Bush-prison-torture News!

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This thread is a continuation from The Unhived Mind website.

Guantanamo Bay Prison and Torture News.

http://z13.invisionfree.com/THE_UNHIVED_MI...pic=19173&st=45

And also from The Forum site's thread ------Conspiracy 'Theories'

Aussie David Hicks,held in Guant. Bay/Torture news

http://www.davidickeforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27682

Welcome!

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After five years of torture, Bisher is slowly slipping into madness

False allegations from MI5 put my clients in Guantánamo Bay and the British government has failed them abysmally

G Brent Mickum
Tuesday January 9, 2007
The Guardian


The day after tomorrow marks the confluence of two ignominious anniversaries. The first is the five-year anniversary of the opening of the notorious prison camps run by the US at the Guantánamo naval air station in Cuba. In the five years since the US started shipping prisoners from around the world to Guantánamo, approximately 99% have never been charged with any transgression, much less a crime. Approximately 400 prisoners, characterised by the Bush administration as "the worst of the worst", have been released without charge, many directly to their families. That any prisoners have been released is due almost entirely to the outrage of the civilised world.

Thursday is also the start of my clients' fifth year of captivity around the world. Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, both British residents, are prisoners because British intelligence tipped off the CIA that they were travelling from the UK to Gambia and falsely described them as Islamist terrorists. We know this because in a court proceeding last year the British government produced copies of telegrams sent by MI5 to the CIA. Although the names are redacted from the documents, we know that the CIA was the recipient because the judge in the case inadvertently noted that they had been sent to the CIA. In the telegrams, MI5 provided knowingly false information to induce my clients' arrest and subsequent rendition.
Bisher and Jamil remain prisoners because, until March of last year, Britain refused to demand their release. Then the foreign secretary made what appears to be a half-hearted request for the release of Bisher in the face of public exposure of the connections with MI5. Britain, however, still refuses to demand the release of Jamil and seven other British residents. None will ever be charged; there is no evidence in the record I have reviewed that would withstand the slightest scrutiny in any court. Moreover, the treatment of Bisher and Jamil has been so appalling, the Bush administration would never allow their story to be exposed to the world in open court. And, of course, some of that story directly implicates British officials.

Bisher and Jamil have withstood various forms of physical torture during their five years as prisoners. Both have suffered numerous beatings (Bisher suffered broken ribs and perhaps a broken foot because of beatings by guards, though both injuries went untreated - despite Bisher's requests for medical assistance), stress positions, temperature extremes, extreme sleep deprivation, death threats, threats to family and, at various times, starvation and being denied water that was fit to drink.

It pains me to report that, at the start of his fifth year in prison, the once healthy and extremely articulate Bisher is failing. He is no longer able to withstand the most insidious form of torture being used by the US military: prolonged isolation combined with environmental manipulation that includes constant exposure to temperature extremes and sleep deprivation.

Bisher is, slowly but surely, slipping into madness. British officials have long been aware of Bisher's treatment. To my knowledge, they have done nothing to intercede on his behalf. Until last March the British government adamantly refused to intercede on behalf of any of the British residents still interred at Guantánamo.

That changed suddenly when the government asked for Bisher's return on non-humanitarian grounds, belatedly conceding that Bisher had worked for MI5. Unfortunately for Bisher, this long-overdue admission, and the British government's request for his immediate repatriation, coincided with Bisher being thrown into isolation. He remains there more than nine months later, with no end in sight.

Bisher's world is a cell 6ft by 8ft in Camp V, where alleged "non-compliant" prisoners are incarcerated. After all these years and hundreds of interrogations, Bisher finally refused to be interrogated further. Despite the fact that Guantánamo officials have publicly proclaimed that prisoners are no longer required to participate in interrogations, Bisher is deemed to be non-compliant and hence is tortured daily.

While in isolation he has, in addition to the temperature extremes, been subjected to other sensory torments. His cell is frequently unbearably cold because the air conditioning is turned up to the maximum. Sometimes his captors take his orange jump suit and sheet, leaving him only in his shorts. For a week at a time, Bisher constantly shivers and is unable to sleep because of the extreme cold. Once, when Bisher attempted to warm himself by covering himself with his prayer rug, one of the few "comfort items" permitted to him, his guards removed it for "misuse".

Dinner never arrives before 9:30pm, and sometimes comes as late as 12am. It is almost always cold. Changes of clothing take place at midnight when prisoners are given a single, thin cotton sheet. Prisoners are unable to sleep until close to 1am. They are awakened at 5am, when each is required to return his sheet. All of Bisher's legal documents and family photographs were seized from him last June and have never been returned.

What the British government knows and the British public needs to know is that Bisher's treatment is designed to achieve a single objective: causing an individual to lose his psychological balance and, ultimately, his mind. Every aspect of Bisher's prison environment is controlled and manipulated to create constant mental instability. The damage to Bisher's psyche is not unexpected. The ravages of extended isolation and sensory deprivation leave no marks, but they destroy the mind.

I have conveyed my concerns about Bisher and Jamil to the British embassy in Washington for some time now. Most recently, I provided detailed declarations, submitted under oath, detailing Bisher's deteriorating mental condition and his appalling treatment. Although I have been assured that great progress has been made negotiating the terms of his release, it is still uncertain and, I'm told, is at least four more months away. If Bisher spends four more months in the conditions I have described, the man I met in September 2004, who was healthy, articulate, thoughtful and humorous, will in all likelihood no longer exist. He will probably slip into a madness that is permanent. If that comes to pass, Britain must recognise and accept the grave culpability it bears.

Almost a hundred prisoners that we know of have died in US custody; 33 of these deaths are formally classified as homicides by the military. Not since the second world war, when the US imprisoned American citizens of Japanese descent, has this country experienced such a constitutional nadir.

If the world is to fight this war on terror, morality must not be allowed to become collateral damage. The time is long past for the British government to demand Bisher's and Jamil's immediate return. Paradigms of innocent suffering, they will remain wraiths that hover above the political and moral landscape, constantly reminding us that the destinies of those who would wage just war and those against whom that war is waged are mingled.

In the process of reasserting the moral high ground in this war, Britain must not forget to reclaim the war's innocent victims. The victims of the United States are too innumerable to count. Britain has Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna.

· George Brent Mickum is an American lawyer representing Jamil el-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi, British residents who are detained at Guantánamo Bay; for a longer version of this article visit commentisfree.co.uk/brent_mickum

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A voice from Gitmo's darkness


A current detainee speaks of the torture and humiliation he has experienced at Guantanamo since 2002.

By Jumah al-Dossari
JUMAH AL-DOSSARI is a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain. This article was excerpted from letters he wrote to his attorneys. Its contents have been deemed unclassified by the Department of Defense.


01/11/07 "Los Angeles Times" -- -- Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba — I AM WRITING from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen.

In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.

At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.

During the first few years at Guantanamo, I was interrogated many times. My interrogators told me that they wanted me to admit that I am from Al Qaeda and that I was involved in the terrorist attacks on the United States. I told them that I have no connection to what they described. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I did not encourage anyone to go fight for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have done nothing but kill and denigrate a religion. I never fought, and I never carried a weapon. I like the United States, and I am not an enemy. I have lived in the United States, and I wanted to become a citizen.

I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States. And I have to say that not all American soldiers stationed in Cuba tortured us or mistreated us. There were soldiers who treated us very humanely. Some even cried when they witnessed our dire conditions. Once, in Camp Delta, a soldier apologized to me and offered me hot chocolate and cookies. When I thanked him, he said, "I do not need you to thank me." I include this because I do not want readers to think that I fault all Americans.

But, why, after five years, is there no conclusion to the situation at Guantanamo? For how long will fathers, mothers, wives, siblings and children cry for their imprisoned loved ones? For how long will my daughter have to ask about my return? The answers can only be found with the fair-minded people of America.

I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.

If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.

Show the world the letters I gave you. Let the world read them. Let the world know the agony of the detainees in Cuba.

UMAH AL-DOSSARI is a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain. This article was excerpted from letters he wrote to his attorneys. Its contents have been deemed unclassified by the Department of Defense.

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

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Guantanamo Unclassified

Prisoner # ISN 940



Adel Hamad, husband and father, aid worker and teacher, has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2003.

01/11/07 Video Runtime 8 Minutes

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16139.htm

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Five Myths About Guantanamo Bay

MYTH: The detainees at Guantanamo are the “worst of the worst."

Fact: Few of the men sent to Guantanamo are the high-ranking al Qaeda or Taliban members the US government alleges them to be. Hundreds were not even involved in the conflict, but rather sold to the US by bounty hunters or turned over by rival clan members trying to settle a vendetta, while high level al Qaeda operatives with the money to buy their freedom got away. According to Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit from 1999 until 2004, no more than 10 percent of those brought to Guantanamo Bay were considered high-value detainees.


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MYTH: All the Guantanamo detainees are combatants who fought against the United States.

FACT: Many of them were not picked up on or anywhere near the battlefield. Detainees were taken into custody from 14 different countries, including Gambia, Bosnia, and Thailand. About half were taken into custody in Pakistan – and, as noted above, the thousands of dollars offered by the US to bounty hunters encouraged false arrests. According to US military records, the US has not even accused the majority of them of fighting US or coalition forces.


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MYTH: All the Guantanamo detainees will be prosecuted.


FACT: Of the nearly 400 men still being held at Guantanamo (another 300 have been repatriated or released), only 10 have been charged with a crime. None have been convicted. The Bush administration now claims that it plans to bring charges against a total of 70 detainees under the military commissions approved by Congress this fall. This still leaves more than 300 detainees at Guantanamo who have never – and will never – be prosecuted. They are simply being held indefinitely without charge or trial. Most of the detainees have filed habeas corpus petitions in federal courts asking that a judge review the legality of their detention. Pressured by President Bush, Congress enacted legislation that bars the courts from hearing their habeas claims – or any other claim regarding their treatment. Absent a new law out of the new Congress or a decision by the Supreme Court that the denial of habeas is unconstitutional, the detainees could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, without trial or any independent review of the legality of their detention.


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MYTH: All of the Guantanamo detainees have had fair hearings where they could contest their detention.

Fact: None of the detainees has been given a fair or impartial hearing to determine whether his detention is justified. The Bush administration claims that the summary hearings that have taken place before three military officers are a sufficient substitute for independent judicial review. The officers conducting these hearings have relied on secret, classified evidence that was presumed to be genuine and accurate but was never shown to the detainee. This put detainees in the impossible situation of rebutting evidence that they had never even seen and subjecting them to decisions made on the basis of untested evidence. In many cases the detainee was never even told what specific activities he was accused of doing that would supposedly make him an “enemy combatant.” Detainees were not allowed lawyers and in most cases were not able to produce any witnesses or evidence apart from their own statements.


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MYTH: All of the Guantanamo detainees have been treated humanely.

FACT: Pentagon superiors, including then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, provided Guantanamo interrogators broad authority to use interrogation techniques that ranged from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to outright torture. The practices included prolonged forced standing, extended sleep deprivation, painful stress positions, exposure to extreme heat and cold, and use of snarling dogs. One memo from an FBI officer who visited Guantanamo described detainees as being “chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water ... Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more.“ The military has since repudiated the use of such abusive interrogation techniques in a newly issued Army Field Manual.

http://hrw.org/campaigns/guantanamo/2007/myths.htm

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Absolute Power

The real reason the Bush administration won't back down on Guantanamo.

By Dahlia Lithwick

01/14/07 "Slate" -- -- Why is the United States poised to try Jose Padilla as a dangerous terrorist, long after it has become perfectly clear that he was just the wrong Muslim in the wrong airport on the wrong day?

Why is the United States still holding hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, long after years of interrogation and abuse have established that few, if any, of them are the deadly terrorists they have been held out to be?

And why is President Bush still issuing grandiose and provocative signing statements, the latest of which claims that the executive branch holds the power to open mail as it sees fit?

Willing to give the benefit of the doubt, I once believed the common thread here was presidential blindness—an extreme executive-branch myopia that leads the president to believe that these futile little measures are somehow integral to combating terrorism. That this is some piece of self-delusion that precludes Bush and his advisers from recognizing that Padilla is just a chump and Guantanamo merely a holding pen for a jumble of innocent and half-guilty wretches.

But it has finally become clear that the goal of these foolish efforts isn't really to win the war against terrorism; indeed, nothing about Padilla, Guantanamo, or signing statements moves the country an inch closer to eradicating terror. The object is a larger one, and the original overarching goal of this administration: expanding executive power, for its own sake.

Two scrupulously reported pieces on the Padilla case are illuminating. On Jan. 3, Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio interviewed Mark Corallo, spokesman for then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, about the behind-the-scenes decision-making in the Padilla case—a case that's lolled through the federal courts for years. According to Totenberg, when the Supreme Court sent Padilla's case back to the lower federal courts on technical grounds in 2004, the Bush administration's sole concern was preserving its constitutional claim that it could hold citizens as enemy combatants. "Justice Department officials warned that if the case went back to the Supreme Court, the administration would almost certainly lose," she reports, which is why Padilla was hauled back to the lower courts. Her sources further confirmed that "key players in the Defense Department and Vice President Cheney's office insisted that the power to detain Americans as enemy combatants had to be preserved."

Deborah Sontag's excellent New York Times story on Padilla on Jan. 4 makes the same point: He was moved from military custody to criminal court only as "a legal maneuver that kept the issue of his detention without charges out of the Supreme Court." So this is why the White House yanked Padilla from the brig to the high court to the federal courts and back to a Florida trial court: They were only forum shopping for the best place to enshrine the right to detain him indefinitely. Their claims about Padilla's dirty bomb, known to be false, were a means of advancing their larger claims about executive power. And when confronted with the possibility of losing on those claims, they yanked him back to the criminal courts as a way to avoid losing powers they'd already won.

This need to preserve newly won legal ground also explains the continued operation of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the camp that—according to Donald Rumsfeld in 2002—houses only "the worst of the worst." Now that over half of them have been released (apparently, the best of the worst) and even though only about 80 of the rest will ever see trials, the camp remains open. Why? Civil-rights groups worldwide and even close U.S. allies like Germany, Denmark, and England clamor for its closure. And as the ever-vigilant Nat Hentoff points out, new studies reveal that only a small fraction of the detainees there are even connected to al-Qaida—according to the Defense Department's own best data.

But Guantanamo stays open for the same reason Padilla stays on trial. Having claimed the right to label enemy combatants and detain them indefinitely without charges, the Bush administration is unable to retreat from that position without ceding ground. In some sense, the president is now as much a prisoner of Guantanamo as the detainees. And having gone nose-to-nose with the Congress over his authority to craft stripped-down courts for these "enemies," courts guaranteed to produce guilty verdicts, Bush cannot just call off the trials.

The endgame in the war on terror isn't holding the line against terrorists. It's holding the line on hard-fought claims to absolutely limitless presidential authority.

Enter these signing statements. The most recent of the all-but-meaningless postscripts Bush tacks onto legislation gives him the power to "authorize a search of mail in an emergency" to ''protect human life and safety" and "for foreign intelligence collection." There is some debate about whether the president has that power already, but it misses the point. The purpose of these signing statements is simply to plant a flag on the moon—one more way for the president to stake out the furthest corners in his field of constitutional dreams.

Last spring, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer profiled David Addington, Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff and legal adviser. Addington's worldview in brief: A single-minded devotion to something called the New Paradigm, a constitutional theory of virtually limitless executive power, wherein "the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it," Mayer describes.

Insiders in the Bush administration told Mayer that Addington and Cheney had been "laying the groundwork" for a vast expansion of presidential power long before 9/11. In 2002, the vice president told ABC News that the presidency was "weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years." Rebuilding that presidency has been their sole goal for decades.

The image of Addington scrutinizing "every bill before President Bush signs it, searching for any language that might impinge on Presidential power," as Mayer puts it, can be amusing—like the mother of the bride obsessing over a tricky seating chart. But this zeal to restore an all-powerful presidency traps the Bush administration in its own worst legal sinkholes. This newfound authority—to maintain a disastrous Guantanamo, to stage rights-free tribunals and hold detainees forever—is the kind of power Nixon only dreamed about. It cannot be let go.

In a heartbreaking letter from Guantanamo this week, published in the Los Angeles Times, prisoner Jumah Al Dossari writes: "The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed." I fear he is wrong. The destruction of Al Dossari, Jose Padilla, Zacarias Moussaoui, and some of our most basic civil liberties was never a purpose or a goal—it was a mere byproduct. The true purpose is more abstract and more tragic: To establish a clunky post-Watergate dream of an imperial presidency, whatever the human cost may be.

A version of this piece appeared in the Washington Post Outlook section.

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Cell phone cams expose torture

By Claude Salhani Jan 16, 2007
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middlee..._expose_torture

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Human rights groups have long complained against the use of torture in Egypt, a fact consistently denied by the Egyptian government. But a video recording made with a cell phone camera and posted on the Internet for the world to see places the government of President Hosni Mubarak in an embarrassing position.

The Egyptian government -- and indeed all governments which resort to the use of torture -- may start having second thoughts now that, thanks to modern technology, denial is no longer an option. With the probability that such actions may be recorded and later used as evidence against the torturers in criminal courts, police officers may now think twice before abusing prisoners.

While torture may serve an immediate goal, that of forcing the suspect to reveal information, it carries a devastating long-term effect for both the prisoner and the people applying the torture.

For the victims of torture it augments the hate and helps widen the schism between them and the established powers. Often, as in Iraq, for example, it lays the groundwork for future revenge.

To prove this point one need only look at the case of al-Qaida`s number two man, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. The radical Islamist militant and deputy leader of the world`s most feared terrorist group is reported to have turned to radical and violent Islam only after suffering severe torture while serving time in an Egyptian jail. It is said that it was the torture that changed him.

Regrettably, the story of Zawahiri being subjected to torture is far from being unique. Despite repeated calls from the world community, from human rights advocates and others, the torture of suspects in Egyptian, or other Arab jails, persists. And in Asian jails, or for that matter American jails, remains all too current. Think back to Abu Ghraib and the horrid scenes from the U.S.-run jail outside Baghdad. Or much closer to home, think of the stories -- the nightmares, rather -- that emerged from the Guantanamo detention facilities.

Zawahiri`s case became known to the public as a result of his association with al-Qaida. But for every case that surfaces to the public`s attention there remain hundreds, if not thousands, more untold stories of prisoners being routinely tortured while in the custody of government security agencies.

But the tables may be starting to turn on the torturers thanks to modern technology and the invention of the cell phone video camera.

After the video taping of Saddam Hussein`s execution by someone using a cellular phone equipped with a video camera found its way on the Internet, the world had the opportunity to see justice miscarried within minutes. Saddam`s hanging turned out to be more of a lynching and an embarrassment for the Iraqi government.

This week a similar scandal has erupted in Cairo over the use of cell phone/video cam, this time to film a torture scene. Somehow, someone managed to sneak a cell phone camera into an Egyptian police station and document a disturbing scene showing a woman hanging from a lateral pole that was balanced between the backs of two chairs. The woman`s hands and feet are tied and she is swinging upside-down with the wooden pole placed under her knees.

The popular Internet site youtube.com displayed this clip as well as several others showing Egyptian policemen hitting, kicking, shouting and abusing detainees.

The prisoners appear completely helpless; if they attempt to defend themselves, if they try to cover their faces in order to avoid blows, they are hit even harder.

The Egyptian government has consistently denied the use of torture by its military, police and security forces. But the sudden appearance on youtube.com of dozens of clips taken by cell phone cams has brought much embarrassment to the government of President Mubarak, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East and in the war on terror.

Adding to Mubarak`s embarrassment, Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV`s documentary channel had one of its producers arrested at Cairo International Airport as she tried leaving the country with footage showing the use of torture in Egyptian detention centers.

Howayda Taha, the al-Jazeera producer, found herself charged with 'harming the state`s national interest' -- meaning al-Jazeera was planning to air the torture footage. The al-Jazeera journalist was accused of fabricating images in a way that is detrimental to the country`s reputation; she was prohibited from leaving the country and had nearly 50 tapes confiscated.

Maybe someone managed to film her arrest with a cell phone camera?

(Comments may be sent to Claude@upi.com.)

Copyright 2007 by United Press International

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Guantanamo is a US torture camp

BY VIKRAM DODD

18 January 2007



IT would be the ideal spot for a beachside birthday party. Surrounded by a turquoise sea, palm trees and white sand, the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is now five years old. Tony Blair calls it an ‘anomaly’, but the evidence is overwhelming.


Camp Delta, which still houses 470 men never convicted of any crime, is a torture camp. That should be the starting point of any debate about what is acceptable in the west's fight with Islamist extremists. More than 750 men have passed through the camp, with nearly half being released. Many prisoners, past and present, have given consistent and repeated testimony of serious abuses and ill treatment. There is also significant evidence from US officials and government documents of widespread abuse at the camp.

The British detainees known as the Tipton Three (after their home town of Tipton in the north of England) allege they were repeatedly beaten, shackled in painful positions for long periods and subjected to sleep deprivation. They were also subjected to strobe lighting, loud music and extremes of hot and cold -- all meant to break them psychologically. Other detainees have suffered beatings, sexual assaults and death threats. At least one man has been ‘water boarded’ -- tied to a board and placed under water so that he had the sensation of drowning.

According to the Red Cross, the regime at Guantanamo causes psychological suffering that has driven inmates mad, with scores of suicide attempts and three inmates killing themselves last year.

Even US officials are shocked. Last week FBI documents revealed that an inmate's head had been wrapped in tape for quoting from the Qur'an. Another was humiliated for his religious beliefs and ‘baptised’ by a soldier posing as a Catholic priest. The documents show FBI agents saw 26 instances of abuse in their time at Guantanamo. The FBI is highly sceptical about alleged confessions gained by its military colleagues. A May 2004 FBI memo branded intelligence gained from ‘special techniques’ as ‘suspect at best’. Indeed, one of the Tipton Three confessed to being in a video shot at an Afghan terror camp alongside Osama bin Laden -- in fact, at the time he was working in an electronics store in the UK.

But the US should not shoulder all the blame. Some of the material from Guantanamo has been used by Britain's counter-terrorism agencies. In June 2003 Tony Blair told the House of Commons: ‘Information is still coming from people detained there ... That information is important’. George Bush, his aides and the US military define what they have been doing as a special programme using special measures: their position appears to be that as long as blood is not drawn, it is not torture.

One official investigation found an inmate had been sexually humiliated and forced to perform dog tricks on a leash. It said the conduct was “abusive and degrading” but not torture. In a UK court hearing over Guantanamo, a senior British judge, Mr Justice Collins, declared: “America's idea of what is torture is not the same as ours.”

A UN report has confirmed evidence of torture, and Amnesty International has declared Guantanamo ‘the gulag of our time’. Guantanamo is not the only US torture camp. Bagram in Afghanistan has been dogged by stories of abuse, and there are secret US prisons around the world where it is widely feared new horrors are occuring.

Human rights have been traded away in Guantanamo in the hope of gaining security, and it has not worked. One of the US's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, stated: “He who trades liberty for security deserves neither and will lose both.”

Adorned on the walls of the Guantanamo camp is its mission statement: ‘Honour-bound to defend freedom’.

After five years of Guantanamo, do you feel any safer?

Vikram Dodd is a senior staff writer on the London-based Guardian newspaper.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle...on=opinion&col=

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MULTIMEDIA

A special report on David Hicks by The Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/multimedia/hicks/main.html

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The Waste Land: Declassified poetry from Guantánamo Bay

Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2007. By Ken Silverstein
http://www.harpers.org/sb-the-waste-land-1169582427.html

Jumah al-Dossari, originally from Bahrain, was seized by Pakistani security forces in late 2001 and turned over to the United States. The U.S. military brought him to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, where, he claims, he was beaten, his life was threatened, and he was isolated from other prisoners for long stretches of time. Dossari, who denies any connection to Al Qaeda or terrorism, and has never been charged with any such crime, has repeatedly attempted to commit suicide while imprisoned. His most recent attempt, according to Amnesty International, was in March 2006, when he tried to slit his throat.

Death Poem

By Jumah al-Dossari

Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the “protectors of peace.”

---end of poem-------

That poem will be included in a collection of poetry by Guantánamo detainees that is being assembled by Marc Falkoff, a law professor at Northern Illinois University and an attorney for seventeen clients at the prison camp. Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak will be published this fall by the University of Iowa Press and will include essays by several prominent literary and cultural figures. Most of the poems were written in Arabic and translated by non-professionals.

Falkoff, who has a doctorate in literature, was intrigued when several of his clients began sending him poems. “I didn't think much of it,” he told me, “until I was reading a terrifically moving volume of poems called Here, Bullet by Brian Turner, an Iraq War vet. I started thinking about the power of topical poetry, and it occurred to me that the public should read the poetry that my clients wrote. I was curious if other lawyers had clients who’d written poetry, so I asked around and learned that there was a lot of it in their files. It hit me that we could pull a lot of this stuff together as a collection so the public could, yes, hear the voices of Guantánamo, and perhaps move [[beyond]] the administration's sloganeering.”

Falkoff won't be able to include all of the works he had hoped to, because the Pentagon has classified some of the poems. In a September 18, 2006 memo, a Pentagon official explained that several poems submitted for declassification had been rejected because poetry “presents a special risk” due to its “content and format.” It was not made clear whether the Pentagon believes the danger lies in the power of words or in the risk that detainees could send coded messages to terrorist operatives through their poems. “As much as I'd like to think it's the former, I presume it's the latter,” Falkoff replied when I asked him about the military's thinking on the matter.

Of the work that has been cleared for publication, Falkoff plans to include “Ode to the Sea” by Ibrahim al Rubaish (“Your beaches are sadness, captivity, pain and injustice whose bitterness eats away at patience/Your calm is death, and your sweeping is strange and a silence rises up from you, holding treachery in its fold”) and “Even if the Pain” by Saddiq Turkestani. The latter is one of nine ethnic Uighurs whom the Pentagon long ago determined not to be “enemy combatants” but continues to hold because they would likely be tortured and killed if sent home to China. The Bush Administration won't allow them into the United States, and no other government has volunteered to take them.

Several of the poets in the volume were released from Guantánamo after long periods of incarceration, without ever having been charged. They include the Moazzam Begg of Britain (“Freedom is spent, time is up/Tears have rent my sorrow’s cup/Home is cage, and cage is steel/Thus manifest reality’s unreal”) and Abdur Rahim Muslim Dost of Afghanistan (“Those who argue or reason unjustly and foolishly with Dost the Poet/They can't help to surrender or runaway”).

Dost's brother, Badruzzaman Badr, was also detained at Guantanamo and later freed (his work, too, will appear in the collection). Both men returned to their home in Peshawar, Pakistan, and last September published The Broken Shackles of Guantanamo, which describes their experiences there. The book is also critical of the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, and its collaboration with the United States in the “war on terror.” On September 29 of last year, Dost was arrested as he left a local mosque; he has thus far not been charged but has been prevented from seeing an attorney or his family. His brother has reportedly gone into hiding.

* * *

[accuracy]

Guantanamo inmates facing worse conditions-lawyer

26 Jan 2007 Source: Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26364409.htm



By Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Some Guantanamo Bay prisoners have been moved to a new wing where they face the worst conditions since their arrival, as interrogators make a last attempt to extract confessions, a U.S. lawyer said on Friday.

Zachary Katznelson, who represents 36 detainees, said that since he last saw his clients there in December at least 160 of the 395 prisoners had been moved to solitary confinement in "Camp 6", the latest modern facility to be opened at the base.

"Since they were moved, every lawyer is reporting clients extremely depressed, some becoming psychotic. The men say this is the harshest treatment since they arrived five years ago," Katznelson said in an interview with Reuters.

More than 770 people have been held at the U.S. military base in Cuba since the prison camp opened there in January 2002, and only 10 have been charged with crimes. About 395 remain, suspected of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban and kept in modern maximum security cells.

Many people have called for the detainees to be charged with crimes or released. U.S. officials say they are a threat to the United States and could return to the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq if released.

Inmates in the new camp were locked "in extreme isolation in six-foot by eight-foot cells with lights on 24 hours and all they have are an inch-thin mattress, a steel platform to sleep, a steel sink and toilet and the Koran," Katznelson said.

"They are turning on air-conditioning up to a maximum, freezing the prisoners," said the U.S. lawyer, a senior counsel with the British-based rights group Reprieve.

Katznelson said the tougher policy was tied to an assumption that time was running out for interrogators to yield results, as pressure grew for Washington to close the controversial prison.

"They want to do whatever is possible to break them mentally in the hope that somehow they will reveal some kernel of information they have been withholding for five years," he said.

REGULAR CONTACT

More than 100 have been kept in less harsh solitary confinement conditions in Camp 5 for the past two years while 130 others had regular contact with fellow prisoners, Katznelson said.

U.S. President George W. Bush has made no move to close Guantanamo but has been under pressure by rights groups to allow countries to assume responsibility for their own nationals and to allow for its closure as soon as possible.

"They know many of these people will go home soon. They are still pushing them, pushing them...even though are saying we have nothing left to say," Katznelson said.

U.S military prosecutors are expected to bring cases against between 60 and 80 of those still held. About 380 detainees have been sent home, 114 of them last year.

Katznelson, said "declassified information" he received showed that, since October, the level of beatings had risen dramatically.

"Entire cans of Mace have been sprayed in prisoners' faces. Prisoners are being denied medical care unless they give information to interrogators," Katznelson said.

Many of the men held at Guantanamo Bay were captured in Afghanistan in the U.S.-led war to oust the Taliban in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks. Many have been held for years and nearly all are being held without trial.

More inmates returned home in the past six months than in any period since the prison was opened, Katznelson said.

He said Yemen was seeking to get back its 100 citizens, the largest national group at the base. Saudi Arabia took back at least 60 of its nationals last year. Afghanistan had only 70 detainees after at least 140 inmates were handed over, most freed outright on their return.

"In the last few months, more states are saying we want our sons back. We will put them on trial if there is any evidence against them but we want to do justice for our men," Katznelson.

[accuracy]

28th January 2007

The detention of terror suspect David Hicks in a Guantanamo Bay "hell hole" is an abuse of human rights that must end immediately, the Australian Democrats say.

Democrats legal affairs spokeswoman Natasha Stott Despoja said it was an "outrage" that Hicks was being held in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day, with fluorescent lighting, air-conditioning and restricted access to reading materials.

"This is abuse of human rights," Ms Stott Despoja said in a statement.

"Mr Hicks has no charges against him, yet he has been detained in this hellhole for five years."

The 31-year-old Adelaide-born father of two has been held at the US naval base in Cuba since January 2002, after being captured with the Taliban in Afghanistan the previous month.

Ms Stott Despoja said she and South Australian ALP senator Linda Kirk had called for a cross-party delegation to visit the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to inspect the conditions.

"Australian politicians can no longer turn a blind eye to this facility and blight on international law," she said.

"... I will continue to fight for Hicks to be repatriated.

"Other countries have had their citizens returned.

"It is time to bring David Hicks home."

Conditions inside Guantanamo Bay have been detailed in US District Court documents.

Hicks' Australian lawyer David McLeod left for Cuba on Friday and is due to visit Guantanamo Bay on Monday, but has said there is no guarantee his client will agree to see him.

Hicks, a convert to Islam, was charged with conspiracy, aiding the enemy and attempted murder but the charges were dropped after the US Supreme Court ruled last June that the military commissions set up to try Guantanamo Bay detainees were unlawful.

The Pentagon announced a new system of military commissions earlier this month and Hicks is expected to face fresh charges within weeks.

AAP

[accuracy]

27th January 2007

David Hicks is spending 22 hours a day in "nightmarish" isolation in conditions described by Guantanamo Bay inmates as "a dungeon above the ground", court documents suggest.

Fresh evidence about the treatment of prisoners in the US military base has been revealed amid deepening concerns about the Australian terrorist suspect's mental state, and just days before Hicks receives a visit from his Australian lawyer.

Conditions inside Hicks' cell block at the naval base in Cuba are so bad that detainees are suffering mental health problems ranging from "crushing loneliness" to hearing "voices", the documents say.

Life inside Guantanamo Bay's Camp 6, where Hicks was transferred in early December from another section of the prison, has been detailed in declarations filed in a case in the US District Court.

Lawyers are trying to expedite hearings for five terrorist suspects who are Uighur Muslims from the Xinjiang region of northern China that borders Central Asia.

The documents say the impact of Camp 6 conditions on the inmates has been "profound", and all five Uighurs are struggling to pass the days of "infinite tedium and loneliness".

"All describe a feeling of despair, crushing loneliness and abandonment by the world," a statutory declaration by the men's lawyer, Sabin Willett, said.

"One felt he was in the 'dungeon above the ground'; another said 'it feels like we are in tunnels'.

"All expressed a desperate desire for sunlight, fresh air and someone to speak to."

The tiny cells in camp 6 are constructed of solid metal and receive no natural air or sunlight.

There are no windows except for small glass strips which provide a view of the corridor, a clock and the military police guarding them.

They eat and pray alone and have no reading material other than the Koran.

Each inmate is allowed two hours "rec time" every 24 hours, but this is frequently only called late at night or in the early hours of the morning.

Recreation time is spent in a confined area measuring three metres by four metres and surrounded by concrete walls two storeys high, giving prisoners little chance of seeing the sun.

The US military had imposed on the men "a regimen of isolation and cruelty unheard of in penal or military law and unknown to civilised people", said Willett, who visited Guantanamo Bay on January 15 to 18.

Hicks', who is waiting for fresh charges to be laid against him, has been held at Guantanamo Bay without trial for five years and has been in continuous isolation since March last year.

His American military lawyer, Marine Corps Major Michael Mori, said he was disturbed by the reported conditions inside Camp 6.

"It's worse than even our supermax prisons in the United States," he told AAP.

"They've got TV, they've got books. These people don't have anything."

Hicks' Australian lawyer David McLeod left for Cuba on Friday and is due to visit Guantanamo on Monday, but has said there is no guarantee his Adelaide-born client will agree to see him.

The 31-year-old, who was captured among Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001, refused to take a phone call from his family just before Christmas, raising fresh concerns about his emotional state.

Charges of conspiracy, aiding the enemy and attempted murder were dropped after the US Supreme Court ruled last June that the military commissions to try Guantanamo Bay detainees were unlawful.

The Pentagon announced a new system of military commissions earlier this month and Hicks is expected to face fresh charges within weeks.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said he wasn't aware of the specific conditions in which Hicks is detained, but added Australia is pushing for charges to be laid within weeks.

"I haven't seen the documents and I undoubtedly will be briefed on any documentation that has been tabled, but at this point I haven't seen any such documentation," he said.

"The prime minister has made it clear that we will be seeking from the United States charges by mid-February and we'll see how events unfold from there."

AAP

[accuracy]

29th January 2007

Prime Minister John Howard says Australian terror suspect David Hicks can't be held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay without going to trial.

Last week, the government told the United States it wanted Hicks, who has been held by the Americans for five years, charged by the middle of February.

"We'll see whether that time line is met," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

"I'm not happy at the time that has gone by.

"I do not accept that he can be held indefinitely without trial, whatever view I may have about the alleged offences with which he is charged."

The 31-year-old Adelaide father of two has been detained at the US' Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba since January 2002, a month after he was captured with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, aiding the enemy and attempted murder at a US military commission hearing in August 2004, but the charges were struck out by a US Supreme Court ruling last June declaring the military commissions unlawful.

The Americans announced a new system of military commissions earlier this month, saying Hicks would be charged soon.

Mr Howard defended Australia's decision not to ask the US to return Hicks to Australia, like Britain had done with its citizens detained at Guantanamo Bay.

"We took the view that somebody who was charged with the offences that Hicks was charged with, knowing as we did that he could not be charged with any offence under Australian law because they were not crimes under Australian law when he allegedly committed them ... we took a view that it was reasonable that he face a military commission in the United States, he said."

On talkback radio, Mr Howard rejected criticism from a listener that the government was being a lapdog to the US by allowing Hicks to be held so long.

"There are a lot of Australians who think a close and strong alliance between Australia and the United States will be as important to our future security as it proved to be critically in the past," he said.

"I don't think we're sacrificing Australians - I think what we're doing is trying to strike a very difficult balance, on the one hand our detestation of the alleged offences and also our proper desire to ensure that no one is held indefinitely without trial."

Also on Monday, the Law Council of Australia said the new system of military commissions remained fundamentally flawed and Hicks should be able to challenge his detention at Guantanamo Bay in US courts.

As the Labor Party considers signing an appeal to US Congress, the law council has written to US lawmakers calling for a fair trial for Hicks.

"He must be brought promptly to a trial before a regularly constituted court affording, in the words of the Geneva Convention, 'all the necessary judicial guarantees recognised as indispensable by civilised peoples'," council president Tim Bugg wrote.

"Failing that, he should be released and repatriated."

The law council said in its letter to congress, Hicks should be released if he couldn't be dealt with by a properly constituted court.

"The construction of a specially designed but inferior and deficient system of justice to deal with people pre-ordained as terrorists diminishes the moral standing of our two societies," Mr Bugg wrote.

"Although now a creature of the congress rather than the Pentagon, the military commissions regime remains fundamentally flawed and fails to provide fundamental fair trial guarantees."

AAP

[oneofmany]

why is anyone in that pit? It's inhumane :(

[jimijams]

'It's like a Nazi camp': Hicks

Accused terrorist David Hicks has told his lawyers that conditions at Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held for five years, are "like a Nazi concentration camp".

In other developments, the Queen has replied to a letter sent by an Australian journalist pleading for her to intervene in the Hicks case, however she has declined to become involved.

Hicks, a 31-year-old father of two, met his lawyers today inside the newly-created Camp Six at the US military prison in Cuba.

The Adelaide-born Muslim convert showed signs of mental deterioration, his Australian-based lawyer David McLeod said after the meeting.

"He shows all the signs of someone who has been kept in isolation for a very long time," Mr McLeod said.

"He's not in very good shape, the conditions are pretty ordinary."

Hicks has been detained by the US military without trial since he was captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001.

He was sent to Guantanamo Bay the following month.

"He continues to be locked up 22 hours a day," Mr McLeod said.

"He has seen the sun three times since he has been at Camp Six in early December.

"He has no privacy whatsoever in Camp Six - his toilet paper is rationed, he hasn't been able to comb his hair since going there because he's not provided with a comb or brush.

"The guards can see into his cell 24 hours a day.

"I won't go into his condition in more detail than that.

"We have just had some time with him and we are seeing him again tomorrow.

"But suffice to say, he's not in good shape."

Queen replies to letter

Barry Everingham wrote to the Queen on December 12 last year urging the monarch to exercise her power as Australia's head of state to get Hicks out of the prison.

In a letter from Buckingham Palace received by Mr Everingham today, the Queen's correspondence officer Sonia Bonici said the Queen had asked her to thank him for the letter.

"Mrs Bonici wrote, this is not a matter in which Her Majesty would intervene," Mr Everingham said.

While Mr Everingham said he was disappointed that the Queen had not become involved directly in the issue, he was happy she had forwarded his letter to the British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett.

If nothing else, the Queen will have a better idea of the sort of person Prime Minister John Howard is, Mr Everingham said.

"I outlined in my letter to her his [Mr Howard's] intransigence in dealing with this outrageous treatment of David," Mr Everingham said.

Mr Everingham said in his letter the Australian Government was deaf to appeals for its intervention to have Hicks returned to Australia while he awaited trial.

"David has been ignored ... and the Prime Minister has abandoned an Australian citizen to a fate surely worse than death," Mr Everingham wrote.

"Is there something you, Australian Head of State, can do to address this grievous wrong?"

Emergency motion filed

A US lawyer, Sabin Willett, has visited Camp Six, where Hicks was moved last month, and filed an emergency motion in the US Court of Appeals criticising the conditions.

In an affidavit to the court, Mr Willett described the conditions as like a "Nazi concentration camp - a place where, when they take you in, you never come out".

In his affidavit, Mr Willett said Camp Six detainees are held in solid metal cells with no natural light or air and detailed other alleged human rights violations.

"We put those things very quickly to David and he confirmed each and every allegation of the nature of Camp Six," Mr McLeod said.

"Those observations in those articles are totally consistent with what David is putting up with."

US prosecutors are expected to lay fresh charges against Hicks within weeks.

He pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy before a US military commission in August 2004.

But the charges were dropped last year when the US Supreme Court ruled the military commissions designed to prosecute Hicks and other Guantanamo detainees were unlawful.

The US announced its new rules for the commissions on January 18.

AAP
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/its-like-a-nazi-camp-hicks/2007/01/30/1169919319298.html

[accuracy]

This is the official website of David Hicks:

“Fair Go For David”

David Hicks : Australian Citizen

Location : Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba


http://www.fairgofordavid.org/

http://www.fairgofordavid.org/images/David23.jpg

[accuracy]

Potshot at Guantanamo lawyers backfires

Big firms laud free legal aid for detainees.

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | January 29, 2007

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/01/29/potshot_at_guantanamo_lawyers_backfires/


WASHINGTON -- Two weeks after a senior Pentagon official suggested that corporations should pressure their law firms to stop assisting detainees at Guantanamo Bay, major companies have turned the tables on the Pentagon and issued statements supporting the law firms' work on behalf of terrorism suspects.

The corporate support for the lawyers comes as law associations and members of Congress have expressed outrage at the remarks of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Charles D. "Cully" Stimson on Jan. 11.

In a radio interview, Stimson stated the names of a dozen law firms that volunteer their services to represent detainees, and he suggested that the chief executives of the firms' corporate clients would make the lawyers "choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."

He said he expected the newly public list of law firms that do work at Guantanamo Bay to spark a cycle of negative publicity for them. Instead, Stimson himself became the center of nationwide criticism and later apologized for the remarks.

The episode has become an embarrassing chapter in the Pentagon's long-running battle with the detainees' lawyers and appears to have spurred public support for the legal rights of the detainees, nearly 400 of whom just marked the start of their sixth year of incarceration at the base.

Charles Rudnick , a spokesman for Boston Scientific Corp., said the company supports the decision of its law firm, WilmerHale, to represent six men who were arrested in Bosnia in 2001 "because our legal system depends on vigorous advocacy for even the most unpopular causes."

Brackett Denniston, senior vice president and general counsel of General Electric, said the company strongly disagrees with the suggestion that it discriminate against law firms that do such work. "Justice is served when there is quality representation even for the unpopular," Denniston said in a statement.

Verizon issued a similar statement.

The lawyers have welcomed these expressions of solidarity from their paying clients.

"It would seem [the Pentagon] made a miscalculation," said Stephen Oleskey , an attorney at WilmerHale in Boston who has traveled to Guantanamo Bay seven times since he took up the case in 2004. "We haven't had any clients call up and say, 'We are really deeply disturbed that you are advocating for fair hearings.' The amount of support [we have gotten] has been heartening."

He said a committee at WilmerHale swiftly made the decision in 2004 to offer free help to the detainees when a request went out from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit legal organization, which had filed a petition in federal court on behalf of the detainees.

"As time has gone on, it has become plainer that it is an important issue for our justice system," Oleskey said. "People have been more and more interested in hearing about it. We have been asked to speak at universities, human rights groups, and churches."

Michael Ratner , president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that in his early days of defending Guantanamo detainees he got hundreds of hate letters from the public every time he spoke about the issue on television. But now, he said, he receives only positive feedback, especially since Stimson's remarks.

"They miscalculated, that's for sure," said Ratner, who helps coordinate 500 lawyers and 120 law firms across the country to defend the detainees.

Support for the defense of Guantanamo detainees has become so widely accepted that two Newton attorneys are defraying the cost of their trips to Guantanamo Bay by collecting donations from the public.

Doris Tennant and Ellen Lubell have collected $7,000 in the past three weeks toward the estimated $20,000 they expect to spend defending an Algerian detainee known as Number 744. It is difficult to tell whether the controversy has made fund-raising easier, Tennant said, because Stimson's remarks coincided with their appeal for funds. But she said many of her supporters made reference to Stimson as they voiced their support and sent in checks.

"It has been quite an outpouring," said Tennant, who hopes to make her first visit to Guantanamo Bay next week.

That support is not what Stimson predicted when he gave a radio interview Jan. 11, the fifth anniversary of the day the detainees were brought to the base.

Stimson told the Washington-based Federal News Radio that the cause of detainees was "not popular" with the American people and that the list of major law firms representing the detainees was "shocking."

"I think quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hurt their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms," he said.

In the interview, he named about a dozen firms, including WilmerHale. He said that corporations would become outraged when they realized that their legal fees were subsidizing this kind of pro bono work.

In addition to the interview, a Wall Street Journal columnist quoted an unnamed US official making similar remarks in a column that also included the names of several top firms.

Now, some lawyers for detainees are accusing the Pentagon of an organized effort to generate bad publicity for the firms.

Baltimore-based lawyer William J. Murphy , who represents a Kuwaiti detainee, has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records of communications between senior Pentagon officials and the media before the Jan. 11 interview in a bid to uncover evidence of a smear campaign.

Some lawyers said publicizing the names of the law firms had achieved one of Stimson's objectives -- distracting attention from the roughly 395 men who remain imprisoned.

"It backfired to the extent that they didn't get the kind of support that they were hoping," said Neil McGaraghan , a Boston-based attorney at Bingham McCutchen, which represents a group of ethnic Uighurs from China at Guantanamo Bay.

"But to the extent that it has drawn attention away from Guantanamo and focused it on the lawyers, it has worked."

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

[accuracy]

Sudan journalists protest detention of colleague at Guantanamo

Monday 29 January 2007
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article20001

Jan 28, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Television stations in Sudan turned black for three minutes on Sunday to protest the detention of a Sudanese cameraman held in U.S. custody at the Guantanamo Bay prison for more than five years.

http://www.sudantribune.com/IMG/jpg/Sami_al-Hajj.jpg
Sami al-Hajj

A cameraman for the pan-Arab TV channel Al-Jazeera, Sami al-Hajj was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and is detained at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in southern Cuba.

Like several hundred other men held at Guantanamo on allegations they have links to international terrorism, al-Hajj has not been tried.

"We want him released immediately or, if there are any charges against him, that he be presented to trial" said Mohammed Mustafa Mamoon, the spokesman for the Sudanese TV union that organized the protest.

Sudan’s state television and the private Blue Nile Satellite TV suspended broadcasting for three minutes at 10 p.m. local time (1900GMT) in a sign of solidarity with al-Hajj, the spokesman said.

Osama bin Laden, who’s terrorist organization has often used Al-Jazeera to broadcast messages, mentioned al-Hajj in an audiotape released last May, saying the cameraman had no ties to al-Qaida.

Mamoon said al-Hajj has been on hunger strike for the past three weeks to protest his conditions of detention and ask for his release. Mamoon did not say how he obtained this information, which could not be independently verified.

A lawyer representing al-Hajj was not immediately available for comment Sunday, and the U.S. military, which runs the prison, does not confirm the identity of individual hunger strikers.

Several Sudanese nationals are being held at Guantanamo, including the cameraman. Details on his arrest have not been made public.

Last week, hundreds protested in Khartoum against al-Hajj’s prolonged detention and demonstrators including members of his family and some colleagues handed a memo demanding his release to the U.S. embassy.

The U.S. and Sudan have long had strained diplomatic relations but are reported to cooperate on counterterrorism issues despite a growing antagonism over how to pacify Darfur, where the White House says Khartoum is perpetrating a genocide.

Some 759 people have been held over the years at Guantanamo, according to U.S. Defense Department documents released to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

(AP)

[accuracy]

Guantanamo protest at U.S. Consulate

Fake prison set up at rally

By MIKE KOREEN, TORONTO SUN
Sun, January 28, 2007

http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2007/01/28/3466826-sun.html

On a cold, snowy day, Samy Mousa stood in a T-shirt across from the U.S. Consulate on University Ave., refusing to put on his heavy coat.

It was the Dunbarton High School student's way of showing support for the 400-plus terror suspects at the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba during a Close Guantanamo rally yesterday.

About 60 people took part in the event organized by Amnesty International Toronto, one of a series of worldwide rallies calling for the closure of the five-year-old facility.

Amnesty International constructed a fake prison yesterday and had protesters in orange jumpsuits standing inside to illustrate the plight of the detainees, many of whom are being held without charges or trials.

"First and foremost, we are demanding George Bush close Guantanamo," Michael Craig, the event organizer, said. "We are hoping the Democratic-controlled congress will start to take action to close Guantanamo and re-confirm a commitment to human rights. But we are also very upset that Stephen Harper has been missing in action on this issue. ... We are calling on Stephen Harper to speak out."

[accuracy]

Abu Ghraib officer to face court-martial

By DAVID DISHNEAU, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jan 26
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070126/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/abu_ghraib;_ylt=AloNjUAlTcMJ8h2u2mFgQGwD5gcF;_ylu= X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--

HAGERSTOWN, Md. - The only U.S. military officer charged with a crime in the Abu Ghraib scandal will be court-martialed on eight charges, including cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners, the Army said Friday.


Lt. Col. Steven Lee Jordan, a 50-year-old reservist from Virginia who ran the interrogation center at the Iraqi prison, was accused of failing to exert his authority as the place descended into chaos, with prisoners stripped naked, photographed in humiliating poses and intimidated by snarling dogs. He was also charged with lying to investigators.

He has not been accused of personally torturing or humiliating prisoners, and was not pictured in any of the photos that embarrassed the Pentagon and shocked the Muslim world.

Army spokesman Col. Jim Yonts told The Associated Press that Maj. Gen. Guy C. Swann, commander of the Military District of Washington, decided Jordan must stand trial.

Jordan was charged in April with 12 offenses. Swann dismissed four of them after Jordan was given an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a civilian preliminary hearing, in October.

Besides cruelty and maltreatment, the charges include disobeying a superior officer, willful dereliction of duty and making false statements.

Jordan's military lawyers did not immediately return calls for comment.

2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[accuracy]

By Rob Taylor
Reuters
Wednesday, January 31, 2007

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/31/AR2007013100126.html

CANBERRA (Reuters) - The United States may speed up the trial of Australia's only Guantanamo Bay inmate, David Hicks, following a rare split between the two allies over accusations he faced "Nazi concentration camp" conditions.

With his five-year detention shaping as an election year issue for Australia's conservative government amid growing public clamor for his release, Prime Minister John Howard has insisted to U.S. authorities that Hicks be charged by February.

"Our position is we want him charged by the end of next month. We have made that very clear to the Americans," Howard told a news conference on Wednesday.

"We are not happy about the time that has gone by it is also important to remember the gravity of the charges."

U.S.-based lawyer Sabin Willet said Hicks's cell was like a Nazi death camp and Australian lawyer David McLeod who visited Hicks's Cuban enclave prison on Tuesday said he was shocked "seeing him chained to the floor, hollow eyes."

Hicks, 31, was arrested in Afghanistan in late 2001 and accused of fighting for al Qaeda. He is among around 395 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters being held in the U.S. enclave, and is tipped to be one of the first to face trial.

Charges against Hicks of conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy were dropped when the U.S. Supreme Court last June rejected the tribunal system set up by President George W. Bush to try foreign terrorism suspects.

Hicks, a convert to Islam, had previously pleaded not guilty.

But his case is straining Canberra's usually unswerving support for the U.S.-led war on terror, as Howard faces re-election in the second half of the year against polls showing 62 percent of Australians oppose the handling of the Iraq war.

Australia was an original coalition member in both Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney will visit Canberra in February to thank the country for its military support.

But in a subtle shift, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who has previously lashed out at terrorist "appeasers," said on Wednesday he did not want any Australian maltreated.

"If fresh allegations, detailed allegations, facts can be brought forward to us in relation to Hicks, then we're obviously happy to investigate that," he told local radio.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has admitted Hicks's case is dragging and called last week for an urgent medical assessment.

"I think the government must now be feeling a bit angry with Washington, as the Americans have done nothing to meet Australian concerns," Hugh White, Professor of Strategic and Defense Studies at the Australian National University told Reuters.

U.S. military prosecutor Colonel Moe Davis denied Hicks was in poor physical and mental condition, but said the Australian was confined in his Guantanamo cell for long periods.

"The detainees there generally are offered two hours of outdoor recreation time a day, so that would be the 22 hours a day - about right," Davis said.

© 2007 Reuters

[accuracy]

Defense shows documents that accused officer wasn't in the chain of command

BY DAVID DISHNEAU
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Jan 31, 2007

http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArti cle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149192937284&path=!news&s=1045855934842

WASHINGTON - The only officer charged with crimes in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal was arraigned yesterday on eight charges including cruelty and maltreatment of detainees.

Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, a 50-year-old reservist from Fredericksburg, chose not to enter a plea to the charges, which carry prison terms totaling up to 22 years. Jordan also deferred his decision on whether to be tried by a judge or by a jury of at least five fellow officers, all of equal or greater rank.

The 15-minute hearing was held in a small, third-floor courtroom at Fort McNair in Washington. The judge, Army Col. Stephen R. Henley, scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on a defense motion to dismiss the charges for lack of a speedy trial.

Jordan was charged April 28.

According to background presented at a hearing in October, Jordan was sent to Abu Ghraib in September 2003 by top intelligence commanders in Iraq to run the newly established Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center. But witnesses for both sides said Jordan devoted himself mainly to improving soldiers' safety and welfare, introducing himself to incoming interrogators as the civil affairs officer and as a liaison between the center and U.S. commanders in Baghdad.

Jordan wasn't in the chain of command stretching from interrogators to their commander at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas Pappas, leader of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, according to documents produced by the defense. Several interrogators testified they reported not to Jordan, but to Capt. Carolyn Wood, leader of a unit within the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center called the Interrogation Command Element.

Neither Pappas nor Wood have been charged with crimes. Pappas was reprimanded and fined $8,000 for once approving the use of dogs during an interrogation without higher approval. Wood hasn't been disciplined for any role she played at Abu Ghraib.

Wearing a green dress uniform yesterday, Jordan generally said only, "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to the judge's routine questions.

He is not in custody but is on extended active duty at the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir.

Jordan's case is the last remaining active investigation in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Eleven enlisted soldiers have been convicted of crimes at Abu Ghraib, and a number of officers have been reprimanded.

[accuracy]

BY JAY WEAVER
Jan. 30, 2007
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/16580780.htm

An appellate court in Atlanta today put the pow back into the prosecution's terror case against Jose Padilla and two other Muslim men by reinstating the first count in the Miami indictment -- conspiring to commit murder, kidnapping and other violent acts to carry out Islamic extremism overseas.

The three-judge panel overturned a major decision by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, who had ruled in August that the first count repeated two other terror-related charges and was therefore unconstitutional.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' panel, consisting of Chief Judge J.L. Edmondson and Circuit Judges Gerald B. Tjoflat and John R. Gibson, concluded the first count did not violate the double-jeopardy provision of the Constitution.

The decision was a clear victory for federal prosecutors in Miami because it means if they win convictions on the first count against Padilla and two other defendants, they would face life imprisonment.

Without the first count included at trial on April 16, Padilla and the others accused of being part of a North American terror cell faced a potential maximum of 15 years in prison.

''We are gratified by the 11th Circuit's swift decision and look forward to presenting the evidence at trial,'' said U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta.

The legal teams for the three defendants have 21 days to ask for a rehearing by the panel or the entire 12-member appellate court.

Cooke had dramatically changed the dynamics of the high-profile terror case in August when she lopped a big chunk off of the indictment, saying the government wrongly overcharged the notorious former ''enemy combatant'' and the other two defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi .

The judge threw out the first count of the indictment -- that they ''conspired to murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country . . . to advance violent jihad'' -- saying it repeated charges from two other counts involving a scheme to provide financial and other support for Islamic terrorist activities.

''There can be no question that the government has charged a single conspiracy offense multiple times, in separate counts, when in law and in fact only one [alleged] crime has been committed,'' Cooke wrote in an eight-page ruling.

''The danger'' in the indictment, she wrote, is that it violates the double-jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the prosecution or punishment of a defendant twice for the same offense.

But the appellate panel, in a 15-page ruling, disagreed: ``It appears that the trouble in this appeal stems from the interrelatedness of the three counts at issue. . . . But while these three charges are interrelated, they are not interdependent.''

The panel then concluded: ``Moreover, it bears repeating that double jeopardy is not implicated simply because a factual situation might exist where a defendant could commit one act that satisfies the elements of two distinct offenses.''

[accuracy]

By Caroline Overington and Verity Edwards
February 01, 2007

THE Australian Government last night asked for an independent assessment of David Hicks's mental health, but admitted that US authorities would be unlikely to agree.

"We are still awaiting a detailed read-out from the Australian consul-general in Washington, who is currently in Guantanamo to visit Mr Hicks," said a DFAT spokeswoman last night.

"And while we have sought an independent report on Mr Hicks, initial US advice is that independent physical and mental healthcare is not generally permitted at Guantanamo Bay," the spokeswoman said.

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5376495,00.jpg
Concern ... the mental health of David Hicks, thought to be pictured here at Guantanamo Bay, has severely deteriorated, his lawyer said / File / No credit

The move comes after Foreign Minister Alexander Downer declared in mid-January that Hicks showed no signs of mental illness after five years in a cell. The assessment was based on a three-minute observation by an official at the US embassy in Canberra who did not speak to the Australian terror suspect.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said yesterday that charges - which are likely to include attempted murder and aiding the enemy - were "imminent, which ought not to be surprising".

When the charges are laid, Hicks is likely to face a pre-trial hearing within 30 days and a trial by May.

The expected charges are not clear, although the chief US military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, Colonel Morris Davis, said they were likely to be similar to the charges dropped when the US Supreme Court ruled the previous military process invalid.

Hicks's lawyers allege that his mental and physical health is deteriorating and that the 31-year-old is rationed toilet paper, denied a comb, chained to the floor and has seen the sun three times since early December last year.

On Tuesday night, Hicks refused a visit from Australia's consul-general in Washington, John McAnulty, declaring in a letter: "I don't want to see you. I am afraid to speak to you."

In his letter, Hicks claimed an American impersonated an Australian official during a recent visit and that he had been disciplined for speaking about his incarceration. "In the past I have been punished for speaking to you," he wrote.

John Howard said the Government would press for details on Hicks's health.

Colonel Davis rejected allegations that Hicks had been poorly treated, saying he was not, as reported yesterday, chained in his cell for 22 hours a day. He was shackled to the floor during an interview with his lawyer.

Colonel Davis said Hicks was "fine".

Additional reporting: Pia Akerman, Sid Marris, Andrew McGarry

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21150426-5005961,00.html

[accuracy]

By 7News
Thursday February 1
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070201/23/129n1.html

Former Guantanamo detainee Mamdouh Habib is to stand for election in the NSW state poll.
Mr Habib will run as an independent in the safe Labor seat of Auburn, standing against ALP incumbent Barbara Penny.

He announced his candidacy on Thursday morning, pledging to campaign against anti-terrorist legislation - to work for "the right to freedom of expression and in opposition to the anti-terrorist laws, state and federal".

He also pledged to "fight racism, the end of scapegoating of Aborigines, Muslims and migrants," and to oppose Australia's involvement in the war in Iraq.

Mr Habib spent three years at the US prison camp at Guantanamo in Cuba, after he was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.

He was released without charge in January 2005.

Born in Egypt, father-of-four Mr Habib became an Australian citizen after moving to the country in 1980.

[accuracy]

http://www.cageprisoners.com/images/top.jpg

1848 days of illegal imprisonment!

Visit http://www.cageprisoners.com/

[accuracy]

From correspondents in Los Angeles.
February 02, 2007

THE US military today said photos and articles on former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's execution were shown to David Hicks and other Guantanamo Bay inmates as "intellectual stimulation".

Hicks's legal team was outraged during this week's visit to the US prison camp to learn Hicks had viewed photos of Saddam's execution and trial.

US Commander Robert Durand, director of public affairs at Guantanamo Bay, today described the articles and photos available to the inmates as "neither graphic nor sensational".

Commander Durand said the photos and articles were from mainstream news organisations such as Britain's BBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post and were available to Guantanamo inmates as part of the the prison's library and literacy program.

Hicks's lawyers had said the Adelaide detainee had viewed a photo of Saddam hanging from a noose, but Commander Durand rejected the suggestion.

He said a photo of Saddam prior to his hanging accompanied a BBC news report.

"Our primary mission is safe and humane care and custody of the detainees.

"In addition to our library and literacy programs, detainees are provided with a weekly collection of news articles.

"The news articles, intended to provide intellectual stimulation for the detainees, are taken from mainstream news sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, al Jazeera, the Gulf News, and wire services such as AP, Reuters and AFP.

"Articles chosen are not always pro-US.

"Our news program provides current news from worldwide media sources every week.

"The news photos that appear in the stories are neither graphic nor sensational. The news articles are in English, printed from the web.

"A BBC news article describing Saddam Hussein's execution, with a photo of him prior to his hanging, was included in the camp news."

Hicks's lawyers were also upset a poster containing photos of Saddam at his trial were also displayed for Guantanamo inmates to view.

The poster has been taken down.

"Posters in Arabic are also used to bring news in the camp," Commander Durand said.

"A recent poster showed Saddam Hussein's capture, court appearances and sentencing.

"It did not show his execution.

"The intent of this poster was to show that the Iraqi people are making progress and have delivered justice.

"We regret that the language of this poster appeared insensitive.

"The poster has been removed and replaced with more current news."

Hicks's lead American defence lawyer, Joshua Dratel, who was at Guantanamo this week with Hicks's US military lawyer Major Michael Mori, and Australian lawyers, David McLeod and Michael Griffin, was outraged by the poster and execution coverage.

"Displaying photos of condemned men to those who may be facing capital charges can only interpreted as an attempt to intimidate and compel submission under a threat of death and mentally torture an already abused detainee population," he said.

Hicks has been in US custody since late 2001 when he was captured in Afghanistan.

The US expects to charge him shortly.

In Canberra, Greens leader Bob Brown said the showing of the pictures was "premeditated torture".

"The Hicks saga goes from bad to worse," Senator Brown said.

"The Guantanamo Bay horror is based on unlawful behaviour and sadistic practice by the jailers."

Federal Labor MPs have sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party speaker of the US Congress, asking for help in bringing Hicks home.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21157929-401,00.html

[accuracy]

By SARAH ABRUZZESE
Published: February 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/washington/03gitmo.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — The senior Pentagon official who set off a controversy last month with remarks suggesting that corporations should consider severing business ties with law firms that represent Guantánamo Bay detainees has resigned.

The official, Charles D. Stimson, deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, said that it was his decision to resign and that he was not asked to leave by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the Pentagon.

“He determined that it was going to hamper his ability to be effective in this position,” Mr. Whitman said.

Mr. Stimson’s comments in an interview on Jan. 11 on Federal News Radio angered many lawyers and caused the Defense Department to distance itself publicly from his remarks.

In the interview, Mr. Stimson named more than 12 firms that are defending detainees.

“I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms,” Mr. Stimson said.

Mr. Stimson, a former Navy defense lawyer, wrote an apology published in The Washington Post, saying the remarks did not reflect his “core beliefs.”

On Jan. 24, the Bar Association of San Francisco requested that the State Bar of California investigate Mr. Stimson for possible violations of California ethics rules, the San Francisco group’s Web site says.

The president of the American Bar Association, Karen J. Mathis, said that she could not comment on the resignation, but that by reacting to his comments “the American public reaffirmed its commitment to a core principle of our justice system: that every accused person deserves adequate legal representation.”

Mr. Whitman said Mr. Stimson did a lot for the department “with respect to setting policy standards, increasing transparency and working with international organizations and allies, with respect to the nature of our detention operations.”

[accuracy]

By Laurence Peter
BBC News 2 February 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6325561.stm

A Lebanese-born German, who accuses the CIA of having kidnapped and tortured him, says he is determined to get an apology from the US authorities.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41095000/jpg/_41095084_masriap203b.jpg
Mr Masri is seeking damages from the CIA

Khaled al-Masri alleges that he was seized in Macedonia, flown to a secret jail in Afghanistan and tortured there.

"I'll pursue the case until the Americans admit what they did to me, give an explanation and make an apology," he told the BBC News website.

Munich prosecutors have ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents.

Mr Masri says he was abducted at the end of 2003 and detained for five months before being released in Albania after the Americans realised they had got the wrong man.

'Traumatised'

Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention.

"I'm suffering from stress - this experience has left me traumatised," he said.

His German lawyer Manfred Gnjidic told the BBC News website that his client was feeling "isolated and depressed".

"His life isn't back to normal, he was tortured, nobody cared about him until now. The trauma is so deep in him, he needs a lot of help, not just in psychotherapy. Nobody was able to get him a simple job."

Mr Gnjidic says that he has evidence of how his client was maltreated: "We have some witnesses, we worked a lot to get one of them, from Algeria."

The arrest warrants for the 13 agents accused of involvement were issued last month. The information for them came from Mr Masri's lawyers and a journalist and officials in Spain, where the flight carrying Mr Masri is thought to have originated.

Mr Gnjidic described the CIA agents as "contractors" from a base in North Carolina.

German arrest warrants are not valid in the US, but if the suspects were to travel to the European Union they could be arrested.

Milan case

Mr Masri says he was abducted on 31 December 2003 by US agents in Skopje, capital of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

He is seeking to sue the US government over his detention, but in May a judge dismissed a lawsuit he filed against the CIA, citing national security considerations.

"The most important thing is that the European and German authorities are saying directly to the CIA agents that this is an illegal way to act," Mr Gnjidic said.

"Now the German government should insist on getting the rehabilitation of Mr Masri by the American side."

Meanwhile in the Italian city of Milan, court hearings to decide whether to indict 25 alleged CIA agents and several Italians accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in 2003 are under way.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, or Abu Omar, says he was abducted from the streets of Milan and then tortured in Egypt.

[accuracy]

February 04, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21163674-2,00.html

GUANTANAMO Bay inmate David Hicks could enter a plea bargain on terrorism charges in a desperate effort to come home, his father Terry said today.

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5378414,00.jpg
Trial ... Mr Hicks is among the first three detainees to be charged
under the new tribunal system / Image supplied



Fresh charges of providing support to terrorism and attempted murder were sworn against the Australian prisoner yesterday.

Hicks has been held without trial for five years at the US military base in Cuba after being detained in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Terry Hicks said his son had been mentally weakened by his time in custody and may consider a plea bargain in response to the charges.

Mr Hicks said the new charges would frustrate his son because he had already pleaded not guilty to similar charges.

“Now all of a sudden they'll be coming to him and saying 'this is what you're charged with',” Mr Hicks told ABC Radio.

“He isn't well, he's not coping, he's suffering mental stresses at the moment.

“I believe what's happening is they'll catch David in that frame of mind where he desperately wants to come home and he'll possibly enter into a plea bargain,” Mr Hicks said.

In August 2004, Hicks pleaded not guilty at a US military commission hearing to charges of conspiracy, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy.

Those charges were dropped when the US Supreme Court ruled last June that the commissions were unlawful.

Federal Labor said today the charges Hicks faces are retrospective under American law and wants Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock to explain the Government's response.

Mr Ruddock has long held that Hicks, who has been detained for five years at the US base in Cuba before the charges were announced yesterday, could not be charged in Australia because anti-terror laws were not in place at the time of his arrest and couldn't be used retrospectively.

“Philip Ruddock has said he is averse to retrospective law being passed in Australia to deal with David Hicks,” Labor's attorney-general spokesman Kelvin Thomson said.

“But yesterday his name was on a press statement welcoming the move by the United States to charge David Hicks, when one of the proposed charges – material support for terrorism – was not an offence until the US Military Commissions Act of 2006 made it one.”

Mr Thomson asked if this meant Mr Ruddock would raise with the US its plan to try David Hicks under a retrospective law.

“Or does he believe it is not OK to charge David Hicks in Australia under retrospective Australian law, but it is OK to charge David Hicks under retrospective American law at Guantanamo Bay?” he said.

Prime Minister John Howard said he was satisfied with the US Government implementing a retrospective law for Hicks.

“We do not believe the passage of retrospective criminal law in Australia is appropriate,” Mr Howard said in Sydney.

“What the Americans do is up to the Americans.

“We believe the arrangements for the military commission meet the reasonable requirements of Australian law.”

Mr Howard rejected the Opposition's comparison between the US retrospective law and Australia's claim it couldn't charge Hicks under such circumstances.

“I don't accept the interpretation of what the US is doing,” Mr Howard said.

“I don't equate the US is doing with the passage of retrospective criminal law in Australia.”



US military prosecutor Colonel Moe Davis has recommended Hicks be charged with “providing material support for terrorism and attempted murder in violation of the law of war”.

Col Davis has “sworn” the charges against Hicks but they won't be formally laid until they have been approved by US military judge Susan Crawford – a process expected to take two weeks.

If convicted, the 31-year-old former jackeroo from Adelaide faces a maximum penalty of life in a US prison.

[accuracy]

4th February 2007
http://thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=145&ContentID=20475

The announcement of proposed charges against Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks brings little relief, says his father Terry Hicks.

Overnight, Colonel Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the upcoming US military commissions, announced Hicks and two other Guantanamo Bay inmates would be the first three brought to trial.

Col Davis has recommended Hicks be charged with "providing material support for terrorism and attempted murder in violation of the law of war".

If convicted, the 31-year-old former jackeroo from Adelaide faces a maximum penalty of life in a US prison.

Col Davis swore the charges against Hicks today but they won't be formally laid until they have been approved by US military judge Susan Crawford - a process expected to take two weeks.

Terry Hicks says the new proposed charges are confusing and bring little promise that the process is moving forward.

"There is in one way, but I would be more relieved if David was facing a fair and just situation, not virtually the same thing that they went through before, which has been ruled as illegal," Mr Hicks said today.

Hicks pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy at a US military commission hearing in August 2004.

But those charges were dropped when the US Supreme Court ruled last June that the commissions were unlawful.

"The basic bottom line is David's got to go through another process of an unfair and unjust system and they're not going to listen to him anyway," Mr Hicks said today.

He said he just wanted his son home and was getting sick of hearing uncertain dates.

"It gets a bit ridiculous - no one ever seems to want to put a hard and fast date on anything because I think what happens if you put a date on and nothing happens, then there's repercussions - we jump up and down," he said.

Hicks' military defence lawyer, Major Michael Mori, said his client would still be facing unjust charges.

He said the charge of material support was not part of the law of war and did not appear in any US or Australian military manual as a law of war offence.

"What is most disturbing is that while Australian ministers have consistently said that creating a new law and applying it retrospectively to David Hicks is inappropriate, the same ministers are encouraging the US administration to apply a new law created less than four months ago retrospectively to David Hicks," Major Mori said in a statement today.

Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja agrees, labelling the process a sham.

"Today's announcement of new charges that may be brought against Hicks continues the tragic farce that has been David's fate since being taken by military authorities in Afghanistan," she said in a statement today.

The senator says Hicks is about to face a process that defies the rule of law and contravenes international humanitarian law.

"The new commissions allow detainees to be convicted on evidence obtained by coercion and on hearsay evidence they will not have the opportunity to challenge," Senator Stott Despoja said.

Prime Minister John Howard said he was pleased the charges were to be laid before a mid-February deadline that he had set.

"I'm glad that the charges are being laid and that the deadline I set has been met," Mr Howard told reporters today at his Sydney residence Kirribilli House.

"They are very serious charges and that is why they should be dealt with as soon as possible."

But Labor says the government can't say its demands have been met because no charges have actually been laid as yet.

"David Hicks has not yet been charged, nor is a trial imminent," Labor's legal affairs spokesman Kelvin Thomson said.

Mr Thomson said the prosecution has only indicated an intention to charge Hicks.

He said today's announcement was a small step towards a trial for Hicks, but a giant leap backwards for a fair trial for the detainee.

AAP

[accuracy]

By Chris Amos - Staff writer
Friday Feb 2, 2007
http://navytimes.com/news/2007/02/ntguantanamodocs070202/

A detachment of 74 active-duty personnel from Naval Hospital Jacksonville, Fla., have begun deploying to Guantanamo Naval Station, Cuba, to work at a hospital that serves foreign detainees.

The deployment should be completed within 30 days, according to Terresa White, public affairs officer for the hospital.

The detachment, which includes doctors, nurses and hospital corpsmen, will train for about one week at Fort Lewis, Wash., before traveling to Guantanamo, White said.

The group will relieve another group of 86 medical personnel who deployed to Guantanamo from Jacksonville about six months ago.

About 26 members of the first group will arrive in Jacksonville tomorrow; the remainder should follow within weeks.

*************************

[accuracy]

5th February 2007
http://www.thewest.com.au:80/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=353261

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says charges the US is planning to lay against Australian terrorist suspect David Hicks will not be retrospective because last year's introduction of the charge of supporting terrorism was a "mere codification".

Mr Ruddock was speaking after the US military said at the weekend it would seek to charge the Adelaide-born Hicks with attempted murder, conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

The charges relate to allegations against Hicks dating back to before late 2001, when he was captured while fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

However, the charge of supporting terrorism was not an offence until the US Military Commissions Act of 2006 made it so.

Labor and Hicks's lawyers say the accused terrorist should not be charged retrospectively.

However, Mr Ruddock told ABC radio: "I've been assured that there were existing laws and this is a mere codification."

Chief prosecutor for the US office of military commissions, Colonel Moe Davis, backed Mr Ruddock's explanation and said the claim the charge was new was "a load of rubbish".

"It's an offence that Congress recognised more than a decade ago," Colonel Davis told ABC radio.

"The difference here is the forum in which that offence can be prosecuted."

Hicks's US-appointed military lawyer Major Michael Mori said the charge of supporting terrorism was retrospective.

Major Mori accused the Australian government of back-flipping on its stance against retrospective charges.

"Before, they said 'we can't bring David back from Guantanamo (Bay) because we can't create new laws and apply them to him retroactively' and yet, to serve their purpose of getting David done over ... they're more than willing to allow the United States to do to an Australian what they won't do to an Australian," Major Mori told ABC Radio.

Colonel Davis said the evidence against Hicks was damning and would be fully laid out during the military commission.

"He picked up a rifle and a grenade, went to where he thought the US forces and coalition forces would be present, when they weren't there he relocated to another spot where he thought there were better opportunities."

Hicks has been held for more than five years in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

AAP

[accuracy]

February 6, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/us-handling-of-hicks-poor-pm/2007/02/06/1170524082371.html

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/02/05/davidhicksboy_wideweb__470x358,0.jpg
The image of Hicks as a boy released this week.

Prime Minister John Howard has criticised America's handling of the David Hicks' case as a handful of his backbenchers demanded the Australian terror suspect be returned home.

Speaking to government members as parliament returned for the year, Mr Howard also acknowledged that community sentiment was changing about the Adelaide man who has been held without trial at a US military prison in Cuba for five years.

"The PM said he acknowledged the shift in community sentiment," a coalition spokesman said.

"He feels this hasn't been well-handled by the Americans."

Mr Howard told his colleagues that the government had resolved to put a deadline on charges against Hicks and "would pursue the Americans on other timelines".

"The prime minister said he was very uncomfortable the Americans had taken three years to get around to charging him," the spokesman said.

Mr Howard continued to harden his line against the US as half a dozen backbenchers voiced their concerns about the way the Hicks case had been handled.

"People did report that this is coming up in the community ... people are very concerned about the treatment of David Hicks, it's principally been the length of time (it's taking to charge him)," the coalition spokesman said.

Three government members argued for Hicks to be returned home.

Proponents of Hicks' repatriation have suggested he could be sent to Australia and subjected to a control order, which would monitor and restrict his movements.

"The issue of a control order came up but it was pointed out we don't decide who has a control order, it is something decided by the courts," the spokesman said.

Earlier Former Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib has joined hundreds of protesters on the lawns of Canberra's Parliament House, calling for Hicks to be brought home.

Habib, who is running as an independent for a seat in the NSW election, told the crowd Hicks was being tortured and brainwashed in the US camp.

"Guantanamo Bay is an experiment ... and what they experiment in is brainwashing," Mr Habib claimed.

"Not just mentally, they want to know what to do to harm you to make you crazy ... that's what they are brainwashing.

"That's the treatment of David Hicks, and they give him the wrong medicine to make him sick.

"David Hicks was in camp five - now they have built camp six, more rooms to brainwash, he can't talk, he is brainwashed completely.

"We sit down and watch this man, what he's been through we are ashamed, we have to stand up for this guy and if we don't do it now he is lost, he is gone."

AAP

[accuracy]

6th February 2007
http://www.thewest.com.au:80/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=353642

The United States says it could be more than a month before Australian terror suspect David Hicks knows the final charges he will face before a US military commission.

The Australian government had set a mid-February deadline for Hicks to be charged but while prosecutors last week recommended he face charges of attempted murder, conspiracy and supporting terrorism, it could be several more weeks before they are finalised.

Speaking to Australian journalists via video link, Sandra Hodgkinson, deputy director of the Office of War Crimes Issues, said it was not certain the charges would be finalised by the middle of February.

The recommended charges have now been referred to the convening authority, US Military Appeals Court chief judge Susan Crawford, who will review them and decide which ones to refer to the US military commission.

"It could be within a few weeks to more than a month time period in which the convening authority and the legal adviser to the convening authority, in particular, will take a careful look at the information ... so that they can do a thorough review," Ms Hodgkinson said.

"Several weeks to more than a month is what's likely until the next phase for the convening authority to move forward."

Once the final charges have been referred to the military commission, Hicks will face a preliminary hearing within 30 days so he can plead to the charges.

From the time the charges are referred to the military commission, the US will have four months to choose the judge and others who will officially make up the commission to try Hicks.

Ms Hodgkinson and John Bellinger, the US State Department's legal adviser, could give no guaranteed time frame for Hicks to be brought to trial.

However, both vowed it was the highest priority for the US government.

"It's too early to speculate what might be possible, the intention is to move forward swiftly," Ms Hodgkinson said.

"Certainly that's something we've assured the Australian government of."

Mr Bellinger said the United States was anxious to get started with the trials of Hicks and others as quickly as it could.

"We really do want to move forward. Although we do not believe we are required to try any of these individuals, for those we believe ... have committed violations of the laws of war, we want to move forward.

"It has been frustrating for us that we have not been able five years later to move forward with these trials."

Prime Minister John Howard on Monday night vowed to keep harassing the US until Hicks was brought to trial.

He is facing pressure from his backbench in the coalition joint party room to ensure the 31-year-old Adelaide father of two faces a speedy and fair trial after being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for more than five years.

Mr Bellinger said America understood the frustration of the Australian government.

Hicks' Australian lawyer David McLeod said one senior US legal official had told him during a recent visit that it could be six months before Hicks goes to trial.

"Guantanamo Bay is really at the end of the earth, and just getting people there and getting things organised and having motions dealt with, his best estimate is September," he told ABC radio.

The US has also promised the government that if Hicks is acquitted he will be returned to Australia.

Even if convicted, there is a good chance Hicks may still be returned to Australia to serve his time.

"We've had discussions with the Australian government and, at this time, it's certainly believed that Mr Hicks may be able to carry out his incarceration, after the appeals process is complete, in Australia," Ms Hodgkinson said.

The US officials rejected suggestions by Hicks' supporters that he was more of a larrikin adventurer who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time than a terrorist.

"The record has shown ... that he had trained in three different al-Qaeda training camps and had a significant amount of training, including undertaking surveillance operations and a significant amount of weapon training," he said.

"This, from our perspective, is not the activities simply of an individual who is an adventurer."

AAP

[accuracy]

Government blocks release of advice on Hicks

February 7, 2007

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pows-sexually-abused-report/2007/02/07/1170524145809.html

The federal government has blocked a bid to force it to release its advice about the legality of US military commissions set to try Australian terror suspect David Hicks.

The government used its majority in the Senate today to vote down a motion from the Australian Democrats calling for the release of legal advice regarding the military commissions.

The Senate action came after Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the US would likely agree to return Hicks home if the Australian government asked.

Hicks has been held in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than five years without trial, after being arrested in Afghanistan in December 2001.

Mr Ruddock confirmed Hicks could be brought home, if that was the government's wish.

"I think it's quite clear that we do have a special relationship with the United States and while any decision that would be taken, would be taken by the United States, it is reasonable to assume that if the prime minister made such a request, there would be a probability that people would want to accede to it," he said.

Mr Ruddock told reporters in Canberra the government was unwilling to bring Hicks home because he couldn't be charged in Australia.

US prosecutors recommended last week that Hicks face charges of attempted murder and providing material support for terrorism, but it could be several weeks before the draft charges are approved.

Mr Ruddock denied reports the charges against Hicks were not yet official.

"I would simply say the charges have been sworn," he said.

"In Australia, we would say if somebody was of interest to law enforcement authorities they would be charged and those charges having been laid would be then dealt with by a committal authority."

Mr Ruddock said this is a similar process that has happened in Hicks' case and now a judge advocate is reviewing the charges.

"She cannot lay new charges but she can vary them or strike them out in the same way that a judicial officer would in Australia in committal proceedings," he said.

Meanwhile, a junior US officer has reported witnessing Taliban prisoners of war being sexually abused in Afghanistan weeks after Hicks says he was anally penetrated by his American captors.

Documents obtained by AAP show the officer reported a Taliban prisoner was abused on February 11, 2002.

"I noticed that one of the MPs (military police) was lubricating two of his fingers preparing to perform the anal probe instead of the medical person," says the officer's sworn statement, made in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

"Without warning the EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War), and in a cruel way, he push both his fingers into the EPW's anus.

"This caused the EPW to scream and fall to the ground violently."

Hicks's father Terry Hicks last year said the Australian "suffered beatings and anal penetration".

"If it was the doctor doing it, then that's part of the process these prisoners go through ... but this was a thug," Mr Hicks said today.

Mr Hicks said he held out little hope of a reopening of any investigation into the alleged abuse.

AAP

[accuracy]

Phillip Coorey and Cynthia Banham
February 7, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pm-i-could-free-hicks--but-wont/2007/02/06/1170524096341.html

JOHN HOWARD has told his party room he could secure the release of David Hicks any time but says that would be wrong because the terrorism suspect should face a trial first.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/02/06/hicks7207_wideweb__470x277,0.jpg
Chorus of discontent ... protesters gather outside Parliament House yesterday to demand the release of David Hicks from the Guantanamo Bay military prison.
Photo: Louie Douvis

The admission yesterday prompted MPs to challenge him why he did not.

Bruce Baird, Petro Georgiou and Warren Entsch contended Mr Hicks had been in detention too long, would not receive a fair trial and should be brought home and placed under a control order.

"What do you expect us to do?" Mr Howard was quoted as saying.

Mr Entsch responded "bring him home like the Brits did", a reference to the British Government repatriating its Guantanamo Bay inmates because of concerns about the military commissions.

Mr Howard said that meant Mr Hicks would go free because he could not be charged under Australian law.

But he also indicated yesterday he would not let him languish indefinitely, saying he would set the US further timelines for the case to be dealt with.

He earlier gave the US until the middle of this month for Mr Hicks to be charged. At the weekend, two new charges were sworn against Mr Hicks but have not yet been approved or laid.

Lawyers from the US State Department said yesterday it was unlikely he would be formally charged by mid-February, and it was too early to say whether he would be tried within a year.

The Prime Minister said public sentiment was shifting and the matter had not been well handled by the Americans.

But this did not deter backbenchers from speaking out, saying it was not the person but the process that concerned them.

Mr Entsch said he had no sympathy for Mr Hicks as an individual but was worried about the lack of due process he had been afforded. "After five years it's ridiculous. The process is clearly flawed," he said.

Others MPs pointed out that Mr Hicks's case was becoming a "big concern" in the community.

The West Australian senator Judith Adams said a Labor victory in a state byelection in Perth over the weekend was in part fuelled by anger over Mr Hicks and Iraq.

Mr Howard dismissed this.

Labor's legal affairs spokesman, Kelvin Thomson, said Mr Howard's claim exposed the whole process as a joke.

"If the Prime Minister is claiming he can determine, and therefore by default, is determining David Hicks's fate, this is outrageous," Mr Thomson said.

Mr Hicks has been in Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He was charged in 2004 but the charges lapsed last year when the original military commissions were ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court.

John Bellinger, the legal adviser to the US Secretary of State, admitted Guantanamo Bay had become "a lightning rod for criticism that threatens our record on human rights" and it was important to try to counter this.

Sandra Hodgkinson, the deputy in the office of war crimes, said after the charges had been laid, Mr Hicks had 30 days to be arraigned and enter a plea and then a trial must start within 120 days.

The laying of charges "could be within a few weeks to more than a month's time", she said. Asked if a trial would happen within a year, she said, "It's too early to speculate as to what might be possible."

Mr Bellinger defended the trial process as fair and he denied Mr Hicks was being charged under a retrospective law.

He said there were many instances of international war crimes tribunals using offences that were "obviously put down on paper much later than the conduct actually that was in question".

Mr Bellinger said he did not believe it was a violation of Mr Hicks's human rights to be held in Guantanamo Bay for five years without charge, and the Australian was "more than just an adventurer".

[accuracy]

07 February, 2007
http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=47318
INDEPENDENT NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF EAST MALAYSIA


Kuala Lumpur: Ali Shalah, popularly known as 'the man in the hood' in a famous photograph depicting the torture suffered by Iraqis at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison, in Baghdad, Tuesday spilled the beans on the inhumane treatment he received at the detention centre.

Ali, who now heads an organisation representing tortured victims in Iraq, captivated some 2,000 audience with his story at the three-day War Crimes Conference at the Putra World Trade Centre, organised by the Perdana Global Peace Organisation headed by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

"My nightmare began on 13th October, 2003, when I was arrested and put in a small room, which I later found out to be a toilet, which was flooded with water and human waste. I was interrogated in that room.

"They asked me if I was Sunni or Shiaa. I replied that we don't have that kind of difference in Iraq. They also claimed that I had helped instigate people to oppose the occupation and to reveal the location of Osama bin Laden.

"They also said I was an important person in the Iraqi resistance. I was then marked to be transferred to the Abu Ghraib. They wrote "big fish" on my forehead denoting that I was an important detainee," he said, relating his experience at a special session chaired by Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, the wife of Dr Mahathir.

He said he was then beaten up and put in the truck and transferred to the prison, which had five sectors with each sector having a tent surrounded by a wall and barbed wire.

Living condition in these tents was bad with each tent accommodating 45 to 50 detainees, he said adding that each tent was given only 60 litres of water daily for washing, cooking and cleaning.

"Our breakfast was at 5am, lunch at 8am while dinner was at 1pm. During Ramadhan food was given at midnight but food was again given during the day, encouraging us to break our fast," he said.

Ali said he was interrogated twice during his "stay" at the infamous prison but "I heard that detainees were tortured using lighted cigarettes and by injecting hallucinogens".

"After one month, I was called up and my hands were tied, a hood put over my head and transferred to a cell. At the cell they asked me to strip but when I refused they tore my clothes and tied me up again. They then dragged me up a flight of stairs and when I could not move, they beat me repeatedly.

"When I reached the top of the stairs, they tied me up to some steel bars.

They then hurled me human waste and urinated on me. Then they put a gun on my head and said that they would execute me there. Another soldier used a megaphone to shout abuses at me and this went on the whole night," Ali said.

He said the next morning he was asked the names of resistance fighters in Iraq and when he replied that he did not know any, they inserted a jagged wooden stick into my rectum, followed by the barrel or a rifle, which caused him to bleed profusely.

"The next morning the interrogator came to my cell and tied me to the grill of the cell and then played the pop song 'By the Rivers of Babylon' continuously until the next morning. The effect on me was that I lost my hearing and lost my mind," he added.

On the 15th day of detention, Ali was given a blanket, in which he made a hole and used it to cover himself.

Soon after this, the former lecturer, said he was forcefully placed on top of a carton box containing canned food and connected wires to his fingers "and ordered me to stretch my hand out horizontally and switched on the electric power".

"As the electric current entered my whole body, I felt as if my eyes were being forced out and sparks were flying out. My teeth were clattering violently and my legs shaking violently as well. My whole body was shaking all over. I was electrocuted on three separate sessions," he said to pin-drop silence in the hall.

Throughout the torture, he said the interrogators would take photographs of him.

He said he was then left alone in the cell for 49 days, and during this period the torture stopped.

"At the end of the 49th day, I was transferred back to the tents and after 45 days at the tents, I was informed by a prisoner that he overheard some guards saying that I was wrongly arrested and that I would be released.

"I was released in the beginning of March, 2004. I was put into a truck and taken to a highway and then thrown out. A passing car stopped and took me home," he ended his tale.

To a question from the floor after his talk, he said only God kept him alive during his ordeal but the suffering he went through was only "a drop in the ocean". - Bernama

Copyright © Daily Express, Sabah, Malaysia

[accuracy]

Feb 7, 2007
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-02-07T081901Z_01_N06446205_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-MUSLIMS-YEE.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Capt. James Yee spent 76 days in solitary confinement, much of the time shackled and in leg irons, after accusations of sedition, espionage and aiding the enemy while serving as a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay.

The Army's case against him collapsed at trial, and it eventually wiped his record clean and gave the West Point graduate an honorable discharge.

Two years later, he is still waiting for an apology. "Since my case was dismissed, nobody has taken responsibility for what happened to me," he said in an interview. "Nobody has explained what went wrong or why. Nobody apologized."

Yee says the way he was treated damaged the reputation of military justice and is one of the reasons why American Muslims are reluctant to join the military at a time when it needs Arabic speakers as it wages war in two Muslim countries.

(For a related story see "Fear of bias keeps U.S. Muslims out of military")

"If the Pentagon came out and said 'we admit we made a mistake,' it would show the integrity of the system. An apology would make the military stronger."

Despite what he calls humiliating treatment driven by bigotry, ignorance and mistrust, Yee said he would consider rejoining the military if there were a formal apology. "I'm waiting for the outcome of an investigation by the (Pentagon's) Inspector General."

The Pentagon has given no indication of when the investigation might be completed. It began in December, 2004, after written requests to then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by lawmakers.

Since leaving the Army, Yee has written a book about his ordeal, "For God and Country, Faith and Patriotism Under Fire," and given lectures at universities and Muslim community centers around the country.

ABUSE ENCOURAGED?

Critics of the United States around the world see the detention of prisoners at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a symbol of American disregard for international law.

In his book, which became a bestseller in Indonesia but had limited success in the United States, Yee portrays an environment in which guards were encouraged to abuse prisoners by the prison commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller.

Miller went to Iraq in 2003 to step up intelligence gathering from prisoners there. He refused to testify in the courts martial in January last year of two dog handlers charged with prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, invoking his constitutional right to avoid self incrimination. He retired six months later and received a Distinguished Service Medal for meritorious service in a ceremony at the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes.

Yee said he prompted the ire of senior officers at Guantanamo by drawing attention to U.S. soldiers abusing the Koran, mocking Islam and stripping prisoners of their dignity. After he was arrested and taken to a Navy brig in Jacksonville, Florida, he said he was subjected to similar treatment.

"My cell was 8 foot by 6 foot, the same size as the detainees' cages at Guantanamo," he wrote in his book. "Now I was the one in chains. It was my turn to be humiliated every time I was taken to a shower. Naked, I had to run my hands through my hair to show that I was not concealing a weapon. Then mouth open, tongue up, down, nothing inside."

"Right arm up, nothing in my armpit. Left arm up. Lift the right testicle, nothing hidden. Lift the left. Turn around, bend over, spread your buttocks, knowing a camera was displaying my naked image as male and female guards watched. It didn't matter that I was an army captain, a graduate of West Point, the elite U.S. military academy.

The fact that he had not been charged at that time and his religious beliefs prohibited him from being fully naked in front of strangers did not matter to his captors, he said in the interview. "So, if that kind of justice, that kind of treatment, is given to a U.S. citizen, what can a foreigner expect?"

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

[accuracy]

10th February 2007

More than 800 people attended a prayer service in support of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks in central Melbourne.

Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne Dr Philip Freier spoke at the service at St Paul's Cathedral, which is opposite Federation Square.

The service included a prayer for a fair trial, for Hicks' mental and physical health and for the victims of terrorism.

"God loves justice," Archbishop Freier said.

"And what is increasingly evident in the incarceration of David Hicks is the lack of justice in his detention."

Anglican diocese of Melbourne media director Roland Ashby said the service had attracted "a broad range of people".

"Anglicans, but also people who don't usually come to church but were very happy the church is saying something about this."

Hicks, a 31-year-old Adelaide father of two, has been held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than five years.

The US last week began the process of laying charges against Hicks, who is accused of taking part in terrorist operations in Afghanistan.

AAP

[accuracy]

February 10, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21200396-2,00.html

DAVID Hicks, already facing the possibility of 20 years' jail on terrorism charges in the US, is the subject of a new investigation by the Indian Government over his attacks on their armed forces in Kashmir.

The investigation has been triggered by disclosures in American prosecution files about the involvement of Hicks with a terrorist group that has killed thousands of people in the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir.
The prosecution file states that the former kangaroo skinner and father of two who converted to Islam joined the terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan, travelled to the border with Indian Kashmir in 2000 and fired on Indian troops.

Reports of the American disclosures were sent to New Delhi this week by the Indian deputy high commissioner to Australia, Vinod Kumar.

Senior officials in New Delhi yesterday confirmed they were examining that material.

"We're looking into it and finding out the facts," an official in New Delhi told The Weekend Australian.

"If Mr Hicks was involved with them at any level, and if he was indeed firing weapons at our troops, then, most certainly, we'd like to talk to him about it.

"We'd be interested to talk to anyone who has done that. We don't take kindly to attacks on our soldiers -- even attacks by people like Mr Hicks."

The American file is consistent with a letter Hicks wrote to his family in Adelaide in which he admits to firing hundreds of bullets in Kashmir at the enemies of Islam.

In a March 2000 letter, Hicks told his family "don't ask what's happened, I can't be bothered explaining the outcome of these strange events has put me in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in a training camp. Three months training. After which it is my decision whether to cross the line of control into Indian-occupied Kashmir."

The training camp was run by Lashkar-e-Toiba, the army of the pure, Islamic fundamentalists fighting to free Muslims under Indian rule and designated a terrorist group by Australia in 2003.

In another letter on August 10, 2000, Hicks wrote from Kashmir, claiming to have been a guest of Pakistan's army for two weeks at the front in the "controlled war" with India.

"I got to fire hundreds of bullets. Most Muslim countries impose hanging for civilians arming themselves for conflict. There are not many countries in the world where a tourist, according to his visa, can go to stay with the army and shoot across the border at its enemy, legally."

Australia has an extradition relationship with India as a fellow member of the Commonwealth that could allow the transfer of a suspect in special circumstances.

Hicks has been detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since being captured in Afghanistan in 2001 where he was fighting alongside Taliban forces.

US prosecutors last week announced Hicks will face a US Military Commission to answer new charges of attempted murder and providing material support to a terrorist organisation.

LET has waged a brutal insurgency aimed specifically at "destroying" India and "annihilating" Hinduism and Judaism, having proclaimed Hindus and Jews to be enemies of Islam.

It has over the years - including 2000 when Hicks was apparently in action with it - waged a war not just targeting Indian troops in Kashmir, but also rounding up Hindus and Sikhs in the disputed territory and massacring them.

LET militants in 2000 massacred 35 Sikhs in the village of Chittisinghpura.

Since hostilities broke out in earnest in Kashmir in 1989, an estimated 5000 Indian soldiers and paramilitaries have been killed. Estimates are, too, that 80,000-odd civilians have perished, and hundreds of thousands of others have been displaced from their homes.

John Howard yesterday expressed extreme frustration at the time the US is taking to bring Hicks to trial, vowing to press them "almost daily" over the matter.

The US last week began the process of charging Hicks. But US officials have admitted the final charges could be a month away - falling short of an Australian request that the issue be dealt with by the middle of February. And they have admitted a full trial could be as much as a year away.

The Prime Minister said he was reasonably satisfied that the process was now in train, but was concerned about how long it might be before Hicks actually goes to trial.

"Let me, without getting into the weeds of the technical jargon, let me simply say that it has gone on for so long now that we will be pressing the Americans almost on a daily basis," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

[accuracy]

Key House Democrats Suggest Speedy Trial Or Release Of Most Prisoners
WASHINGTON, Feb. 8, 2007
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/08/terror/main2452243.shtml

AP) Key House Democrats said Thursday they are considering a plan to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of 2008, with the exception of several dozen detainees in the war on terror who would be kept at the facility and tried there.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said he hopes to include the provision in legislation this spring that Democrats also intend to use to try to prevent further increases in troop strength in the war in Iraq.

http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2006/09/18/image2020154g.jpg
Quote

“Without closing it, this just plays into the propaganda of the enemy.”
Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va.

Without public notice, Murtha dispatched Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., to the detention center at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay on a one-day trip late last month to recommend ways for closing it. Both men said the prison has become counterproductive as the United States tries to win converts overseas in the war on terror.

“Without closing it, this just plays into the propaganda of the enemy,” Moran said in an interview.

The prison was opened on Jan 11, 2002, and none of the more than 700 prisoners who have entered the facility — suspected of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban — has ever been tried.

Moran said there currently are 393 detainees at the prison, and added he had told Murtha about 80 of are likely to face trial, including 14 whom he described as high value targets.

The Virginia lawmaker said 87 other detainees can probably be released without trial and should go either to their country of origin, or if that isn't possible, to Afghanistan, where they were captured.

Moran said he had recommended requiring the administration to review the cases of the remaining detainees promptly and decide which of them should be held for trial and which should be released.

The facility at Guantanamo Bay has been the subject of extensive political and legal debate, and drawn protests by human rights activists since it was opened. The European Union has urged closing the facility.

The Pentagon recently released new rules to govern trials at the prison, based on a law passed by Congress last year that permits the administration to go ahead with special military commissioners to hear the cases.

Authorities recently drafted charges against three detainees, and they are expected to be formally filed soon. Once that occurs, regulations require preliminary hearings within 30 days and the start of a jury trial within 120 days at Guantanamo Bay.

Moran estimated that it could take five years for all the trials to take place.

He said the rest of the prison population should be out at least by the end of next year. “That is our intent. We feel this is one of the reasons we've lost so much credibility” in the war on terror, he said.

Murtha is chairman of a House subcommittee with jurisdiction over spending on military matters. Moran is a member of the panel.

© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[accuracy]

Have a Nice Flight

Boeing helps CIA fly kidnapped suspects abroad for torture

by Nat Hentoff
February 4th, 2007
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0706,hentoff,75712,2.html



On the Boeing 737 Business Jet, Khaled el-Masri said, "all the people were in black clothes and black masks. They put earplugs in my ears and a sack over my head." After putting chains on his legs, they led him onto the plane. "They threw me on the floor and injected me with something. I blacked out."

—From Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, Stephen Grey (St. Martin's Press)

http://images.villagevoice.com/issues/0706/hentoff.jpg

Last month, a judge in Milan, Italy, began a hearing on kidnapping charges against 26 Americans, most of them CIA agents, that could lead to the first trial anywhere on the CIA's "extraordinary renditions." Scores of flights to torture chambers have been documented—along with flight logs from European and American official aviation sources—by human rights organizations and in Stephen Grey's extensively sourced book Ghost Plane.

The CIA agents in Italy left behind bountiful evidence of their violations of Italian and international laws. But the U.S. will not extradite them to Italy for doing their duty under special orders from the president on September 17, 2001, orders that gave the agency unprecedented latitude to engage in "clandestine intelligence activity" in the war on terrorism.

This Bush "notification memorandum" is "Top Secret." Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is striving mightily to get Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to provide him with this further proof of how the administration has been operating—as Dick Cheney advised right after 9-11—"on the dark side."

In any case, the CIA kidnappers under scrutiny in Italy, along with rampantly lawless agents elsewhere, cannot be tried in the U.S. as long as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is in effect. The president got the Republican-controlled Congress, in that legislation, to give CIA lawbreakers a retroactive get-out-of-jail-free card for their work on "the dark side."

Meanwhile, although the CIA "renditions" are no longer secret—and Ghost Plane writer Grey has recently been talking about them to members of Congress—little has been revealed about the private American airline companies that have been supplying the CIA with the planes to transport the shackled, blindfolded, drugged passengers for interrogation in foreign torture chambers.

But now The New Yorker's Jane Mayer—in her most recent meticulously documented report on the execution of this administration's violations of our own War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions—has revealed the complicity of the world's largest aerospace company, Boeing, in some of these CIA kidnappings.

Her investigation, "The CIA's Travel Agent," appeared in the October 30 New Yorker; but oblivious to her disclosures, Boeing has been receiving a celebratory press: "Boeing Takes Lead in Aircraft Orders: Company Tops Airbus for the First Time Since 2000" (Washington Post, January 17) and "Why Boeing's Flying High" (George Will's widely syndicated column, in the January 18 New York Post).

Mayer found out that Boeing has a subsidiary—Jeppesen International Trip Planning, based in San Jose, California—that proclaims it "offers everything needed for efficient, hassle-free, international flight operations . . . from Aachen to Zhengzhou."

A number of American charter airlines—front companies for the CIA—are involved in "renditions," but, Mayer notes, the Boeing subsidiary handles "many of the logistical and navigational details—including flight plans, clearance to fly over other countries, hotel reservations, and ground-crew arrangements."

Consider the kidnapped Khaled el-Masri's account of the CIA flight attendants in black clothes and black masks who took him in a Boeing 737 Business Jet to Afghanistan to be tortured. The flight plans for el-Masri's unforgettable trip were prepared, Mayer reports, by the superbly reliable Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen International Trip Planning.

She quotes a former Jeppesen employee about what Jeppesen's managing director, Bob Overby, said at an internal corporate meeting: "We do all of the extraordinary renditions flights—you know, the torture flights. Let's face it, some of those flights end up that way . . . It certainly pays well."

Overby didn't return any of Mayer's phone calls. When I tried to reach Overby in San Jose, I couldn't even get put through to his office. And Boeing headquarters in Chicago told me it was unaware of that subsidiary. (This was after Mayer's article appeared.)

With ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, Khaled el-Masri is trying to sue the CIA—and Boeing may, in time, be included as a defendant. Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis III would not even start a trial because the government invoked the "state secrets" privilege. But as Wizner said (The New York Times, November 29), the trial would only confirm "what the entire world entirely knows" from reports in the world press. (The case is on appeal.)

As I noted in a previous column, Judge Ellis did moisten his decision dismissing the case in the lower court with crocodile tears, saying el-Masri might have suffered a great injustice, but the judge's hands were tied by the Justice Department's "state secrets" maneuver.

Not incidentally, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—in her previous post as National Security Adviser—had ordered Khalid el-Masri released in May 2004. Sorry, she said, he had been mistakenly identified as being connected to terrorism. (She did not say who misfingered him.)

Khaled el-Masri, who hasn't been able to get a job since his release, is suing for damages, but primarily, he says, he'd like an apology. He is as likely to get one from the CIA or Commander in Chief Bush as he is from the world's largest aerospace company.

When the CIA is Boeing's client, does Jeppesen supply the black masks too? On January 31, German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents involved in the rendition of el-Masri. Involved in the kidnapping, said the prosecutors, was a Boeing plane.

Copyright © 2007 Village Voice

[accuracy]

2/11/2007
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-02-11-gates-nato_x.htm

MUNICH, Germany — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that the United States needs to repair its reputation after prisoner abuse scandals in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and tried to defuse criticism from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Gates, speaking to world leaders, defense officials and members of Congress gathered here for a conference, said the detention of terror suspects in Cuba and abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq "have negatively impacted the reputation of the United States." The defense secretary stressed that trials of detainees at Guantanamo Bay would be fair and transparent.

http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2007/01/28/mug-gates.jpg
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates

One of the United States' greatest assets in the last century, he said, has been its reputation as being a champion of the rule of law and human advancement. "We have some work to do in restoring American soft power around the world," Gates said.

The defense secretary also skirted charges made by Putin Saturday that the United States acts unilaterally in foreign affairs and destabilizes the world. Gates criticized Russia for arms proliferation and using its energy resources as a weapon, even as he played down differences between the countries. He said he had accepted an invitation from Putin to visit Russia.

"Let me repeat: there is no desire for a new Cold War with Russia," Gates said at the 43rd Conference on Security Policy.

Other highlights from Gates' speech and the question-and-answer session that followed:

• He disputed Putin's contention that extending missile defense to Europe threatened Russia. The ballistic missile defense system proposed for Europe would provide defense against Iran and other threats, Gates said. Butm, he said, it is "not aimed at deterring Russia."

• Gates told Russia not to worry about the potential expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Eastern Europe. "Russia need not fear law-based democracies on its borders," he said. Putin charged Saturday that NATO expansion there "represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust."

• The secretary warned that failing to build a stable government in Iraq could lead to the spread of terrorism. "If there is chaos in Iraq, every member of this alliance will feel the consequences," he said.

Gates also sought to smooth over conflicts with U.S. allies in Europe and show how he his different from his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. In 2003, Rumsfeld referred to Germany and France as "old Europe" and said the center of gravity for NATO was shifting to the east.

On Sunday, Gates said, characterizations of "old Europe" are outdated and "belong to the past."

Gates flew to Pakistan, where he planned to meet with President Pervez Musharraf. During his talks with NATO allies, Gates stressed the need to press a military offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan's neighbor. He said military forces had to be combined with economic development and a counternarcotic effort.

[accuracy]

12/02/2007
By Karen J. Greenburg

The first detainees arrived in Guantánamo four months to the day after the 9/11 attacks. From the opening of Camp X-Ray—the first site of imprisonment, notorious for its tin-roofed open-air cages—to the recently completed permanent prison known as Camp 6, critics have called for its closure. Even President Bush has said, “I’d like to end Guantánamo. I’d like it to be over with.” Yet he refuses to close it because, he says, it holds detainees who “will murder somebody if they are let out on the street.”




It’s time to look at the powerful reasons to close Guantánamo, both the standard ones enumerated below—and also what may be the most compelling, if unspoken, one of all: Guantánamo must be closed because the United States needs to indicate that it has decided to change course. Closing Guantánamo will help to restore America’s standing in the world and in the eyes of its own citizens.


#1 It is a legal no-man’s-land

Guantánamo Bay Naval Base was established as a coaling and naval station under U.S. control in 1903. It has no civilian legal authority (you can’t get a marriage license there, and you can’t be arraigned) and U.S. military authority is limited. According to the Department of Justice, the prison is not indisputably U.S. territory, nor does it necessarily fall under the jurisdiction of any foreign entity.




According to the Church Report—an official investigation of Guantánamo prepared by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III, a former navy inspector general for the Armed Services Committee—Guantánamo’s uncertain legal footing may have been a fundamental reason the administration decided to use the facility to interrogate al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. “Perhaps most importantly,” the report states, “GTMO was considered a place where [other] benefits could be realized without the detainees having the opportunity to contest their detention in the U.S. courts.”




According to Northwestern University Professor Joseph Margulies, the administration’s legal position rests on “the remarkable claim that the prisoners have no rights because they are foreign nationals detained outside the sovereign territory of the United States.” In 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled that U.S. courts have jurisdiction in hearing habeas corpus petitions from Guantánamo. Yet through a series of laws and military rulings, the administration has continued to argue that the prisoners do not have the right to contest their detention in a U.S. court.


#2 It violates the Geneva Conventions

Guantánamo is a prisoner-of-war camp that is not labeled as such. From the beginning, the administration took the legal position that the captives brought to Cuba were not prisoners of war, but fell into the vague, newly created legal category of “enemy combatants.”




But according to the International Committee of the Red Cross Commentary to the conventions, no such intermediate ground between civilians and prisoners of war exists: “Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, [or] a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.”




As the camp was being built, military personnel I interviewed said they knew not to use the words “prison-camp,” or “prison.” Why? Under the Geneva Conventions, a prisoner cannot be interrogated, punished, or forced to answer questions beyond rank, name and serial number.

#3 Prisoners are degraded and abused

Abusive treatment of Guantánamo detainees has been documented in lawyers’ notes, FBI memos, statements from released detainees and court affidavits submitted by attorneys representing detainees.




Jumah Al Dossari, a Bahraini detainee who has been incarcerated at Gitmo for five years, wrote to his lawyer, “At Guantánamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter, and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on the one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.”




All of what he describes is illegal for the 194 countries that have ratified the Geneva Conventions—of which the United States is one—as well as those that have ratified the Convention Against Torture (which the United States has signed, with reservations).


#4 Prisoners have no way to prove their innocence

Under the Constitution, every prisoner in U.S. custody has the right to legal representation and to due process, i.e. a trial (habeus corpus). Yet the detainees at Guantánamo, though afforded Combatant Status Review Tribunals, cannot have their own counsel at those hearings and have no meaningful way of contesting evidence, some of which is secret. To date, not one individual among the nearly 800 incarcerated at Guantánamo has been charged with a crime recognized under either U.S. or international law. Moreover, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006 is the latest attempt to strip captives of their right to argue their appeals in U.S. courts.




MCA is currently being challenged in two cases—al Odah v. United States of America and Boumediene v. Bush. Briefs in these cases argue that the Act is unconstitutional and that the retroactive suspension of the detainees’ right of habeas corpus does not apply to pending cases. These briefs focus on the Constitution’s Writ of Habeus Corpus, which states that such rights shall only be revoked at times of rebellion or invasion.


#5 It undermines intelligence efforts

Despite the tens of thousands of hours of interrogation that have taken place at Guantánamo, very little worthwhile intelligence has been extracted. What information is left is now five years old, and it is doubtful that any Guantánamo prisoner has knowledge of a ticking bomb or a current plot.




And while the government maintains that detainees can provide a primer on jihad networks and al-Qaeda’s strategic goals, at this point, the information is likely out of date. Besides, what can be extracted from individuals who, for the most part, were the wrong people to imprison in the first place.




According to a report by Seton Hall School of Law, 86 percent of detainees were arrested by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and “handed over to the United States at a time when the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.”




Moreover, Guantánamo’s very existence has alienated potential inside sources of information. Two years ago, at a Center on Law and Security conference in Florence, Italy, two of Europe’s leading terrorism magistrates pointed out that attempts to infiltrate terrorist cells had become much more difficult in the wake of rising public anger over Guantánamo.

#6 It creates new enemies

Guantánamo has fomented that which it was created to combat—anti-American extremism and jihad.




Guantánamo is just the public face of a global network of “ghost prisons.” According to Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights),the United States has acknowledged 20 detention centers in Afghanistan, in addition to the bases at Bagram and Kandahar; as a prison near the Afghan border in Kohat, Pakistan; and the al Jafr prison in Jordan. This suggests that Guantánamo may have been a smokescreen for more inhumane, less legal incarceration and interrogation practices elsewhere.




According to Armando Spataro, a senior Italian prosecutor known for his work on global terrorism, Guantánamo and the U.S. renditions policy “is extremely damaging to all our efforts to integrate our Muslim communities.” Muslims around the world are asking why there is so little international opposition to the U.S. policy of imprisonment without due process. The collateral damage of Guantánamo—the incarceration of nearly 800 individuals who are denied legal rights, who regularly report being abused and who face a lifetime of imprisonment—is incalculable. It breeds new angers and resentments, and thus new enemies.




Last March, the Department of Defense finally released the names and countries of the detainees. It turned out that many were not captured on the battlefield but picked up elsewhere in the world, in the Gambia, in Pakistan, and even in Europe. In all, persons detained in Guantánamo Bay come from 46 different nations, including Spain, France and the United Kingdom.


#7 … and alienates our allies

At a time when international solidarity is needed to confront the potent and lethal enemy of terrorism, Guantánamo has led to widespread distrust of the United States. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for Guantánamo’s closure. And Justice Lawrence Collins, a British high court judge, has said, “America’s idea of what is torture is not the same as ours and does not appear to coincide with that of most civilized nations.”




Baltasar Garzon, Spain’s most prominent magistrate for crimes of terrorism, has warned, “If we continue along these lines, we are on the road to committing crimes against humanity.”




In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said, “There is no question … An institution like Guantánamo in its present form cannot and must not exist in the long term.”


#8 It will signal a fundamental change of strategy in the war on terror

Guantánamo is the single most potent symbol in the misguided war on terror. In the wake of 9/11, the United States’ pledge to do everything in its power to protect its people from further harm led to a policy of overreaction. Closing Guantánamo will signal that the United States has emerged from its confusion, and regained a place among civilized nations.




We must no longer act like scared victims, willing to make any bargain with any devil to create the illusion of safety. We must reassert our confidence in the rule and wisdom of law. Enemies must be combatted with legal tools, military prowess and diplomacy—not with illegalities, bullying and walls of silence.




Closing Guantánamo is not about bowing to human rights concerns or even to the law. We must close it as a signal to the world that, even in the face of danger, the United States remains true to its values. Closing Guantánamo is a pledge of allegiance to the American past and to the American future.




Research for this article was contributed by Center on Law and Security Research Fellow Francesca Laguardia.




SOURCE: InTheseTimes

[accuracy]

13 Feb 2007
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,21218114-5006301,00.html

A FORMER Adelaide businessman is willing to give up all food from today in support of David Hicks.

The man, who wants to be known only as Mike, is going on a hunger strike for ``as long as it takes'' for Hicks to be released from Guantanamo Bay.

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5387415,00.jpg
A former Adelaide businessman, known as "Mike", has begun a hunger strike outside St Francis Xavier's Cathedral in the city today in support of David Hicks. He has vowed to stay on hunger strike for "as long as it takes" to get Hicks out of Guantanamo Bay. Picture: BRENTON EDWARDS

Mike, wearing orange, will sit in peaceful protest in Victoria Square from 1pm today. He is encouraging others to sit with him to show support.


``I realised that I am ashamed to be an Australian and I never thought I would say that,'' Mike said.

You can text support to 0412 361 234.

(Please text if you care, i did.--accuracy)

[accuracy]

15th February 2007

US President George W Bush has cleared another hurdle in his plan to prosecute Australian David Hicks and other "enemy combatants" held at Guantanamo Bay.

The president has issued an executive order setting the stage for military trials to go ahead.

The move is a technical step, but necessary for the US government to prosecute Hicks and two other accused terrorists at military commission trials.

Trial proceedings could begin against Hicks at the American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as early as next month.

"There are hereby established military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants for offences triable by military commission," Bush declared in the order, released to the media by White House officials.

Adelaide-born Hicks, Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni accused of being al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's driver, and Canadian, Omar Khadr, were selected by the US military as the first three Guantanamo inmates to be brought to trial.

US Colonel Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the upcoming military commissions, announced earlier this month charges had been sworn against Hicks, Hamdan and Khadr.

Davis has recommended Hicks be charged with "providing material support for terrorism and attempted murder in violation of the law of war".

If convicted, the 31-year-old former jackaroo from Adelaide faces a maximum penalty of life in a US prison.

The president's executive order paves the way for the convening authority for military commissions, Susan J Crawford, to examine Davis's recommended charges.

If Crawford, a former US Court of Appeals judge for the Armed Forces, agrees with Davis' recommendations, Hicks will likely be formally charged.

Hicks then must appear before a military judge within 30 days and a trial will start within 120 days.

The court proceedings are expected to take place in court facilities at Guantanamo Bay, a heavily fortified US military base where Hicks has been in custody for more than five years.

Hicks, 31, was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and accused of training with al-Qaeda.

AAP

[accuracy]

15th February 2007

United States authorities insist there's nothing to suggest David Hicks' mental health is suffering.

They turned down an Australian request to send in an independent psychologist and instead had their own doctors check on the psychiatric health of the Adelaide-born father of two, who's been locked up in Guantanamo Bay for five years.

The Guantanamo doctor gave Hicks a clean bill of health, indicating there was nothing to suggest the Australian terror suspect was suffering depression or anxiety.

But the conditions he lives under would undoubtedly test the metal of even the most mentally healthy.

During a parliamentary hearing on Thursday, senators were given a rundown of Hicks' surroundings and daily routine in the US military prison in Cuba.

Last December he was moved to Camp Six, described this week as more humane by the US commander in charge at Guantanamo.

Hicks lives in a cell 3.6 by 2.3 metres that receives no direct sunlight, is climate controlled at 25 degrees Celsius and has glass observation panels for prison staff to check detainees aren't trying to commit suicide.

He sleeps on a double bunk bed, but has no roommate, and has a plastic table, a seat and bookshelf in his cell for reading and writing.

But the bookshelf is mostly empty. He has 52 books but is only allowed two in his cell at any one time.

Toilet paper is rationed - he's allowed 30 sheets at a time - because others at Guantanamo have used it to block the toilets and cause flooding.

The Americans describe it as a security issue.

Hicks is kept in his cell for 22 hour stretches. For two hours a day - which can be at any time of the day or night - he is allowed into the exercise yard.

But, for whatever reason, he was refused the privilege 21 times last month, meaning he was in his cell for 24 hours.

AAP

[accuracy]

15th February 2007

David Hicks has been on toilet paper "rations" because some Guantanamo Bay detainees - but not the Australian terror suspect - have been using it to cause flooding.

Rod Smith, a senior consular officer from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), said Australian officials were first alerted to this problem in early November last year.

"Toilet paper is rationed to 30 sheets at a time but additional supplies can be provided as requested," Mr Smith said.

"(The US says) some detainees have used toilet paper to block toilets and cause floods."

American officials described it as a security measure, he said.

But Mr Smith said as far as he was aware Hicks was not one of the detainees causing the flooding problem.

"It is an issue we have taken up with the American authorities," Mr Smith said.

Australia's consul-general to Washington, John McAnulty, raised the toilet paper issue with US authorities in a letter on December 5.

The rationed toilet paper was still a problem late last month when Hicks was visited by his lawyers but, at a parliamentary hearing on Thursday, Mr Smith was unable to say if it was still an issue.

Information from US authorities also disputes claims that Hicks has not been able to use a comb since being transferred to Camp Six last year.

Mr Smith said the US had told Australia that Hicks is allowed to use a comb in the shower room.

Senators were also provided with some details of the personal effects to which Hicks has access.

Mr Smith said Hicks has a library of 52 books at the prison but was only allowed to keep two in his cell at any one time.

The Adelaide father of two spends at least 22 hours in his cell each day.

He is allowed two hours each day for exercise but Mr Smith said he refused to go to the exercise yard 21 times during January.

AAP

[accuracy]

Feb 15, 2007
http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=27415

Rabat (ANTARA News) - A 16th century Marrakesh palace has for the past three weeks been transformed into the infamous American prison camp in Guantanamo Bay to set the scene for a movie being shot there, Moroccan media reported on Tuesday.

South African director Gavin Hood is using the castle as a backdrop for his political "Rendition", starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon and Peter Sarsgaard.

The film tells the tale of a CIA analyst in Cairo who witnesses an unorthodox interrogation of an Egyptian chemical engineer suspected of being a terrorist.

The El Badia palace has, according to a set worker quoted by AFP from Moroccan daily Aujord'hui, been completely transformed to resemble Guantanamo, even featuring Moroccans walking around in the American camp's notorious orange jumpsuits.

The Moroccan part of the shoot is scheduled to last for eight weeks, and will include a scene shot in the seaside town of Essaouira, formerly known as Mogador.

Hood will also take his cast to South Africa and the United States to shoot other scenes for the film. (*)


Copyright © 2006 ANTARA

[accuracy]

By David Bauder
Associated Press
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070214/LIFE/702140338/1005

This week on Fox's "24" a counter terrorism agent was tortured with a quarter-inch bit drilled into his chest. Earlier this season on the show agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) tortured his own brother by putting a plastic bag over his head.

In previous seasons Jack has cut off the head of a tortured terrorist suspect who had died to send a message and pretended to kill a terrorist's bound and gagged child before his eyes to get him to talk. Even Jack himself has died under torture, only to be resuscitated back to life.

The scenes from Fox's "24" are haunting, but hardly unusual. The advocacy group Human Rights First says there's been a startling increase in the number of torture scenes depicted on prime-time television in the post-2001 world.

Even more chilling, there are indications that real-life American interrogators in Iraq are taking cues from what they see on TV, said Jill Savitt, the group's PR director.

Human Rights First recently brought a West Point commander and retired military interrogators to Hollywood for meetings with producers of "24" and ABC's "Lost" to talk about their concerns about life imitating art. One man in the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former U.S. Army specialist who questioned prisoners in Baghdad's infamous Abu Ghraib prison and several other facilities around Iraq. He said he saw instances of mock executions like that in "24." Once, some fellow interrogators asked an Iraqi translator to pretend he was being tortured to strike fear in a prisoner, after they had just watched a similar scene on a DVD.

Television is hardly the only factor at play; Lagouranis said many American interrogators are young, receive little training and are pressured by commanders to quickly extract information from prisoners.

But it's enough of a concern that one professor at a military academy told Savitt that Jack Bauer represented one of his biggest training challenges. Retired U.S. Army Col. Stu Herrington, who learned interrogation techniques in Vietnam and is an expert asked by the Army to consult on conditions at Guantanimo Bay, said that if Bauer worked for him, he'd be headed for a court-martial. "I am distressed by the fact that the good guys are depicted as successfully employing what I consider are illegal, immoral and stupid tactics, and they're succeeding," he said. "When the good guys are doing something evil and win, that bothers me."

Prior to 2001, the few torture scenes on prime-time TV usually had the shows' villains as the instigators, Savitt said. In both 1996 and 1997, there were no prime-time TV scenes containing torture, according to the Parents Television Council, which keeps a programming database.

Recently they found examples on "Alias," "The Wire," "Law & Order," "The Shield" - even "Star Trek: Voyager."

In one "Lost" scene, Sayid Jarrah was depicted holding a knife to the face of one adversary, suggesting that "perhaps losing an eye will loosen your tongue."

Howard Gordon, an executive producer of "24," suggested that a helpless feeling in the nation because of terrorism and the Iraq war may be what creators are reflecting in their shows. There's been a surge in the level of violence tolerated in prime time. "Perhaps at some level it's an expression of our anger and our helplessness," he said.

But Herrington said he's concerned that much of what's on TV is misleading.

Television interrogation frequently works to a ticking clock: someone needs to find out the location of a bomb from a prisoner within the hour or it will explode. That's so rare in real life that it's essentially mythology, he said.



Publication date: 02-14-2007

[accuracy]

EU endorses damning report on CIA

14 February 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6360817.stm

The European parliament has approved a damning report on secret CIA flights, condemning member states which colluded in the operations.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42369000/jpg/_42369098_ciaflight_ap203b.jpg
The EU report said the US had operated 1,245 flights


The UK, Germany and Italy were among 14 states which allowed the US to forcibly remove terror suspects, lawmakers said.

The EU parliament voted to accept a resolution condemning member states which accepted or ignored the practice.

The EU report said the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture.

The report was adopted by a large majority, with 382 MEPs voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining.

Vigilance

The final version denounces the lack of co-operation of many EU member states and it condemns the actions of secret services and governments who accepted and concealed renditions.

It is unlikely, the report says, that European governments were unaware of rendition activities on their territory, something the British government, among others, has denied.

"This is a report that doesn't allow anyone to look the other way. We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again," said Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava, who drafted the document.

The parliament also called for an "independent inquiry" to be considered and for closure of the US' Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Human rights campaigning group Amnesty International welcomed the EU lawmakers' vote, but urged member states to carry out independent investigations.

Revealing facts

Although the report has no force in EU law, Mr Fava said during the parliamentary debate that the related investigation, over a year, had uncovered much new evidence.

Many of those taken from EU states were subjected to torture to extract information from them, the report said.

It said there was a "strong possibility" that this intelligence had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained.

It also uncovered the use of secret detention facilities used as the flights made their journey across Europe towards countries such as Afghanistan.

It was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centres were operated in Poland and Romania, the report said.

'Incommunicado detention'

Centre-right MEPs - the largest group in parliament - have been highly critical of the report, saying it is primarily motivated by anti-Americanism.

EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said the commission would act on the truth, even if it were uncomfortable or unpalatable. But he called for a relaunching of the Euro-Atlantic relationship and said Europe must continue to work with its US partners.

During the course of their investigation, delegations of MEPs travelled to countries including Romania, Poland, the UK, the US and Germany to investigate claims of European involvement in so-called extraordinary renditions.

The governments of Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the UK were criticised for their "unwillingness to co-operate" with investigators.

The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".

[accuracy]

February 18, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21245206-2,00.html

BUSINESSMAN Dick Smith has given $60,000 to support the campaign to free Australian terror suspect David Hicks.

Sky News reports the businessman as saying he is angry with the Howard government's neglect of Hicks and plans to give more to help secure a fair trial.

Mr Smith's announcement yesterday came at the same time as the release of a computer generated image of the 31-year-old held at the US military camp in Cuba.

The image shows the strain of five years at Guantanamo Bay.

[accuracy]

By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET
Published: February 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/world/middleeast/18bucca.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/18/world/18bucca.xlarge1.jpg
Laith al-Ani, with his daughter, Al Budur, was recently released by the American military in Iraq after spending more than two years in detention facilities. He was never charged with a crime.


DAMASCUS, Syria — In the early hours of Jan. 6, Laith al-Ani stood in a jail near the Baghdad airport waiting to be released by the American military after two years and three months in captivity.

He struggled to quell his hope. Other prisoners had gotten as far as the gate only to be brought back inside, he said, and he feared that would happen to him as punishment for letting his family discuss his case with a reporter.

But as the morning light grew, the American guards moved Mr. Ani, a 31-year-old father of two young children, methodically toward freedom. They swapped his yellow prison suit for street clothes, he said. They snipped off his white plastic identification bracelet. They scanned his irises into their database.

Then, shortly before 9 a.m., Mr. Ani said, he was brought to a table for one last step. He was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated:

“I didn’t go through any abuse during detention,” read the first option, in Arabic.

“I have gone through abuse during detention,” read the second.

In the room, he said, stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn.

“Even the translator told me to sign the first answer,” said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The New York Times. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands,” as if to say, Who knows?

“I thought if I don’t sign the first one I am not going to get out of this place.”

Shoving the memories of his detention aside, he checked the first box and minutes later was running through a cold rain to his waiting parents. “My heart was beating so hard,” he said. “You can’t believe how I cried.”

His mother, Intisar al-Ani, raised her arms in the air, palms up, praising God. “It was like my soul going out, from my happiness,” she recalled. “I hugged him hard, afraid the Americans would take him away again.”

Just three weeks earlier, his last letter home — with its poetic yearnings and a sketch of a caged pink heart — appeared in The Times in one of a series of articles on Iraq’s troubled detention and justice system.

After his release from the American-run jail, Camp Bucca, Mr. Ani and other former detainees described the sprawling complex of barracks in the southern desert near Kuwait as a bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners to long periods of extreme heat and cold; where prisoners fought among themselves and extremist elements tried to radicalize others; and where detainees often responded to the harsh conditions with hunger strikes and, at times, violent protests.

Through it all, Mr. Ani was never actually charged with a crime; he said he was questioned only once during his more than two years at the camp.

American detention officials acknowledged that guards used electric devices called Tasers to control detainees, but they said they did so rarely and only when the guards were physically threatened. The officials said that detainees had several ways to report abuse without repercussions, and that all claims were investigated.

Officials declined to give specific details about why they had detained Mr. Ani or why they had freed him.

“He was released because the board that reviewed his case didn’t believe he any longer posed a threat,” said First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, a spokeswoman for detention operations, in a written answer to questions. “He was originally detained as a security threat. I don’t have anything more.”

The Detention System

The American detention camps in Iraq now hold 15,500 prisoners, more than at any time since the war began. The camps are filled with people like Mr. Ani who are being held without charge and without access to tribunals where their cases are reviewed, the Times examination published last December found.

Mr. Ani, a women’s clothing merchant, said he was detained in 2004 after American soldiers who were searching for weapons in his six-family apartment building found an Iraqi military uniform in the basement. His joy upon being released in January was short-lived. Days later, he said, a Shiite militia ransacked his home in Baghdad, looking to kill him. He hid, going from house to house, until he could move his family out of Iraq.

Now he is among the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis who have taken refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan, where sectarian rifts are springing up.

In one area of Damascus, Shiite refugees from Iraq have established a mini version of Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood. Sunni refugees, in turn, are forming their own enclaves. In interviews, former detainees seethed with rage at the United States.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/18/world/18bucca.1902.jpg
Scott Nelson/WPN, for The New York Times
A letter written by Mr. Ani to his family from the Camp Bucca detention center in Iraq.

One, a 43-year-old man from Samarra, Iraq, said he was released last year despite having fought American troops.

“I wish to go back to Iraq and fight against the Americans, God willing,” vowed the man, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his nom de guerre, Abu Abdulla, for fear of reprisal.

Mr. Ani has other priorities, still exhausted from his detention and preoccupied with finding a permanent home. But he regularly turns his television to a new station called Al Zawra, transfixed by its running montage of videotaped attacks on American troops.

The station is owned by a Sunni, Meshaan al-Juburi, a former Iraqi politician who was indicted last year on charges of embezzling millions of American dollars; he denied the charges and returned to Syria, where he lived before the war. The station has become an information center for the Sunni insurgency and in the process has exasperated American and Iraqi forces. In an interview at his office here, Mr. Juburi said that he opposed Al Qaeda’s use of suicide bombers to kill Iraqi civilians but was soliciting support for Iraqis intent on killing American troops. When the image of a roadside bomb blowing up an American Humvee appears on the large flat screen on his office wall, his eyebrows rise and he urges his visitors to watch, “This is a good one.”

A Nightmare Begins

Mr. Ani’s ordeal began on Oct. 14, 2004, when soldiers brought him in for what he described as desultory questioning.

“ ‘Are you married? How many children? Sunni or Shiite? Which mosque do you pray in?’ ” Mr. Ani said he was asked. “I said I didn’t pray, and they said, ‘Are you not Muslim,’ and I said, ‘Yes, but I’m not praying and going to mosques.’ ”

“They never asked me about terrorism,” he said. “I’m a normal person, just a usual man, and don’t have anything to do with anyone who was fighting against the Americans.”

Mr. Ani spent a total of 44 days at two other American facilities before being sent to Camp Bucca. In all, he said, he was questioned just once at each site.

Mr. Ani said the electric prods were first used on him on the way to Camp Bucca. “I was talking to someone next to me and they used it,” he said, describing the device as black plastic with a yellow tip and two iron prongs. He said the prods were commonly used on him and other detainees as punishment.

“The whole body starts to shake and hurt,” he said. “And you lose consciousness for a couple of seconds. One time they used it on my tongue. One guard held me from the left and another on my back and another used it against my tongue and for four or five days I couldn’t eat.”

In a separate interview, the insurgent from Samarra said such a device had been used on him for speaking out of turn. Ahmed Majid al-Ghanem, 50, a former Baath Party official who was also freed from Camp Bucca and is now living in Syria, said in a separate interview that he witnessed the electric prods being used as punishment on other detainees.

The Times interviewed Mr. Ani at his apartment in Damascus, the Syrian capital, where he sat on a couch with his parents, wife and children. When he demonstrated how he had been held for the electric prod, his 4-year-old daughter, Al Budur, mimicked his actions.

Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a detention system spokesman, said: “Every use of less than lethal force, to include use of Tasers, is formally reported by facility leadership, ensuring soldiers are in accordance with proper use. Touching a Taser to someone’s tongue is not one of the approved uses.”

Mr. Ani said guards treated him kindly when he arrived at the jail on Nov. 20, 2004. He recalls being given soap, and, when his hands cracked from the cold, a soldier bringing him lotion and socks.

But soon new guards came “who had had special thoughts,” he said. “They were not allowing us to talk. They cut off the salt, gave us food that was not fit for dogs. One guard named David sometimes brought us outside to stay in the sun, or when it was cold. He also didn’t respect our faith, telling us not to pray here, and when we moved not to pray there.”

The detainees also began fighting among themselves. Those who spoke to the American guards were ostracized. Long toilet lines further raised tensions.

One day the guards searched a makeshift prayer area, Mr. Ani said, “and they started to step on the Korans, which fell down.”

“A fight started,” he continued. “There was a huge demonstration. The prisoners started to throw their shoes at the guards, and we started to beat them with empty plastic bottles. The guards shot at us with rubber bullets, but then prisoners were killed and others were injured.”

A Pentagon statement at the time described such an incident in January 2005, saying that four detainees were killed when guards were compelled to use deadly force to quell the riot and that it was set off by a search for contraband. Colonel Curry said an investigation concluded that a detainee leader had fabricated the Koran allegations to instigate violence.

Mr. Ani and other former detainees said there were frequent demonstrations to protest various grievances. Mr. Ghanem said he was released in late 2003 after hunger strikes forced camp officials to review his case and those of others.

Detention officials said they were also fighting radicalization at the camps and were trying to identify and isolate extremists. Former detainees said in interviews that the influence of Islamic extremists was still growing. At Camp Bucca, they said, hundreds of men formed a group called the Brothers. Members shaved their beards and otherwise masked their ideology so they would be placed with other detainees.

Mr. Ani generally slept in a wooden barrackslike structure, with a mattress on the ground and a nail on the wall for hanging clothes. Once, when the guards found an improvised needle that he said was used to repair clothes, he was taken to an isolated cell, where he was kept for 24 days.

“You cannot see the difference between day and night,” he said. “There was no opening, not even in the door.”

Colonel Curry said it was standard to discipline detainees when they did not follow procedure.

Mr. Ani despaired of ever being released. His letter that was printed in The Times ended with, “I hope I can be dust in the storms of Bucca so that I can reach you.”

Dangers Beyond Jail

“I didn’t see any kind of solution for me,” Mr. Ani said after his release. “The only solution was to die,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “I was hoping to die.”

In releasing Mr. Ani, the American military transferred him to Camp Cropper in Baghdad and gave him $25, which he and his parents used to hire a taxi. Along the way home, they had to dodge Shiite-controlled checkpoints, and just days later, he said, he narrowly escaped capture by a Shiite militia. Mr. Ani and other Iraqis say they believe these militias have found a way to learn when Sunni men are released from jail and then hunt and kill them.

Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, commander of American detainee operations, said that he had heard such concerns and that he was trying to alter the process of releasing detainees to improve their safety.

Mr. Ani said that for him there was only one way to stay alive: flee Iraq.

He said he was scared and puzzled about his next step. He said he felt that he could not stay in Syria, if only because work was scarce. But he must compete with other refugees for the attention of another host country.

“Until now, I can’t sleep, really,” he said. “Whenever I hear something noisy I stand up. I’m in a very bad psychological situation. I can’t stop thinking of what we should do. I don’t have a future here. How should we live?”

When his uncle put on Al Zawra, the satellite television station, Mr. Ani turned to look at the scenes of Sunni children who had been killed and the attacks on American soldiers.

“I am an Iraqi,” he said. “I love my country. Of course, everyone who is an Iraqi at the moment, we are thinking how can we support our country.”

“The United States through its actions made people hate the Americans much more than before.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[accuracy]

Assigned to defend a Guantánamo detainee, jag lawyer Charles Swift joined up with legal scholar Neal Katyal and sued the president and secretary of defense over the new military-tribunal system. With their 2006 Supreme Court victory overridden by the Republican Congress, and Swift's navy career at an end, they are fighting on.

by Marie Brenner, March 2007

The whole purpose of setting up Guantánamo Bay is for torture. Why do this? Because you want to escape the rule of law. There is only one thing that you want to escape the rule of law to do, and that is to question people coercively—what some people call torture. Guantánamo and the military commissions are implements for breaking the law. Why build a prison here when there are plenty of prisons in Nebraska? Why is it, when we see photos of Abu Ghraib, we think that it is "exporting Guantánamo"? That it is the "Guantánamo method"?—Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift to the author, January 2007.

He could not even get his client a pair of socks. That realization came to Charlie Swift, a lawyer in the navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps (jag), as he landed in Guantánamo. It was December 22, 2006, a few weeks before the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first enemy detainees at the American naval base in Cuba. Swift had been a jag defense lawyer for 12 years and was making his 30th visit to Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a diminutive Yemeni who had been held for more than five years. The first time Swift met Hamdan, in January 2004, the prisoner was in shackles. "I am freezing," Hamdan told him. "Can't you get me a pair of socks?" After that, Swift brought Hamdan socks. Sometimes his client was given them, sometimes he was not. Now, nearly three years later, Hamdan was at the center of a landmark Supreme Court case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, held up as a symbol of detainees' rights and the need for the Geneva Conventions, yet he was still mired in legal limbo.

The island, once again, seemed inexpressibly strange to Swift. He always drove past a sign that read honor bound to defend freedom. "This is probably not the best sign for this place," Swift said to himself on one of his first trips. Seeing the rec hall and a McDonald's, he made notes for a future jury summation: "This is the island of misfit toys."

An order had been issued just before he arrived. Hamdan was to be taken to Camp Six, a nether zone on the base, and placed in solitary confinement. His days would be spent in a tiny room kept cold by air-conditioning. Mail from his family in Yemen was withheld for months. Immediately, Swift called Washington to speak to his partner, law professor Neal Katyal. This was the fourth year Katyal had spent his holidays preparing legal briefs on the subject of President Bush's military tribunals. "They've put Salim back into solitary," Swift told him. "That is outrageous," Katyal said. "But what about the notes?" Camp authorities had seized the notes Hamdan took after a recent visit with Swift. Katyal was furious at this violation of lawyer-client privilege.

Through the holidays, Katyal wrote draft after draft of possible briefs for the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. He made phone calls trying to learn what the Department of Defense would include in the new guidelines for Guantánamo it was issuing in January. Swift and Katyal were bogged down in procedural delay. A few months after their decisive victory the previous June, when the Supreme Court had declared the military tribunals illegal, Congress had passed an onerous new law, muting the court's ruling on the no-man's-land of Guantánamo. Now the lawyers were planning a new strategy to take before the appellate court. This time, in addition to going up against the administration, they would be challenging Congress.

From the beginning, Swift had been in an untenable situation. He had been asked, as a military lawyer, to defend enemy combatants—the government's term for the men held at Guantánamo—under rules that, were he to follow them as a civilian lawyer, would be clear ethical violations. On his first trip to see Hamdan, in 2004, he had made a list of these on a legal pad: no right to habeas corpus, no attorney-client privilege, forced guilty pleas for charges never made public, secret and coerced evidence, juries and presiding officers picked by executive fiat, clients represented even if they declined legal counsel. He and Katyal had won their case in the Supreme Court, but had anything really changed?

"We are right back to where we started," Swift said. "When I met Salim Ahmed Hamdan, he was sitting and waiting. Now he is sitting and waiting again. And he is still freezing and does not have a pair of socks." The central question remained for Swift: Could a president hold someone forever without trying him? "What are we defending here?," he asked. "Kangaroo courts where the defendants never knew what they were being indicted for?"

October 15, 2006. The day I meet Charlie Swift, he attempts to sum up the legal morass of Guantánamo. "Justice," he says, "is based on a simple idea: it can happen to you." The line comes out minutes after he arrives at a Starbucks in the suburbs of Maryland, and the intensity of his delivery causes the teenagers making out at the next table to look up. It's a Sunday afternoon, shortly after the announcement that Swift is leaving the navy. A few days earlier, on October 11, The New York Times ran a harsh editorial commenting on the subject:

In 2003, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned to represent Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen accused of being a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda—for the sole purpose of getting him to plead guilty before one of the military commissions that President Bush created for the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Instead of carrying out this morally repugnant task, Commander Swift concluded that the commissions were unconstitutional. He did his duty and defended his client.… The Navy gave no reason for denying Commander Swift's promotion. But there is no denying the chilling message it sends to remaining military lawyers about the potential consequences of taking their job, and justice, seriously.

The Times editorial made it seem as if a navy hero had been slapped down for trying to put a stop to the practices at Guantánamo. On the telephone, Swift was irritated about that. "There is nothing clear-cut about this," he insisted. "It is not black-and-white."

The fog surrounding Guantánamo had seemed to lift on June 29, 2006, when Hamdan v. Rumsfeld—a case scholars have compared to Brown v. Board of Education in its ramifications for this country—was decided in the Supreme Court. The court struck down President Bush's military tribunals, declaring them illegal under long-established U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In a 73-page opinion, the court said that the administration had established the tribunals without congressional authorization and violated international law. At first, the decision seemed a complete victory for Swift and all the other lawyers in and out of the jag Corps who had been fighting what they considered to be Draconian conditions at Guantánamo.

The victory, however, was short-lived. On October 17, President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, creating a new system of interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects and denying the 430 prisoners at Guantánamo and others around the world the right to file writs of habeas corpus. "The constitutional issue could not be more stark," Swift declared. "What they are doing is unprecedented."

read on-
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/guantanamo200703?printable=true&currentPage=all

[accuracy]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/costello-points-the-finger-at-hicks/2007/02/18/1171733612758.html

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/02/19/470davidhicks.jpg
Unfamiliar face … few have seen David Hicks's face in the past five years, but his lawyers say this computer-generated image commissioned by Channel Nine, right, is an accurate reflection of how he looks now. Left, Mr Hicks before he left Australia.

Tom Allard National Security Editor
February 19, 2007

THE federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, says David Hicks could easily have killed Australian soldiers in Afghanistan - even though the US says Mr Hicks fled the battlefield before Australian forces had begun action there.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said yesterday Mr Hicks could be home before this year's election - as long as his lawyers did not appeal against the military commission process.

Mr Costello told Channel Ten yesterday that Mr Hicks faced very serious charges. "The charges include the fact that he armed himself and prepared himself to kill coalition soldiers - could easily have been Australian soldiers," he said.

However, according to the charge sheet provided by US prosecutors, Mr Hicks left the front line where Taliban and US-backed Northern Alliance fighters were engaged after only two hours, in early November 2001.

US prosecutors say he then told other fighters he was leaving the country, and that he was arrested after three weeks in hiding, after selling his weapon to raise funds to escape to Pakistan.

The full contingent of Australia's SAS troops arrived in Afghanistan in December, and it was several weeks before they began operations.

Indeed, one of the few differences between the first charge sheet produced by US prosecutors in 2004 and the second made public last week is that a reference to Australian troops being possible targets of Mr Hicks was removed.

"They had to do that because they realised there were no Australian forces there fighting at the time," said Mr Hicks's US lawyer, Major Michael Mori.

But Mr Costello said the case against Mr Hicks was "pretty straightforward". "He wasn't on a backpacker tour," he said.

Mr Downer said Mr Hicks would be back in Australia, one way or another, before the election, as long as his trial proceeded quickly.

"It'll be possible to get Mr Hicks back to Australia by the end of the year, either to serve in a prison in Australia or, of course, just to be released, depending on the result of the trial," Mr Downer told the Nine Network.

There has been mounting public concern about the five years Mr Hicks has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay without trial, forcing the Federal Government to press the US for a speedy resolution of the case. The businessman Dick Smith yesterday pledged $60,000 towards Mr Hicks's legal expenses.

Major Mori said it was inevitable there would be further appeals against the military commission system.

Mr Downer was non-committal about what the Government would do if there was a delay but said it would be harder to bring Mr Hicks home if the appeal was instigated by his team.

"If the reason the trial isn't going ahead is that Mr Hicks and his lawyers want to delay the trial for one reason or another - and I make no judgement about that, that is their perfect right - then it's hard to get Hicks out of Guantanamo Bay," he said.

The Greens senator Bob Brown said the Prime Minister was planning to use Mr Hicks to save his own skin as voter reaction to the Australian's continuing imprisonment turned hostile.

"Hicks will come home before Christmas so that Howard can get home before Christmas. It is very tawdry," Senator Brown said. Mr Howard had turned a blind eye to Mr Hicks's mistreatment for five years and his plan to bring him home before the election was "political cowardice".

with AAP

[accuracy]

U.S. rejects investigator's Guantanamo visit request

Reuters
Friday, February 16, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021600603.html

PARIS (Reuters) - A European investigator probing alleged CIA abuses of detainees said on Friday the United States has refused his request to visit the controversial U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to talk to inmates.

Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty had planned to travel to Guantanamo with Manfred Nowak, United Nations special rapporteur for torture, to question detainees about reports they were earlier held in secret prisons in Europe.

"The U.S. sent a very short reply saying that they couldn't accept his request to visit and talk to inmates," a spokesman for the Council of Europe said.

Over 20 mainly European countries colluded in a web of secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) jails and flight transfers of terrorism suspects stretching from Asia to Guantanamo Bay, Marty said in a June 2006 report.

"If I cannot speak freely with detainees -- as I understand from the American reply -- such a visit would be pointless," Marty said in a statement.

"I am disappointed at this refusal by the U.S., an observer to the Council of Europe, but my investigation continues."

© 2007 Reuters

[accuracy]

February 21, 2007

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/02/21/guantanamo_detainees_wideweb__470x324,0.jpg
A shackled detainee is escorted while being transported inside the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.
Photo: AP

Australia's David Hicks and other Guantanamo Bay inmates suffered a significant setback today in an American court.

The US federal appeals panel in Washington DC ruled inmates held at the American military base in Cuba do not have the right to challenge their detention in lower federal courts.

The three judge panel ruled 2-1.

However, instead of paving the way for Hicks to be prosecuted at a military commission trial after five years in US custody, the court decision will likely cause more delays.

It is expected the decision will be challenged in America's highest court, the US Supreme Court.

The court ruling came after US President George W Bush and Congress introduced new legislation last year that stripped detainees' rights to challenge their detention.

Bush and Congress drew up the legislation following the landmark victory by Guantanamo detainees in the Supreme Court last year.

The new legislation survived the ruling.

"Federal courts have no jurisdiction in these cases," Judge A Raymond Randolph and Judge David B Sentelle announced.

Judge Judith W Rogers, who was the dissenting judge, offered hope to Hicks and other inmates if, as expected, their lawyers take the issue to the Supreme Court.

Rogers said the Pentagon had not come up with an adequate option outside the federal courts that Guantanamo inmates could challenge their detention.

"District courts are well able to adjust these proceedings in light of the government's significant interests in guarding national security," Rogers wrote.

Amnesty criticises decision

Amnesty International has criticised the decision by the US appeals court.

The London-based human rights group said in a statement that it "deeply regrets" the decision that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction to hear any habeas corpus appeals from so-called "enemy combatants" at the camp in Cuba.

"The right of all detainees to challenge the lawfulness of their detention is among the most fundamental principles of international law," Amnesty's US researcher Rob Freer said.

"That any legislature or any judge anywhere should contenance such stripping of this basic protection against arbitrary detention, secret custody, torture and other ill-treatment is shocking and must be challenged."

Amnesty said that of the nearly 400 detainees still held at the US-run camp, some have been held for more than five years but none has had his indefinite detention judicially reviewed.

It repeated its claims - denied by Washington - that detainees have suffered "serious human rights violations" and said those held must be either charged with recognizable criminal offences, brought to trial or released.

Meanwhile the US military has announced Adelaide-born Hicks, 31, Omar Khadr of Canada and Salim Hamdan of Yemen would be the first three Guantanamo inmates to be prosecuted via the revamped military commission trial system.

Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and is accused of having ties with terrorist group al Qaeda and the Taliban.

AAP

[accuracy]

February 21, 2007
From correspondents in London

AMNESTY International has criticised a decision by the US appeals court preventing foreign terror suspects from challenging their detentions at Guantanamo Bay in the US legal system.

The London-based human rights group said today that it "deeply regrets" the decision that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction to hear any habeas corpus appeals from so-called "enemy combatants" at the camp in Cuba.

"The right of all detainees to challenge the lawfulness of their detention is among the most fundamental principles of international law," Amnesty's US researcher Rob Freer said.

"That any legislature or any judge anywhere should contenance such stripping of this basic protection against arbitrary detention, secret custody, torture and other ill-treatment is shocking and must be challenged."

Amnesty said that of the nearly 400 detainees still held at the US-run camp, some have been held for more than five years but none has had his indefinite detention judicially reviewed.

It repeated its claims - denied by Washington - that detainees have suffered "serious human rights violations" and said those held must be either charged with recognisable criminal offences, brought to trial or released.

"One only has to imagine what would happen if another government captured a US citizen and held him indefinitely for years on end while denying him this basic right to challenge his detention," he said.

"The US government should now turn its imagination to fully restoring an indispensable rule of law principle."

[accuracy]

Wednesday, February 21, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070221/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saudi_guantanamo_1

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Seven Saudis released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay returned home on Wednesday and were promptly detained to see if they had terrorist connections, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

Their return brings to 60 the number of Saudis freed from Guantanamo, according to The Associated Press' own tally. Another 67 Saudis remain incarcerated at the U.S. military facility on Cuba, a source of tension in U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Washington.

Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz expressed his "great joy" about the seven Saudis' return and "appreciation of the cooperation by the American authorities," the Saudi Press Agency reported.

He added he hoped the remaining Saudi detainees in Guantanamo would return in the near future.

The seven who returned Wednesday were expected to remain in custody until the security authorities had determined whether they were linked to militant organizations.

Five batches of Saudis have returned from Guantanamo, the first arriving in May last year, and all have gone through the same process of being detained on arrival. The kingdom released 30 detainees in December.

Two Saudis died in Guantanamo prison last year in what American officials said were suicides. Many Saudis don't believe that and think the detainees were abused — a claim the U.S. denies.

The United States began using the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in January 2002 for people captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan who were suspected of having links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Of the 759 people who have been held over the years at Guantanamo, according to Defense Department documents released to The Associated Press, 136 have been Saudis, making them the second- largest contingent of prisoners, behind Afghan nationals.

[accuracy]

Anti-Terror Law Bans Guantanamo Bay Prisoners from Civil Courts

Guantanamo Bay prisoners do not have a right to plead their innocence in American civilian court.

Foreign-born prisoners seized as potential terrorists and held in Guantanamo Bay may not challenge their detention in US courts, US federal appeals court ruled today.

According to the ruling, civilian courts no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding the prisoners - a decision that will strip court access for hundreds of detainees with cases currently pending.

"The arguments are creative but not cogent. To accept them would be to defy the will of Congress," wrote Judge Raymond Randolph in the 25-page opinion, which was joined by Judge David Sentelle.

This means a key victory for President Bush's anti-terrorism plan.

The Bush administration has fought to prevent the detainees from having their claims heard in court. At the White House, deputy press secretary Dana Perino called the decision "a significant win" for the administration and said the Military Commissions Act provides "sufficient and fair access to courts for these detainees."

US citizens and foreigners being held within the United States normally have the right to contest their detention before a judge. The Justice Department said foreign enemy combatants are not protected by the Constitution. Attorneys for the detainees immediately said they would appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Though former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once referred to the Guantanamo detainees as the "worst of the worst," none has been tried and hundreds have been released and sent back to their home countries.

http://www.torontodailynews.com/index.php/WorldNews/2007022102anti-terror-law

[accuracy]

February 26, 2007

Former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson says the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Attorney-General could be charged with war crimes for insisting David Hicks face trial before a US military commission.

Mr Nicholson said the commission was not a properly constituted court and it could not deliver a fair trial to the terrorist suspect.

He said war crimes legislation clearly made that an offence on the basis that kangaroo courts should not be established to try a regime's enemies.

"We are saying it is strongly arguable that they have broken the law because to counsel or procure a person who is entitled to protection of the Geneva convention as Hicks is, a trial of such a person before an illegal tribunal is clearly an offence against the international criminal court statute," he told ABC Radio.

"It is also an offence in Australian law."

Mr Nicholson said that constituted a war crime.

"It is so defined under the relevant legislation," he said.

Adelaide-born Hicks, 31, has been detained by the US at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for five years, after he was picked up in Afghanistan in December 2001.

The US is considering the charges he would face at trial.

Mr Nicholson and five other top lawyers co-signed a legal opinion sent to Mr Ruddock last year, arguing that Government ministers could face charges under war-crimes legislation.

That view was repeated in a letter from senior lawyer Robert Richter, QC, sent to The Age newspaper earlier this month.

Mr Nicholson acknowledged it was unlikely Mr Ruddock would be charged with war crimes by this Government, although it would be potentially open to a future Labor government.


"It is always possible. But my experience is that one government doesn't usually try and single out the misdeeds of another," he said.

"If this Government at this stage was to indicate that it thought the trial process was unsatisfactory and Hicks should be repatriated, I have no doubt that he would be."

AAP

[accuracy]

February 26, 2007

A Sydney courtroom packed with supporters of terrorist suspect David Hicks has been told the Australian Government has no legal obligation to help the Guantanamo Bay inmate.

The Government might have a moral obligation to assist Australian people abroad, but there was no legal basis for a Federal Court challenge to Hicks's incarceration by United States authorities, the Federal Court was today told.

A team of lawyers has launched the action in a bid to force the Government to take steps to bring Adelaide-born Hicks home.

The 31-year-old has been detained without trial at the US naval base since January 2002, following his arrest in Afghanistan.

The action against the Federal Government, federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, seeks declarations and an order that could lead to the release of Hicks from the US military jail in Cuba.

Government lawyer, Solicitor-General David Bennett, QC, told the court a general obligation for the Federal Government to protect citizens abroad "is simply something that the law has never recognised".

The courtroom was packed with supporters of Hicks, who earlier rallied outside the building calling for his release.

Former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib was also in court to support Hicks.

Speaking outside court, Hicks's Pentagon lawyer Major Michael Mori said he would tell Hicks about today's hearing.

"I came to see and hear the hearing so when I go back and see David next time at Guantanamo I can give him a report on what happened. Obviously this has a direct effect on his freedom," he said.

Major Mori said knowing he had support in Australia was helping Hicks cope with his incarceration.

"He's been in Guantanamo for five years. I don't think he'll ever believe he's leaving until he's back here in Australia," he told reporters outside court.

"I think the support, and knowing that there are people out there fighting for him, helps him get day by day though the time he sits in that cell by himself in solitary 22 hours a day."

Also in court today was entrepreneur and businessman Dick Smith.

While he said he did not support Hicks, Mr Smith said he was helping financially because he was concerned Hicks was not being treated fairly.

"It gets me incredibly angry when I find out that no American can be tried by military commission because it is against their law but an Australian can be tried, and that's not on," he said.

The hearing on whether the Federal Court has jurisdiction in the matter continues before Justice Brian Tamberlin.

AAP

[accuracy]

By Ben Fox
ASSOCIATED PRESS

February 25, 2007
http://washtimes.com/world/20070224-111035-6885r.htm

NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- A TV cameraman is getting an inside view of life at Guantanamo Bay prison, only he is unable to get out and tell the story.
Sami al-Hajj, of the Al Jazeera TV network, was stopped at the Afghanistan border by Pakistani authorities in December 2001, turned over to U.S. forces and hauled in chains six months later to Guantanamo, where about 390 men are held on suspicion of links to al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Mr. al-Hajj, a 38-year-old native of Sudan, has been held in this U.S. military prison ever since.
He is believed to be the only journalist from a major international news organization held at Guantanamo.
Colleagues from Mr. al-Hajj's Qatar-based network and the Sudanese government want to know why he is being held, but the U.S. government is saying little. The military did not even publicly acknowledge holding Mr. al-Hajj until last April, when it released a list of Guantanamo detainees in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Associated Press.
But military documents sketch at least a partial outline of Mr. al-Hajj's experiences at Guantanamo and the U.S. grounds for holding him -- that he transported money between 1996 and 2000 for a defunct charity that purportedly provided money to militant groups, and that he met a "senior al Qaeda lieutenant."
When he appeared before a military review panel at this remote U.S. military base in August 2005, Mr. al-Hajj, citing the advice of his attorney, declined to respond to questions. But he denied any connection to terrorism.
"With all due respect, a mistake has been made because I have never been a member of any terrorist group," he said, according to a transcript released the following year. "I can say without hesitation that I am not a threat to the United States."
During the hearing, aimed at determining whether Mr. al-Hajj posed a threat to the United States or possessed intelligence value, Mr. al-Hajj wore a white jumpsuit reserved for the "most compliant" detainees. An officer told the tribunal that Mr. al-Hajj was leading Islamic prayer sessions and teaching other prisoners English.
His colleagues at Al Jazeera claim his detention is American harassment of an Arabic TV network whose coverage has long angered U.S. officials. Near the entrance to the network's Khartoum, Sudan, bureau a banner saying "Free Sami al-Hajj" hangs alongside his photo.
"He's our colleague, so we're very worried," said Nassef Salah Eldin, an Al Jazeera producer in the Sudanese capital. "We feel it could happen to any of us."
Lamis Andoni, a Middle East analyst for the network who helped organize a campaign for Mr. al-Hajj's release, noted the network's sour relationship with the American government. In April 2003, an Al Jazeera journalist was killed when the network's Baghdad bureau was struck during a U.S. bombing campaign. In November 2001, a U.S. missile destroyed Al Jazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan. The U.S. claims both attacks were mistakes.

"When you are targeted once, it could be a mistake," Mr. Andoni said in an interview from Amman, Jordan. "But when you are bombed twice, it's something else."
In an interview in Khartoum, Sudanese Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi said the holding of the cameraman without charge "is repugnant to all the conventions and principles of international law."
Washington has given Sudan no information about Mr. al-Hajj, Mr. al-Mardi said. U.S. relations with Sudan are strained over the Darfur conflict in western Sudan.
"I consider the information that we obtained from him to be useful," Paul Rester, director of the Joint Intelligence Group at the prison, said in an interview at Guantanamo Bay. Mr. Rester refused to elaborate or even to comment on the charges aired at the 2005 hearing.

The U.S. military says that in the 1990s, Mr. al-Hajj was an executive assistant at a Qatar-based beverage company that provided support to Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya.

[accuracy]

By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD, Associated Press Writer
Sun Feb 25,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070225/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_italy_cleric;_ylt=ArS0zyqaW3rQdIXPJFT9fucLew gF

CAIRO, Egypt - An Egyptian cleric allegedly kidnapped off the streets of Italy by CIA agents in 2003 claimed Sunday that the Americans who abducted him "savagely" tortured him while deporting him to Egypt for interrogation.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070225/capt.nn10202251524.mideast_egypt_italy_cleric_nn10 2.jpg
AP Photo: Egyptian cleric Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, known as Abu Omar, 44, shows a dark scar...

The allegations by Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, who also is known as Abu Omar, are likely to intensify criticism of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program. Italy has indicted 26 Americans and five Italian agents accused of seizing the cleric in 2003.

Nasr told the pan-Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera that he "was savagely tortured by the CIA when kidnapped and during my deportation" to Egypt.

He did not provide further details during the live interview. The CIA has repeatedly declined to comment on the case.

Nasr's case is the first criminal trial connected to the rendition policy, in which U.S. agents secretly transferred terror suspects for interrogation to third countries where critics say they faced torture. Nasr was released from an Egyptian prison on Feb. 11 after four years in Egyptian custody.

During the Al-Jazeera interview, Nasr, 44, did not discuss allegations he made last week that Egyptian authorities also tortured him while he was in prison here, but he said he had tried to commit suicide while in Egyptian custody.

"Yes, this happened, but I didn't do this out of my own will because I know what a grave sin it is to kill oneself," the bearded Muslim preacher said. "But I was pushed to do it. I was in a situation where I wasn't able to distinguish between heaven and Earth."

Italian prosecutors say Nasr — suspected of recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes — was kidnapped from the streets of Milan in February 2003 by CIA agents with help from Italian agents. He was allegedly taken to Aviano Air Base near Venice, Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, and then to Egypt for interrogation.

Italy has signaled it will not seek extradition of the 25 CIA agents and one U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, but it will likely try them in absentia. The State Department said last week the Bush administration has nothing more to say on Nasr's case.

Nasr on Sunday appealed to the Italian courts to reveal the "secrets of this operation."

A prosecutor in Milan had issued an arrest warrant for him in April 2005 as part of a terrorism investigation. According to Italian officials, Nasr fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia, though Nasr's Egyptian lawyer has denied he visited those countries.

Nasr has said he was innocent and wanted to return to Italy, where he was granted political asylum in 2001, four years after entering illegally.

Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro said Thursday that judicial authorities would like Nasr to testify in the case against the American and Italian agents. But Egypt has not responded to an Italian request for access to Nasr.

Egypt, a close U.S. ally, has kept silent over its role in the case. Nasr was freed in 2004 but was re-arrested after only three weeks after he spoke to a journalist by phone. Egypt never officially acknowledged he was in custody, but Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif acknowledged in 2005 that "people have been sent" to Egypt, without saying how many.

Prosecutors elsewhere in Europe are moving ahead with cases aimed at the CIA program.

The Swiss government has approved prosecutors' plans to investigate the flight that allegedly took Nasr over Swiss airspace from Italy to Germany. In Germany, a Munich prosecutor recently issued arrest warrants for 13 people in another alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping, that of a German citizen who says he was seized in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonia border and flown to Afghanistan.

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc

[accuracy]

27th February 2007

David Hicks' military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, has described as "strange and foreign" comments that Australia has no legal obligation to help the Guantanamo Bay inmate.

The US Marine Corp lawyer is in Melbourne to deliver a speech to more than 300 delegates at a human rights conference which marked 30 years of equal opportunity laws in Victoria.

Government lawyer, Solicitor-General David Bennett QC, told the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday that a general obligation for the federal government to protect citizens abroad "is simply something that the law has never recognised".

Major Mori said he was surprised by the comment.

"As an American, that seemed strange and foreign to me," Major Mori told reporters in Melbourne.

"It's frustrating for me to see an Australian being abandoned and being pushed towards a cliff for this system that is not acceptable for Americans."

A team of lawyers has launched legal action against the federal government, federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Foreign minister Alexander Downer in a bid to force the government to take steps to bring Adelaide-born Hicks home.

The 31-year-old Muslim convert has been detained without trial at the US naval base since January 2002, the month after he was captured with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Major Mori said he had not met with Prime Minister John Howard nor the attorney-general during this visit to Australia.

He said he was still trying to get an independent psychological examination carried out on Hicks.

"This March will be one year in solitary confinement where he sits in a concrete room with a steel door for 22 hours a day," he said.

"No window to the outside. That's his life.

"You can see him ageing."

Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne Phillip Freier, who was also at the conference, said he was concerned that the United States had "cherry picked" certain parts of the Geneva Convention in regards to prisoners of war and their treatment of Hicks.

"My concern is what is being offered is not a fair system," Dr Freier said.

"Any sportsperson, such as an AFL footballer appearing before a tribunal, will be guaranteed much better procedural fairness than David Hicks or the other people who might appear before these proposed military commissions.

"It seems to me an unacceptable situation for Australians to tolerate."

AAP

[accuracy]

By STEFAN NICOLA
UPI Germany Correspondent

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20070226-051151-5432r

BERLIN, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he tried in 2002 to get a German-Turkish Guantanamo inmate released but the U.S. government blocked any of his advances.

Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national who was born and raised in Bremen, ended up spending four and a half years in the U.S. military prison in Cuba, and was released in the summer of 2006, after Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened with U.S. President George W. Bush.

Fischer first learned about Kurnaz's case when in January 2002 after the man's mother wrote Fischer a letter about her son, whom she feared was captured "by the Americans."

Fischer, who left politics after Merkel took over in late 2005, said although Kurnaz was a Turkish national, his interior ministry felt it should act on the man's behalf because he had spent his entire life in Germany and because the majority of the family lived in Bremen.

"This was not an everyday case. We did what we could," Fischer said Monday before a German parliamentary inquiry tasked with probing whether the German government did enough to get the man released. "But (the U.S. government) blocked heavily when it came to Guantanamo and other human rights cases," Fischer said, referring to talks with his U.S. counterpart Colin Powell.

Fischer said that in those talks he heavily criticized the dubious legal status of Guantanamo, also because "in my opinion it was clear that Guantanamo would come back to hurt the United States," as it undermined Washington's moral superiority over the terrorists.

Fischer said he believed Powell shared that view but was doomed to be silent.

"My U.S. colleague was not really able to lead a discussion," Fischer said. When it came to judging Guantanamo "there was no real difference between Colin Powell and me, those differences were higher up."

At the time, officials in the German foreign ministry were told that if information about Kurnaz was to be forwarded to another government, it would be Ankara, as Kurnaz was a Turkish national. Fischer's office, however, turned out to be the only advocate for Kurnaz in Berlin.

Germany's intelligence circles in Sept. 2002 were granted access to Kurnaz in Guantanamo. A group of three German intelligence agents flew to Cuba to interrogate Kurnaz. After two days of talks, the three Germans and their U.S. counterparts in the Central Intelligence Agency were convinced that Kurnaz had "no extremist ties."

A U.S. agent even said Kurnaz could hope to be part of a wave of inmates to be released soon. When the former German government, at the time led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, heard that Kurnaz may be released, a top-level meeting in the chancellor's office on Oct. 30, 2002, debated his fate.

The agents' findings were not mentioned in the meeting, former Deputy Interior Minister Claus Henning Schapper said before the inquiry.

Rather, the top officials in the German intelligence and criminal prosecution scene were still convinced that Kurnaz posed a security risk. The prosecution office in Bremen, the northern German city where Kurnaz was born and raised, had started investigating him in late 2002, shortly after Kurnaz had left Germany for Pakistan.

Without informing his mother Rabiye, who was worried that her son could do "something wrong," during his trip, Kurnaz flew to Pakistan on Oct. 3, 2002, less than a month after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and days before the U.S. went to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ahead of the trip, Kurnaz's family members -- who are predominantly secular -- observed that the 21-year-old had become increasingly religious. After a few weeks, Kurnaz was arrested by Pakistani police and turned over to the Americans, who kept him in Afghanistan and a few weeks later transferred him to Guantanamo.

Relying on testimonials from co-workers and acquaintances, the prosecutors came to the conclusion that Kurnaz was radicalized by a Bremen Imam and traveled to Pakistan with the plan to fight the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

With that information in mind (and lacking knowledge about the findings of the three agents), the top-level meeting in the chancellor's office decided that Kurnaz should not return to Germany; the interior ministry was even tasked with finding legal ways to prevent a return.

While the opposition believes the German refusal to take back Kurnaz prolonged the man's stay in Guantanamo, Hans-Georg Maassen, an immigration expert in the interior ministry, said the common belief in the German government was that Kurnaz -- granted Washington was willing to release him -- would be extradited to Turkey.

"There was never the possibility Bremen or Guantanamo, but always Bremen or Turkey," said Maassen, who was also the man who found out that because Kurnaz had spent six months outside Germany, his residence permit had become legally invalid.

Completely clueless of those developments, Fischer's foreign ministry continued to plead Kurnaz's case through diplomatic channels, while the remaining offices saw Berlin had done what was necessary.

The foreign minister nevertheless defended the former government and the security officials, arguing that they had the tough job to secure the country right after the 9/11 attacks. After all, doubts remained whether Kurnaz really was innocent, he added.

Allegations by the opposition that the former government had acted "heartless" in the Kurnaz case and had prolonged his stay in Guantanamo were "factually wrong and politically rotten," he said.

Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc.

[accuracy]

Detainees look to Supreme Court for quick ruling, exit from 'legal black hole'

Feb. 28, 2007

By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4588573.html


WASHINGTON — Foreigners imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay want the Supreme Court to rule quickly on their legal rights, before the justices go off on their summer break.

Lawyers for two men detained nearly five years who face military trials as early as this summer asked the court Tuesday to hear their cases on a rare fast track. Their request was even more unusual because a federal appeals court has yet to rule on whether one of them, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, can be tried by a military tribunal or whether he even has the right to mount their challenge in U.S. courts.

"As the war on terror enters its sixth year, this court's guidance is needed on whether the judiciary can be summarily removed from its traditional role in safeguarding liberty and preserving the balance of power," said the appeal, also filed Tuesday, on behalf of Hamdan and Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

Hamdan is a Yemeni accused of supporting al-Qaida operatives. The Supreme Court last year voided Bush administration plans to try Hamdan before a military commission, but a new law restored those plans and stripped detainees of their right to seek their freedom through the courts.

Lower courts have so far upheld the new law, the Military Commissions Act. In so doing, those courts have created "a legal black hole at Guantanamo," the appeal said.

Other detainees plan to file their appeal with the court by Monday, also asking for expedited review of the Military Commissions Act, which limits their ability to challenge their confinement.

Last week, a panel of federal appeals judges ruled, 2-1, that the nearly 400 detainees remaining at Guantanamo are prohibited from using the U.S. court system.

The court should consider the cases together and quickly, said a team of lawyers led by Neal Katyal, who argued Hamdan's case before the Supreme Court. Doing so would allow the justices to rule, in one decision, on the legality of the jurisdiction-stripping provisions of the military commissions law both for detainees facing military trials and those who have not been charged but are being held indefinitely as "enemy combatants," the lawyers argued.

The lawyers said the uncertainty makes it difficult to prepare for their clients' trials, which could include the use of hearsay testimony and other evidence that normally is not allowed in civilian trials.

"Ordinary criminal trials apply fixed rules in advance. Here, everything about the trials, including the most basic question of all — does the Constitution apply to them — are in doubt," they wrote.

The last time the court acted so promptly was in a 1997 case on the line-item veto in which the justices held a special argument session and rendered a decision by late June.

_________________________________________________

[accuracy]

Abu Ghraib officer seeks new hearing


The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Feb 27, 2007

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/02/apAbuGhraib070227/

The only U.S. military officer charged in the abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners has requested a new hearing to determine whether he should be court-martialed, the Army said Tuesday.

Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan contends the presiding officer at his Article 32 investigation in October improperly considered written witness statements that were not in evidence before recommending a court-martial. An Article 32 investigation is the military equivalent of a preliminary hearing or grand jury proceeding.

Jordan, who directed an interrogation center at the Iraqi prison in autumn 2003, also asked the court to exclude statements he made to investigators, claiming he was not property warned of his rights.

In those interviews, Jordan denied having seen prisoners abused. The statements are the basis for charges that Jordan lied to investigators about abuses he allegedly witnessed.

A hearing on the motions will be held March 12 at Fort McNair in Washington. Jordan’s trial is scheduled for July.

Lawyers for both sides declined to comment on the motions.

Jordan, a 50-year-old reservist from northern Virginia, is accused of failing to exert his authority as prisoners were stripped naked, photographed in humiliating poses and intimidated by military dogs.

Jordan’s lawyers have said that most of the abuses were committed by rogue military police who weren’t under his command.

Jordan is on involuntary extended active duty at the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Va. He could be sentenced to 22 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Eleven enlisted soldiers have been convicted of crimes at Abu Ghraib, and a number of officers who weren’t charged have been reprimanded.

__________________________________________________ __________

[accuracy]

By Mark John
Wed Feb 2-8
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070228/pl_nm/usa_italy_cia_dc;_ylt=ArMPRjcBeVpcP2siXgbKfHuyFz4D

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States will reject any request by Italy to extradite CIA agents for the first criminal trial over controversial U.S. "renditions" of terror suspects, a U.S. government lawyer said on Wednesday.

A Milan judge earlier this month ordered 26 Americans, most of them thought to be CIA agents, to stand trial with Italian spies for kidnapping a Muslim cleric and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

"We've not got an extradition request from Italy ... If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite U.S. officials to Italy," State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger told a news briefing.

Bellinger, in Brussels for meetings with European legal advisers, did not comment on details of the case but said the United States would never hand over a suspect to another country without assurances about their treatment.

He acknowledged widespread concern in Europe about the tactics of the Bush administration in what it calls the "war on terror" but said the risk of legal action against U.S. officials in Europe was harming intelligence cooperation.

"The continuing threat of criminal charges not only harms cooperation on our end but does also cast a pall over cooperation on the European side as well," he said.

"We get assurances from countries that individuals will be properly treated and if we can't get these assurances then we will not turn people over to those countries," he added.

Bellinger's remarks were no surprise and meant the indictees would probably stand trial in absentia on June 8.

THORN IN THE SIDE

Among those indicted for the 2003 abduction are Jeff Castelli, former CIA chief in Rome, former CIA Milan station chief Robert Lady and a former head of Italy's SISMI military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari.

Prosecutors say a CIA-led team, with SISMI's help, grabbed terrorism suspect Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, off a Milan street in February 2003, bundled him into a van and drove him to a military base in northern Italy.

Prosecutors allege the CIA flew him from there via Germany to Egypt, where he says he was tortured with electric shocks, beatings, rape threats and genital abuse.

Persistent criticism by European rights groups and lawmakers of U.S. anti-terror tactics and the alleged acquiescence of European governments has long troubled officials on both sides of the Atlantic.

A court in Munich issued arrest warrants last month for 13 suspected CIA agents accused of kidnapping a German of Lebanese descent and flying him to a jail in Afghanistan, where he too says he was tortured.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a senior aide to former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, has also faced a barrage of criticism over charges that he blocked the release of a German-born Turkish man held in Guantanamo Bay prison.

A European Parliament report published this month said that renditions were illegal and had taken place with the collusion of a number of European governments and their secret services.

Bellinger rejected the report as an "unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair" interpretation of acceptable and important intelligence cooperation.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited.

[accuracy]

Friday March 2, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6451033,00.html


SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - The U.S. military announced Thursday that it has sent home two Afghans and three Tajikistani detainees at Guantanamo Bay, leaving fewer that 400 prisoners at the naval base.

The five men, who were held at the isolated detention center in southeastern Cuba without being charged, were flown out early Wednesday and transferred to the custody of the governments in their native countries, Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand said.

They were cleared for departure by a military review process that assesses whether prisoners have intelligence value or pose a threat to the United States. The military does not provide details about individual cases including the names of those released.

Since the Guantanamo prison opened in January 2002, some 390 detainees held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban have been released, according to the Pentagon.

Roughly 385 prisoners remain, including about 85 who have been deemed eligible for transfer or release through a series of review processes, according to a Pentagon statement.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

[accuracy]

March 03, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21317773-1702,00.html

TERROR suspect David Hicks may succumb to the temptation of a plea bargain after years of incarceration at Guantanamo Bay without trial, his father said today.

Terry Hicks was responding today to reports that US military prosecutors have held preliminary talks on a plea bargain with his son's legal team.

"It doesn't matter what I say, it comes down to David," Mr Hicks said.

"He's the one that's got to make up his mind whether he thinks 'take the easy option' or see what happens.

US authorities, he said, "may have gone on a weakening exercise on him to get him into a position where he may have had enough and plead guilty to anything to get out."

The 31-year-old Adelaide-born Muslim convert, who has been in US custody since he was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, was charged yesterday with providing material support for terrorism and referred to stand trial by a special military commission at the detention camp in Cuba.

But a second charge of attempted murder was dismissed after Judge Susan Crawford concluded there was no "probable cause" to justify it.

Federal Government sources are reported by The Sydney Morning Herald as indicating a guilty plea on the sole remaining charge could secure freedom for the accused terror suspect by taking into account time already served.

But Mr Hicks questioned whether such a result would constitute justice for his son.

"That's not 'free' though is it? When you enter into a plea bargain you're not coming out a free person, all you're coming out is a guilty person that's negotiated a way out," he said.

Mr Hicks said he had not yet spoken to his son's legal team including US military lawyer Major Michael Mori about the possibility of a plea bargain.

"All I know is Major Mori's made a comment 'why plead guilty if you believe you're not?'."

Hicks's supporters contend that the new charge laid against him was only created last year and is being applied retrospectively.

The Australian Government has always refused to bring Hicks home because it says there was no law under which he could have been charged at the time the alleged crimes occurred and it would have to retrospectively create a criminal offence under which to try him.

Yesterday Mr Hicks took Prime Minister John Howard to task over the apparent contradiction during an exchange on regional radio.

Mr Hicks renewed his criticism today, saying Mr Howard's explanation yesterday - that the charge Hicks faces has been on the books since 1994 - was wrong.

"The law he quoted wasn't the one that David's been charged with.

"The one he's charged with now is October 2006. The one John Howard was talking about goes back to 1994 and it's got nothing to do with the one that he's been charged with. He was just trying to give a bit of spin.

"It's been retrospectively done and not only that they've built the law around what they think David's done and then charged him on it.''

[accuracy]

Growing Calls in Australia for Terror Suspect’s Return


By RAYMOND BONNER
Published: March 3, 2007

SYDNEY, Australia, Saturday, March 3 — The decision by the United States military to charge an Australian citizen, David Hicks, with one terrorism-related offense comes as Prime Minister John Howard is under mounting pressure, even from conservatives in his own party, to have Mr. Hicks charged, tried and brought home.

Mr. Hicks is the first detainee from the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be charged under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But the single charge, of providing “material support for terrorism,” after Mr. Hicks has been held for five years in Guantánamo, has been met with skepticism, disbelief and some anger here, from conservatives and liberals alike.

The charge, which was announced by the Pentagon in Washington on Thursday, represents a substantial reduction in the case the Bush administration has claimed it has against Mr. Hicks, a high-school dropout who was captured in Afghanistan after the American invasion in 2001.

Only two weeks ago, the American ambassador to Australia, Robert D. McCallum Jr., described the Guantánamo detainees as “ruthless fanatics who would kill Australians and Americans without blinking an eye.”

Mr. Hicks was initially charged with conspiracy to commit murder and engage in acts of terrorism, attempted murder and aiding the enemy. That was later reduced to attempted murder and “providing material support for terrorism.”

Now all those charges, except material support, have been dropped, and there is a question if even that will stick. Mr. Hicks’s lawyers argue that material support was not made a crime until 2006, five years after Mr. Hicks trained with Al Qaeda.

The relatively minor, single charge after such a long detention “means they’ve botched it,” said Barnaby Joyce, a federal senator for Australia’s conservative National Party, which is part of the governing coalition. “They’ve completely abused the process of justice.”

Mr. Joyce is one of an increasing number of conservative politicians and others who have joined the Bring David Hicks Home movement, which has gained considerable momentum here in the last few months.

In fact, the case has generated such political outrage that members of Mr. Howard’s own center-right Liberal Party acknowledge that it is hurting the prime minister in his bid for re-election this year.

For nearly five years, Mr. Howard, one of President Bush’s most stalwart supporters, was generally content to allow Mr. Hicks to remain in Guantánamo. But in recent weeks, he has been forced to take account of the strong shift in public opinion around the case, which has become a major irritant in American-Australian relations.

Last month, Mr. Howard raised the Hicks case directly with President Bush in a telephone call, and again with Vice President Dick Cheney when he was here last week.

Whether the charge finally leveled against Mr. Hicks was “the result of my representations to President Bush and Vice President Cheney, I don’t know,” Mr. Howard told Australian journalists on Friday, as reported by the BBC.

It is an issue that Mr. Hicks’s lawyers are expected to explore, for if there was any influence of this kind on the bringing of the charge, it could result in the case being dismissed.

Mr. Hicks’s lawyers are in any case certain to challenge the charge on the grounds that there was no such crime when Mr. Hicks was training with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001. The United States Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws, but in light of recent laws passed by Congress and various court rulings, it is not certain that Mr. Hicks will be afforded that protection.

The next probable step is that the United States government will try to get Mr. Hicks to plead guilty to this single charge, in exchange for a sentence of time served. That would have him back in Australia soon. Australian officials said this would be acceptable.

The groundswell of support for Mr. Hicks here does not arise because Australians believe that he is innocent, but rather because many here believe he has been denied justice by having been held so long without a regular trial.

“He may well be a rat bag, but even rat bags deserve their day in court,” is how Senator Joyce put it.

“It is about due process of law, the principles we are fighting for in Iraq,” he added in an interview. “In fighting the barbarians, we are starting to imitate the barbarians.”

According to American and Australian officials, Mr. Hicks trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but officials have said he did not fire any shots during the war.

Described by one Australian police official as a “lost soul,” Mr. Hicks was a kangaroo skinner in the Australian outback, went to Japan to train horses, and joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, which had the support of NATO in the war against Slobodan Milosevic.

Back in Australia, he tried unsuccessfully to enlist in the army. He joined an evangelical church, but eventually converted to Islam and went to Pakistan. There, he first joined up with Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was not declared a terrorist organization by the United States or Australia until the last week of 2001.

He was picked up by Afghan irregulars and turned over to the American troops for a ransom of several thousand dollars, according to his father, Terry Hicks, a printer by trade.

Mr. Hicks, an online organization, GetUp!, and his son’s military lawyer, Maj. Michael Mori, have campaigned with increasing success to bring the case to light.

Often guided by liberal organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which has represented several Guantánamo detainees, Mr. Hicks kept his son’s case alive with stunts, such as standing in a make-shift cage in the center of New York.

GetUp!, which is patterned after MoveOn.org, a liberal online organization in the United States, a few months ago hung a huge sign — “Bring David Hicks Home” — on the side of an office building at the entrance to the famed Sydney Harbor Bridge, which is passed every day by thousands of motorists commuting to work.

To the surprise of the organization, within 72 hours, it collected 150,000 Australian dollars, about $118,000, for the cause. Altogether, it has raised at least $196,500, said Brett Simpson, the organization’s executive director.

Major Mori has made seven trips here, always in his tightly pressed Marine Corps uniform. Initially, Australians were skeptical that a military man would put up a vigorous defense. Since then, he has become something of a folk hero here, drawing large crowds around the country.

Some American Embassy officials sought unsuccessfully to have the Pentagon bar Major Mori from coming to Australia, said an American official who was granted anonymity in order to reveal information that has not been made public.

The combined public relations strategy has recently gained traction. For nearly five years, the opposition center-left Labor Party stayed far away from the Hicks case, as did the Australian news media. In the first nine months of 2006, there were 63 mentions of David Hicks in The Australian, according to the paper’s researchers; in the last five months, there have been 255.

The list of public leaders calling for David Hicks to be given an expeditious and fair trial has grown steadily longer and includes those from the Labor Party.

In January the director of military prosecutions in the Australian Army, Brig. Gen. Lyn McDade, called Mr. Hicks’s detention “abominable.”

“I don’t care what he’s done or alleged to have done,” General McDade, a former prosecutor, told The Sydney Morning Herald. “I think he’s entitled to a trial, and a fair one.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/world/asia/03hicks.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=29b3f68260808d70&ex=1330578000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

[accuracy]

Kuwait court acquits two former Guantanamo detainees

(Reuters)

4 March 2007



KUWAIT - A Kuwaiti court has cleared two Kuwaitis of charges of belonging to Al Qaeda and ordered the former detainees of the Guantanamo Bay prison freed, a judicial source said on Sunday.


Omar Rajab Amin and Abdullah Kamel Al Kandari, released from the US prison in September after what Kuwait said was mediation by the Gulf Arab country’s emir, have been held since their return.

They were charged with joining Al Qaeda and engaging in activities harmful to relations with a friendly country.

A total of 12 Kuwaitis were among some 500 men held at the US naval facility in Cuba since the U.S.-led war that ousted Afghanistan’s Taleban rulers following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

Kuwait’s supreme court last year acquitted six Kuwaitis formerly detained at Guantanamo of charges of belonging to Al Qaeda, after they were freed and returned home.

Kuwait, a staunch US ally, is a main transit route for American forces going to Iraq and was the launch pad for the 2003 war on Iraq.

[accuracy]

Father hurting Hicks' case: prosecutor

6th March 2007
http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=361735

The father of Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks may become a key prosecution witness in the Australian terror suspect's trial.

Chief prosecutor at the US Office of Military Commissions, Colonel Morris Davis, said he has evidence of Terry Hicks referring to his son as a "terrorist".

Terry Hicks is a vocal supporter of his son and has been a key figure in the campaign to have him released from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and returned to Australia.

Colonel Davis, however, said Terry Hicks referred to his son as a "terrorist" in an interview soon after it became public Hicks had been picked up in Afghanistan in December 2001 and placed in US custody.

"The very first interviews I can find when someone referred to him as a terrorist was Terry Hicks," Colonel Davis told AAP.

"The first time he was interviewed, Terry Hicks described the phone call with David in September (2001) after 9/11 and David was in Pakistan and said he was going to go back to Afghanistan.

"Terry Hicks said he tried to talk him out of it and told him he shouldn't be taking up arms against his own.

"I think his quote was 'He's 26-years-old, he's his own man, and I can't tell him what to do. In our eyes he's a terrorist because he took up arms against his own'.

"I would tend to agree with Terry Hicks."

Asked if Terry Hicks could be called as a prosecution witness or his comments used to bolster the prosecution case, Colonel Davis said: "Possibly".

"I'm not the lead prosecutor in the case so I don't want to commit him to a particular strategy or not, but certainly Terry Hicks has changed his tune considerably since that time," Colonel Davis said.

"But, on day one, he's the first one I can find anywhere that refers to David Hicks being a terrorist."

Hicks, 31, was charged last week with providing material support for terrorism and is expected to appear before the military commission at Guantanamo for a preliminary hearing in late March.

It is alleged Hicks trained with al-Qaeda and fought with the terrorist group when US and Coalition forces invaded Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Washington DC and New York.

Hicks faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if found guilty.

Colonel Davis said the prosecution was still open to a plea deal and if Hicks did plead guilty he could be back in Australia "walking free" this year.

Colonel Davis said he could be open to a plea deal of 10 to 20 years imprisonment.

If the sentence was the 10 years, and Hicks was sent back to Australia to serve it, Colonel Davis said it was his understanding Hicks's five years jail at Guantanamo could be taken into account.

Colonel Davis said the matter had been discussed with Hicks's US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori.

"In my understanding in talking to Major Mori that there is a strong possibility or likelihood or expectation the Australian government would credit whatever time he spent in Guantanamo once he gets back to Australia they would apply the credit," Colonel Davis said.

"Depending on the length of the sentence, there's a strong possibility he would be parole ready once he got back to Australia.

"I'm certainly no expert on the Australian parole system, but the way it was presented to me, if it was reasonably accurate, it's possible, and I can't say it's probable or likely, but it's possible he could be back home and walking free by the end of the year."

AAP

[accuracy]

http://www.bartcop.com/close_gitmo-chain.jpg

[accuracy]

Experts Want New Definition of Torture

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer

Monday, March 5, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/05/national/a130059S83.DTL&type=politics


Prisoners who endure poor or degrading treatment suffer much of the same long-term psychological distress as do captives who are tortured, suggests a study published Monday.


The study was based on interviews with victims of ill treatment and torture while imprisoned in the former Yugoslavia, and experts said the findings underscored the need for a broader definition of torture.


"What is the basis for the distinction between torture and other cruel and degrading treatment? Science should inform this debate," the study's lead author, Metin Basoglu of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College in London, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. The study was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.


Steve H. Miles of the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics, who was not involved in the study, said the findings "show that the severity of long-lasting adverse mental effects is unrelated to whether the torture or degrading treatment is physical or psychological."


"The wrongness of these inflicted harms is compounded by the fact that most abused prisoners, including those in the present war on terror, are innocent or ignorant of terrorist activities," Miles said.


The Bush administration has said the U.S. uses legal interrogation techniques — not torture — to gain information that could head off terror attacks. It insists that the U.S. complies with the U.N. Convention Against Torture.


Yet Washington's definition of torture, as interpreted by the U.S. Justice Department after reports of American abuses at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan surfaced, is fairly narrow.


It excludes mental pain and suffering created by acts that do not cause severe physical pain, such as blindfolding, hooding, forced nudity, isolation and deprivation of sleep or light, the researchers said, citing a Dec. 30, 2004, Justice Department memo. The document also contends that for an act to be considered torture, there must be proof that it inflicts "prolonged mental harm."


"The implications of such a narrow definition of torture have raised serious concerns in the human rights community," said the study. "These findings suggest that physical pain per se is not the most important determinant of traumatic stress in survivors of torture."


The study involved interviews with 279 victims who suffered ill treatment and torture while imprisoned in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.


The researchers said they found that aggressive interrogation techniques, humiliating treatment, verbal abuse, threats against a captive's family and being forced to watch an acquaintance being tortured produced much of the same long-term mental trauma as physical torture.


"Sham executions, witnessing torture of close ones, threats of rape, fondling of genitals and isolation were associated with at least as much if not more distress than some of the physical torture stressors," they wrote.


Such experiences were just as likely as physical torture to lead to depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, the study said.


"Ill treatment during captivity ... does not seem to be substantially different from physical torture in terms of the severity of mental suffering they cause," it concluded. "These procedures do amount to torture, thereby lending support to their prohibition by international law."


Shukrije Gashi, a pro-independence activist in Kosovo, was jailed by Yugoslav authorities in 1983 and spent nearly two years as a political prisoner. Strictly speaking, she wasn't tortured, but 2 1/2 decades later it still feels that way, she says.


Gashi was confined to a cramped, unventilated cell and fed small rations of often-rotten food. Allowed to shower just once a month, she endured frequent beatings and verbal abuse.


Today, she still trembles whenever she sees the police. Her ordeal, she says, is "a spiritual burden that stays with you forever."


Gashi copes by writing poetry and running a center for conflict management.


But 24 years later, she still can't erase the indelible memories of what she endured.


"The treatment in prison was horrific," she said. "I remain psychologically burdened. Memories of the violence follow me like a shadow."


___


Associated Press Writer Garentina Kraja in Kosovo contributed to this report.

[accuracy]

US has no case for redefining torture: study

Published: Monday March 5, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_has_no_case_for_redefining_tortu_03052007.html

Psychological torture, including some of the techniques reportedly used on Guantanamo Bay detainees, appears to inflict the same kind of long-term mental damage as physical abuse, a study released Monday said.

Researchers who evaluated the mental health of soldiers and civilians tortured during the 1990s Balkan wars found that victims of psychological abuse were just as likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression as victims of classic physical torture methods.

The researchers also reported that the torture victims rated some techniques such as stress positions, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding as distressing as most physical torture methods.

"Ill treatment during captivity, such as psychological manipulations, humiliating treatment, and forced stress positions, does not seem to be substantially different from physical torture in terms of the severity of mental suffering they cause," the study's authors wrote.

"Thus, these procedures do amount to torture, thereby lending support to their prohibition by international law," they wrote in the journal of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The investigators said their findings undermine moves by the US government to narrow its definition of torture in order to free interrogators to use certain psychological methods aimed at breaking a prisoner's resistance.

In 2003, lawyers for the US Justice Department and a Pentagon working group report on detainee interrogations made the case for a narrow definition of torture that excludes procedures such as blindfolding and hooding, forced nudity, isolation and other psychological manipulations.

The Justice Department memorandum argued that the scope of the term torture should be limited to those acts which could be shown to result in "prolonged mental harm," according to the study.

The development followed allegations of human rights abuses at US detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

However, the authors of this paper said that based on their analysis of the experiences of torture victims from the modern Balkans conflict, the US appears to be drawing a distinction without a difference.

They said their analysis of 279 Bosnian, Croatian and Serb torture survivors showed that the individuals who suffered psychological abuse had the same rates of depression, PTSD, and social and work-related problems as others who had endured beatings, burnings, sexual abuse and other forms of physical punishment at the hands of their captors.

They suggested that the trauma is the same, because regardless of the form of aggression, the effect is to create fear or anxiety in the detainee while at the same time removing any form of control from the person in order to create a state of total helplessness.

"The distinction between torture and degrading treatment is not only useless, but also dangerous," said Steven Miles, professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in an accompanying editorial in the journal of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The study was written by Metin Basoglu, head of trauma studies at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, with help from colleagues at the department of psychiatry at the Clinical Hospital Zvezdara in Belgrade.



-------------------------------------------------------

[accuracy]

by Jackie Northam
March 6, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7725260

The way the Pentagon and White House have responded to failures at Walter Reed — with profuse apologies and by firing a general and a highly placed civilian — is different from how the administration acted after the last major military scandal.

Three years ago, photographs that showed American service personnel sexually humiliating and abusing prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison made headlines around the world. The photos damaged the image of the U.S. military and exposed new policies on rough interrogation techniques to public scrutiny.

Despite the enormity of the scandal, the Bush administration was slow to react, and did not hold senior officers accountable, says John Hutson, dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center and a former Navy judge advocate general.

"Secretary Rumsfeld said at the very beginning that it was a few bad apples. And so that is what we stuck with, a few bad apples," Hutson said. "And sure enough, we prosecuted at court martial a few bad apples, they were low-ranking enlisted personnel. We did not go up the chain of command."

That's in stark contrast to how the Bush administration is handling the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Less than two weeks after The Washington Post detailed the deplorable conditions and inadequate treatment for outpatients at the center, the new defense secretary, Robert Gates, fired Maj. Gen. George Weightman, the commander of the medical center, and forced Francis Harvey to resign from his post as secretary of the army. Gates made it clear that, unlike Abu Ghraib, the blame was not going to fall on just low-ranking personnel in this scandal.

"I don't have very much patience with people who don't step up to the plate in terms of addressing problems that are under their responsibility," Gates said.

The defense secretary's handling of the Walter Reed scandal gives him an opportunity to demonstrate how he will run the Pentagon. Analysts say his approach — and his attitude — is completely different than those of his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, who was criticized for being dismissive. This was evident in Rumsfeld's answer to a U.S. soldier heading to Iraq in 2004 who asked when the Pentagon was going to provide more armor for vehicles.

"As you know, you go to war with the army you have, and not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld did offer to resign over Abu Ghraib. But President Bush rejected the offer. Several investigations were launched, but no independent inquiries. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, former head of the Army War College, says circumstances have changed since then.

"Rumsfeld was dealing in a political climate different than the climate today," Scales said. "Recall now, the 2006 election changed everything."

With Democrats in control of Congress, Hutson says there will likely be more probing hearings about the situation at Walter Reed.

" And that reality may have prompted quick, decisive action because the hearings are going to have a completely different tenor now than they would have had if he had just said, 'Well, it's isolated, it's not a problem,' the kinds of things we heard before," Hutson said.

The reports of shoddy treatment at Walter Reed — long considered a premier medical facility — come as the Bush administration is trying shore up waning support for the war in Iraq. Scott Silliman, a law professor at Duke University and a former Air Force lawyer, says the Walter Reed scandal also has political consequences.

"Walter Reed is clearly a policy issue with political ramifications coming up in this country with the election in '08, and the administration is looking at it in that light," Silliman said. "And making sure that it is seen as taking an extremely aggressive approach towards remedying the situation."

Silliman says the impact of the Abu Ghraib scandal was much greater overseas than in the United States. He says, with Walter Reed, the reverse is true.

"In Abu Ghraib it was those that we claimed to be insurgents or al-Qaida members," he said. "Here we're talking about our own soldiers who are defending us over there. So it impacts the American people quite differently."

Another round of testimony about the conditions at Walter Reed takes place Tuesday.

[accuracy]

Hicks' dad not aware of being called as witness

March 07, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21340117-421,00.html

THE father of Australian terror suspect David Hicks says he's been given no indication that he could be called as a prosecution witness at his son's trial.

Chief prosecutor at the US Office of Military Commissions, Colonel Morris Davis, said he had evidence that Terry Hicks referred to his son as a terrorist when he was first taken into custody by US forces in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Col Davis said that reference was included in an interview Mr Hicks gave at the time and it was possible the Adelaide man could be called as a witness as a result.

The Adelaide Advertiser reported today that the interview with Mr Hicks ran on December 13, 2001.

In it Mr Hicks was quoted as saying: “I think of a terrorist as someone with a bomb strapped to him, but he's a terrorist in our eyes as he's fighting against his own kind”.

But Mr Hicks today said he had gone back over material from that time and he could not recall describing his son as a terrorist.

He said he had not been advised he could be called as a witness and believed the comments from the prosecutor were another attempt to discredit the defence in the lead-up to the military commission hearings.

“I don't give any credence to this,” Mr Hicks told ABC Radio.

“I think it would be pretty hard to give evidence on information that came out in a paper in that era of demonising of David.”

David Hicks, 31, has been charged with providing material support for terrorism and is expected to appear before the US military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for a preliminary hearing in late March.

A more serious charge of attempted murder was dropped last week.

[accuracy]

Australian Guantanamo Detainee's Father Denies Calling Son Terrorist

March 6, 2007
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7006664626

Richard Bowden - All Headline News Staff Writer

Adelaide, Australia (AHN) - The father of Guantanamo Bay detainee and accused terrorist David Hicks has reacted sharply to accusations from the U.S. chief prosecutor that he referred to his son as a terrorist in an interview.
Speaking to reporters, Terry Hicks said, "I think what is happening here is we're going through a discrediting exercise that's coming through the US."

"They've done it with Major [Michael] Mori [Hicks's defense lawyer] the last few days on a few comments that he's made. "Now all of a sudden that's failed - let's try and jump on Terry Hicks's neck."

Some media reports have said the U.S. chief prosecutor's office has indicated it may call Hicks's father as a witness for the prosecution. The Adelaide-born Hicks has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since his capture by Northern Alliance forces in 2002. He was charged with giving material support to terrorists this month.

[accuracy]

Pentagon closes Guantánamo Bay hearings to media

Wednesday, March 7, 2007
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003604964_gitmo07.html

By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Reporters will be barred from hearings that begin Friday in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for the 14 suspected terrorists who were transferred last year from secret CIA prisons, officials said Tuesday.

Interest in the 14 is high because of their alleged links to al-Qaida. Among them is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. He was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/03/06/2003604515.jpg
Alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

A New York-based human-rights group that represents one of the 14 men accused the Pentagon of designing "sham tribunals." The organization contended that its client, Majid Khan, has been denied access to his lawyers since October 2006 "solely to prevent his torture and abuse from becoming public" and to protect complicit foreign governments.

U.S. authorities say Khan was being groomed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for an attack inside the United States.

"We might expect this in Libya or China, but not America," the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement. It said Khan was subjected to CIA interrogation methods that amounted to torture.

Pentagon officials have said any allegations of mistreatment are investigated.

In announcing the hearings, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not say which of the 14 would go first or how long the process would take. No word of the hearings will be made public until the government releases a transcript of the proceedings, edited to remove material deemed damaging to national security, he said.

Whitman said the Pentagon is planning to withhold the name of the detainee from the edited hearing transcript, although that will be reconsidered.

The hearings — known as combatant status-review tribunals — are meant to determine whether a prisoner is an "enemy combatant." If the prisoner is deemed an enemy combatant, then President Bush can designate him as eligible for a military trial. The first of these are expected to begin this summer.

News coverage of previous combatant status-review tribunals — there were more than 550 between July 2004 and March 2005 — was not prohibited. But there were restrictions on some information.

Whitman said the hearings for the 14 suspects will be closed to the media to protect national-security interests that could be compromised by the detainees' statements.

In additional to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 14 include:

• Ramzi Binalshibh: Believed by U.S. authorities to have helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks. He was captured in September 2002 in Pakistan.

• Abu Zubaydah: A Palestinian raised in Saudi Arabia, he was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida terrorist cells before he was captured in Pakistan in 2002.

• Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri: He is the suspected mastermind of the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors in Aden harbor in Yemen.

• Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani: A Tanzanian who allegedly helped coordinate the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The Pentagon opened the Guantánamo Bay prison in January 2002; so far no captives have gone on trial.

In another development: The Senate voted Tuesday to give 45,000 airport screeners the same union rights as other public-safety officers, despite vigorous opposition by Republicans and a veto threat from the White House.

A broad anti-terrorism bill that would put in place unfinished recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission also would give airport screeners the right to bargain collectively. An amendment by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., that would have removed that right was defeated by a vote of 51-46.

The Senate expects to complete work on the bill by the end of the week. The House last month passed a similar anti-terrorism bill that had the same union provision for airport screeners.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

[accuracy]

Russian court hears torture complaints by former Guantanamo inmate

The Associated PressPublished: March 6, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/06/europe/EU-GEN-Russia-Rights-Abuses.php

NAZRAN, Russia: A Russian prosecutor's official told a court Tuesday that a man released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay then re-arrested in southern Russia was beaten while in police custody — but the abuse was lawful, relatives and a lawyer said.

The comments by Alexander Yevseev, of the Kabardino-Balkariya prosecutor's office, came amid an official investigation into complaints by Rasul Kudayev that he was abused after being arrested in a October 2005 attack by hundreds of young men on police and government facilities in the regional capital, Nalchik.

Kudayev, 29, returned to the North Caucasus region in 2004 after being released from the U.S. military prison without charge. His relatives said he was frequently harassed by police before his arrest following the Nalchik attack.

Relatives complained that he was severely beaten to extract confessions following his arrest, and his lawyer has said that at one point he was unable to walk without assistance, according to U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

In January, prosecutors opened an investigation into the torture allegations.

Yevseev admitted that there had been violence committed toward Kudayev, but maintained that it was lawful, said Irina Komisarova, a defense lawyer who formerly represented Kudayev and was called to testify Nalchik City Court.

His current lawyer, Magomed Aburbakarov, told the court that Russian was a signatory to international laws treaties banning torture.

Kudayev, who has denied participating in the Nalchik attacks, did not attend the proceedings, which were to closed to journalists. The court gave no explanation for the decision.

Kudayev was one of seven men from Russia and other former Soviet republics detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan on suspicion of fighting for the Taliban regime. They were released from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004, and some were briefly jailed upon returning to Russia before investigators said they found no evidence of Taliban involvement.

Other former Guantanamo prisoners have faced harassment or abuse by Russian law enforcement agencies, which critics say are persecuting innocent Muslims in a counterproductive effort to check Islamic extremism.

Like other provinces near war-battered Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkariya is a poor, Muslim region that has been wracked by instability, violence and the growing threat of Islamic extremism, which rights groups say is aggravated by abuses and corruption by the authorities.

[accuracy]

Hicks can take Government to court

March 08, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21346745-1702,00.html

THE federal Government has failed to stop the Federal Court hearing a case by lawyers for David Hicks who are trying to bring the Guantanamo Bay inmate home to Australia.

Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin today dismissed a strike-out application from the Government in response to action brought by Hicks' legal team.

Lawyers for 31-year-old Hicks have taken action against the federal Government, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, seeking declarations and an order that could lead to the release of Hicks from the US military prison.

The government lawyers argued the action should be dismissed because Hicks' claim had no reasonable prospect for success.

But Justice Tamberlin today ruled Hicks would get his hearing, ordering the strike-out application be dismissed and the hearing expedited.

"Due to the long history of this matter and because of the great importance of the issues, the matter will be expedited so that it is heard at the earliest possible time," he told the court.

The submissions made by Hicks' lawyers raise "important constitutional questions as to the relationship of the judiciary and the executive, the interaction between the protection of individual liberty and the national interest, and involve questions of foreign affairs," Justice Tamberlin said.

Speaking outside court, Hicks' solicitor John North said the hearing could go ahead in the coming weeks.

"This is a major step forward for David Hicks. We now have a court that will look at his conditions and the fact that he has been put in Guantanamo Bay," he said.

Today's decision comes after Prime Minister John Howard this morning announced Hicks would make his first appearance at a court at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on March 20.

Hicks was charged last week with providing material support for terrorism and faces a maximum sentence of life in a US prison if found guilty.

He has been in US custody since he was captured in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Hicks is alleged to have trained and fought with the al-Qaeda terrorist group in Afghanistan.

[accuracy]

Hicks's father plans Guantanamo visit

March 08, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21347292-1702,00.html

THE father of Australian terror suspect David Hicks will travel to Guantanamo Bay next month in the hope of seeing his son before his first court appearance at the US military prison in Cuba.

Prime Minister John Howard today announced Adelaide-born Mr Hicks would be arraigned in a US military commission on March 20 on a charge of providing material support for terrorism.

Terry Hicks said he was apprehensive but determined to see his son before the hearing, after more than two years apart.

Terry Hicks last saw his son in August 2004 during a brief visit to Guantanamo Bay where he has been detained for more than five years.

"It has been a long time between drinks," he said. "I am a little apprehensive.

"I don't know what state David will be in or how he is feeling - hopefully they will give us some time to talk."

Terry Hicks said he had not finalised his travel plans, although another family member would make the 30-hour journey with him.

Mr Hicks, a 31-year-old Muslim convert, has been held without trial since his capture among Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001.

Today, US civilian lawyer Joshua Dratel said Mr Hicks would plead not guilty to the sole charge of providing material support during the arraignment - a move Terry Hicks said he expected.

US prosecutors last week dropped a charge of attempted murder.

Terry Hicks said he doubted his son would plead out the offence in the hope of - what he described as a "dangling carrot" - returning home a free man.

"It is up to David if he believes he is not guilty ... but I have a gut feeling he will not take a plea bargain," he said.

The Australian Federal Court today dismissed a strike-out application made by the Government in response to an action by Mr Hicks' legal team.

Mr Hicks' lawyers allege the federal Government has failed in its duty of care by not applying for the detainee's release.

Terry Hicks said that decision was "a bit of positive" but he remained cautious about the outcome of the case.

"We will just have to now wait for the next step to see what happens there," he said.

[accuracy]

Jury selection begins for Padilla trial

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer
Mon Apr 16
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070416/ap_on_re_us/padilla_terror_charges;_ylt=AkNR3x7mrjFkyIUcstcpv4 lvzwcF

MIAMI - Potential jurors were questioned about their knowledge of Jose Padilla's link to a purported "dirty bomb" plot as jury selection began Monday for the suspected al-Qaida operative's trial.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070416/capt.e9068ebc8dae45d39a629e7aaa32b627.padilla_terr or_charges_ny110.jpg
In this Jan. 5, 2006, file photo, Jose Padilla, center, is escorted by federal marshalls on his arrival in Miami. It's been nearly five years since then-Attorney General John Ashcroft declared the United States had thwarted an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive 'dirty bomb' in a major city and had arrested a 'known terrorist,' Jose Padilla. However, as jury selection begins Monday, April 16, 2007 the case against Padilla has no mention of the 'dirty bomb' allegations or purported plots inside the United States. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

The allegations that Padilla, a U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant for 3 1/2 years, sought to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the United States are not part of the criminal case. But the Bush administration initially accused Padilla of such a plot shortly after he was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

"If I said to you the phrase 'dirty bomber,' what does that mean?" U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke asked one prospective juror.

"Jose Padilla," the man answered.

Others in the jury pool of more than 300 people had definite opinions about a supposed connection between Islam and terrorism around the world.

"I think the religion espouses intolerance of other religions and looks to a situation where they are either going to kill non-Muslims or subjugate them," one potential male juror said.

But another juror said the opposite: "I don't think because somebody's Muslim, it makes them violent."

The exchanges illustrated the challenges of seating a jury to hear the charges against Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun, 45, and 44-year-old Kifah Wael Jayyousi. They face life in prison if convicted on charges of participating in a North American cell that supported Islamic extremist causes around the world.

Padilla, a 36-year-old former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert, allegedly was recruited to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. Critical pieces of evidence include thousands of intercepted phone conversations and an application Padilla purportedly completed in 2000 to become a "mujahedeen" trainee at the Afghan camp.

Padilla was hastily added to an existing case in Miami in November 2005, a few days before a Supreme Court deadline for Bush administration briefs on the question of the president's powers to continue holding him in military prison without charge.

Federal officials claim Padilla admitted involvement and training with al-Qaida during his brig interrogations, as well as the proposed "dirty bomb" plot and another plan to blow up apartment buildings. However, none of that can be used as evidence because Padilla had no lawyer present and was not read his Miranda rights.

In the courtroom Monday, Padilla smiled and waved at relatives.

Jury selection is expected to take about two weeks, and the trial is expected to last about four months.

Cooke ruled that prosecutors can refer to the Sept. 11 terror attacks in a limited way but cannot suggest that Padilla and the others were involved.

Prosecutor John Shipley said there was never any intent to link Padilla and the other defendants to the conspiracy or the attacks that killed about 3,000 people. But he said there will be testimony connecting the defendants to the terror group led by Osama bin Laden.

"They certainly supported al-Qaida, there's no question about that," Shipley said. "We're not going to try them for their specific involvement in 9/11."

Courtroom security was especially tight, including an extra metal detector set up outside the room and a temporary wall erected in the lobby to shield potential jurors and witnesses from the public.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[accuracy]

Patti Smith lashes out at Guantanamo Bay

http://www.ndtvmusic.com/story.asp?id=6280

Rocker Patti Smith said on Friday that her concern for the hundreds of men imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay compelled her to record a song about a former detainee.

"I feel responsible as an American citizen. It's a terrible injustice and I think it will be a stain upon us when history examines this period," said Smith.

Smith's Without Chains focuses on Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen who said he was kept under fluorescent lights for 24 hours at a time and complained of being beaten at the US military detention center in southeast Cuba.

Detainees are held there on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban, many without the opportunity to face trial.

"I'm not really politically articulate, so I try to respond to the things that move me in a humanistic way. I can't imagine people languishing in prison for years while other people are trying to decide what to do," said the 60-year-old.

At the Pentagon, Navy Cmdr Jeffrey Gordon said Guantanamo is reserved for the most egregious terror suspects and insisted that the US military does not hold any detainee for longer than necessary.

Smith sings

In the track, which Smith said will be posted soon on her Web site for downloading, she sings: "For four long years I wasn't a man, dreaming chained with the lights on in another world, a netherworld. Four long years with nothing to say. Thoughts impure at Guantanamo Bay."

Kurnaz, 25, was released in August from the detention center without being charged and flown to Germany.

In October, German prosecutors said they found no evidence linking Kurnaz to Islamic radicals in Pakistan or Afghanistan and formally dropped their investigation.

US officials have maintained Kurnaz was a member of al-Qaida, based on classified evidence.

Kurnaz's New Jersey-based lawyer, Baher Azmy, said that he was shown the classified evidence and found it unpersuasive. He also said it contained a half-dozen statements exonerating Kurnaz.

Smith, who straddled the hippie and punk eras with her 1975 album Horses, is best known for her hit Because the Night, co-written with Bruce Springsteen.

[accuracy]

Egypt – Systematic Abuses in the Name of Security

A pdf file.

http://www.cageprisoners.com/download.php?download=559

[accuracy]

Guantanamo Al-Jazeera hunger strike enters 100th day

Tuesday, 17 April 2007
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/170407/al_jazeera_hunger_strike

The International Federation of Journalists has called on the US government to release Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Haj, who this morning started his 100th day of hunger strike after almost five-years of detention at the Guantanamo Bay.

According to the IFJ Al-Haj was first arrested crossing into Afghanistan with a legitimate visa on 15 December 2001. He was held by the US military at the Bagram base before being transferred to Guantanamo on 13 June, 2002. The IFJ says that since then he has been interrogated over 150 occasions, tortured, and accused of terrorism offences. . IFJ chairman Aidan White said: "Journalists around the world are calling for Sami's release, now his detention is not just a matter of injustice but a matter of life and death." Al-Haj is the only confirmed journalist now imprisoned at Guantanamo, according to the IFJ.

The US has alleged that he worked as a financial courier for Chechen rebels.

Al-Haj's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, has said there is no credible evidence against his client and that the focus of US questioning has not been alleged terrorist activities but obtaining intelligence on Al-Jazeera and its staff.

Copyright © 2007 Wilmington Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

[accuracy]

Australia and US to swap refugees

18 April 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6566619.stm

Australia and the United States have announced a plan to swap up to 200 asylum seekers every year.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39636000/jpg/_39636489_nauru203ap.jpg
Australia has a camp for asylum seekers in Nauru

Migrants held by the US in Guantanamo Bay will be resettled in Australia, while Canberra will send people held in its offshore detention camps to the US.

The move is aimed at deterring would-be refugees by preventing them from reaching their destination of choice.

But critics say the plan could backfire on Canberra, as many refugees around the world are hoping to get to America.

Atlantic exchange

The first asylum seekers to be exchanged are likely to be 83 Sri Lankans and eight Burmese who are being held in Australia's off-shore detention centre on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru.

If they qualify as genuine refugees, they could soon be resettled somewhere in the US.

In return, the Americans will be allowed to send Cuban and Haitian detainees held at Guantanamo Bay (the naval base housing asylum seekers, rather than the prison) to Australia.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41528000/jpg/_41528984_howaf.jpg
Mr Howard insisted the plan would deter illegal migrants

Both Canberra and Washington insist the move will deter illegal migrants.

The hope is that potential refugees might think again about trying to get to the US if there was a chance they could end up in a faraway place like Australia, and vice versa.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard insisted the plan would also deter people smugglers.

"The thing that discourages people from people smuggling is the fact that we make it very plain that people will not be allowed to reach the Australian mainland," Mr Howard told local media.

But critics believe that the plan could backfire on the Australians, by encouraging asylum seekers from Asia and the Middle East who want to build a new life in the US.

An immigration spokesman for the Australian opposition Labor Party, Tony Burke, said the new policy would therefore mean even more boat people arriving on the shores of Australia.

"If you are in one of the refugee camps around the world, there is no more attractive destination than to think you can get a ticket to the USA," Mr Burke said.

"What John Howard is doing is saying to the people around the world: if you want to get to the US, the way to it is to hop on a boat and go to [Australia's] Christmas Island."

Australia has often been criticised by human rights groups for the uncompromising stance it takes on asylum seekers.

Under a policy introduced in 2001, would-be migrants are now intercepted at sea, and are routinely sent to off-shore processing camps in the South Pacific where their refugee applications are assessed.

The tactic is designed to ensure they never set foot on the Australian mainland.

Even if they are deemed genuine refugees, efforts are made to find a third country willing to accept them, although in practice this often fails and they are eventually accepted into Australia.

[accuracy]

To much of the Muslim world, American culture is the culprit

Bruce Ramsey / Times editorial columnist
April 18, 2007
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003670258_ramsey18.html

Recall the lurid photos of Private Lynndie England, United States Army. At Abu Ghraib, she was pulling an Iraqi man on a leash.

Liberals said it was "torture." It violated the Geneva Conventions.

Conservatives, hard-wired to "support our troops," said it was no big deal. Rush Limbaugh compared it to a fraternity hazing. Heh, heh.

"Most Muslims did not view it as a torture story at all," writes Dinesh D'Souza in his book, "The Enemy at Home." To the Muslims, Abu Ghraib was a story of sexual perversion. D'Souza quotes a Muslim businessman in Turkey: "What the female American soldier in uniform did to the Arab man, strip him of his manhood and pull him on a leash, this is what America wants to do to the Muslim world."

Before we say: Nonsense! — we might consider D'Souza's argument. His book makes other claims I set aside, but on the 9/11 question — Why do they hate us? — he argues plausibly that their objection is our spreading of an immoral culture.

We like American culture. We may criticize it, but it is ours and we resent it when others pick at it. When we see that much of the world is drawn to our ways, we think it's good. There is a thought, often not expressed, of an American world — which, as you might expect, may be unwelcome. And because America by global standards has a liberal culture, the strongest resistance is from the world's conservatives. Particularly the Muslims.

I worked with Muslim colleagues for several years on a magazine in Asia. We sometimes wrote about Islamic religion and politics, and had to be careful not to insult Islam. It was not that difficult — not nearly as difficult as keeping on the good side of some of the governments over there. It was not difficult to get along with Muslim colleagues, either. They were all decent people, serious about their religious duties and respectful of the religious duties of Christians.

And they were conservative people. As D'Souza says, they were drawn to American culture in some ways, but wary of Western ideas of easy sex and of a definition of human rights that would undermine the traditional family.

D'Souza goes on to argue that America's political conservatives, who also tend to religious conservatism, should be respectful of ordinary Muslims. And yet in 2004, when American soldiers made pornography of Muslims at Abu Ghraib, American conservatives gave Muslims no support.

In 2005, when a newspaper in Denmark printed cartoons blasphemous to Muslims, American conservatives did it again. They defended the Danes. They supported not only their right to print the cartoons, which was OK, but their decision to print them. Some Seattle-area conservatives posted the cartoons on the Internet. Others wore little Danish flags.

A few years ago, when an artist painted the Virgin Mary and splattered her image with elephant dung, did America's conservatives defend the New York gallery's decision to display it? No. They denounced it as a gratuitous attack on Christians, which it was. Would they defend an attack on Judaism? Never. An attack on Islam? Heh, heh. Freedom of speech!

That says clearly: Our religion counts; yours doesn't.

Right after 9/11, Christians and Jews in Seattle stood in support of the Muslims. It was a fine moment, and it was the liberal denominations that led it. Political conservatives tend toward a bombings-and-beheadings view of Islam. Listen to their radio shows and you can hear it. Their tribalism overwhelms their sympathy. They fail to see that ordinary Muslims are a lot like them. The Muslims are not liberals, and their feeling for God, family and country is about the same. They are outraged when excrement is smeared on their symbols, just as conservatives are.

None of which seems to make any difference.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

[accuracy]

German Minister speaks out against Guantanamo

19/04/2007
Ireland on-line.
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=216739176&p=zy673988z

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, facing criticism that he delayed the release of a German-born Guantanamo Bay prisoner, spoke out against US practices at the base last night during a rare visit to the Caribbean.

In a news conference with Dominican Foreign Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso, Steinmeier declined to comment specifically on Murat Kurnaz’s five-year confinement but criticised Washington for allowing extended detentions at the base on nearby Cuba.

http://newsfeed.tcm.ie/images/people/guantanamobay16.jpg

“Without a process that conforms with a state of rights and international law, we are not in agreement with keeping prisoners at that base for so long,” Steinmeiner said through a Spanish translator.

Steinmeier faces allegations by German media and a European Parliament report that he and other officials spurned a US offer to free the German-born Turk in 2002.

Kurnaz, 24, was detained in Pakistan in 2001 and held at Guantanamo, where he says he was beaten, housed under fluorescent lights for entire days and kept in solitary confinement.

The ex-detainee was released last year and returned to Germany when a US federal judge found that evidence did not justify his detention and Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened.

Steinmeier has denied knowing of an “official offer” to free Kurnaz and recently defended the actions of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government, of which he was chief of staff.

Dozens of European and Latin American diplomats were expected in Santo Domingo this week for a Rio Group conference on Latin American development and rebuilding in Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

[accuracy]

Ethiopia: Ethiopia running Guantanamo Bay-like prison –Somali leaders

April 19, 2007 By David Odoki
http://somalinet.com/news/world/East%20Africa/9659

(SomaliNet) Somali leaders have accused Ethiopia of opening a prison like the one that exists in Guantanamo Bay.

Somali deputy prime minister, who is also the minister for public works and housing, Hussein Mohamed Aidid, the former Speaker of parliament, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, and the executive chairman of Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) Sheikh, Sharif Sheikh Ahmad, accused Ethiopia of of opening a prison similar to the Guantanamo Bay Prison.

At a press conference held Wednesday in Asmara by the Somali leaders, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad read a declaration of 11 provisions to the media. He spoke about the general situation in Somalia, the intervention of Ethiopian forces in Somalia and other problems in the capital.

The declaration underlined that first and foremost the Ethiopian forces should withdraw if national reconciliation is to be achieved as well as peace and stability to be ascertained in Somalia.

Sheikh Sharif said the Ugandan government is supporting the Ethiopian government in operations of disturbing the Somali people.

He said “the so-called peacekeeping force is a ‘Trojan horse’” for the Ethiopian government, underscoring that its silence and failure to take any measures in the face of the war crimes perpetrated against the Somali people by the regime proves such a conspiracy.

(AFP)

© 1998 - 2006 SomaliNet. All Rights Reserved

[accuracy]

Guantanamo to lose two senior lawyers

Apr 22, 2007
http://www.newsobserver.com/114/story/566660.html

WASHINGTON - The general who has been the most public Pentagon face of President Bush's controversial war court at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is retiring, and an activist chief defense counsel is leaving his post soon, too.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway retires at the end of the month as legal adviser in the Office of Military Commissions, which is in charge of the first U.S. war-crimes tribunals since World War II. On the defense, Marine Corps Col. Dwight Sullivan, a reservist and former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, returns to civilian life in August.

Hemingway's transition comes just weeks after Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified at Congress that, given the "taint" of impropriety at Guantanamo Bay, the war court would lack credibility in some parts of the globe.

A 30-year veteran of the U.S. military justice system, Hemingway was recalled to active duty in 2003 to the second-most senior role supervising the war court. At the Pentagon, he often gave public briefings about the war-court process while other Defense Department officials shielded their identities.

The commissions have so far been closed once by the U.S. Supreme Court, been revised by Congress and yielded one conviction -- last month's plea bargain by al-Qaeda foot soldier David Hicks, 31.

No replacement has been named for Hemingway, who retires May 1, said a Pentagon spokesman for Guantanamo, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, on Friday. Nor has a replacement been named for Sullivan.


All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published, broadcast or redistributed in any manner.

[accuracy]

Former Guantanamo chaplain shares his story

Muslim was wrongly accused of espionage

Virginia De Leon ;Staff writer
April 24, 2007
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=186170

He was accused of spying and aiding the enemy.

So James Yee – a West Point graduate, military chaplain at Guantanamo Bay and rising star in the U.S. Army – found himself under arrest in September 2003. For 76 days, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement. He was threatened with the death penalty.

Less than a year later, the military dropped the charges.

And Yee, who retired in 2005 with an honorable discharge, is still waiting for an apology.

"This is my struggle for justice," Yee said during a phone interview from Olympia, where he lives with his wife and 7-year-old daughter.

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Yee, author of "For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire," has been traveling the country to share his experience as a chaplain at Guantanamo and how he became the target of suspicion because of his Muslim faith.

He tells audiences about the stories of mistreatment he heard from Guantanamo detainees. He speaks of his own mental and emotional anguish while imprisoned in a Naval brig. He sheds light on the prejudice that continues to hurt religious and ethnic minorities and the erosion of civil liberties in post-Sept. 11 America.

"This happened to me," he said. "It could happen to anyone."

No official public apology has been given to the former chaplain, who claims his constitutional rights were violated by the very country he served.

The Pentagon's inspector general is still investigating how and why Yee was falsely accused and the subsequent treatment he endured. The investigation was supposed to be finished last October, he said, but it has constantly been put on hold. "I suspect it's because the military does not want to disclose how badly they handled my case," Yee said. "The public has been outraged over what happened to me."

Born in New Jersey to second-generation Chinese American parents, Yee and his four siblings were raised in a Lutheran household and attended church every Sunday. It wasn't until after he graduated from West Point in 1990 that he became interested in Islam.

He learned about the religion from a friend and was immediately drawn to its simplicity. "When I became Muslim, I converted solely based on believing in that simple belief of one God," he told Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly in October 2005.

While serving in the military during the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Yee went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and was moved by the diversity of Muslims who shared the universal experience of hajj.

He ended up leaving active duty to pursue the study of Islam even further. He went to a school in Syria, where he met his wife, Huda. In 2000, he returned to the Army as a Muslim chaplain.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Yee was propelled into the spotlight for his work on educating others about his faith. He was promoted to become the Muslim chaplain for the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where he advised camp commanders on the religious practices of the detainees, some of whom were suspected Al-Qaida terrorists and members of the Taliban.

Yee also objected to abuses inflicted upon the prisoners.

He soon found himself the target of anti-Muslim sentiment, he said. After being officially recognized twice for outstanding performance, Yee was arrested and charged with several offenses, including espionage and "aiding the enemy."

Terms such as "enemy" and "the war on terror," a phrase often used by the president and other Americans, can be misleading, Yee said during a recent phone interview. By using these terms, people allow injustices – such as the ones committed against him – to continue.

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"Most of the Muslim world perceives this war to be a war on Islam," he said. "It's not only among Muslims, but anti-American sentiment is growing all over the world. … After 9/11, we had the sympathy of the entire world, but we quickly squandered that by implementing these irrational policies."

His experience of being wrongly accused and thrown in prison traumatized his entire family, including his wife, who was led to the brink of suicide, he said.

While his faith in God bolstered him during that time, his faith in military leaders quickly eroded. He remains proud of the fact that he's a West Point graduate and that others in his family have served in the U.S. armed forces, but he no longer trusts those in power.

"I am disturbed that there are people in the military who harbor negative feelings toward religious and ethnic minorities," he said.

Since his book was published in 2005, Yee has earned a master's degree in international studies and has delivered lectures to students, human rights organizations, interfaith communities and others throughout the country. He helped raise money and campaigned for Minnesota's Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress.

"I'm still devoted to American values," he said. "I haven't lost faith in diversity, tolerance and justice – the values embodied in the U.S. Constitution and the core beliefs of Islam."

He hopes to spend the rest of his life promoting those ideals, he said.

[accuracy]

German-Born Ex-Guantanamo Inmate Publishes Memoir

http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,2245759_1,00.jpg
Kurnaz spent almost five years in captivity

Former Guantanamo inmate and German-born Turkish citizen Murat Kurnaz has published a harrowing account of the time he spent in the notorious US prison.

Beatings, amputations and torture were parts of the excruciating daily routine with which Murat Kurnaz claims to have lived for almost 5 years. The 24-year old German-born Turk was a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay and the subject of a legal battle with the German government of the time, who, according to Kurnaz, failed to secure his release when they had the chance.

His memoir, entitled "Five Years of My Life," which hit German bookstands on Tuesday, paints a disturbing picture of Kurnaz' ordeal.



"I understood a long time ago what this prison was about," Kurnaz said. "They could do with us whatever they wanted."



Kurnaz was arrested in Pakistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Kurnaz insists he didn't travel to Pakistan to fight alongside al Qaeda, but rather to work for an Islamic "Salvation Army" to help the homeless, among others. Kurnaz claims he was "sold" to US soldiers by unscrupulous bounty hunters. He was then taken to Afghanistan, where he faced torturous interrogations.

http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,2455918_1,00.jpg
Kurnaz claims he was even mistreated by German soldiers in Afghanistan

No help from Germany

According to his own account, Kurnaz was left for days to hang by his hands that were tied behind his back and that were attached to electrodes. He hoped in vain that the German authorities would help him out.

"One of the German soldiers came, pulled my head up and asked if I knew who they were," Kurnaz said. "He said they were the elite force, the KSK, and slammed my head on the floor. Later another one came up and kicked me and the group of soldiers started laughing."

http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,2307443_1,00.jpg
The US was prepared to release Kurnaz from Guantanamo in 2002

Kurnaz was subsequently transported to Guantanamo. In the book, he accuses the US soldiers there of gross maltreatment. He describes how doctors would make unnecessary amputations and how guards would hand out regular beatings. Kurnaz himself spent over a year in solitary confinement, suffering from extreme cold, heat, darkness and oxygen deprivation.


"I never imagined I would come out of it alive," Kurnaz said. "I presumed I could die at any minute. I was often unconscious due to the pain and the cold. My body couldn't take any more."

Personal intervention

It wasn't until August 2006 that the newly elected Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened personally to secure Kurnaz' release from Guantanamo. The US was reportedly prepared to release him as early as 2002, but the Germans were allegedly reluctant to allow him to return to Germany at the time -- a fact that sparked uproar and prompted a parliamentary inquiry.



The question whether Kurnaz did represent a terror threat and whether the government of the time should have done more to free him is the subject of an ongoing investigation. According to former Interior Minister Otto Schily, however, the Social Democratic-Green party government coalition headed by Gerhard Schröder responded adequately to the situation.

http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,604004_1,00.jpg
Otto Schily said the German government did what it had to do to protect its citizens

"We have a responsibility for the safety of our citizens," Schily said. "And that includes keeping people out of our country who represent a danger to our security. And that was the case with Murat Kurnaz."



Now back in his home city of Bremen, Kurnaz says he just wants to get on with his life. He says the book is not intended to settle any scores, but rather to tell the world how his co-prisoners lost their legs, hands and lives in Guantanamo Bay.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2455819,00.html

© 2007 Deutsche Welle

[accuracy]

Murder charge for Guantanamo Canadian

April 25, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21618211-5005961,00.html

THE US military formally charged a young Canadian prisoner with murder and other crimes today, clearing the way for his trial before the war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay naval base.

Omar Khadr, 20, was charged with murder, attempted murder, conspiring with al-Qaeda to attack civilians, providing material support for terrorism and spying.

He was captured during a gunfight at an alleged al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan when he was just 15 and sent to Guantanamo shortly after his 16th birthday. He would face a life sentence if convicted.

The charges accuse Khadr of throwing a hand grenade that killed US Army Sgt 1st Class Christopher Speer during the battle in 2002. He is also accused of conducting surveillance of US military convoys in Afghanistan and planting explosives along their routes.

Prosecutors drafted the charges in February and Susan Crawford, the military judge overseeing the war crimes tribunals at the Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, formally approved them today.

Khadr had faced similar charges in the first Guantanamo tribunal system created by President George W Bush to try suspected terrorists after the September 11 attacks. The US Supreme Court struck down that version of the war crimes court last year, and Khadr is the second prisoner to be charged under the new version created by Congress.

The first, Australian David Hicks, pleaded guilty last month to providing material support for terrorism and will serve a nine month sentence in Australia.

The Australian Government had publicly pressured the United States to formally charge and try Hicks, who had become a political symbol in Australia.

But Canadian government officials have said very little publicly about Khadr.

Today, a spokesman for Canada's ministry of foreign affairs said "Foreign affairs officials have carried out several welfare visits with Mr Khadr and will continue to do so. Mr. Khadr faces serious charges".

The rules require that Khadr be arraigned within 30 days and that his trial begin within 120 days. His lawyers were not immediately available for comment but have said that trying him for crimes allegedly committed as a juvenile violates international law.

Khadr's family was close to Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian-born father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was an alleged al-Qaeda financier killed in a battle with Pakistani soldiers in 2003.

His family had lived in Pakistan but returned to Canada after the elder Khadr's death.

The United States has asked Canada to extradite one of Omar's older brothers, Abdullah Khadr, for trial in the civilian court system on 2005 charges of selling rockets and other weapons to al-Qaeda and conspiring to kill Americans in Afghanistan.

[accuracy]

Court Asked to Limit Lawyers at Guantánamo

WILLIAM GLABERSON
April 26. 2007
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070426/ZNYT02/704260905

The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to impose tighter restrictions on the hundreds of lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the request has become a central issue in a new legal battle over the administration’s detention policies.

Saying that visits by civilian lawyers and attorney-client mail have caused “intractable problems and threats to security at Guantánamo,” a Justice Department filing proposes new limits on the lawyers’ contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases that would replace more expansive rules that have governed them since they began visiting Guantánamo detainees in large numbers in 2004.

The filing says the lawyers have caused unrest among the detainees and have improperly served as a conduit to the news media, assertions that have drawn angry responses from some of the lawyers.

The dispute is the latest and perhaps the most significant clash over the role of lawyers for the detainees. “There is no right on the part of counsel to access to detained aliens on a secure military base in a foreign country,” the Justice Department filing argued.

Under the proposal, filed this month in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the government would limit lawyers to three visits with an existing client at Guantánamo; there is now no limit. It would permit only a single visit with a detainee to have him authorize a lawyer to handle his case. And it would permit a team of intelligence officers and military lawyers not involved in a detainee’s case to read mail sent to him by his lawyer.

The proposal would also reverse existing rules to permit government officials, on their own, to deny the lawyers access to secret evidence used by military panels to determine that their clients were enemy combatants.

Many of the lawyers say the restrictions would make it impossible to represent their clients, or even to convince wary detainees — in a single visit — that they were really lawyers, rather than interrogators.

Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a lawyer who has helped to coordinate strategy for the detainees, said the government was trying to disrupt relationships between the lawyers and their clients and to stop the flow of public information about Guantánamo, which he described as a “legal black hole” before the courts permitted access for the lawyers in 2004.

“These rules,” Mr. Hafetz said, “are an effort to restore Guantánamo to its prior status as a legal black hole.”

The dispute comes in a case in which detainees are challenging decisions by military panels that they were properly held as enemy combatants. The Justice Department’s proposed rules could apply to similar cases that lawyers say are likely to eventually involve as many as 300 of the roughly 385 detainees now held at Guantánamo.

Some of the detainees’ lawyers say the Justice Department proposal is only the latest indication of a long effort to blunt their effectiveness, which they say was evident in statements of a senior Pentagon official early this year. The official, Charles D. Stimson, deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, resigned after he was criticized for suggesting that corporations should consider severing business ties with law firms that represented Guantánamo detainees.

Under the current rules, legal mail is inspected for contraband but is not read. The lawyers, who have security clearances, are presumed to be entitled to review classified evidence used against their clients.

There is no limit on the number of times lawyers can visit their clients. Some say that they have been to Guantánamo 10 or more times and that they have needed the time to work with clients who are often suspicious and withdrawn.

Justice Department officials would not comment on the proposal, which is scheduled to be the subject of a court hearing on May 15.

The filing used combative language, saying lawyers had been able to “cause unrest on the base” and mentioned hunger strikes, protests and disobedience. An affidavit by a Navy lawyer at Guantánamo, Cmdr. Patrick M. McCarthy, that accompanied the filing, said lawyers had gathered information from the detainees for news organizations. Commander McCarthy also said the lawyers had provided detainees with accounts of events outside Guantánamo, like a speech at an Amnesty International conference and details of terrorist attacks.

“Such information,” his affidavit said, “threatens the security of the camp, as it could incite violence among the detainees.”

Several detainees’ lawyers involved in some of the incidents denied that they had caused security problems. Neil H. Koslowe, a lawyer at Shearman & Sterling in Washington, called the assertion a “McCarthy-era charge” that was not supported by the evidence.

The dispute over the lawyers’ role is one of the first issues the appeals court in Washington will have to decide as it opens a new chapter of the legal battle over Guantánamo. In 2005, Congress designated that court as the forum for detainees to challenge directly decisions made by the Pentagon’s combatant status review tribunals designating them as enemy combatants.

But many detainees’ lawyers have resisted filing petitions to review those decisions because Congress narrowly defined the arguments the appeals court could consider. The law said the court could review whether a panel’s decision “was consistent with the standards and procedures” set forth by the Pentagon.

Instead, many detainees’ lawyers pursued habeas corpus petitions, using the centuries-old legal proceeding to ask a judge for release from imprisonment. But after a complex trip through the courts, Congress last year passed a provision intended to strip courts of the authority to hear habeas corpus cases involving Guantánamo detainees.

A divided panel of the federal appeals court in Washington upheld that provision in February. And early this month, the United States Supreme Court declined to review that decision. Two justices, John Paul Stevens and Anthony M. Kennedy, said that before the Supreme Court could again consider whether Congress was permitted to strip the courts of the ability to consider the habeas corpus cases, the detainees had to try to complete the appeals court review of their enemy combatant decisions.

As a result, much of the focus in the legal battle is now shifting to the appeals court. Scores of petitions seeking review of the combatant-status rulings are expected to be filed in the coming weeks, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy group that has been coordinating the detainees’ lawyers. The May 15 arguments will focus on rules that could apply to all of those cases.

Lawyers say they are pressing ahead with the more limited review process in the appeals court as part of an effort to set the stage for a return to the Supreme Court. Some lawyers said that while they may lose, that would allow them to argue to the Supreme Court that the reviews were so limited that the detainees needed the more sweeping consideration permitted in habeas corpus cases.

But government lawyers, too, are developing new strategies in the wake of the Supreme Court action this month. They say that Congress and the courts have determined that expansive habeas corpus petitions are not available to the detainees.

As a result, they say, rules like those that allowed unlimited visits with detainees are no longer necessary as the detainees pursue the more limited appeals court review.

But, while arguing that detainees have no right to lawyers, the Justice Department filing said the government was giving the Guantánamo detainees enough access to lawyers so that “the court’s review will be assisted by having informed counsel.”

Herald-Tribune newspaper

[accuracy]

Detainee dies at U.S. Army prison in Iraq

April 27, 2007, The Associated Press
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/27/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Detainee-Killed.php

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi detainee at a U.S. Army prison has died from injuries apparently sustained during an assault by other prisoners, the military said Friday.

The detainee — whose name and age were not provided — was pronounced dead at Camp Bucca at 9:54 a.m. Thursday by an attending physician, a brief statement said.

An investigation is pending to determine whether the apparent assault was the cause of death, it said. Afterward, the detainee's family will receive the remains.

In Iraq, the U.S. Army oversees thousands of prisoners at Camp Cropper near Baghdad airport, Camp Bucca in the southern desert, and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north.

Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved

[accuracy]

Detainee calender

http://www.bartcop.com/detainee-calendar.jpg

[accuracy]

A look at Guantanamo Bay terror suspects

Fri Apr 27,2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070427/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_capture_thumbnails

Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. detention center for terror suspects, now houses 15 so-called high-value detainees with the addition of Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an alleged al-Qaida operative. The prisoners were all held by the CIA in secret prisons abroad. The other 14 were sent to Guantanamo Bay last September and have since undergone military hearings there to affirm their status as enemy combatants eligible for military trials.

A look at the high-value detainees:

_Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, one of al-Qaida's most senior and experienced operatives, was transferred from CIA to Defense Department custody in April 2007. He was captured in an undisclosed location in late 2006 as he was trying to return to his native Iraq, where he once served in the military, the Pentagon said. Authorities described al-Iraqi as an associate of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and as someone who may have been targeting Westerners outside of Iraq. Al-Iraqi is believed responsible for plotting cross-border attacks from Pakistan on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and leading an effort to assassinate Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and U.N. officials, the Pentagon said.

_Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, was captured near Islamabad, Pakistan, in March 2003 by Pakistani authorities and CIA officers. He was born in Pakistan's Baluchistan province and raised in Kuwait.

_Ramzi Binalshibh, who is believed to have helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks and allegedly was a lead operative for a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport. He was captured in September 2002 at a house in Karachi, Pakistan, after a shootout.

_Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian raised in Saudi Arabia, was believed to be a link between bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells before he was captured in Pakistan in 2002. At the time of his capture, he was believed to be organizing an attack on Israel.

_Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar Al-Baluchi, is accused of serving as a key lieutenant to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan and delivering funds to the Sept. 11 hijackers. He was born in Baluchistan and raised in Kuwait.

_Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, allegedly helped coordinate the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania before running a document forgery office for al-Qaida in Afghanistan. He was arrested after a gunbattle in Gujrat in eastern Pakistan in July 2004.

_Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesia native also known as Hambali, is believed to be the main link between al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional terror group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. He was arrested in Thailand in 2003.

_Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, a Saudi, reportedly arranged financing and travel for the Sept. 11 plot participants from his post in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Al-Hawsawi served as a witness in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, saying he had seen Moussaoui at an al-Qaida guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in the first half of 2001, but was never introduced to him nor conducted operations with him.

_Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, a Malaysian also known as Lillie, allegedly helped transfer al-Qaida funds for a 2003 car bombing at a hotel in Jakarta that killed 12.

_Majid Khan, also known as Yusif, was allegedly being groomed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for an attack inside the United States. The Pakistani native attended high school in Baltimore in the late 1990s before returning to Pakistan in 2002. He was at the center of a 2005 trial that accused a young Pakistani man of trying to help the al-Qaida operative obtain fake travel documents to slip past U.S. immigration officials to carry out bombings in the United States.

_Waleed bin Attash, better known as Khallad, was an alleged al-Qaida operative accused of being bin Laden's bodyguard. Authorities say bin Laden selected him as a Sept. 11 hijacker but he was prevented from participating when he was arrested and briefly detained in Yemen in early 2001.

_Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected mastermind of the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and alleged al-Qaida operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula until he was caught in 2002. Nashiri, 41, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent, was allegedly tasked by bin Laden to attack the Cole.

_Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan, was regarded by Pakistani intelligence as a successor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the al-Qaida No. 3, and became the most wanted man in Pakistan for allegedly masterminding two bombings 11 days apart in December 2003 that targeted President Pervez Musharraf for his support of the U.S.-led war on terror. Musharraf narrowly escaped injury, but 17 other people were killed.

_Mohd Farik Bin Amin, a Malaysian better known as Zubair, allegedly helped Jemaah Islamiyah's operational planner case targets for planned attacks. He is believed to have been tapped to be a suicide operative for an al-Qaida attack on Los Angeles.

_Gouled Hassan Dourad, a native of Somalia, allegedly headed a Mogadishu-based network that supported al-Qaida members in the country.

___

Sources: U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and AP archives.

[accuracy]

82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

U.S. Cites Difficulty Deporting Detainees.

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 29, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR2007042801145_pf.html

LONDON -- More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

The delays illustrate how much harder it will be to empty the prison at Guantanamo than it was to fill it after it opened in January 2002 to detain fighters captured in Afghanistan and terrorism suspects captured overseas.

In many cases, the prisoners' countries do not want them back. Yemen, for instance, has balked at accepting some of the 106 Yemeni nationals at Guantanamo by challenging the legality of their citizenship.

Another major obstacle: U.S. laws that prevent the deportation of people to countries where they could face torture or other human rights abuses, as in the case of 17 Chinese Muslim separatists who have been cleared for release but fear they could be executed for political reasons if returned to China.

Compounding the problem are persistent refusals by the United States, its European allies and other countries to grant asylum to prisoners who are stateless or have no place to go.

"In general, most countries simply do not want to help," said John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "Countries believe this is not their problem. They think they didn't contribute to Guantanamo, and therefore they don't have to be part of the solution."

A case in point is Ahmed Belbacha, 37, an Algerian who worked as a hotel waiter in Britain but has been locked up at Guantanamo for five years. The Pentagon has alleged that Belbacha met al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden twice and received weapons training in Afghanistan. His attorneys dispute the charges and say he was rounded up with other innocents in Pakistan in early 2002.

On Feb. 22, without explanation, the Pentagon notified Belbacha's lawyers in London that he had been approved to leave Guantanamo. Despite entreaties from the State Department, however, the British government has refused to accept Belbacha and five other immigrants who had lived in the country, because they lack British citizenship.

This month, Clint Williamson, the State Department's ambassador for war crimes, visited Algiers to discuss possible arrangements for the return of two dozen Algerians who remain at Guantanamo, including Belbacha, but no breakthroughs were reported. That country has been slow to accept its citizens.

Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer who represents Belbacha and several other prisoners who have been cleared, said defense attorneys have tried to speed up the process by contacting foreign governments to see if there are any specific obstacles to the return of their clients. In many cases, he said, the prisoners and officials in their home countries are willing to approve the transfer, but the delays persist.

"The holdup is a mystery to me, frankly," said Katznelson, senior counsel for Reprieve, a British legal defense fund. "If the U.S. has cleared these people and they want to go back, I don't understand why they can't just put them on a plane."

Other prisoner advocates said the Bush administration has made its task more difficult by exaggerating the threat posed by most Guantanamo inmates -- officials repeatedly called them "the worst of the worst" -- and refusing to acknowledge mistaken detentions.

Foreign governments have also questioned why U.S. officials should expect other countries to pitch in, given that Washington won't offer asylum to detainees either.

"This is a problem of our own creation, and yet we expect other countries to shoulder the entire burden of a solution," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "There needs to be a worldwide solution here. The U.S. has to bear some of that burden. It can't simply expect its partners and allies to absorb all its detainees."

The 82 cleared prisoners who remain stuck in limbo come from 16 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, according to defense attorneys who have received official notification of their clients' status.

The 17 Chinese Muslim separatists make up the largest contingent. Other countries with multiple prisoners awaiting release include Afghanistan, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Pentagon has reduced the population at Guantanamo by roughly half since the peak of 680 people in May 2003, generally by sending prisoners back to their native countries. But U.S. officials said progress has slowed because of the complexity of the remaining cases.

Of the roughly 385 still incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to eventually put 60 to 80 on trial and free the rest. But the judicial process has likewise moved at a glacial pace, largely because of constitutional legal challenges.

Only two people have been charged under a military tribunal system approved by Congress last year. One of those cases has been adjudicated. David M. Hicks, an Australian citizen, pleaded guilty in March to lending material support to terrorists. He was sentenced to nine months in prison and is scheduled to be transferred to Australia in May to serve his time there.

Defense lawyers for some of the 82 cleared prisoners whose release is pending said Hicks received a better deal than did their clients who were not charged with any offenses. "One of the cruel ironies is that in Guantanamo, you've got to plead guilty to be released," said Wizner, the ACLU attorney. "It's the only way out of there."

Complicating the return process is that virtually all the prisoners at Guantanamo come from countries that the State Department has cited for records of human rights abuses. Under U.S. rules, a pattern of abuses in a country does not automatically preclude deportation there. Rather, U.S. officials must investigate each case to determine whether an individual is likely to face persecution.

The investigations are time-consuming and often meet with resistance from the prisoners' home countries, which can be sensitive to suggestions that they allow torture, U.S. officials said. In cases where there is a risk of mistreatment, U.S. policy is to obtain a written promise from the host government that the prisoner will not be abused and that U.S. officials will be allowed to monitor the arrangement.

"It often takes us months and months, or even years, to negotiate the human rights assurances that we are comfortable with before we will transfer someone to another country," said Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser.

Human rights groups have criticized the written assurances as unreliable. In March, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch issued a report on the fate of seven Russians who were released from Guantanamo three years ago, asserting that three of the men have been tortured since their return.

The watchdog group urged the U.S. government to find third-party countries willing to take Guantanamo inmates who are judged to be at risk for political persecution. U.S. officials countered that they have tried to do that for years, with virtually no success.

Only one country has been willing to accept Guantanamo prisoners who had never previously set foot inside its borders. Last year, after prodding by the State Department, the Balkan nation of Albania agreed to take five Chinese separatists who belong to an ethnic group known as Uighurs.

The men were captured in late 2001 after they crossed the Chinese border into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their attorneys said they were mistakenly taken into custody and had not taken up arms against U.S. forces. U.S. officials said dozens of countries refused to grant asylum to the Uighurs for fear of angering China, which considers them terrorists for leading a secession movement in the western province of Turkestan.

Seventeen other Uighurs who were caught in similar circumstances have been cleared for release but remain in Guantanamo because the State Department has been unable to find a home for them. Human rights groups have pressed the U.S. government to offer the men asylum, to no avail.

A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the Bush administration had considered granting the Uighurs asylum but that the idea was nixed by the Department of Homeland Security. The Uighurs would be rejected under U.S. immigration law, the official said, because they once trained in armed camps and because their separatist front, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2002.

Attorneys for the Uighurs said their predicament has been compounded by the Pentagon's unwillingness to say they don't pose a national security risk to the U.S. government or its allies. In announcing that the Uighurs had been approved to leave Guantanamo, military officials made a point of noting that they had not been exonerated and were still classified as enemy combatants.

"It's not a distinction that makes sense at all," said Michael J. Sternhell, a New York lawyer whose firm represents four of the Uighurs. "It's a caveat that the Defense Department is offering to cover itself."

Some human rights advocates said the Bush administration could speed things up by asking the United Nations or another international body for help.

Manfred Nowak, an Austrian law professor who serves as the U.N. special monitor on torture, said European allies and other countries would continue to duck requests to accept released prisoners as long as the U.S. government approaches them separately. An international commission responsible for finding a solution, he said, might carry more weight.

"If the U.S. is willing to do something to close down Guantanamo, then it should be done in a cooperative manner with the international community," Nowak said. "It's a question of burden-sharing. Otherwise, every individual country that the U.S. approaches says, 'Why us?' "

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

[accuracy]

Inside Africa's Guantánamo

The only way the US can prop up its client regime in Somalia is through lawlessness and slaughter.

By Salim Lone

04/28/07 "The Guardian" -- -- This is the most lawless war of our generation. All wars of aggression lack legitimacy, but no conflict in recent memory has witnessed such mounting layers of illegality as the current one in Somalia. Violations of the UN charter and of international humanitarian law are regrettably commonplace in our age, and they abound in the carnage that the world is allowing to unfold in Mogadishu, but this war has in addition explicitly violated two UN security council resolutions. To complete the picture, one of these resolutions contravenes the charter itself.

The complete impunity with which Ethiopia and the transitional Somali government have been allowed to violate these resolutions explains the ruthlessness of the military assaults that have been under way for six weeks now. The details of the atrocities being committed were formally acknowledged by a western government for the first time when Germany, which holds the current EU presidency, had its ambassador to Somalia, Walter Lindner, write a tough letter - made public on Wednesday - to Somalia's president, Abdullahi Yusuf.

The letter condemned the indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery in Mogadishu's densely populated areas, the raping of women, the deliberate blocking of urgently needed food and humanitarian supplies, and the bombing of hospitals. This is a relentless drive to terrify and intimidate civilians belonging to clans from whose ranks fighters are challenging the occupation.

There was a time when security council resolutions were hallowed in most of the world, as for example resolution 242 demanding the return of occupied Palestine territory in exchange for peace. But in our new world order, the powerful decide which UN resolutions are passed, and whether they need to be honoured. So the United States, which was violating the UN arms embargo on Somalia, rushed through another resolution in December that it thought would better serve US goals - and then proceeded to violate that one as well.

The new resolution forbade neighbouring countries from being part of the regional peacekeeping force the security council authorised for Somalia; but Ethiopia went much further and unilaterally invaded, with the covert assistance of the US - which also joined the war by bombing Somalia.

This December resolution actually contravened the charter itself, because it made the security council the aggressor and turned a clearly peaceful situation into war. The resolution linked the Islamic Courts government to international terrorism and mandated peacekeeping force, on the basis of chapter VII of the UN charter, to address the "threat to international peace and security" that Somalia posed - when every independent account, including Chatham House's on Wednesday, indicated that the country was experiencing its first peace and security since 1991.

The resolution paved the way for the Ethiopian invasion that has led to the bitter conflict that many independent analysts, including those at a meeting in Addis Ababa organised by Ethiopia's Inter-Africa Group, had warned would be the inevitable result. A government imposed through force by arch enemy Ethiopia was never going to hold sway.

The long silence and the refusal even now to announce measures that might arrest this slaughter mark the lowest point in the big powers' abdication of the "Responsibility to Protect" mandate - adopted, with British leadership, at a summit-level meeting of the security council two years ago. The world's most impoverished people are now being ripped to shreds with no effort whatsoever to get the perpetrators to desist.

A huge campaign must be launched to press western governments to end this slaughter, which is almost entirely the work of those in control of the country. The European Union warned a month ago that war crimes might have been committed in an assault on the capital last month - in which the EU could be complicit because of its large-scale support for those accused of the crimes. Human Rights Watch has documented how Kenya and Ethiopia had turned this region into Africa's own version of Guantánamo Bay, replete with kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons and large numbers of "disappeared": a project that carries the Made in America label. Allowing free rein to such comprehensive lawlessness is a stain on all those who might have, at a minimum, curtailed it.

Work must begin to derail the astounding proposal from the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, which is to be discussed by the security council in mid-June. He would like to mount a UN-sanctioned "coalition of the willing" to enforce peace and restore order in Somalia - in other words, the UN would help Ethiopia and the United States achieve what their own illegal military interventions have failed to accomplish: the entrenchment of a client regime that lacks any popular support. Such an operation is unlikely to succeed in any event, but it could further threaten the turbulent Horn of Africa, which is already teetering on the brink of chaos.

The Somali government is busy crying "al-Qaida" at every turn and offering lucrative deals to oil companies, in a bid to entice greater western support. But this war was lost long ago. In turning to the arch enemy Ethiopia, the transitional government's fate was sealed: the nation will not abide an Ethiopian-US occupation.

Only a political solution will resolve this crisis. Africa must step up to the plate and show spine and leadership in a drive to protect its civilians, and work with Europe and the UN to convince the US to swiftly terminate its latest destabilising adventure.

Salim Lone, who was the spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya salimlone@yahoo.com

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17618.htm

[accuracy]

NYC Bar chides government on Guantanamo

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
Sun Apr 29,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070429/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_lawyers

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is trying to evade responsibility for problems at the Guantanamo Bay prison by falsely blaming defense lawyers for the trouble, the New York City Bar says.

The group's president leveled the criticism in asking Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to abandon a Justice Department proposal to limit lawyers' access to the nearly 400 detainees.

In a court filing this month, the department said attorney access via the mail system has "enabled detainees' counsel to cause unrest on the base by informing detainees about terrorist attacks."

The mail system was "misused" to inform detainees about military operations in Iraq, activities of terrorist leaders, efforts in the war on terror, the Hezbollah attack on Israel and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, the department said in this month's court filing.

"This is an astonishing and disingenuous assertion," the association president, Barry M. Kamins, wrote Gonzales.

Kamins said many detainees have been held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods and have lost hope of a fair hearing to demonstrate their innocence.

"Blaming counsel for the hunger strikes and other unrest is a continuation of a disreputable and unwarranted smear campaign against counsel," according to the letter Friday.

Kamins pointed to recent remarks by the former deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, Charles Stimson. Stimson resigned after saying he found it shocking that lawyers at many top firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

The 137-year-old New York City Bar, with more than 23,000 members, is one of the oldest and largest lawyers' organizations in the country.

A Justice Department spokesman, Erik Ablin, said the department is reviewing the New York City Bar's letter.

Ablin pointed to the department's court papers that say the proposal on attorney access is well beyond what the Constitution and the law require.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military is giving broad lawyer access to many detainees, even though they are accused of having al-Qaida or Taliban links and the U.S. is at war.

Attorney Zachary Katznelson sees the Justice Department proposal as an attempt to seal the facility from critics.

"If we cannot come in, the only news getting out of here will be the government's carefully crafted version, which to my chagrin as an American deviates far too often from the truth," Katznelson said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. He is spending two weeks at Guantanamo Bay to meet with 18 client detainees.

The department wants to narrow the definition of "legal mail" and impose a three-visit rule on the number of face-to-face meetings once a detainee agrees at an initial meeting to let an attorney represent him.

On Thursday, American Bar Association President Karen J. Mathis criticized "arbitrary restrictions concerning the number of times and the ways that lawyers may confer with their clients in Guantanamo." She said such practices at Guantanamo or in a court "would threaten competent representation without at all advancing national security."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear arguments on the department's proposal May 15.

___

Associated Press writer David McFadden in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

[accuracy]

Guantanamo Lawyers Predict More Suicides

Monday April 30, 2007
By DAVID McFADDEN

Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6597213,00.html

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Lawyers envision more suicides and despair at Guantanamo Bay if the U.S. Justice Department succeeds in severely restricting access to detainees by defense attorneys, virtually the only contact inmates have with the outside world.

The Justice Department has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to limit the number of lawyer visits allowed to three after an initial face-to-face meeting, to tighten censorship of mail from attorneys and to give the military more control over what they can discuss with detainees.

Lawyers for detainees believe that if their visits are limited, detainee desperation will deepen and more will try to kill themselves. On June 10, 2006, two Saudi detainees and one Yemeni hanged themselves with sheets, the first and only suicides since the 2002 opening of the detention center that now holds about 380 inmates.

``Visits by lawyers are one of the few bright spot these men have,'' attorney Zachary Katznelson told The Associated Press from Guantanamo, where he is spending two weeks to meet with 18 client detainees.

Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney for several Guantanamo detainees, said curtailing lawyer visits would likely lead more prisoners to attempt suicide.

``The level of depression is soaring, I am afraid,'' he said over the weekend.

Many detainees are kept in isolation in small cells with no natural light. With no prison sentence having been pronounced - except for one Australian detainee - the detainees do not know when they will get out, if ever. Many have been there for more than five years.

Attorney Stephen Oleskey, who represents six Algerians, said more suicides are ``a real risk'' if the court restricts lawyer-client contacts.

``I've seen firsthand the mental conditions of my clients deteriorate in isolation,'' Oleskey said from Boston. ``And I think the impact of further restrictions would be dramatic.''

Meanwhile, Katznelson sees the move to restrict attorney access as an attempt to seal the facility from critics.

``If we cannot come in, the only news getting out of here will be the government's carefully crafted version,'' Katznelson said in an e-mail Saturday.

It is the attorneys, arriving at the base in southeast Cuba aboard military planes or tiny commuter flights, who provide the world with information about hunger strikes, solitary confinement and other details about the detainees.

Journalists can visit but are barred by the military from interviewing detainees. The Red Cross, which occasionally visits, keeps its findings confidential.

But military commanders at Guantanamo and the Justice Department view the lawyers with suspicion.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told the AP the military has been giving broad lawyer access to many detainees - even though they are accused of having al-Qaida or Taliban links and the United States is still at war.

The mail system was ``misused'' to inform detainees about military operations in Iraq, activities of terrorist leaders, efforts in the war on terror, the Hezbollah attack on Israel and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, the Justice Department said in this month's court filing.

Barry M. Kamin, president of the New York City Bar, called the assertions ``astonishing and disingenuous'' in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Lawyers for detainees also dismissed the claims, calling them a pretext to deprive detainees of proper legal representation.

``There have been a lot of extreme statements made,'' said Oleskey, referring to U.S. government criticism of legal defense efforts. ``I think it's unfortunate and it should stop.''


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

[accuracy]

McCain: I'd move Guantánamo detainees to US

Sun, Apr. 29, 2007
By WILL LESTER

Associated Press
http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/90761.html


WASHINGTON -- GOP presidential candidate John McCain, defending his conservative credentials, said Sunday he is resented by some political activists in Washington while well received by Republicans around the country.

''I'm pleased with the support that I have all over the country from rank-and-file Republicans who are supporting me, who believe in me,'' said McCain, R-Ariz.

McCain is engaged in a difficult balancing act these days.

His defense of the war in Iraq has hurt him with independents who backed his White House bid in 2000. His stands on immigration and campaign finance have raised doubts among some conservatives, still wary of his criticism of evangelical Christian leaders in the 2000 campaign.

He has been running behind former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the polls and has lagged in fundraising.

''My record is very clear. It's very consistent. It's very conservative,'' McCain said.

McCain generally supports President Bush on Iraq, but is questioning the conduct of the war and would have a different approach to fighting terrorism.

''I would probably announce the closing of Guantánamo Bay. I would move those detainees to Fort Leavenworth'' in Kansas, McCain said. ``I would announce we will not torture anyone.''

The senator has called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to step down. On Sunday, McCain described Gonzales' job performance as ''embarrassing.'' Gonzales has been under fire for his handling of the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys.

McCain made the comments on ``Fox News Sunday.''

------

[accuracy]

Family fears for Guantanamo man

From correspondents in Rabat

May 01, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,21651152-5005962,00.html

THE family of a Moroccan man freed by the US from Guantanamo Bay last week said they feared for his wellbeing today as Moroccan authorities declined to reveal his whereabouts.

Ahmed Errachidi, who spent more than five years at the US detention camp for terrorist suspects in Cuba, has not been heard from since US authorities confirmed four days ago that they had handed him over to Morocco.

"Petitioner Errachidi ... has been released from United States' custody and transferred to the control of the government of Morocco," a US Department of Justice official said in an email to Errachidi's US lawyer dated April 26.

A Moroccan government official said: "It's true he was extradited to Morocco."

But he said he was unable to provide any additional information on the case.

Errachidi, who lived for 17 years in London and worked as a chef at well-known restaurants, including the Hard Rock Cafe, suffers from bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression.

"Ahmed has been mentally ill since the 1990s," said a family member who asked not to be identified. "Either he's smiling and laughing all the time, or he's crying all the time...The question now is: where is he? We're very worried, he needs to take medicine."

The relative said a human rights lawyer presented a written submission to the Moroccan prosecutor's office today seeking information about Errachidi's fate.

"He said simply: "He's my client, and I need to know where he is'", the relative said. "We haven't got a reply."

Errachidi, 41, has a wife and two young sons living in Morocco.

According to the British-based legal charity, Reprieve, which represents him, he was arrested in Pakistan after travelling there in 2001 on a business venture to fund a cardiac operation for his younger son, Imran.

Reprieve said Errachidi had the idea of importing silver jewellery from Pakistan to raise money.

While there, he was affected by television footage of the US invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan and went to try to help refugees from bombing raids, a decision his lawyers said reflected his erratic judgement due to his illness.

Once in Afghanistan, he soon realised there was nothing he could do and that it was dangerous to stay, but he was detained after crossing back into Pakistan.

"The Pakistani authorities told him he would be deported, but after a couple of days, Pakistani officials instead sold Ahmed to the US military for a bounty that was negotiated while he stood by in shackles and a hood," Reprieve said.

The family member said the amount was $US500 ($600).

Reprieve's legal director Clive Stafford Smith wrote in a fax to Morocco's justice minister on Sunday he was willing to travel to Morocco if needed and could supply copious evidence proving Errachidi's innocence.

Chris Chang, an investigator for Reprieve, said the organisation assumed Errachidi was in police custody but had no confirmation.

"We haven't had any news. We're just completely in the dark, to be honest," he said.

[accuracy]

Do secret interrogations continue?

By Nat Hentoff
April 30, 2007
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070429-100046-4854r.htm

Americans know many details of the firing of U.S. attorneys and Don Imus -- along with the horror at Virginia Tech. But how many are aware that the FBI has been interrogating terrorism suspects -- including an American citizen -- in secret Ethiopian prisons?

On April 5, the Associated Press reported that Ethiopia was under pressure "to release details of detainees from 19 countries... including women and children [who] have been transferred secretly and illegally. An investigation by the Associated Press found that CIA and FBI agents have been interrogating the detainees." As John Sifton, a deeply experienced researcher at Human Rights Watch, said on the national Democracy Now radio and Internet program (April 5), these suspects would previously have been held as enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay or the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. But "the Bush administration has shifted gears, and now they have the FBI interrogating people... by local forces, the Ethiopians, the Kenyans... That's why we call it a sort of outsourced Guantanamo." These interrogations purportedly are to weed out al Qaeda conspirators and cells in the Horn of Africa.

The American prisoner, Amir Mohamed Meshal of Tinton Falls, N.J., held since late January, was questioned several times by FBI agents as American officials admit without being charged and without having a U.S. consular official present, or an attorney. But Meshal has a very active and properly indignant attorney in Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. On April 2, he wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding that she get the Ethiopian government to release his client. Also, writing to Miss Rice was Rep. Rush Holt, New Jersey Democrat, about his constituent, Amir Meshal: "Our government," Mr. Holt told Miss Rice, "cannot allow an American citizen to be held by the Ethiopian government in violation of international law and our own due process." As of this writing, Miss Rice has not replied to the congressman.

Fortunately, Mr. Holt is chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel. I expect that in addition to finding out why his constituent was outsourced to Ethiopia, the congressman will also ask FBI Director Robert Mueller, CIA Director Michael Hayden and other high-level intelligence officials why they have been directly responsible, in this case of an American citizen, for working with the Ethiopian government to violate international law and the very basis of our system of justice, due process. (If they are not directly responsible, who's running their shops?)

It also would be very useful and indeed necessary if our rule of law is to have credibility at home and in the world to find out from the president and Vice President Cheney how they justify this outsourcing of an American citizen to an Ethiopian dungeon.

Meanwhile, what's happening to American citizen Amir Meshal? In a dispatch from Addis Ababa on April 12, The Washington Post quoted FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko, who "confirmed that there were no charges against Meshal, and State Department officials said the FBI told them that no charges were pending." So, Mr. Meshal was set to be released from the secret prison and flown back to the United States where, unlike Ethiopia, every citizen is guaranteed due process of law.

Not so fast. The same Washington Post story revealed that Mr. Meshal is still imprisoned. (As of this writing, he remains in his cell.) Why? "State Department officials booking his flight discovered that his name had been placed on a no-fly list at the request of the FBI and no airline would take him, U.S. officials said." Then, on Friday, April 13, Mr. Meshal did get out of that lockup to be hauled before an Ethiopian military tribunal. The New York Times on April 14 added: "No news media or members of the public were allowed at the hearing (before the military tribunal), and American officials said that they, too, were barred from attending. Ethiopian officials did not disclose details. Ethiopian Foreign Ministry officials said they were not authorized to talk about it." Did any FBI agent on the scene call Mr. Mueller? Did any American State Department person there try to reach Miss Rice?

Last year, the president said that no one was still being held in CIA secret prisons, although they remain open, as permitted by the Military Commissions Act of 2006. On what authority has (as reported by The Washington Post) "the FBI carried out interrogations of dozens of detainees in Ethiopian secret prisons?"

What of the international treaties against torture and other abuses by which we are bound? What about American citizen Amir Mohamed Meshal of Tinton Falls, N.J.? Has his citizenship been suspended?

Copyright 2007 The Washington Times

[accuracy]

The Sham of the Padilla Trial

by Jacob G. Hornberger, April 30, 2007
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0704p.asp

Jury selection in the Jose Padilla case is now under way in federal district court in Miami, but the trial is nothing more than a sham. Why? Because no matter how the jury rules, Padilla is almost certain to remain incarcerated for a long time.

If Padilla is convicted by the jury, the judge will likely sentence him to serve much of the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary for having conspired to violate federal criminal laws against terrorism.

On the other hand, if Padilla is acquitted, the U.S. military is likely to exercise its post-9/11-acquired power to declare Americans (and foreigners) “enemy combatants” in the war on terror and throw Padilla back into a military dungeon. That is where he was before the government, as part of a clever legal maneuver that was obviously designed to avoid Supreme Court review of Padilla’s request for habeas-corpus relief, converted him from an “enemy combatant” in the war on terror to a federal-court criminal defendant charged with violating federal terrorism laws.

While the military, of course, could decline to exercise its power to retake Padilla into custody after an acquittal by the jury, that course of action is unlikely given the government’s repeated assertion that Padilla is one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.

So either way the jury rules — guilty or not guilty — the result is almost certain to be the same — Padilla’s stay in jail is likely to be greatly prolonged.

Prior to 9/11, if a criminal defendant, including one accused of terrorism, was found not guilty by a federal jury, he would walk out of court a free man. That was the whole idea behind the right of trial by jury that was guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. However, the government’s post-9/11 “enemy-combatant” doctrine, which was upheld by the conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Padilla’s habeas corpus proceedings, revolutionized our judicial system by giving the military the power to take Americans (and foreigners) into custody as “enemy combatants,” including those who have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a duly selected and impaneled jury in federal district court.

Obviously, the government would prefer that Padilla be convicted by the jury because then the citizenry can simply assume that the federal system is operating normally. No alarm bells would go off, as they would if U.S. military officials carted Padilla out of federal court after a jury announced a verdict of “not guilty.”

If the military should reclaim custody of Padilla after a jury in federal district court has acquitted him, everyone will be able to easily recognize the raw military power that now hangs over the American citizenry, including the power to orchestrate sham criminal justice proceedings in federal district court, ignore federal jury verdicts, and indefinitely incarcerate Americans (and foreigners) accused of terrorism in some military hellhole.

Those who traded away our rights and freedoms for safety after 9/11 would undoubtedly respond to all this with “So what if the military now wields omnipotent power over the citizenry? Security is more important than freedom. Anyway, the military can be trusted not to abuse its powers over the citizenry, and federal officials have promised to restore our rights and freedoms as soon as the terrorist crisis is over.”

Those American ancestors of ours who crafted the Sixth Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, who understood that the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people was the federal government, and who never would have dreamed of trading their freedom for safety, must be turning over in their graves.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

[accuracy]

Enron filmmaker focuses on U.S. torture

Apr 30, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/filmNews/idUSN3046044220070501

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After examining corruption at energy giant Enron, director Alex Gibney has turned his lens on what he calls the "corruption of American values" in a new film about U.S. torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

"Taxi to the Dark Side," which had its premiere at New York's Tribeca Film Festival this weekend, examines the case of an Afghan taxi driver who was mistakenly detained and died after sustained beating by U.S. guards in December 2002.

From there, the film draws a picture of a pattern of abuse it says spread with a "nod and a wink" from the U.S. military base in Cuba to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and then to Iraq, notably to the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Part of the problem, the film contends, is that there never were written orders authorizing many of the abuses -- a situation that led to prosecution of lowly enlisted soldiers branded "bad apples" while senior officers remain untouched.

U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly denied measures approved by his administration amount to torture and the Pentagon has said the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal and other similar cases were isolated incidents.

Gibney said he was pitched the idea of the film by "some very angry lawyers" after his 2005 film "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," which was nominated for an Oscar.

"WORK THE DARK SIDE"

The title "Taxi to the Dark Side" refers to remarks on intelligence gathering by Vice President Dick Cheney just a few days after the September 11 attacks in 2001. "We also have to work the dark side, if you will. We have to spend time in the shadows," Cheney told NBC in the interview shown in the movie.

The film includes interviews with several soldiers prosecuted for beating the taxi driver and a British man detained in Afghanistan and held for nearly two years in Guantanamo who witnessed the death of the taxi driver.

Others interviewed are former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora, whose concerns about torture appeared to be brushed aside, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, and John Yoo, who drafted key memos for the White House on aggressive interrogation tactics in 2001 and 2002.

Gibney said he wanted to tell a balanced story.

"I'm not one of these people who believe there's a few men in a black tower who said, 'This is going to be the way it works,"' he said. "But I think they were reckless and possibly not very bright ... I don't think the people responsible for this really knew what they unleashed."

The film suggests that when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized certain harsh interrogation tactics for a single detainee at Guantanamo, said to have been a conspirator with the September 11 hijackers, similar tactics spread to Bagram in Afghanistan and from there eventually to Iraq.

"I ended up doing a film about corruption -- corruption of the rule of law and corruption of American values ... What I was most surprised by was just how dark the dark side was."

Reuters/Nielsen

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved

[accuracy]

Supreme Court refuses to bar Guantanamo detainee transfer to Libya

Wednesday, May 02, 2007
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/05/supreme-court-refuses-to-bar-guantanamo.php

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] refused Tuesday to prevent the US military from transferring Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee Abu Abdul Rauf Zalita to his home country of Libya, rejecting Zalita's arguments that he faced a "grave risk of arbitrary detention, torture, persecution and extrajudicial assassination" after being returned to Libya. In a one-sentence order [PDF text], the Court rejected Zalita's application for an injunction, which was opposed [PDF text; addendum, PDF] by the Bush administration. Solicitor General Paul Clement argued that the Military Commissions Act [PDF text; JURIST news archive] bars US courts from considering Zalita's claims.

Zalita was determined to be an "enemy combatant" in 2005 by a Guantanamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal [DOD materials]. According to Clement's Supreme Court filing, "The unclassified summary of the evidence presented to the CSRT explains that [Zalita] was a member of a known terrorist organization, received weapons training by that group, traveled to Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001, and then fled to Pakistan, where he was captured."

[accuracy]

Former Guantanamo inmate walks free in Morocco

May 3, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0338635720070503

RABAT (Reuters) - A Moroccan man sent home from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay last week was released by local authorities after terrorism-related charges were dropped, a human rights lawyer and relatives said on Thursday.

Ahmed Errachidi, 41, was arrested on his return to Morocco and appeared before a judge on Wednesday on suspicion of preparing and carrying out terrorist acts, lawyer Mohamed Sebbar told Reuters.

"The charges were dropped, he was released last night and he is now back home with his family," said Sebbar. A relative confirmed his release and return home.

Errachidi spent more than five years at the U.S. detention camp for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being freed without charge last week. He has a wife and two young sons living in Morocco.

Relatives say he suffers from bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, and needs to take medication regularly.

Errachidi lived in Britain for 17 years and worked as a chef in London restaurants. According to the British-based legal charity Reprieve, which represents him, he was arrested in Pakistan after traveling there in 2001 on a business venture to fund a heart operation for his younger son, Imran.

While there, he was affected by television footage of the U.S. invasion of neighboring Afghanistan and went there to try to help refugees from bombing raids, a decision his lawyers say reflected his erratic judgment caused by his illness.

Once in Afghanistan, he soon realized there was nothing he could do and it was dangerous to stay. He was detained after crossing back into Pakistan.

Pakistani officials then "sold Ahmed to the U.S. military for a bounty that was negotiated while he stood by in shackles and a hood", Reprieve said in a press release on his case.

The U.S. government has repatriated 10 Moroccans from Guantanamo in the past three years, according to lawyers.

They were charged with forming criminal gangs, forgery, illegal migration or belonging to an international terrorist organization but only one was imprisoned.

Three Moroccans remain in the maximum security prison in Cuba.

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.

[accuracy]

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/inmate_dogs_vets.jpg

"Inmate Edward Parent, who is serving a ten-year sentence for a DUI death resulting in a conviction, sits with Chuck, a black Labrador he is training to be a service dog as part of NEADS' Prison Pup program, at the John J Moran medium security prison in Cranston, Rhode Island, in this April 24, 2007 file photo. Dozens of dogs are being trained by prison inmates in a fast-growing program that provides "service dogs" to help U.S. veterans who have lost arms and legs or suffered brain injuries in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Photo/USA-PRISONS/Brian Snyder"

[accuracy]

One in three US combat troops would condone torture: survey

Fri May 4,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070504/pl_afp/usiraqmilitaryhealth_070504174418;_ylt=An300T8q0zV FTekVVMNxWtQZO7gF

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A survey of US combat troops deployed in Iraq has found that one in 10 said they mistreated civilians and more than a third condoned torture to save the life of a comrade, a report said Friday.

The study by an army mental health advisory team found continuing problems with morale and that acute mental health issues were more prevalent among troops with lengthening tours or on their second and third deployment to Iraq.

"They looked under every rock, and what they found was not always easy to look at," said Ward Casscells, the Pentagon's health affairs chief.

For the first time ever, a sampling of soldiers and marines in combat units were questioned on issues of character, and their answers suggested hardened attitudes toward civilians among front line troops:

-- About 10 percent of soldiers surveyed reported mistreating non-combatants or damaging their property when it was not necessary;

-- Less than half of the soldiers and marines would report a team member for unethical behavior;

-- More than a third of all soldiers and marines reported that torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow soldier or marine.

Major General Gale Pollock, the army's acting surgeon general, sought to make a distinction between soldiers' thoughts about torture and their actions.

"These men and women have been seeing their friends injured and I think that having that thought is normal," she said at a Pentagon press conference.

"But what it speaks to is the leadership that the military is providing, because they're not acting on those thoughts. They're not torturing the people," she said.

The team surveyed 1,320 soldiers and 447 marines between August and October 2006 in Iraq. Although the report was completed in November, it was only released Friday in censored form after its findings began to leak to the press.

The study found that morale among soldiers was worse than among marines, which it said was explained in part by the marines' shorter six month tours.

The team recommended that the army's yearlong tours in Iraq either be shortened, or that soldiers be given 18 to 36 months between deployment to recover.

Instead, the army is moving in the opposite direction, extending tours to 15 months to keep pace with a surge in forces. The army is struggling to allow units a year at home between deployments.

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc.

[accuracy]

U-S commander in Iraq "greatly concerned" by combat ethics report

http://wkbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=6480643


BAGHDAD The top American commander in Iraq says he's "greatly concerned" by a report on combat ethics.

As General David Petraeus (puh-TRAY'-uhs) describes it, the study showed "a fair proportion" of combat troops in Iraq would not report illegal actions by their buddies -- such as killing or wounding civilians.

Petraeus told the A-P's annual meeting in New York via video hookup from Baghdad that the American military "can never sink to the level of the enemy." The general says he's ramping up educational efforts and also drafting a memo reminding troops to live up to standards.

He told the meeting that past incidents of moral lapses like the Abu Ghraib scandal hurt the military tremendously.


Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[accuracy]

Jailing of journalists in Gitmo, Iraq rapped

Wed, May. 09, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/100937.html

BY NATASHA T. METZLER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Representatives of two journalists detained by the U.S. military said Tuesday the government should charge them or set them free.

U.S. forces have been holding Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein in Iraq for a year. Sami al Hajj, a cameraman for the Middle East television station Al-Jazeera, has been detained since late 2001 and is currently at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

While U.S. officials allege that Hussein took photographs synchronized with explosions, indicating he was at a location ahead of time, Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the AP, said he was ``simply the unlucky fellow who happened to be the photographer for the world's largest newsgathering organization in a difficult province.''

Carroll said the AP had examined 900 of Hussein's photographs and found no indication that he had been on the scene before attacks occurred.

Paul Gardephe, the lawyer handling the case for the AP, said the military recently acknowledged to him that it has no evidence to support earlier allegations that Hussein was involved in a plot to kidnap two other journalists.

Carroll said, ``The sort of rolling set of allegations that arise and then disappear without the benefit of a trial . . . or any kind of an official court proceeding is what is distressing to all of us here.''

She spoke during a panel discussion in connection with World Press Freedom Day.

Officials have what they believe to be information that links Hussein to insurgent activity, but most of the evidence is classified and will not be released publicly, said Col. Gary Keck, a U.S. Defense Department spokesman.

Hussein's detention is legal under U.N. Security Council resolutions that authorize the Iraq coalition to hold people for security reasons, Keck said. He added that the case has been reviewed several times by coalition and Iraqi officials.

Al Hajj's attorney, Zachary Katznelson, said U.S. officials have offered varying allegations against his client but have never filed charges or presented evidence against him. Al Hajj was stopped at the Afghanistan border by Pakistani authorities in December 2001 and turned over to U.S. authorities six months later.

''If there is any evidence, then let's see it,'' Katznelson said.

The Pentagon said there is classified and unclassified evidence to support his detention, and the unclassified portions have been available to the public.

''While Mr. al Hajj has been given the opportunity to contest his status as an enemy combatant and challenge his continued detention through hearings and review boards at Guantánamo, he has repeatedly declined to do so,'' said Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Defense Department spokesman. ``Instead, he has declined to answer any questions about his alleged role in supporting terror networks.''

The panel discussion was sponsored by the Committee to Protect Journalists and the National Press Club's Freedom of Press Committee.

Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

[accuracy]

U.S. to Build Cuba Migrant Center

Wednesday May 9, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6618312,00.html


SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - The United States, which has been planning for possible waves of fleeing Cubans when Fidel Castro dies, has hired a Florida company to build a temporary complex to hold migrants at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the military said.

Islands Mechanical Contractors Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., has won a $16.5 million contract to build a ``migrant operations complex'' at the base, a U.S. enclave in eastern Cuba, the U.S. Defense Department said.

The fenced complex would include showers and laundry facilities and is to be finished by May 2008, according to a Defense Department publication that announces contracts.

The announcement late Monday did not specify the capacity of the complex and a Defense Department spokesman said additional details were not immediately available. Bob Turnage, the president of Islands Mechanical, declined to discuss the project.

The contract announcement did not specify that the complex would be for Cuban migrants, but Navy officials told The Associated Press in January that they were preparing for a potential Cuban exodus because of Castro's health problems and would hold migrants at Guantanamo, where the U.S. also has detained about 380 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Guantanamo was used to hold thousands of Haitian and Cuban migrants in the 1990s. U.S. officials had said they would keep the migrants on the other side of the base from the detainees and would have to increase troop levels to provide additional security.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

[accuracy]

Murtha: Move trials out of Guantanamo

Thursday, May 10, 2007

By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07130/784884-84.stm

WASHINGTON -- Pennsylvania's Rep. John Murtha yesterday said he would start pushing the Bush administration to move military trials for high-level terrorism suspects from the controversial detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to the U.S. mainland.

Such a step, he argued, would help improve the nation's image abroad after years of negative publicity surrounding the prison camp, which first opened in January 2002 and now holds about 380 detainees.

"We don't want anybody released who is a threat," Mr. Murtha, D-Johnstown, said after a hearing of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. "But, on the other hand, we have to get them a fair trial."

As the subcommittee chairman, Mr. Murtha is the highest-ranking House member in charge of defense spending, and he has threatened to use his power to cut off funding for Guantanamo, effectively forcing its closure. But he backed off from that stance yesterday, saying it wasn't practical.

Instead, he hopes to address concerns from some legal advocates that the prison is too remote to allow regular access between detainees and their lawyers and that it cannot accommodate a large number of court proceedings.

Defense Department officials, however, seemed cool to the idea of moving the trials or holding detainees in the United States, arguing that new locations would be easier targets for terrorists. "I believe we're holding the right men in the right place for the right reasons, and we're doing it the right way at Guantanamo," said Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, the prison's commander.

Daniel J. Dell'Orto, a Defense Department deputy general counsel, expressed concern that the legal status of detainees would change if trials were held on U.S. soil. He also warned that the trials could become a "media circus."

Mr. Murtha pointedly probed some of Mr. Dell'Orto's arguments. "We spend more than any country in the world on intelligence, and you're telling me that closing down Guantanamo would cripple our intelligence efforts?" he asked Mr. Dell'Orto.

"If you take away those capabilities, it would cripple our efforts," Mr. Dell'Orto replied.

"You see why I've said I have such a hard time believing the kind of information I get," Mr. Murtha responded. "That's a real exaggeration."

For more than five years, the question of how to handle terrorism suspects caught in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere has hampered the Bush administration, with the Supreme Court twice ruling that detainees have the right to contest their imprisonment.

Congress last year passed a law that prevents detainees from filing such appeals, and, in April, the high court declined to hold a new hearing on the issue.

But concerns about Guantanamo's future haven't gone away. Both President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have said they would like to close the facility eventually, while some legal groups have said there are serious doubts about the connections between some detainees and terrorist groups.

"I think that Guantanamo should be closed, and it should be closed quickly," said Thomas B. Wilner, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who has represented several detainees. "It's against everything we stand for as a nation."

Defense officials said much of their evidence cannot be made public because of security concerns. "It's a very common thing for these guys to say they're cooks," said Joseph A. Benkert, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for global security affairs.

Some detainees even convinced U.S. officials of their innocence, he said. Since Guantanamo's opening, the government has released about 30 detainees who eventually forged new connections with terrorist groups. The military now has significantly tighter procedures for releasing prisoners.

Of the roughly 380 detainees now being held, about 60 to 80 are likely to face military tribunals over the next few years. About 80 can be released in the near future, but the United States must first negotiate that process with foreign governments.

Afghans, Saudis, and Yemenis make up the top three nationalities among detainees.

Col. Dwight Sullivan, chief defense counsel for the Marine Corps' Office of Military Commissions, said several U.S. sites could safely accommodate trials for detainees, including the Marine base in Quantico, Va.

Mr. Murtha said his office would draw up a list of possible sites.

[accuracy]

Kuwaiti Gitmo Inmates to Be Released

Sunday, May 13, 2007
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=55676

KUWAIT CITY: The United States has decided to release the last four Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantanamo Bay in the coming four months, a new Kuwaiti daily said on Saturday.

Al-Wasat daily, quoting informed sources, said US authorities had informed Kuwait, a staunch ally of Washington, that its remaining citizens in the military base do not constitute any danger to American national security.

The daily quoted the sources as saying the prisoners would be released before the start of Ramazan which begins by mid-September.

The United States has so far freed eight of the 12 Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantanamo. They have faced trial in Kuwaiti courts and acquitted of charges of joining al-Qaeda and fighting US forces under Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban.

About 455 people are currently held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base where the US has detained and interrogated 750 prisoners since early 2002 in its war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

[accuracy]

Dutch soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners: report

Wed May 16,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070516/wl_nm/dutch_iraq_abuse_dc

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Three Dutch military intelligence officers may have broken interrogation rules in 2003 while questioning prisoners in Iraq, Dutch television program NOVA said.

NOVA said it obtained excerpts of an independent committee's report prepared for the Dutch Ministry of Defense describing the use of head covers and electrodes during questioning.

A committee spokesman declined to confirm or deny the NOVA report, aired late on Tuesday, but added he "had ideas" about how parts of the committee's report may have been leaked.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said the ministry would comment when the committee's report was published in mid-June.

The ministry ordered an independent inquiry last November after a newspaper reported that Dutch military intelligence abused prisoners in Iraq in 2003 by hosing them with water to keep them awake and exposing them to bright light.

Former Major Micha Geeratz, a legal advisor monitoring interrogations in Iraq at the time, told NOVA that unsupervised questioning took place in the Iraqi city of As Sawamah.

"I had the feeling then that things would happen that could not bear the light of day," Geeratz said in the program aired late on Tuesday.

One Iraqi prisoner who complained to British authorities in Iraq about mistreatment had mentioned the use of water, sound, electrodes, and head coverings during interrogations, Geeratz said. He estimated that 5 to 10 people could have been interrogated without supervision.

Former Dutch Minister of Defense, Henk Kamp, has said that in October 2003, two months after Dutch troops first arrived in Iraq, 15 suspects were interrogated by military intelligence and security officers but that no punishable actions had taken place.

But the independent committee was established last November and some politicians drew parallels with the uproar over abuse by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Since then, scandals have also erupted in Britain and Germany over the behavior of their troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[accuracy]

Harvard’s Kangaroo Law School

The School for Torturers

By Francis A. Boyle

05/16/07 "ICH" -- -- Not surprisingly, the newly released January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Imperial Law — otherwise known as the self-styled American Journal of International Law but founded and still operated by U. S. State and War Departments’ apparatchiks and their professorial fellow-travelers — just published an article by Harvard Law School’s recently retired Bemis Professor of International Law Detlev Vagts (who only taught me the required course on Legal Accounting) arguing in favor of the Pentagon’s Kangaroo Courts System on Guantanamo despite the fact that they have been soundly condemned by every human rights organization and every human rights official and leader in the entire world as well as by the United States Supreme Court itself in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006).

I am not going to bother to recite here all the grievous deficiencies of the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts under International Law and U.S. Constitutional Law. But suffice it to say that the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts constitute war crimes under the Laws of War, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and even the U. S. Army’s own Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare (1956). Field Manual 27-10 was drafted for the Pentagon by my Laws of War teacher Richard R. Baxter, who was generally recognized as the world’s leading expert on that subject, which is precisely why I voluntarily chose to study International Law with him and his long-time collaborator Louis B. Sohn, and not with the bean-counter Vagts. For the entire post-World War II generation of international law students at Harvard Law School, Louis Sohn shall always be our real Bemis Professor of International Law and never the False Pretender to that Throne known as Detlev Vagts.

Since those student days I have personally appeared pro bono publico in five U.S. military courts-martial proceedings involving warfare that were organized in accordance with the Pentagon’s Uniform Code of Military Justice (U.C.M.J.) — which still does not apply to the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts despite the ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court in Hamdan that the U.C.M.J. should be applied in Guantanamo — on behalf of five U. S. military personnel who each acted as matters of courage, integrity, principle, and conscience at great risk to their freedom:

1. U. S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jeff Paterson, the first U. S. military resister to President Bush Sr.’s genocidal war against Iraq;

2. Army Captain Doctor Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, the highest ranking U.S. commissioned officer to be court-martialed for refusing to participate in President Bush Sr.’s genocidal war against Iraq;

3. Captain Lawrence Rockwood, who was court-martialed by the U.S. Army for trying to stop torture in Haiti after the Clinton administration had illegally invaded that country in 1994;

4. Army Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, the first U.S. military resister to be court-martialed for refusing to participate in President Bush Jr.’s war of aggression against Iraq; and

5. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first U.S. commissioned officer to be court-martialed for his refusal to participate in President Bush Jr.’s war of aggression against Iraq.

As I can attest from my direct personal involvement, each and every one of these five courts-martial under the U.C.M.J. were Stalinist show-trials produced and directed by the Pentagon that predictably and readily degenerated into travesties of justice. These five U.C.M.J. courts-martial involving warfare each proved correct the old adage attributed to Groucho Marx that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. By comparison, the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will not even be run in accordance with the U.C.M.J. despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan that they should be.

Whenever they are up and running the Gitmo Courts will constitute Stalinist Show Trials as well as Kangaroo Courts, and their preliminary proceedings have already proven them to be Travesties of Justice. Even worse yet, fully-functioning Stalinist Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will quickly become conveyor-belts of death for alleged and already tortured terrorist suspects along the lines of the Texas execution chamber operated by George Bush Jr. when he was the “governor” of that state and tortured to death 152 victims by means of lethal injection. But today under the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, executing persons detained as a result of armed conflict without a fair trial before a regularly constituted court constitutes a grave war crime. To be sure, under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution Professor Vagts has the freedom to advocate war crimes so long as he does not participate in their commission, or incite them, or aid and abet them. But precisely where is that line to be drawn for law professors?

In this regard, the Harvard Law School Faculty currently has at least five professors who have advocated torture and war crimes:

1. Vagts himself, who supported abusing the then recently captured President of Iraq Saddam Hussein despite his being publicly acknowledged to be a Prisoner of War by the Bush Jr. administration itself and thus absolutely protected by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Convention against Torture;

2. the infamous Alan Dershowitz, a self-incriminated war criminal in his own right. Dersh publicly acknowledged being a member of a Mossad Committee for approving the murder and assassination of Palestinians, which violates the Geneva Conventions and is thus a grave war crime;

3. the Con Law non-entity known as Richard Parker;

4. Another one of my teachers, Waco Phil Heymann. Previously Waco Phil had been Deputy to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the Butcheress of Waco. Reno ordered the Waco Massacre, while Heymann orchestrated its cover-up and thus earned his well-deserved sobriquet of Waco Phil. All those incinerated women and children!

5. The war criminal Jack Goldsmith who while working as a lawyer for the Bush Jr. administration at both the Pentagon and later its Department of In-Justice did much of the legal spade-work designing, justifying and approving the hideous human rights atrocities that the Bush Jr. administration has inflicted on everyone after 9/11. Goldsmith and his co-felon legal colleague from the Bush Jr. administration Professor John Yoo — now desecrating Berkeley’s Law School where my friend and colleague the late, great Dean Frank Newman had taught Human Rights — are functionally analogous to Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone.

Despite my best efforts to prevent it, the Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans hired the war criminal Goldsmith right out of the Bush Jr. administration knowing full well that he was up to his eyeballs in the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts, torture, war crimes, enforced disappearances, murder, kidnapping, and crimes against humanity, at a minimum. And when Goldsmith’s proverbial “smoking-gun” Department of In-Justice Memorandum was published by the Washington Post, Harvard Law School’s Dean Elena Kagan contemptuously boasted in response about how “proud” she was to have hired this notorious war criminal. Previously Kagan had also publicly bragged that the future of International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School would be in the “good hands” of their resident war criminal Goldsmith. How tragically true! The Neo-Conservative Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans deliberately set out to hire this Neo-Nazi legal architect of the Bush Jr. administration’s bogus and nefarious “war against terrorism” because they fully support it together with all its essential accouterments of torture, kangaroo courts, war crimes, murder, kidnapping, enforced disappearances, crimes against humanity, and Nuremberg crimes against peace.

By contrast, after the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in alleged revenge for the Waco Massacre and Cover-up by Janet Reno and Waco Phil Heymann, to the best of my recollection I do not remember that the Neo-Conservative Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans advocated kangaroo courts, torture, war crimes, and racist profiling for America’s White Judeo-Christian Males. Yet after 9/11 the fundamentally White Racist Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans have no problem with inflicting torture, kangaroo courts, war crimes, and racist profiling upon Muslims/Arabs/Asians of Color, which is exactly why they hired the war criminal Goldsmith to teach such criminal practices to their own law students and thus someday turn them into racist U.S. governmental war criminals in their own right. This is because for the most part the Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans have always been viscerally bigoted and racist against Muslims/Arabs/Asians and other People of Color since at least when I first matriculated there in September of 1971.

The Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans are no longer fit to educate Lawyers, Members of the Bar, and Officers of the Court. They are a sick joke and a demented fraud. Groucho Marx would have had a field day with them: Harvard is to Law School as Torture is to Law. The Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans torture the Law. Do not send your children or students to Harvard Law School where they will grow up to become racist war criminals! Harvard Law School is a Neo-Con cesspool.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17714.htm

[accuracy]

Terrorism Suspect Alleges 'Mental Torture'


By Eric Rich

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500935_pf.html


A suspected terrorist who once lived in Maryland told a military tribunal that he was "mentally tortured" at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was driven to twice attempt suicide by chewing through his own arteries, according to a transcript of a hearing released yesterday by the Pentagon.

Majid Khan, 27, one of 14 "high-value" suspects held for years by the CIA at secret foreign prisons before their transfer to Guantanamo Bay, also said he lost 30 pounds in 27 days during a hunger strike, according to the transcript. In a statement redacted in places by government censors, he complained of mistreatment that ranged from having his beard forcibly shaved and spending weeks without sunlight to the poor quality of the camp's weekly newsletter, it says.

"I swear to God this place in some sense worst than CIA jails," Khan is quoted as telling the Combatant Status Review Tribunal on April 15 as it considered whether to designate him an enemy combatant.

Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday that Khan has been "treated humanely" in the custody of the Defense Department.

According to the transcript, Khan, who graduated from public high school in suburban Baltimore in 1999, denied being a terrorist and twice volunteered to submit to a polygraph test. He told the tribunal that he helped the FBI take an illegal Pakistani immigrant into custody in 2002 -- a claim an FBI spokesman declined to comment on yesterday.

U.S. officials allege that Khan, a Pakistani national, took orders from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and is also a high-value detainee at Guantanamo Bay. Khan was allegedly asked to research how to poison U.S. reservoirs and to blow up U.S. gas stations, and was considered for an effort to assassinate the Pakistani president.

At the hearing, the government cited statements it said were made by two of Khan's family members in 2003. A brother of Khan's allegedly said that Khan was "involved with a group that he believed to be al-Qaeda," and his father allegedly said that Khan had been "influenced by anti-American thoughts."

The government also cited statements it said were made by Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and to launch a simultaneous attack on Washington. Faris said Khan referred to Mohammed as his uncle, according to the documents, and told the government that Khan once spoke of his desire to martyr himself by detonating an explosives vest to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

But Faris disavowed those earlier claims in a statement provided to the tribunal at Khan's request. "That is an absolute lie," Faris wrote of his earlier statements, saying he was coerced or deceived into making them.

Khan's father, Ali S. Khan, also provided the tribunal with a statement disavowing his and his son's earlier statements. "Anything we may have said about Majid Khan was simply out of shock because we only knew that Majid had disappeared and was pure speculation based on what FBI agents in the United States told us and pressured us to say," he wrote.

Majid Khan was detained in March 2003 while staying with a brother in Pakistan. His whereabouts were not officially disclosed until September, when President Bush named him as one of the 14 high-value detainees transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

Gitanjali Gutierrez, Khan's attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said that Khan's response to the conditions of his confinement show how formidable they are. "He's definitely under a great deal of mental stress," she said. "The idea of indefinite detention is something that the Red Cross identified years ago as being tantamount to torture."

Some of Khan's complaints were less serious than others, including his allegation that he and other detainees are given "cheap branded, unscented soap" and must suffer with a loud fan that "drives us all crazy." He also complained about the condition of athletic equipment.

Damaging information about Khan came from Saifullah Paracha, a Guantanamo Bay detainee who provided a statement to the tribunal at Khan's request. Paracha said that, while in Karachi, he and a man later identified to him as Khan were introduced by Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Mohammed's who is accused of helping finance the Sept. 11 attackers.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

[accuracy]

U.S. House demands plan for Guantanamo detainees

17 May 2007
Source: Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N17420590.htm

WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) - Shrugging off a possible veto from President George W. Bush, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday demanded the administration develop a plan to transfer detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The 220-208 vote came on an amendment to a bill authorizing defense programs that the Democratic-led House passed overwhelmingly. The Senate has yet to act, and then the two versions will have to be reconciled.

Earlier this week the White House warned lawmakers not to "micro-manage" the treatment of Guantanamo detainees, saying any bill that blocked the administration from detaining people it has designated as "enemy combatants" could provoke a veto.

The United States is holding hundreds of suspected militants at the prison. U.S. defense officials say 95 percent are connected to Al Qaeda, the Taliban or their associates.

Lawmakers noted that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has suggested Congress should explore with the White House ways to close the prison, while not releasing its most dangerous detainees. Human rights groups have demanded that Guantanamo be closed and detainees charged with crimes or released.

The proposal by Rep. James Moran that cleared the House requires the administration to report on plans to place captives on trial, transfer them to other facilities, or release them.

'LACK OF INFORMATION'

"Whether you like it or not, whether you believe Guantanamo Bay is a blight on our international standing, or whether you believe these detainees should be held and tried in the United States, we should all agree the policy options before the president and Congress should not be limited by a lack of information," the Virginia Democrat said.

Pentagon officials say they plan to try about 80 of the 385 Guantanamo detainees under a military commissions structure set up by Congress last year. Those trials are scheduled to begin this summer. The Pentagon also has about 80 detainees it wants to transfer to other countries. The rest are in legal limbo.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, pledged to offer another bill soon to restore to Guantanamo detainees rights that Congress limited last year to challenge their imprisonment.

Moran's amendment was denounced by House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, who said Democrats "are leading us down the road to importing dangerous terrorists into our local communities" as Guantanamo prisoners are moved.

Boehner also disparaged the bill's cuts in missile defense programs as "a giant step backwards." The legislation would cut $160 million the administration wanted to develop a missile defense interceptor site in Poland. But it also says that if a deal on the site is reached with Poland before Sept. 30, 2008, the administration can ask again for the money.

The mammoth defense bill authorizes $504 billion for defense programs. It calls for increases of 13,000 Army and 9,000 Marine Corps active duty personnel over current authorized level.

It also allocates $142 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan during fiscal 2008, which starts Oct. 1, but for this to take effect, a partner defense appropriations bill must pass later this year.

Democrats want to wind down the Iraq war, but House leaders decided not to fight that battle on this defense programs legislation. They are negotiating with the White House over whether to approve a separate Iraq war funding bill with money for the current fiscal year.

[accuracy]

Shell-Shocked at Abu Ghraib?

Friday, May. 18, 2007

By ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1622881,00.html
http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0705/abu_ghraib_dog_0519.jpg
A photograph from Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Polaris

Did the senior U.S. officer at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison suffer a breakdown after a deadly mortar attack, setting the stage for the worst Army abuse scandal in a generation? And did the Army then knowingly use the testimony of a commanding officer who may have been mentally unfit to prosecute subordinates for their roles at Abu Ghraib?


Those troubling questions about Col. Thomas Pappas are being raised in the walkup to one of the final trials stemming from the abuses at Abu Ghraib, which has resulted in a handful of enlisted men going to prison — while top officers, including Pappas, have suffered few if any legal consequences. Under a grant of immunity, Pappas, who has already testified at the courts martial of other subordinates, is scheduled to give evidence in the August trial of his former deputy, Lt. Col. Steven Jordan. Jordan faces six counts and up to 16 1/2 years in prison for alleged cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners, dereliction of duty and other charges. His defense team has already raised questions in court of the mental competence of unnamed prosecution witnesses, one of whom is believed to be Pappas.

Pappas's mental state in Iraq was first publicly questioned in The Lucifer Effect, a best-selling book by Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford University psychologist and expert on detention who conducted the well-known "Stanford Prison Experiment" — a 1971 simulation in which students were asked to play the role of guards — and who also testified as an expert witness in one of the Abu Ghraib trials. The book claims that Pappas, who ran intelligence at Abu Ghraib, was declared "not combat fit" after he survived a devastating mortar attack on September 20, 2003 — just weeks before the notorious abuses began to unfold. The attack — which killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded others but left Pappas physically unharmed — caused the Colonel to repeatedly exhibit bizarre behavior, the book says, while alleging that his "deteriorating mental condition did not permit him to provide the vitally necessary supervision of his soldiers working in the prison."

Zimbardo told TIME that he was not at liberty to name his source for the allegations concerning Pappas's mental condition. But he said the individual was "a senior U.S. military officer who had been present at Abu Ghraib and was in a position to know what happened." Zimbardo added that he had no doubt about the authenticity of the report. A military lawyer representing Pappas had no comment on the allegations concerning her client's mental condition.

Jordan's defense team has asked the Army to turn over records of mental evaluations of two unnamed prospective court-martial witnesses. One is thought to be Pappas. The other, according to Jordan's lawyer, has admitted to being medically treated for shell shock stemming from his service at Abu Ghraib. This week the judge ordered the Army to locate the mental evaluations, if they exist, and give them to the tribunal for review. It remains unclear who may have actually labeled Pappas "not combat fit", or if the records sought by the court will even address his psychological condition.

Experts on military law say the Pappas situation is murky and likely to require further investigation. If it could be determined that he was unfit or suffered from diminished capacity in Iraq, the next question would be whether Army prosecutors knew, or should have known, about his alleged condition when he was called to testify in earlier cases. More broadly, says Eugene Fidell, a lawyer who is president of the National Institute for Military Justice, "if officers in Iraq above Pappas were aware — or should have been aware — that he was impaired, then they should have relieved him of duty."

The attack that allegedly affected Pappas so deeply took place on the night of September 20, 2003, when mortar shells began to fall on Abu Ghraib. Pappas was holding a conference in a tent outside the main prison building with his driver and his deputy, Lt. Col. Jordan, along with others. The incoming shell killed his driver instantly; another solider died in the attack and several were injured, but Pappas was not hurt.

Several hours later, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, then the top officer in Iraq in charge of detention, encountered Pappas. "His face was completely drawn, no expression, blank, ashen color. He said in a very flat voice 'They killed my driver, the guy never did anything wrong,'" Karpinski told TIME. "He was in total shock. It wasn't anger, it was beyond anger — he just looked lost, he didn't know what to do."

Shortly after that, Karpinski says, Pappas briefed Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the overall U.S. commander in Iraq. "At that point, Pappas just did not seem to be stable, but who could blame him after what he had just been through," says Karpinski, who was demoted after Abu Ghraib but has claimed that she was made a scapegoat in order to deflect blame from higher-ranking officers (She has since left the military.) "He was incoherent, maybe just running on adrenaline, but he would unpredictably shift from one topic to another . . ."

Karpinski found him to be in a similar state at a scheduled weekly meeting that she attended with Pappas and others in Baghdad's Green Zone soon after. "He wasn't making any sense ... he was disoriented. The only thing he could focus on was the memorial service [for those killed in the mortar attack] — on that he had clarity."

According to Zimbardo's book, which relied on interviews with a variety of Abu Ghraib personnel, "Pappas was so affected by this sudden horror [the mortar attack] that he never again took off his flak jacket. . . It was reported to me that he always wore his [flak] jacket and hard helmet, even when showering." Several Abu Ghraib veterans also told TIME that Pappas tried to avoid going outside the prison building, and even moved an exercise bicycle into his quarters to avoid having to move around unprotected areas. But another veteran of the prison, Major David Dinenna, said he did not believe Pappas was impaired, though quite a few other soldiers were suffering from battle stress from the same shelling.

Several Abu Ghraib veterans told TIME that "combat stress teams" were dispatched to the prison to give psychological counseling to shell-shocked U.S. victims of the Sept. 20 attack. It remains unclear whether Pappas received any treatment. But one of his subordinates, intelligence analyst Armin Cruz, who was later accused of abuse at Abu Ghraib, specifically cited the Sept. 20 mortar attack at his plea bargain. Cruz, who struggled unsuccessfully to save the life of a fellow soldier wounded in the attack, claimed he had repeatedly sought and failed to receive treatment for shell shock in its aftermath. At his sentencing, a military judge asked Cruz to explain why he had forced prisoners to strip naked. After a long pause, Cruz said, he had mentally connected the prisoners with Iraqis insurgents who killed two members of his company in the mortar attack one month earlier.

In fact, Abu Ghraib came under regular mortar fire from insurgents, sometimes three or four times a week. The decision to site the facility in a combat zone was a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, experts say, and doing so cost scores of American and Iraqi lives — far more than were killed in the abuse scandal itself.

U.S. military doctrine stresses that those who guard prisoners of war should not be in combat, because the hostility and aggression necessary to fight must be directed at the enemy, not at prisoners. But with Abu Ghraib under threat of mortar fire, many of those stationed there have said they were in a perpetual state of tension and fear, the well-known antecedents to shell-shock, also known as post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Ken Davis, an Abu Ghraib veteran who has since left the military said the mortar attacks, "made everyone fear the Iraqis, and people stopped telling the difference between the Iraqi enemy shelling us and the Iraqi guys in our prison ... and that's a lot of what led to the abuse." As Karpinski put it: "The mortar attacks changed everything, because they made people angry, like 'we're going to get these guys,' and the prison is filling up with Iraqis — the impetus to seek vengeance went higher."

Whatever the impact of the mortar attacks, there is no question that Pappas, a decorated officer, made many serious mistakes in their aftermath. An Army investigation found that he failed to ensure that soldiers under his direct command were properly trained in interrogation procedures; they did not know, understand or follow the protections for prisoners required by the Geneva Convention. Ultimately, however, Pappas was punished for only two violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He lost $8000 in pay and was called upon to testify against subordinates.

[accuracy]

Suit claims U.S. illegally spied on detainees' lawyers

A civil liberties group seeks records from the NSA's warrantless wiretap program.

By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
May 18, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-wiretap18may18,1,4308503.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=1&cset=true

A civil liberties organization on Thursday sued the Justice Department and the National Security Agency in New York federal court, alleging that the government illegally spied on 16 lawyers who have represented detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba.

The suit, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, demands that the agencies comply with requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act to turn over all records of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping of the attorneys.

The secret eavesdropping program was launched after the Sept. 11 attacks and came to light in December 2005. In January 2006, the center submitted requests for records pertaining to the surveillance of the lawyers, said Shayana Kadidal, a center attorney.

The NSA and the Department of Justice refused to provide relevant documents within the required time, the plaintiffs' attorneys said.

"I am outraged that the NSA and DOJ have categorically refused to say whether they have eavesdropped — without a warrant — on me or other attorneys simply because we have fought for basic due process for men imprisoned without charge or trial at Guantanamo," said New York lawyer Wells Dixon, one of the plaintiffs.

The government had no comment on the lawsuit. U.S. officials have acknowledged the existence of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, saying that it targets telephone calls and e-mails "only when one party is outside the U.S. and there is probable cause to believe that at least one party is a member or agent of Al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization." But they have declined to provide details, saying it would harm efforts in the war on terrorism.

"The government believes … that pretty much all of our post 9/11 clients" have links to terrorism, Kadidal said. "So we think our calls to them fit the narrow category of calls," Kadidal said, "that Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales" told Congress the NSA was targeting.

*

[accuracy]

Three Swedes Freed From Ethiopia

20/05/2007



Three Swedish men have been released by Ethiopia after being detained for five months on suspicion of helping Islamist militants in Somalia.



A spokeswoman for Sweden's foreign ministry said the three men, who were originally arrested in Somalia, were now back in Sweden.




Spokeswoman Nina Ersman said the three had not been charged with any offence.




Ethiopia has said it detained a number of people after its army helped drive Islamists out of Somalia's capital.




Two of the men are Swedish nationals and one has permanent residency status in Sweden. Their names have not been released.




Sweden's foreign ministry had been demanding the release of the detainees for several weeks.




"I would like to express my gratitude to all foreign ministry officials who made this possible," Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said in a statement.



A lawyer for the three men said there had been no notification from Ethiopia that they would be released.




Ethiopia's government said in April that it had detained 41 people from 17 countries after its army helped Somalia's transitional government drive militias allied to the Union of Islamic Courts out of Mogadishu at the end of last year.




Some detainees were deported from Kenya, where many Somalis fled the fighting in Mogadishu.




Ethiopia has defended the detentions as part of its efforts to combat international terrorism in the Horn of Africa.




Human rights groups say US agents have been allowed to interrogate the detainees as part of the hunt for al-Qaeda suspects in the region.



SOURCE: BBC News

[accuracy]

Jailed Terror Suspects Hold Hunger Strike

Isabel Teotonio

Staff Reporter




The Canadian terrorism suspects being held at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex began a hunger strike yesterday after one of their co-accused claimed he was beaten by jailhouse staff, say several relatives.




The incident, they say, began when Steven Chand was allegedly told by a guard that his time in the shower was up. Chand claimed he still had soap in his hair but was pulled from the shower, beaten and dragged, crying and screaming, to his cell.




According to relatives, Chand told his co-accused what had occurred before he was "thrown into the hole," said Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, wife of one of the accused.




"My husband saw (Chand) being dragged by the hair," she said, recounting what Abdul Qayyum Jamal told her on the phone. "He said (Chand) had a bruise on his head and was asking to see the doctor."




The men were among 18 adults and youths arrested last year, and alleged to be part of a homegrown terrorism cell plotting to bomb several targets in southern Ontario.




Maplehurst staff would not comment.









SOURCE: Toronto Star

[accuracy]

US Government won’t pay compensation to ex-Kazakh prisoners of Guantanamo Kazinform, Kazakhstan

22-5-07

http://www.inform.kz/showarticle.php?lang=eng&id=151768

(I cannot copy and paste the article, so please check out the link-accuracy)

[accuracy]

Naval officer sentenced to six months in prison, discharge

By KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 19, 2007
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=124988&ran=30838

NORFOLK - A Navy lawyer so disillusioned with the government's handling of foreign detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he sent classified information about 550 men in custody there to a civilian attorney was sentenced Friday to six months in prison and dismissal from the service.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz was convicted Thursday on four of five charges stemming from his actions in early January 2005, while stationed at Guantanamo Bay.

http://media.hamptonroads.com/media/content/pilotonline/2007/05/diaz-matthew208x153.jpg
Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz

The most serious conviction - violating the Espionage Act by sending classified information to someone not entitled to receive it - carried the possibility of a 10-year sentence.

The four charges carried a maximum 14-year sentence.

"I am very, very happy with the results," Diaz said before leaving the courtroom at Norfolk Naval Station. He began his sentence in the brig Friday night.

The seven-member jury of officers took more than three hours to determine Diaz's sentence - longer than they spent convicting him.

The military justice system doesn't have sentencing guidelines, only maximum punishments, and military juries have wide latitude in imposing punishments.

The sentencing hearing began with emotional testimony from the officer's ex-wife, Melissa Diaz-Reed; their daughter, Anna Marie Diaz; and his current wife, also named Anna Marie Diaz. All three women live in Jacksonville, Fla., where Diaz is currently stationed.

His 15-year-old daughter described her father as her best friend.

"He does everything for me," Anna Marie Diaz said, her voice breaking. "When I have a dance performance, he's always there. When I need help with school, he helps me."

Diaz-Reed and Diaz's wife, who is in nursing school, also offered teary-eyed accounts of how they would suffer if Diaz was sent to prison or kicked out of the Navy.

But the most riveting moments came later, when Diaz offered an unsworn statement and explained his intent when he mailed a list of the so-called "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo to Barbara Olshansky in January 2005.

Olshansky, then a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, had been part of a landmark lawsuit leading to the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul v. Bush the previous year. The court ruled on June 28, 2004, that Guantanamo detainees had a right to challenge their detention in federal court.

Diaz arrived at Guantanamo a week later for a six-month tour as deputy staff judge advocate.

He said the government's refusal to release detainee names didn't comply with the spirit of the Rasul case.

"I felt there was some stonewalling on what they were entitled to by the government," Diaz said, facing the jury. "The Supreme Court had decided, and I felt we were unnecessarily placing obstacles in the way. "

The government released the names of those in custody in 2006 in response to a lawsuit brought by The Associated Press.

Prosecutors argued the names weren't the heart of the case. It was other identifying information from the intelligence database that could have jeopardized national security, they said, such as the country where detainees were captured and the interrogation teams handling them.

"One thing I want to make clear is that this was not about the release of names," lead prosecutor Cmdr. Rex Guinn said after sentencing.

"We think this will send a clear message you can't just release classified information, no matter how good an intention you think you have."

In his 37-minute appearance before the jury, Diaz answered questions from his lawyer. He was self-critical, saying his misconduct "has caused a lot of harm to a lot of people."

He said he could have chosen other options to express his disagreement with the government's handling of the legal issues surrounding Guantanamo Bay.

"I could have gone to the chief of staff, I could have gone to the IG (inspector general)," or to his commanding officers in Guantanamo, Diaz said. "There were a lot of better ways to do this, and I didn't take those better ways."

He also criticized his decision to send the information to Olshansky anonymously, saying he mailed the information off in a goofy-looking Valentine "for selfish reasons."

"I wasn't really willing to put my neck on the line, to jeopardize my career," he said. " So I did it anonymously. I'm disgraced, I'm ashamed. I was an inspiration to my family. I let them down. I let the JAG Corps down. I let the Navy down."

Though Diaz's prison term was far less than maximum, he may be more affected in the long run by losing his job, benefits and retirement.

Military members convicted of certain crimes forfeit their pay and benefits almost immediately. The jury recommended, however, that Diaz receive his pay and benefits for six more months because of his dependents.

Rear Adm. Rick Ruehe, who oversees the Navy's Mid-Atlantic region, must approve the waiver and sign off on the jury's sentence. He cannot impose a longer or harsher punishment but could decide to lessen it.

Even if Ruehe decides not to endorse Diaz's dismissal, his conviction on an espionage charge could trigger a federal provision that would prevent him from collecting a government pension.

Diaz spent more than 20 years in uniform, entering the Army as an enlisted soldier in 1983 as a high school dropout. He earned his GED and most of the credits toward a bachelor's degree while in the Army, Diaz said Friday.

In 1991, he enrolled in Washburn University School of Law in Kansas, and re-entered the military as a member of the Navy JAG Corps in 1995.

[accuracy]

ACLU Welcomes Guantanamo Closure Bill

5/23/2007
http://www.aclu.org/natsec/gen/29864prs20070523.html

WASHINGTON - The ACLU today welcomed Senator Tom Harkin's (D-IA) introduction of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility Closure Act of 2007, a bill that would close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The bill cuts off funds for everything except sending charged or sentenced detainees to Fort Leavenworth and transferring the remaining detainees to their home countries or other countries that will not torture or abuse them. The bill would effectively end the practice of indefinite detention without charge or due process for detainees who have been held for as long as five years without charge and without knowing the reason for their detention. It will also provide an incentive for the government to finally charge those detainees the government believes are guilty of crimes against the United States.

The bill requires the president to close the facility within 120 days of enactment. Within that time, detainees will be sent either to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, KS, or transferred to another country that will not torture or abuse them. The Secretary of Defense can obtain an additional renewal period of 120 days to hold the detainee if the government is preparing charges and has a logistical need for the additional time.


"This administration has turned the Guantanamo Bay prison into a dungeon, and thrown away the key" said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Locking people up, without ever bringing charges, is not consistent with American values and must stop. Senator Harkin’s bill ensures that criminals or terrorists will be prosecuted but allows other detainees to go home."

Fort Leavenworth is the military's prison specifically designated, designed, and built by the Defense Department to hold national security prisoners. The decision to use Ft. Leavenworth closely tracks a recent statement by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who said, if elected president, "I would immediately close Guantanamo Bay, move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth and truly expedite the judicial proceedings in their cases."

"Senator Harkin’s bill sets a hard deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and restoring America’s values," said Chris Anders, legislative counsel to the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "It is tough legislation--it requires the government to finally get its act together and start charging and trying anyone alleged to be guilty, and send everyone else back to their home countries or other places that won’t torture or abuse them. The Guantanamo Bay prison violates core American values. It’s time to shut it down and return to the rule of law."

© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor New York, NY 10004

[accuracy]

Senate Moves to Expand Detainee Rights

May 25 2007
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070525/D8PBMN0G0.html

By ANNE FLAHERTY

ASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democrats are backing a bill that would grant new rights to terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including access to a lawyer regardless of whether the prisoners are put on trial.

The proposal, approved this week by the Senate Armed Services Committee, also would narrow the definition of an enemy combatant and tighten restrictions on the types of evidence used to prosecute and keep a person detained.

The bill is aimed primarily at increasing legal protections for the hundreds of people captured by the United States and held for years on suspicion of terror ties without a trial. Only those selected for prosecution - typically the most high-profile suspected terrorists - are guaranteed legal counsel and other rights when they go to court.

The legislation has raised red flags at the White House as potential veto bait and among congressional Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said he was concerned that aspects of the bill may go too far.

"Any changes have to meet the test for me that they will not compromise our ability to wage war," said Graham, R-S.C., in a telephone interview Friday.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, tucked the new detainee measure into a $649 billion defense policy bill for budget year 2008, which begins Oct. 1.

The legislation would affect the roughly 380 detainees currently held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Only two detainees have been identified to stand trial, although the Defense Department says it plans to bring charges against about 75 more. About 80 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are slated for release.

Under the current system, President Bush can detain any individual suspected of engaging in or supporting terrorism. Only those selected for trial are provided lawyers and guaranteed access to evidence used against them.

The others are appointed a military representative and regularly undergo reviews by a panel of military officers to determine whether they still pose a threat to the U.S. The panel is allowed to use hearsay and classified information as evidence - none of which is required to be provided to the detainee.

Although Democrats supported the GOP legislation at the time, many party members - including Levin - said they feared Congress did not go far enough to prevent the abuse of prisoners being held without trial.

Accordingly, Levin drafted the committee bill that would impose new restrictions when reviewing a person's status as an enemy combatant. The measure would assign each detainee legal counsel, put a military judge in charge and require the disclosure of evidence during the reviews.

It also further restricts the use of coerced testimony and hearsay evidence.

Under the current system, coerced testimony is allowed if the statement was acquired before a 2005 ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment took effect and if a judge finds it to be reliable.

The new legislation creates a new standard banning coerced testimony regardless of the date it was taken.

In addition, the bill would tighten the definition of who qualifies as an enemy combatant - a step intended to prevent the detention of people unknowingly associated with terrorist groups.

The provisions were described by a Senate Democratic aide, who requested anonymity because details will not be released until after Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess on June 4.

The committee bill was drafted behind closed doors and approved by a 25-0 vote.

Republicans, including Graham and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking minority member on the panel, did not raise any formal objections to the detainee provisions.

But Graham said he probably will try to amend the bill when the Senate debates it on the floor in late June. Graham said he is open to legislation that provides each detainee legal counsel but has concerns that the other provisions could restrict the ability to detain and prosecute terrorists.

"I am open to making the process better," Graham said. But "it has to meet the test that we're in a shooting war."

The bill does not address the issue of habeas corpus, considered to fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate and House Judiciary committees. Under the current system, military detainees are barred from filing habeas corpus petitions to protest their detentions in court.


© 2007 IAC Search & Media. All rights reserved

[accuracy]

British Resident Held At Guantanamo Faces Transfer To Jordan

26/05/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=20448

By: ANDREW O. SELSKY - Associated Press


Jamil el-Banna has been locked up by the United States for nearly five years without being charged -- arrested in Africa, allegedly tortured at a CIA "black site" in Afghanistan, then held at Guantanamo Bay -- all because of faulty British intelligence, his defenders charge.


http://www.cageprisoners.com/art_images/20070526113526.jpg

Now his lawyers have a new worry. The British government told them Friday that el-Banna had been cleared for transfer to his native Jordan, where he says he was tortured before becoming a political refugee in Britain in 1997.




His lawyers decried the move, charging that sending him back amounted to the U.S. outsourcing torture.






"We are going to block his rendition to Jordan," attorney Clive Stafford Smith told The Associated Press. "To be sure, he would be out of (Guantanamo), but it would be from the frying pan into the fire."




Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, refused to discuss el-Banna, who is under indictment in Spain for allegedly joining a terrorist group and who admits associating with Islamic extremists but denies having anything to do with al-Qaida or any other terror activity.




British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently told Parliament that he opposes el-Banna's return to Britain, where the detainee's wife and five British-citizen children live and where -- according to an opposition lawmaker -- official mishandling of intelligence information got him arrested in the first place.




Censored intelligence documents released by Britain to defense attorneys and a transcript of a Guantanamo hearing, both viewed by the AP, trace el-Banna's story:




His troubles started after a British MI5 intelligence officer visited his home near London one overcast morning in October 2002 and tried to get him to become a paid informant.




El-Banna, who is of Palestinian origin, was comfortable in Britain, repairing cars for sale at auction and performing faith healings while raising his family. But after the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., British spies were interested in him because of his associations with radical Muslims.




Abu Qatada, a Muslim cleric described by a Spanish judge as Osama bin Laden's "spiritual ambassador in Europe," had been el-Banna's neighbor in Pakistan, where el-Banna worked in the early 1990s for a Saudi charity helping Afghan refugees.




In Jordan, el-Banna belonged to a radical Palestinian support group linked to Iran and Syria -- which is what got him in trouble with Jordanian authorities.




El-Banna also had spoken with Imad Barakat Yarkas, an alleged al-Qaida cell leader later jailed in Spain, and he was among hundreds of Muslims who regularly attended sermons in Abu Qatada's London-area mosque.




But the MI5 officer wrote that el-Banna "did not give any hint of willingness to cooperate with us."




His lawyers confirmed he didn't want to become an informant.




"He had nothing to do with Islamic extremism, and he did not want his life to be one of an informant," said Stafford Smith. "He was quite happy living the way he was living; he did not want their money, and he had four (now five) young kids to look after, who did not need to be exposed to jeopardy."




Unbeknownst to el-Banna, his friend Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi living in Britain, was helping MI5 keep tabs on London's Muslim community.




At the time, Abu Qatada was in hiding to avoid arrest under Britain's anti-terrorism laws, and al-Rawi relayed messages between MI5 and the cleric. El-Banna, meanwhile, sometimes drove Abu Qatada's wife and children to the imam's hideout as a favor to al-Rawi, el-Banna's lawyers said.




Al-Rawi also recruited el-Banna on the trip that ended with their arrest in Africa. El-Banna, then on welfare while working under the table, planned to manage a Gambian peanut oil plant, and the MI5 officer assured him he could travel.




El-Banna and al-Rawi were detained at Gatwick Airport the next day, however. According to an MI5 memo written that day -- Nov. 1, 2002 -- "some form of homemade electronic device" found in al-Rawi's bag could have been used in a car bomb.




British authorities released the men three days later and let them go to Africa after deciding the device was simply "a commercially available battery charger that had been modified by al-Rawi in order to make it more powerful."




But their fate was sealed when MI5 sent the Nov. 1 memo to U.S. intelligence and alerted Gambian security, which arrested the two friends and handed them over to the CIA.




An MI5 memo 10 days later noted the men had been released in Britain because the device wasn't so suspicious after all, but that memo was never forwarded to U.S. intelligence, say el-Banna's lawyers and Parliament member Sarah Teather, whose constituents include el-Banna's family.




A lawsuit that defense lawyer Brent Mickum filed April 26 with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia charges that while in CIA custody, el-Banna was interrogated, beaten and subjected to "stress and duress techniques." It alleges he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was tortured in a dungeon-like cell at one of the CIA's "black sites."




Al-Rawi was also taken to Afghanistan, and several months later the two were moved to Guantanamo.




CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano denied abuse would have occurred. "To suggest that CIA officers beat anyone during interrogations -- or, more generally, conduct torture at all -- is simply wrong," Gimigliano told the AP.




Britain's Home Office, which oversees MI5, declined to discuss the case.




El-Banna, who turns 45 on Monday, faced a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantanamo more than two years after his arrest. The hearing was meant to determine whether he was an enemy combatant.




The transcript shows the Pentagon didn't have his name right.




While some evidence presented at the hearing remains secret, an unclassified summary alleged el-Banna is a member of al-Qaida and visited Abu Qatada while the cleric was in hiding.




The summary noted el-Banna is under indictment in Spain for allegedly joining a terrorist group. And it returned to the same dubious British intelligence, adding other errors. The summary said el-Banna "was arrested in Gambia while attempting to board an airplane with equipment that resembled a homemade electronic device."




Two years after police in Britain -- not Gambia -- confiscated the device from his friend, it was left to el-Banna to explain that British authorities had figured out it was just a battery-charger.




"The tragedy is that he is innocent," Mickum said. "Jamil is a tragic pawn in the system ... held in a legal limbo, a legal no-man's land, where he has absolutely no rights and no redress to a court."




Al-Rawi was freed from Guantanamo this March after his help for MI5 was disclosed, but Blair has ruled out British help for el-Banna.




"Jamil and Bisher were sent to Guantanamo because of the same faulty evidence provided by British security services," said Teather, the legislator. "But while Bisher has been brought home, Tony Blair has left Jamil to face mistreatment and indefinite imprisonment at the hands of America."




Confronted by Teather about the case in Parliament last month, Blair said it's important that Britain "not take on responsibility" for Guantanamo detainees who are not British citizens.




"It is always important to remember that there have been real issues about them and their conduct over a period of time," Blair said.




One of those issues is el-Banna's links to Yarkas, the alleged al-Qaida operative jailed in Spain.




Mickum said Yarkas merely hired el-Banna to perform a faith healing on his wife. The United States has not heeded an extradition request for el-Banna submitted in 2004 by Spain, where he would have the right to a trial.




-- AP writers Katherine Schrader in Washington and Mar Roman in Madrid, Spain, contributed to this report.






SOURCE: NCTimes.com

[accuracy]

Child porn gets Abu Ghraib contractor 3 years in prison

Monday, May 28, 2007
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news/policebeat.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-05-28-0155.html

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALEXANDRIA -- A U.S. contractor who worked at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for possessing child pornography. He had obtained it using the prison's computer network.

Ahmed Hasan Khan, 31, of Woodbridge was working at Abu Ghraib for contractor L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. in November 2005 when a network administrator at the prison saw that Khan had been visiting suspicious sites. A search of Khan's laptop computer later found hundreds of child pornography images, including of children as young as 4.

Khan apologized for his actions at Friday's sentencing hearing.

"I let my country down at a time when it needed its armed services the most," he said.

The three-year, five-month sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton was at the low end of sentencing guidelines that called for a term of 41 to 51 months.

It is not clear exactly what kind of work Khan was doing at Abu Ghraib. Court records indicate he held a security clearance that was revoked after the investigation.

[accuracy]

US lawyers ask Yemen to act to repatriate citizens from Guantanamo

By Khaled al-Mahidi May 27, 2007,
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1310024.php/US_lawyers_ask_Yemen_to_act_to_repatriate_citizens _from_Guantanamo

Sana'a - A team of US lawyers representing Yemeni nationals imprisoned at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appealed to the Yemeni government on Sunday to take 'assertive and affirmative' steps to secure the release of its citizens.

'The Yemen government must take assertive and affirmative steps to apply for the release of its citizens,' said Martha Rayner, a lawyer who represents two of more than 100 Yemeni men locked up at Guantanamo.

She told a Sana'a press conference that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his government should exert visible efforts for the release of Yemeni detainees.

'Of course the United States is to blame for the tragedy of Guantanamo, but the Yemeni government must shoulder some of the responsibility,' Rayner said at the news conference that was attended by detainees' families and other members of the 14-member team of US lawyers.

'They must shoulder some of the responsibility for the shameful number of men who remained at Guantanamo, and they must take responsibility to change that reality,' she added.

Rayner further said Saleh and other Yemeni officials have repeatedly made public remarks that Yemen has been demanding the repatriation of its citizens from Guantanamo.

The New York-based lawyer said Saleh needs 'to back his words with actions.'

She said that a White House press statement, issued at the conclusion of Saleh's meeting with US President George W Bush in Washington early this month, claimed that Saleh voiced his wish that Yemenis would not be released from Guantanamo.

'Our delegation wants to meet President Saleh for many reasons, but most important among these reasons is the need for the president to debunk President Bush's lie, the lie that Yemen has been behind the dearth of repatriation,' she said.

Some 384 men from several countries are still imprisoned at Guantanamo, over one quarter of them are Yemenis. Of the more than 100 Yemeni detainees, only ten have been sent home.

Five of the returning detainees were released by Yemeni authorities while the rest were charged with falsifying identification documents. None were charged with terrorism-related activities.


© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

[accuracy]

Guantanamo detainee in plea for fellow journalist

May 28, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1848263.ece

An al-Jazeera journalist held in Guantanamo Bay has made an impassioned plea for the release of Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC reporter.

Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for the Arabic satellite network, appealed to the Palestinian group holding Mr Johnston to set him free immediately and unconditionally.

The Times has obtained a copy of al-Hajj’s statement issued from the Guantanamo Bay internment camp in Cuba where he has been on hunger strike for 140 days. Addressing the kidnappers in Gaza, al-Hajj said: “Please, as brothers in one faith, consider this gift that I request of you: That you release Alan Johnston as soon as possible, without conditions.” He added that his prolonged detention without trial by the US “is not a lesson that Muslims should copy”.

Johnston, 45, was snatched in Gaza on March 12 as he drove home from the BBC’s office. A little-known group called Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) claims that it is holding him and has issued a videotape to al-Jazeera that contains foot-age of Johnston’s BBC identity card. The group has demanded the release of Abu Qatada, the radical Palestinian cleric being held at Long Lartin high security prison in Worcestershire, in return for Johnston’s freedom.

Yesterday, a top Palestinian official said that he had received assurances from Jaish al-Islam that Johnston was alive and well. “We have different channels, different contacts to reach these people and I am sure that he is well and he is healthy,” Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Palestinian Government, said in an interview at the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts.

However, there has been no concrete proof of any progress.

[accuracy]

Judge in Padilla case draws praise

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer

Mon May 28,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070528/ap_on_re_us/padilla_judge;_ylt=AhzxL1LslpLCnh7zPkrmg0NvzwcF

MIAMI - The trial of suspected al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla is by far the biggest ever for U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, and she is drawing praise for how she has handled the pressure and the complexity of the case.

Appointed by President Bush in 2004, Cooke has the least experience on the bench of any federal judge in Florida's southern district. But those in legal circles say that has not been an issue.

"Judge Cooke seems to be handling a very difficult, extremely high-profile case very well," said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who has closely followed the case. "The judge in this type of case is under enormous pressure because every action is so closely scrutinized by the attorneys, the press and the public."

Padilla and two co-defendants are accused of being part of a support cell for Islamic extremist groups involved in violence around the world, with Padilla allegedly attending an al-Qaida terror training camp.

Testimony in the trial of Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi is scheduled to resume Tuesday, with the jury likely this week to begin hearing FBI wiretap intercepts.

Before she became the district's first black woman federal judge, Cooke, 52, acquired broad legal experience. She was an assistant U.S. attorney and county attorney in Miami, was Florida's chief inspector general under former Gov. Jeb Bush and served as a federal magistrate judge in Detroit.

Cooke also worked in legal aid services and the public defender's office in Detroit after getting her law degree from Wayne State University in 1977.

Born in Sumter, S.C., Cooke grew up in Detroit where her father was a funeral director and her mother a public schools administrator. She graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1975.

The diplomatic skills she learned there may have helped her in this case. Padilla's entry in 2005 brought a whole host of complications, including defense claims that he was tortured while he was held at a Navy brig as an enemy combatant and that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder because of it.

Siding with federal prosecutors, Cooke would not permit the torture allegations to become part of the case and found Padilla mentally fit to stand trial. She also refused to dismiss the charges on claims that his lengthy detention violated constitutional speedy trial rights, ruling that what happened to Padilla before he arrived in Miami was irrelevant.

Padilla, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen, was initially accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the United States, but those allegations are not part of the Miami indictment.

Cooke has also frequently ruled for the defense, including an order early on that Padilla not be brought to her courtroom in chains and shackles. She dismissed the most serious charge in the indictment — conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas — as duplicative of other charges in the same case, but the charge was reinstated by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the government appealed.

Defense lawyers say Cooke has shown she would not just follow the government line.

"It showed true courage to rule for the defense in a case like this," said David O. Markus, president of the Miami chapter of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "There is an awful lot of pressure to rule for the government and that would have been the safer course."

Cooke declined to be interviewed, citing the ongoing trial. Federal prosecutors also declined to comment.

Miami defense attorney Neal Sonnett, who like Cooke has taught legal courses at the University of Miami, said he has known Cooke for more than 14 years.

"She is extremely bright, has a thorough understanding of criminal law and is fair to both sides," Sonnett said. "I have enormous respect for her."

____

[accuracy]

Yemen is mum so far on Gitmo repatriation

Tue, May. 29, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/122000.html

BY AHMED AL HAJ
Associated Press

SAN'A, Yemen -- A U.S. attorney representing Yemenicaptives at Guantánamo Bay said Tuesday that her group of visiting American lawyers failed to meet with Yemen's president and several senior officials to convince them to accept the return home of some of those prisoners.

''Yemen refuses to take back its detainees in the Guantánamo Bay, which contradicts official statements that the country was working to get them back,'' said Tina M. Foster, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Yemeni lawyer Khaled al Ansi, coordinator of the Yemeni Organization for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms, said that the 15 American lawyers who have been in the country for a week were ``disappointed in failing to meet the president, the interior minister and senior national security officials.''

But the lawyers met with the families of some detainees and assured them that they were still trying to solve the problem, al Ansi said.

According to Foster, after meeting with President Bush during a visit to the United States earlier this, President Ali Abdullah Saleh said he had discussed with the U.S. administration the issue of the detained Yemenis and had called for handing them over to Yemen.

''President Saleh's words should be translated into action . . . words are not enough as there are more than 100 Yemenis in detention and only eight have been returned,'' Foster told The Associated Press.

Foster added that the Yemeni government has rejected U.S. conditions for sending the Guantánamo Yemenis back to their country, which are the same as applied to other countries.

She did not elaborate on those conditions.

However, Foster said the lawyers managed to meet with Yemen Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al Kerbi and Human Rights Minister Huda al Ban.

In December, six Yemenis were released from the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay. Last June, the body of a Yemeni and two Saudi Arabians who committed suicide at the prison were sent to their homelands.

Yemen, the ancestral land of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has largely allied itself with the United States in the war on terror. About 380 men are being held at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base on suspicion of links to al Qaeda or the Taliban.

[accuracy]

Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantanamo

By Stephen Soldz

05/29/07 "ICH" -- -- The Defense Department (DoD) has just declassified a report from their Inspector General (OIG) looking at the various investigations that the Department has conducted into repeated claims of detainee abuse--a.k.a. "torture" and "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment"--banned by international and United States law. The report documents that the various DoD "investigations were, individually and in total, inadequate:

Allegations of detainee abuse were not consistently reported, investigated, or managed in an effective, systematic, and timely manner. Multiple reporting channels were available for reporting allegations and, once reported, command discretion could be used in determining the action to be taken on the reported allegation. We did not identify any specific allegations that were not reported or reported and not investigated. Nevertheless, no single entity within any level of command was aware of the scope and breadth of detainee abuse.

SERE

Perhaps the most important information in this report, however, is that it provides further documentation that psychologists were central to the development of the abusive interrogation paradigm developed at Guantanamo and migrated to Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons. In particular, the OIG provides concrete evidence that techniques developed in the US military's SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) program to help US troops at high risk of becoming POWs evade capture and resist breaking under abusive interrogations were systematically imported to Guantanamo and, less systematically, to Iraq and Afghanistan. As the report describes:

"DoD SERE training, sometimes referred to as code of conduct training, prepares select military personnel with survival and evasion techniques in case they are isolated from friendly forces. The schools also teach resistance techniques that are designed to provide U.S. military members, who may be captured or detained, with the physical and mental tools to survive a hostile interrogation and deny the enemy the information they wish to obtain. SERE training incorporates physical and psychological pressures, which act as counterresistance techniques, to replicate harsh conditions that the Service member might encounter if they are held by forces that do not abide by the Geneva Conventions." (p. 23)

As part of the SERE program, trainees are subjected to abuse, including sleep deprivation, sexual and cultural humiliation, and, in some instances, waterboarding, described by one SERE graduate thus:

"[Y]ou are strapped to a board, a washcloth or other article covers your face, and water is continuously poured, depriving you of air, and suffocating you until it is removed, and/or inducing you to ingest water. We were carefully monitored (although how they determined these limits is beyond me), but it was a most unpleasant experience, and its threat alone was sufficient to induce compliance, unless one was so deprived of water that it would be an unintentional means to nourishment.

Former Air Force officer and now psychoanalyst Eric Anders described his SERE training experience thusly:

"I remember a variety of sadistic abuses, often in the form of mind games and humiliation. It was a horrible experience, but I imagine it might have prepared me to be in the position some of the Iraqi prisoners have unfortunately found themselves in."

Central to SERE is the role of psychologists. A psychologist is required to be present during certain aspects of the process, such as waterboarding as a "safety officer," to stop the training if (s)he perceives the trainee is being overly-traumatized.

In 2005, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer reported evidence that interrogators at Guantanamo were being trained in SERE techniques; they were "reverse engineering" the resistance techniques in order to figure out how to break down detainees. While Mayer reported suspicions, direct evidence of SERE involvement at Guantanamo was lacking for another year, till, in July 2006 Salon's Mark Benjamin, in Torture Teachers reported documentary evidence that SERE was, indeed, taught at Guantanamo. In addition to documentary evidence that SERE techniques were taught at Guantanamo, Benjamin pointed out the similarities between what is done to US troops during SERE training and what was done to US detainees:

"There are striking similarities between the reported detainee abuse at both Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and the techniques used on soldiers going through SERE school, including forced nudity, stress positions, isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and exhaustion from exercise."

Michael Otterman, in his marvelous and very disturbing new book, American Torture, put together then extant evidence of SERE reverse-engineering. Though the use of SERE techniques at US detention facilities was hardly in doubt after the reporting of Mayer, Benjamin, and Otterman , it was not clear until the OIG report whether the use of the techniques was intentional or inadvertent, a result of widespread exposure to them by US personnel during training.

The new OIG report resolves this question, containing as it does official admissions that SERE was, indeed systematically taught at Guantanamo and in Iraq.

"Counterresistance techniques taught by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency [the agency responsible for SERE training] contributed to the development of interrogation policy at the U.S. Southern Command. According to interviewees, at some point in 2002, the U.S. Southern Command began to question the effectiveness of the Joint Task Force 170 (JTF-170), the organization at Guantanamo that was responsible for collecting intelligence from a group of hard core al Qaeda and Taliban detainees.

Counterresistance techniques were introduced because personnel believed that interrogation methods used were no longer effective in obtaining useful information from some detainees. On June 17, 2002, the Acting Commander, Southern Command requested that the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) provide his command with an external review of ongoing detainee intelligence collection operations at Guantanamo Bay, which included an examination of information and psychological operations plans. The CJCS review recommended that the Federal Bureau of Investigation Behavioral Science Unit, the Army's Behavioral Science Consultation Team, the Southern Command Psychological Operations Support Element, and the JTF-170 clinical psychologist develop a plan to exploit detainee vulnerabilities. The Commander, JTF-170 expanded on the CJCS recommendations and decided to also consider SERE training techniques and other external interrogation methodologies as possible DoD interrogation alternatives" (pp. 24-25).

As a result of this review, SERE was introduced at Guantanamo. Notice that psychologists were key to this process:

"On September 16, 2002, the Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency co-hosted a SERE psychologist conference at Fort Bragg for JTF-170 [the military component responsible for interrogations at Guantanamo] interrogation personnel. The Army's Behavioral Science Consultation Team from Guantanamo Bay also attended the conference. Joint Personnel Recovery Agency personnel briefed JTF-170 representatives on the exploitation techniques and methods used in resistance (to interrogation) training at SERE schools. The JTF-170 personnel understood that they were to become familiar with SERE training and be capable of determining which SERE information and techniques might be useful in interrogations at Guantanamo. Guantanamo Behavioral Science Consultation Team personnel understood that they were to review documentation and standard operating procedures for SERE training in developing the standard operating procedure for the JTF-170, if the command approved those practices. The Army Special Operations Command was examining the role of interrogation support as a " Sere Psychologist competency area" (p. 25, emphasis added.)

For those of opposed to the participation of psychologists in abusive interrogations, this document contains the first definitive proof that the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs), consisting at that point of psychologists and psychiatrists (later, the military announced that they preferred psychologists for this role), were deliberately trained in abusive SERE techniques.

According to the OIG report, SERE psychologists were apparently not directly involved in individual interrogations. Rather, their role was to train those conducting or supervising the interrogations:

"On September 24, 2002, a Joint Personnel Recovery Agency representative at the SERE conference recommended in a conference memorandum report to his Commander that their organization "not get directly involved in actual operations." Specifically, the memorandum states that the agency had "no actual experience in real world prisoner handling," developed concepts based "on our past enemies," and assumes that "procedures we use to exploit our personnel will be effective against the current detainees." In a later interview, the Commander, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency stated that his agency's support to train and teach "was so common that he probably got 15 similar reports [memoranda] a week" (p. 25).

Indeed, the report documents that SERE instructors went to Guantanamo and provided training:

"On at least two occasions, the JTF-170 requested that Joint Personnel Recovery Agency instructors be sent to Guantanamo to instruct interrogators in SERE counterresistance interrogation techniques. SERE instructors from Fort Bragg responded to Guantanamo requests for instructors trained in the use of SERE interrogation resistance techniques" (p. 26).

These efforts led to a October 11, 2002 memorandum and legal brief requesting approval of a selection of these SERE techniques. This request led to December 2, 2002 approval of many of these SERE-based techniques by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld

All evidence is that these SERE techniques continued to be used, with active participation of the BST psychologists. For example, it is well documented (see the interrogation log) that the chair of the Guantanamo BSCT team, psychologist Major John Leso participated in the abusive interrogation (a.k.a. torture) of prisoner 063, Mohammed al-Qahtani. A July 14, 2004 memo from the FBI to the Army Criminal Investigation Command documents the effects of this interrogation on al-Qatani:

"In September or October of 2002 FBI agents observed that a canine was used in an aggressive manner to intimidate detainee __ after he had been subjected to intense isolation for over three months. During that time period, __ was totally isolated (with the exception of occasional interrogations) in a cell that was always flooded with light. By late November, the detainee was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non-existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in the corner of a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end). It is unknown to the FBI whether such extended isolation was approved by DoD authorities."


SERE in Iraq and Afghanistan

According to the report, these SERE techniques "migrated" to Afghanistan and Iraq:

"Counterresistance interrogation techniques in the U.S. Central Command Area of Operation derived from multiple sources that included migration of documents and personnel, the JTF-Guantanamo Assessment Team, and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency" (p. 26, emphasis added).

The report also provides direct evidence that SERE techniques were deliberately brought to Iraq.

"The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency was also responsible for the migration of counterresistance interrogation techniques into the U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility. In September 2003, at the request of the Commander, TF-20, the Commander, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency sent an interrogation assessment team to Iraq to provide advice and assistance to the task force interrogation mission. The TF-20 was the special mission unit that operated in the CJTF-7 area of operations" (p. 28).

In fact, TF-20 was a 40-person special forces unit, with its own "private aviation unit" tasked with capturing or killing former Iraqi Baath leadership and resistance leaders ("high value targets"). TF-20 was accused of being "trigger happy," leading to innocent civilian deaths. Those captured by TF-20 were, according to the OIG report, subject to SERE techniques. In Iraq it also appears that SERE staff got to participate directly in interrogations:

"The Commander, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, explained that he understood that the detainees held by TF-20 were determined to be Designated Unlawful Combatants (DUCs), not Enemy Prisoners of War (EPW) protected by the Geneva Convention and that the interrogation techniques were authorized and that the JPRA team members were not to exceed the standards used in SERE training on our own Service members. He also confirmed that the U.S. Joint Forces Command J-3 and the Commanding Officer, TF-20 gave a verbal approval for the SERE team to actively participate in "one or two demonstration" interrogations" (p. 28).

It appears that TF-20 were so brutal in their application of SERE techniques that there was disagreement between SERE and TF-20 staff regarding the appropriateness of using the SERE-based techniques:

"SERE team members and TF-20 staff disagreed about whether SERE techniques were in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. When it became apparent that friction was developing, the decision was made to pull the team out before more damage was done to the relationship between the two organizations. The SERE team members prepared After Action Reports that detailed the confusion and allegations of abuse that took place during the deployment" (p. 28).


American Psychological Association response

With the release of the OIG's report, it is now irrefutable that both SERE psychologists and Guantanamo BSCT psychologists were involved in the development of these forms of interrogation abuse, forms of interrogation that clearly constitute psychological torture and were illegal under the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and various US laws until the 2006 Military Commissions Act granted immunity to those who had previously broken these laws during the "Global War On Terror."

Since psychologists became aware that their profession was being utilized to teach and conduct abusive interrogations, there has been a movement among them to ban participation in abusive interrogations. In response, the American Psychological Association (APA), the main psychologist professional organizations adopted a resolution condemning torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and forbidding members to participate in abusive treatment.

However, like the Bush administration, the APA is always against torture and abusive treatment but never actually sees it. Thus, the APA has never expressed concern as reports have come flooding out suggesting that abuse treatment (whether formally "torture" or merely "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment") is common in US detention facilities holding so-called enemy combatants. Neither has the APA expressed concern at the repeated reports of psychologist participation in abusive interrogations. Rather, they have attacked the critics of psychologist abuse. In a statement that he probably now regrets for making so obvious his contempt for those shedding light on psychologists' role in abusive interrogations, the 2006 APA President, Gerald Koocher, wrote: "A number of opportunistic commentators masquerading as scholars have continued to report on alleged abuses by mental health professionals."

However, the APA, like other health provider professional organizations felt the heat as these reports escalated. Thus, in June 2005 they convened a Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS), clearly designed to provide a rubber stamp on the participation of psychologists in national security interrogations. After 2_ days of deliberations this Task Force concluded:

"It is consistent with the APA Code of Ethics for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation- or information-gathering processes for national security-related purposes. While engaging in such consultative and advisory roles entails a delicate balance of ethical considerations, doing so puts psychologists in a unique position to assist in ensuring that such processes are safe and ethical for all participants."

Of course, the value of a Task Force report depends upon the composition and expertise of the membership of that Task Force. So who did the APA see fit to include on its Task Force? Strangely, when the report was released, it did not include a list of members; its authorship was, rather, anonymous. When members asked who was on the task Force, they were told the membership was confidential. (For the record it should be noted that the PENS membership, while kept from the public and the broader Association membership, was, in fact, released to the APAs Council of Representatives) When, a year later, the membership was finally published by Mark Benjamin in Salon, it was revealed that six of nine voting members were from the military and intelligence agencies with direct connections to interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere; the conclusion of the task Force's deliberations was obviously foregone.

Especially relevant, given the revelations in this newly-released OIG, at least two of the members of this Task Force had direct SERE connections. Captain Bryce E. Lefeve had served at the Navy SERE school from 1990 to 1993 before joining the special forces and becoming the "Joint Special Forces Task Force psychologist to Afghanistan in 2002, where he lectured to interrogators and was consulted on various interrogation techniques." (Criously,, he has "lectured on Brainwashing: The Method of Forceful Interrogation".)

But perhaps most disturbingly, on the task force was Colonel Morgan Banks. His biography states that "[h]e is the senior Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) Psychologist, responsible for the training and oversight of all Army SERE Psychologists, who include those involved in SERE training. He provides technical support and consultation to all Army psychologists providing interrogation support. His initial duty assignment as a psychologist was to assist in establishing the Army's first permanent SERE training program involving a simulated captivity experience."

Given what the OIG's report reveals about the central role of SERE in the development of US abusive interrogation techniques, as well as revelations regarding other PENS members, it appears ever more likely that the APA appointed some of this country's top torturers to formulate its policy on participation in abusive interrogations. The PENS report lacks any credibility. If the APA maintained a shred of decency, they would take the opportunity provided by the release of the OIG report to admit that they made a mistake in creating the PENS Task Force and would immediately set aside the PENS report and begin a new open discussion of the facts and the ethics involved in participation in national security interrogations.

In addition, if the APA were really concerned about ethics and decency, they would join the call by Physicians for Human Rights and by bioethicist Steven Miles for an independent Congressional (or Congressional sponsored) investigation into detainee abuse and the role of psychologists and other health professionals in that abuse. For only a full investigation can clear up the question of exactly what types of abuse went on in the US detention facilities and exactly what role did psychologists and other health professionals play in these abuses. If, as the APA repetitively states as if a mantra, its policies are based upon "our belief that having psychologists consult with interrogation teams makes an important contribution toward keeping interrogations safe and ethical," then the APA would surely want an investigation to reveal any abuses that occurred so as to help prevent future abuses. Of course, if, despite the mountains of evidence, psychologists truly are innocent of involvement in detainee abuse, only a full investigation could clear the air.

Unfortunately, I don't expect the APA to set aside the PENS report nor to endorse an independent investigation of detainee abuse. All evidence is that, from the beginning, APA actions have had one goal in mind, to maintain psychologist involvement in interrogations at all cost. After 9/11, the APA sought to show the government that psychologists were key players in "homeland security" [see Making psychological research a priority for countering terrorism]. To eschew involvement, abuse or not, would be to forsake the access and influence for which they have fought so hard.

"Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog."


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17790.htm

[accuracy]

Pentagon: Taped Guantánamo confession still secret

Tue, May. 29, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/122572.html

By Miami Herald Staff and
Associated Press report

A tape in which a Guantánamo captive allegedly confesses to masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks has sparked an internal debate at the Pentagon, with some officials fearful its release could inspire al Qaeda supporters, a military spokesman said Tuesday.

For now, the Defense Department has decided not to release the audiotape of Khalid Sheik Mohammed from a March 10 hearing at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in which he claims involvement in 31 terrorist plots, spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters in Washington.

''You can imagine there certainly are concerns about how an audio recording of that nature might be used by adversaries to embolden their efforts,'' Whitman said.

A 26-page transcript released by the Pentagon had Mohammed confessing to plotting a reign of worldwide anti-American terror -- from the 9/11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania to unrealized assassination plots against Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Pope John Paul II.

The Pentagon held secret hearings for Mohammed and 13 other ''high value'' detainees who were transferred to the remote Navy base from CIA custody last year, by order of President Bush.

It imposed a news blackout on reporting from the proceedings, then released redacted transcripts -- and followed up with an audio recording of another captive's hearing, for Abu Faraj al Libi, which he didn't attend.

So the only voices on that tape -- posted on a Pentagon website recently -- are of anonymous U.S. military personnel talking among themselves about what non-secret information is available to support the Bush administration standard to hold him indefinitely as an enemy combatant.

A Mohammed tape would include the U.S.-educated man boasting he was an al Qaeda operations chieftain -- if it is a true reflection of the Mohammed transcript.

''It's one thing to have a written transcript; it's another one to have somebody's own voice,'' said Whitman, who had earlier defended banning reporters from the hearings as a national security necessity.

About 380 men are held at Guantánamo Bay, most accused of links to a Qaeda or the Taliban. Many have been held at the prison for more than five years.

Only three have been charged with crimes.

[accuracy]

Guantanamo Captives and Iguanas Need Equal Rights, Lawyer Urges

By David Altaner
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=afyUSUmXMCAo&refer=muse

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- If a soldier runs over an iguana at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, it's a serious offense and draws a $10,000 fine. If he hits a terrorism suspect, it's deemed ``mild non-injurious physical contact,'' which carries no penalty.

So writes lawyer and human-rights campaigner Clive Stafford Smith in his engrossing account of more than 50 detainees on the base that he says he has represented over the past three years, ``Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons.''

More than 750 captives have been on the base; only 10 have ever been charged with a crime, he says. Detainees who get bottled water drink the Freedom Springs brand, which has an American flag on the label. Soldiers greet each other with the salute, ``Honor bound,'' and the snappy response, ``To defend freedom, soldier.''

The military is ``deeply oblivious to irony,'' says Stafford Smith. To the camp salute, one attorney would respond, ``To defend the U.S. Constitution,'' writes the author, who argues that the constitution doesn't apply to Guantanamo.

Stafford Smith is the founder and legal director of Reprieve, a U.K. charity that defends people facing the death penalty or detention without trial. Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the Order of the British Empire in 2000 for his humanitarian advocacy. He is a citizen of both the U.K. and the U.S.

In ``Bad Men,'' Stafford Smith outlines the human cost of President George W. Bush's ``War on Terror.'' He writes with a restrained and sometimes weary tone born of a decade defending prisoners on death row in Louisiana, alternating between carefully reasoned arguments and humor: Even an ex-Vietnam commander who drives a truck with a bumper sticker declaring his love for ``My AK-47'' thinks torture at Guantanamo Bay is a bad, bad idea, Stafford Smith writes.

Feeding Tube

Stafford Smith admits he hasn't seen any torture at the detention center, though he says he has witnessed the force- feeding of hunger strikers. In one grueling account, he describes a client pulling a 43-inch, or 1.1-meter, feeding tube out of his nose, inch by agonizing inch.

Other detainees he has represented at Guantanamo include a 14-year-old boy; an al-Jazeera cameraman; and one of the 10 men actually charged with a crime.

Stafford Smith spells out what he says is wrong with military tribunals, the Bush administration's alternative to U.S. courts. After World War II, he notes, the Allies paid scrupulous attention to due process when they put top Nazi leaders, men accused of shocking crimes, on trial at Nuremberg.

Scripted Trial

In Guantanamo, by contrast, detainee Binyam Mohammed faced a trial that was literally scripted -- nine single-spaced pages, starting with ``Please be seated,'' the author says. Before the event, three military prosecutors quit. One called the process rigged, with the CIA withholding evidence that could help the defendant for ``security reasons.''

Last June, military commissions were halted after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Bush administration had acted without congressional approval. In September, in the heat of an election campaign, Bush got that approval, with the support of several dozen Democrats.

Stafford Smith claims Americans, even liberals, have a blind spot. They have a beautiful constitution that has enshrined a list of freedoms for more than 200 years. That constitution, however, is an agreement only between Americans and their government; it doesn't apply to foreigners, Stafford Smith says.

``There was no need for Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz to justify why foreigners don't have legal rights -- they just don't,'' he writes.

For the Guantanamo attorneys, that necessitated a different approach, he says: ```Equal rights with iguanas' became our clarion call.''

``Bad Men'' is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (308 pages 16.99 pounds).

(David Altaner writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

[accuracy]

Kuwait court upholds acquittal of ex-Guantanamo inmates

5/30/2007
Source ::: AFP
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Gulf%2C+Middle+East+%26+Africa&month=May2007&file=World_News2007053014141.xml

KUWAIT CITY • Kuwait's appeals court yesterday upheld the acquittal of two former Guantanamo Bay inmates on charges of fighting US forces in Afghanistan under Al Qaeda and the Taleban. The two Kuwaiti men, Omar Rajab Amin and Abdullah Kamel Al Kundari, were acquitted by the lower court in March because of lack of evidence.

The public prosecutor in Kuwait, a staunch ally of the United States, had charged them with endangering the emirate's ties with friendly nations by joining Al Qaeda and Taleban to fight US and Nato forces in Afghanistan. The government can still challenge the verdict before the court cassation, whose rulings are final.

The two men were repatriated to Kuwait on September 15 after spending more than four years in the US military prison. They were released by Kuwaiti authorities in March following their acquittal. They told the courts that they had gone to Afghanistan to do charity work and denied belonging to a terror network.

Amin and Kundari are among eight Kuwaitis so far repatriated from the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. All the six others have been cleared by Kuwaiti courts.

Four other Kuwaitis are still being held at Guantanamo. Local media reported earlier in May that they will be freed by the United States within the next four months. Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Al Sabah returned to Kuwait yesterday after a week-long visit to Washington where he discussed the fate of the four Kuwaitis among other issues.

[accuracy]

Guantanamo inmate found dead

By Jane Sutton in Miami
May 31, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,21824811-5005962,00.html

A SAUDI Arabian prisoner died of an apparent suicide at the Guantanamo Bay naval base yesterday, the US military said

"The detainee was found unresponsive and not breathing in his cell by guards. The detainee was pronounced dead by a physician after all lifesaving measures had been exhausted," the US Southern Command in Miami said in a statement.

The military did not indicate how the prisoner died.

He is the fourth detainee to die of apparent suicide at the detention camp, which opened in January 2002 and holds about 380 foreign terrorist suspects on the US naval base in southeastern Cuba.

Three other prisoners - two Saudis and a Yemeni - hanged themselves with clothing and bedding in their cells last June, and their deaths are still under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

"The remains of the deceased detainee are being treated with the utmost respect. A cultural adviser is assisting the Joint Task Force to ensure that the remains are handled in a culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner," the Southern Command said.

It said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service had begun an investigation.

The latest death of a prisoner comes eight days after a new commander took over the military task force that runs the controversial five-year-old detention centre.

Rear Admiral Mark H Buzby took over command of the prison camp last week, replacing Rear Admiral Harry Harris, who was new to the job when the previous suicides took place last year.

The United States has faced growing criticism over its indefinite detention at Guantanamo of men it considers "unlawful enemy combatants" not entitled to the protections granted prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

It opened the prison camp shortly after the September 11 attacks that killed 3000 people in New York in 2001, and says the prison is needed to prevent dangerous al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from returning to the battlefield, and to extract information that could help prevent future attacks.

Human rights activists, who have long urged Washington to close the Guantanamo prison operation, denounced the earlier deaths as a sign of desolation while the US military characterised them as acts of "asymmetrical warfare" in the war on terrorism.

A military tribunal was scheduled to convene on Monday at Guantanamo to arraign two prisoners on war crimes. The earlier suicides also occurred days before a war crimes tribunal was to convene.

[accuracy]

Dead Gitmo captive was Saudi military veteran

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
May. 31, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/124352.html

The Saudi Arabian detainee who died at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, this week was a Saudi military veteran who reportedly told his captors that, had he wanted to kill Americans, he would've done it in his oil-rich homeland when he was trained by U.S. soldiers.

http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2007/05/31/12/271-53107gitmo.embedded.prod_affiliate.56.jpg
A U.S. Army soldier shows a media tour at Camp V in the detention center how guards regularly check on detainees in their single occupancy cells to avert suicide and self-harm attempts.


Abdul Rahman Ma Ath Thafir al Amri, 34, was found dead about 1 p.m. Wednesday in his cell at the remote detention center at the U.S. Navy base in Southeast Cuba.

Two separate sources with knowledge of the case who spoke to The Miami Herald on condition of anonymity identified the dead man as Amri, and also gave his internment serial number as 199.

He was born on April 17, 1973, in Taif, Saudi Arabia, according to Pentagon detainee records.

A check of military documents and court records indicates that -- like the three Arab men who committed suicide in simultaneous hangings a year ago -- Amri was part of the detainee population who had never met with an American attorney across about five years in U.S. detention.

According to Guantánamo documents released by the Defense Department more than a year ago, Amri told a military review panel through an unnamed U.S. military officer that he had spent nearly 10 years in the Saudi army and had been at times trained by U.S. troops in his homeland.

He said he went to Afghanistan in September 2001 to answer a call by a fellow Muslim government for jihad -- the Islamic term for holy war, or struggle -- and was at Tora Bora, and had even seen the al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from afar.

''His intent was to go and fight for a cause that he believed in as a Muslim toward jihad, not to go and fight against the Americans,'' according to a report written by the U.S. military officer for the Pentagon review panel that subsequently confirmed his status as ``enemy combatant.''

In the document, Amri reportedly told his captors that he sometimes went by the nickname ``Abu Anas.''

But, he said, he must have been confused with another man of the same name who allegedly made a movie about the 9/11 attacks, because, he said, he never finished middle school.

And, the officer wrote the panel, ''had he wanted to kill Americans,'' he could have done that in his homeland ``while he was side by side with them in Saudi Arabia.''

Agents with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service were at Guantánamo Thursday investigating the circumstances of the man's death -- the first suicide in nearly a year by a detainee at the offshore detention center housing about 380 enemy combatants.

The NCIS is still investigating the triple suicides, the first deaths of detainees in five years of Guantánamo detention and interrogation operations.

The Pentagon was expected to release more details later Thursday about the death and any arrangements being made for an autopsy, Muslim burial rites and perhaps repatriation.

In Miami Thursday, Southern Command spokesman José Ruiz confirmed that Amry was found dead in Camp 5 -- a 100-cell steel-and-cement-block building whose population includes captives who are regularly interrogated.

Ruiz would not describe the appearance of the man or the method of death.

Commanders have long pointed to Camp 5 as among the most suicide proof. Cells are spartan, with a steel platform fused to the wall on which guards supply a mattress, aluminum toilet and wash basin welded to the walls and a door with a slot through which meals are passed.

The first permanent upgrade to temporary prison camp facilities, it opened in May 2004 and features a state-of-the-art, closed-circuit monitoring system, central locks and air conditioning that can seem chilly in contrast to the open-air Caribbean-front cellblocks at Camp Delta.

It has special interrogation cells, outfitted with faux Persian carpets, blue velour reclining chairs with an ankle shackle point, monitors, panic buttons and open-air, cage-like recreation areas.

Reporters are told on media tours that guards constantly watch the cells to avert suicide and self-harm episodes and that each detainee can spend as much as 22 hours in the cell -- if he chooses to take a two-hour-a-day exercise period in a 20-by-10-foot recreation yard encircled by a chain-linked fence.

Copyright 2007 Miami Herald Media Co

[accuracy]

A Legal Debate in Guantánamo on Boy Fighters

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/03/us/03gitmo.600.jpg
Layne Morris, a housing administrator in West Valley City, Utah, was partly blinded in a battle involving Omar Ahmed Khadr, who was 15 at the time. An American soldier was mortally wounded in the firefight.

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
June 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/us/03gitmo.html?ex=1338523200&en=c25730dd864cbf6b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The facts of Omar Ahmed Khadr’s case are grim. The shrapnel from the grenade he is accused of throwing ripped through the skull of Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer, who was 28 when he died.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/02/us/03gitmo190.jpg
Omar Ahmed Khadr

To American military prosecutors, Mr. Khadr is a committed Al Qaeda operative, spy and killer who must be held accountable for killing Sergeant Speer in 2002 and for other bloody acts he committed in Afghanistan.

But there is one fact that may not fit easily into the government’s portrait of Mr. Khadr: He was 15 at the time.

His age is at the center of a legal battle that is to begin tomorrow with an arraignment by a military judge at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of Mr. Khadr, whom a range of legal experts describe as the first child fighter in decades to face war-crimes charges. It is a battle with implications as large as the growing ranks of child fighters around the world.

Defense lawyers argue that military prosecutors are violating international law by filing charges that date from events that occurred when Mr. Khadr was 15 or younger. Legal concepts that are still evolving, the lawyers say, require that countries treat child fighters as victims of warfare, rather than war criminals.

The military prosecutors say such notions may be “well-meaning and worthy,” but are irrelevant to the American military commissions at Guantánamo. Mr. Khadr is one of only three Guantánamo detainees to face charges under the law establishing the commissions, passed by Congress last year.

“International law,” the Justice Department asserted in a court filing in the case last week, “does not prohibit an individual under 18 from being prosecuted for war crimes.” Even so, prosecutors said that if they won a conviction, they would seek something less than a life term, given Mr. Khadr’s age. He is 20 now.

Whatever the outcome, his case seems destined to become a landmark, though some scholars say not enough attention has been given to its importance. “What is the precedent that we are setting with this unique step?” asked Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written about child fighters.

Mr. Khadr’s case offers a snapshot of relatively new questions surrounding the legal treatment of child fighters globally, though advocates for children have tended to focus less on young terrorists and more on children who fight in civil wars, like Ishmael Beah, whose best-selling memoir, “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” recounts his bloody days as a child soldier in Sierra Leone’s civil war.

Mr. Khadr may not be the most sympathetic figure for those pressing for the more forgiving interpretation of international law. He was born in Canada to a family with such deep Al Qaeda ties that some newspapers there have called them Canada’s first family of terrorism.

He is the youngest detainee at Guantánamo Bay, nearly blind in one eye from injuries sustained during the July 2002 firefight in which Sergeant Speer was mortally wounded and another American soldier was severely injured. Last week, Mr. Khadr said he wanted to fire all of his American lawyers, and some of them said they understood why he might distrust Americans after five years at Guantánamo.

Still, they argue that war-crimes prosecutors should focus on the adults who press children into service, not on the children themselves. The charges against Mr. Khadr, they said in a recent court filing, cross a line in the treatment of children that no other country has crossed “in modern history.”

The prosecutors, they say, included in their charges acts that occurred when Mr. Khadr was younger than 10. Mr. Khadr “was subject to undue adult influences,” said Muneer I. Ahmad, an associate professor at the American University Washington College of Law, who has represented Mr. Khadr.

“If Omar had had his free choice,” Professor Ahmad said, “what he would have chosen to do is ride horses, play soccer and read Harry Potter books.”

It is an appeal to emotion that the prosecutors are likely to meet with their own. Sergeant Speer left a wife and two small children. His widow, Tabitha, said in an e-mail exchange with a reporter last week that Mr. Khadr’s youth entitled him to no special consideration.

“Given the opportunity, he would do it all over again,” she wrote. “He was trained to do exactly what he did, regardless of his age.”

To the prosecutors, Mr. Khadr is the essence of a young man who should be held to adult standards. American officials say his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, who was killed in a shootout with Pakistani forces in 2003, was a senior deputy to Osama bin Laden.

One of Mr. Khadr’s brothers is in a wheelchair as a result of that 2003 shootout; another told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation “we are an Al Qaeda family.” Ahmed Khadr traveled internationally from Canada under the auspices of handling charity money for Muslims. In the mid-1990s, he was held for a time in Pakistan on suspicion of helping finance the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad.

After he was released, the Khadrs and several of their six children moved from Canada to Afghanistan, where they lived at times in the same compound as Osama bin Laden, officials have said. “All of the children were indoctrinated into the Al Qaeda way of thinking,” said the chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/03/us/03gitmo_2.190.jpg
Col. Morris D. Davis is prosecuting Mr. Khadr, who is 20 now.

After Sept. 11, Mr. Khadr made deliberate choices to join Al Qaeda and eventually to kill Sergeant Speer, Colonel Davis said in a recent interview. “There is a difference,” Colonel Davis said, “between a 15-year-old who makes a spur-of-the-moment decision and someone who made a long-term choice.”

Captured bloody and bullet-riddled after the firefight that killed Sergeant Speer, Mr. Khadr has been held at Guantánamo since 2002. At least three other juveniles, perhaps as young as 12, were also held there for a time. But they were released in January 2004, the military said.

Mr. Khadr’s lawyers have said in court that he has been subject to physical and psychological torture that exploited his youth, another example of what they say is a violation of international principles that children be accorded special protections.

In legal filings, the lawyers have asserted, for example, that an interrogator at Guantánamo told Mr. Khadr when he was 17 that if he did not cooperate he would be sent to Egypt where he would be confronted by “Soldier No. 9,” a man who the interrogators said would be sent to rape him.

Asked about the accusations, a Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, said they “may be raised by counsel during the course of the trial” but he would not discuss the specifics of the accusations. Commander Gordon added that detainees “have frequently made allegations of abuse while in detention in order to garner public support.”

In their filings, the prosecutors concede that some treaties require special treatment of children caught in warfare. Some of those treaties, they noted, have not been ratified by the United States, and others do not specifically ban prosecution of combatants who are 15 or older.

Some legal experts acknowledge that it is difficult to define precisely what international law requires in the treatment of child fighters. It is a fluid discipline, with few enforcement mechanisms, and there are inconsistent precedents and treaty provisions.

But even those who say there is no bar to the war crimes prosecutions of youthful fighters say the growing use of child fighters around the world means that Mr. Khadr’s case could become pivotal.

“More and more child soldiers are being recruited, and they are committing heinous crimes. This is an issue the international community is going to have to confront,” said Michael A. Newton, a former military prosecutor and expert on the law of war who teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School.

The two sides in the Khadr case interpret some international legal documents differently. One subject on which they differ is a treaty to which the United States is a party, a 2002 United Nations agreement dealing with child fighters.

The defense notes that the agreement requires countries to demobilize captured child fighters and to provide assistance for their physical and psychological recovery “and their social reintegration.”

The defense lawyers say that means sending them home. That would be inconsistent with the potential life term Mr. Khadr faces on charges of murder, attempted murder, spying, conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.

But government lawyers note that the child-soldier treaty does not expressly rule out war crimes prosecutions for juveniles. Another international child-soldier provision that has become a central issue in Mr. Khadr’s case is a law approved by the United Nations for the prosecution of war crimes after the Sierra Leone civil war in the 1990s. It specifically provides that “persons of 15 years of age” and older can be charged with war crimes.

Colonel Davis said that was a significant precedent. “If the United Nations has signed on to the principle that people who are 15 can be prosecuted for war crimes,” he said, “the notion that we’re blazing a new trail with Mr. Khadr is a false assumption.”

But the former chief war crimes prosecutor for Sierra Leone, David M. Crane, said in an interview that soon after he was appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations in 2002, he announced that he would not prosecute anyone under 18.

Mr. Crane, a former senior Pentagon legal official who is now a professor at Syracuse University Law School, said the Sierra Leone civil war included a catalogue of horrific acts by teenagers and children. But he said he concluded that warriors under 18 did not have the intellectual and emotional maturity to be prosecuted for war crimes.

“I called them as much victims as the people they raped, maimed and mutilated,” he said.

One person who has reached a different conclusion about the culpability of child fighters is Layne Morris, a housing administrator in a Salt Lake City suburb. Mr. Morris is a former Army Special Forces sergeant, who, like Mr. Khadr, is half-blind because of the firefight that day outside Khost, Afghanistan.

On a recent day, Mr. Morris remembered the stream of shots from AK-47s inside a compound a coalition patrol had surrounded. He remembered the hand grenades that kept coming over the wall. And he described the feeling of the shrapnel that took half his sight.

He said the battle did not unfold quickly, as it sometimes seems in the retelling. American forces surrounded the compound. And then they waited. Some women from the compound emerged and were allowed to leave, Mr. Morris said. A boy fighter would have had the chance to walk out of the gate, too, he said.

There were shots. And more waiting, as the Americans called for air support.

Anyone who was inside had a choice of fighting or surrendering, he said, including Mr. Khadr.

“There is just no way you can say this is a poor befuddled, brainwashed kid,” Mr. Morris said. “This is a kid who made a whole lot of decisions on his own.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[accuracy]

The Tortured Lives of Interrogators

Veterans of Iraq, N. Ireland and Mideast Share Stark Memories

By Laura Blumenfeld

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 4, 2007;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/03/AR2007060301121_pf.html

CHICAGO -- The American interrogator was afraid. Of what and why, he couldn't say. He was riding the L train in Chicago, and his throat was closing.

In Iraq, when Tony Lagouranis interrogated suspects, fear was his friend, his weapon. He saw it seep, dark and shameful, through the crotch of a man's pants as a dog closed in, barking. He smelled it in prisoners' sweat, a smoky odor, like a pot of lentils burning. He had touched fear, too, felt it in their fingers, their chilled skin trembling.

But on this evening, Lagouranis was back in Illinois, taking the train to a bar. His girlfriend thought he was a hero. His best friend hung out with him, watching reruns of "Hawaii Five-O." And yet he felt afraid.

"I tortured people," said Lagouranis, 37, who was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq from January 2004 until January 2005. "You have to twist your mind up so much to justify doing that."

Being an interrogator, Lagouranis discovered, can be torture. At first, he was eager to try coercive techniques. In training at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., instructors stressed the Geneva Conventions, he recalled, while classmates privately admired Israeli and British methods. "The British were tough," Lagouranis said. "They seemed like real interrogators."

But interrogators for countries that pride themselves on adhering to the rule of law, such as Britain, the United States and Israel, operate in a moral war zone. They are on the front lines in fighting terrorism, crucial for intelligence-gathering. Yet they use methods that conflict with their societies' values.

The border between coercion and torture is often in dispute, and the U.S. government is debating it now. The Bush administration is nearing completion of a new executive order setting secret rules for CIA interrogation that may ban waterboarding, a practice that simulates drowning. Last September, President Bush endorsed an "alternative set of procedures," which he described as "tough," for questioning high-level detainees. And in Iraq last month, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander, warned troops that the military does not sanction "torture or other expedient methods to obtain information."

The world of the interrogator is largely closed. But three interrogators allowed a rare peek into their lives -- an American rookie who served with the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion and two veteran interrogators from Britain and Israel. The veterans, whose wartime experiences stretch back decades, are more practiced at finding moral balance. They use denial, humor, indignation. Even so, these older men grapple with their own fears -- and with a clash of values.

That clash, said Darius Rejali, a political scientist who has studied torture and democracy, can torment interrogators: "Nothing is more toxic than guilt, which is typical with democratic interrogators. Nazis, on the other hand, don't have these problems."

For Lagouranis, problems include "a creeping anxiety" on the train, he said. The 45-minute ride to Chicago's O'Hare airport "kills me." He feels as if he can't get out "until they let me out." Lagouranis's voice was boyish, but his face was gray. The evening deepened his 5 o'clock shadow and the puffy smudges under his eyes.

Not long ago in Iraq, he felt "absolute power," he said, over men kept in cages. Lagouranis had forced a grandfather to kneel all night in the cold and bombarded others in metal shipping containers with the tape of the self-help parody "Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction," by comedians Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo. ("They hated it," Lagouranis recalled. "Like, 'Please! Just stop that voice!' ")

Now Lagouranis's power had dissolved into a weakness so fearful it dampened his upper lip. Sometimes, on the train, he has to get up and pace. But he can't escape.

An Island in the Mediterranean

James, an amiable man with a red-to-white beard, shook his head when told of Lagouranis: "He's full of self-pity."

James, 65, was one of Britain's most experienced interrogators in Northern Ireland. Starting in 1971, James said, he worked for the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), interrogating Irish nationalists Gerry Adams, Bobby Sands and others whom the British government suspected of being terrorists. Peter Taylor, a leading historian of the conflict in Northern Ireland, said he believes that "James's account is entirely credible."

Late one night in 1993, three Irish Republican Army gunmen crept up to James's door. "They came to get me," James said. Given a 20-minute warning following a tip to the RUC, he and his wife escaped, ultimately to an island in the Mediterranean. James agreed to talk if his last name and location were withheld. "They haven't a clue I'm here."

Driving along winding, stony roads, past goats and grapevines, James had this advice for Lagouranis in Chicago: "You've got to get up and get on with it -- that's what we did."

James had had no training, but the 18-hour days that made his neck ache taught him what he needed: good rapport, good intelligence, great fear. "Yes, a bloke would get a cuff in the ear or he might brace against the wall. Yes, they had sleep deprivation," he said. "But we did not torture."

Once, IRA leader Brendan Hughes claimed that James had cocked a gun to his head. James does not deny it. "You fight fire with fire," he said, the memory igniting his blue eyes.

He noted that the sectarian killings dropped off: "If it's going to save lives, you're entitled to use whatever means you can." How do you fight bad guys and stay good? "You don't. You can't."

The only interrogation James regrets was of Patrick McGee, under arrest for IRA activity. McGee did not crack, which meant he would go free. As McGee walked out, "he just stared at you," James recalled. "Evil was hanging out of him." James spat in his face. "He never even blinked. It was not satisfying, it was humiliating. I lost my cool."

James stopped his car at the edge of the ocean. According to Greek mythology, a god frolicked on this beach. Vacationers drank iced coffee and oiled the air with coconut lotion. But James seemed to be somewhere else, cloudy and turbulent, in his head.

"My friend once saw a guy planting a bomb," he said. He laughed. "My friend tied a rope around the guy's ankle, and made him defuse it. Now t hat's how to deal with a ticking bomb."

Chicago, 8 p.m.

"All of Iraq was a ticking time bomb," Lagouranis said, downing his fourth of seven beers. He had joined the Army before 9/11 to learn Arabic. He didn't expect to go to war.

He was sitting on a night off at the California Clipper bar, where he works as a bouncer. The bartender joked that Lagouranis should be tougher on customers: "You should 'go Abu Ghraib.' "

At Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the site of the 2003-04 abuse scandal, Lagouranis used to relax in the old execution chamber. He and a friend would sit near the trapdoor and read the Arabic scratched into the wall. They found a dirty brown rope. It was the hangman's noose. "If there is an evil spot in the world, that was one of them," Lagouranis said.

At Abu Ghraib and sometimes at the facilities in Mosul, north Babil province and other places where Lagouranis worked, the Americans were shot at and attacked with mortar fire. "Then I get a prisoner who may have done it," he said. "What are you going to do? You just want to get back at somebody, so you bring this dog in. 'Finally, I got you.' "

Lagouranis's tools included stress positions, a staged execution and hypothermia so extreme the detainees' lips turned purple. He has written an account of his experiences in a book, "Fear Up Harsh," which has been read by the Pentagon and will be published this week. Stephen Lewis, an interrogator who was deployed with Lagouranis, confirmed the account, and Staff Sgt. Shawn Campbell, who was Lagouranis's team leader and direct supervisor, said Lagouranis's assertions were "as true as true can get. It's all verifiable." John Sifton, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the group investigated many of Lagouranis's claims about abuses and independently corroborated them.

"At every point, there was part of me resisting, part of me enjoying," Lagouranis said. "Using dogs on someone, there was a tingling throughout my body. If you saw the reaction in the prisoner, it's thrilling."

In Mosul, he took detainees outside the prison gate to a metal shipping container they called "the disco," with blaring music and lights. Before and after questioning, military police officers stripped them and checked for injuries, noting cuts and bumps "like a car inspection at a parking garage." Once a week, an Iraqi councilman and an American colonel visited. "We had to hide the tortured guys," Lagouranis said.

Then a soldier's aunt sent over several copies of Viktor E. Frankel's Holocaust memoir, "Man's Search for Meaning." Lagouranis found himself trying to pick up tips from the Nazis. He realized he had gone too far.

At that point, Lagouranis said, he moderated his techniques and submitted sworn statements to supervisors concerning prisoner abuse.

"I couldn't make sense of the moral system" in Iraq, he said. "I couldn't figure out what was right and wrong. There were no rules. They literally said, 'Be creative.' "

Lagouranis blames the Bush administration: "They say this is a different kind of war. Different rules for terrorists. Total crap."

Tel Aviv

"You have to play by different rules," the Israeli interrogator told an American visitor. "The terrorists want to use your own system to destroy you. What your president is doing is right."

The Israeli, who spoke on condition that he be identified by his code name, Sheriff, recently retired as chief of interrogations for Shin Bet, Israel's security service, which is responsible for questioning Palestinian terrorism suspects. The former head of the service, Avi Dichter, and the former chief terrorism prosecutor, Dvorah Chen, called Sheriff "the best."

"To persuade someone to confess feels better than beating him up," Sheriff said. "It's a mental orgasm."

Sheriff is short and chubby, with thin, reddish skin that turns yellow in the folds when he furrows his brow. He keeps an electric razor in his car so he can shave his head while driving. He wears a cap from the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security.

"Interrogation is a beautiful world," Sheriff said. When Sheriff's 2-year-old was sick and his wife couldn't be at home, he brought the toddler to work and laid him in an interrogation room, on a mattress on the floor: "I put the phone next to the baby and said, 'When you want Daddy, push this button.' "

Another interrogator walked in and exclaimed, "My suspect shrank!"

For Sheriff, interrogation was more psychological than physical. He used flattery on Palestinians who put bombs under playground benches: "You say, 'Hey! Wow! How did you connect these wires? Did you manufacture this explosive? This is good!' "

He played good cop, and bad: "One day I was good. Next day I was bad. The prisoner said, 'Yesterday you were good. What happened today?' I told him we were short on manpower."

Sheriff hugged his suspects, he said, poured them tea and kissed their cheeks. As his former boss, Dichter, put it: "You try to become friends with someone who murdered a baby. That's your job. It's the most difficult feeling." When he came home, Sheriff said, his wife would make him change. "You could smell the guy on your shirt."

But when the pressure mounted for intelligence, Sheriff said, the best method was "a very little violence." Enough to scare people but not so much that they'd collapse. Agents tried it on themselves. "Not torture."

Sometimes a prisoner would accuse Sheriff of torture. He tried to shift the moral burden by blaming the prisoner: "I would tell him this: 'I'm sorry. We prefer it the nice way. You leave us no choice.' "

Chicago, 10:15 p.m.

Lagouranis apologized to his prisoners, too.

"Two brothers, they could've died because we were inducing hypothermia," he said. As Lagouranis was leaving Abu Ghraib, he told one of the brothers: " 'I'm sorry. I'll always consider you a friend,' He gave me a look -- he probably wanted to kill my entire family. I spent a lot of time torturing him, but also talking."

"I could see you trying to comfort him," said Amy Johnson, Lagouranis's girlfriend, sitting at the bar. Johnson likes Lagouranis, she said, because he is gentle.

She was also attracted by the mystery of his job, although she'd never heard the details, until this night. The scars on his ankles from sand-flea bites were visible. Of the unseen scars, Johnson said, "I'm afraid to ask."

"That's the most confusing thing -- people don't hate me," he said.

"But you're trying to fight the bad guys," she said. She knows he is haunted. He got an honorable discharge after a diagnosis of "adjustment disorder." He startles awake, she said: "Last night you had a dream --"

"I never saw a ghost in Abu Ghraib," he said. "But I saw a ghost last night. It was me."

"Seeing innocent people being tortured is hard," she said.

"Not the things I saw, but the things I did. You keep saying 'torturing the innocent,' but the two brothers I tortured were guilty. It doesn't mean you should torture them."

Johnson said nothing. She twisted her hair up into a knot.

Lagouranis kept talking, this time about his Gerber knife with the black handle and five-inch blade: "I'd been interrogating this guy all night." But the prisoner, unafraid, looked Lagouranis in the eye. "I had this idea --"

"That he was guilty?" she said.

"No, at worst he smuggled a can of benzene. It was pure insanity. I wanted to take out my Gerber knife and chop off his fingers."

Johnson blanched, pressed her fingers against her lips.

"I don't know if I comprehend it," she said. "It's not a good place to go."

A Tel Aviv Suburb

The best place to go to unwind, Sheriff said, was the municipal garbage dump. After work, he'd set up a beach chair on top of the landfill, under the Israeli sun.

Now Sheriff was high up on the dump, safe from vindictive prisoners, boiling water on a portable gas burner to make some tea. "Sugar?" he offered. Sheriff stretched, relaxed. "I've got a clean conscience because I rarely use it."

Israeli society, however, has been conflicted. After more than a decade of debate in legal and security circles, the Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that torture is illegal.

Sheriff's concerns, however, aren't legal, they're mortal. He carries a Beretta. In cafes, he faces the door. He ran into a former subject -- "a bit scary" -- knocking on the window of his car.

For all his bravado, quips and denials, Sheriff is afraid to have his full name published.

"I would not like to die in pain."

An Island in the Mediterranean

Pain, for James -- the interrogator tucked away on a Mediterranean island -- was what made the attempt on his life so frightening. The IRA had shot his partner in the heart, he said, but when the gunmen came for him, they brought a sledgehammer.

"They would have tortured me and extracted information," James said.

Britain, like Israel, reformed its interrogation practices. In 1979, the British government acknowledged that Northern Ireland police had mistreated IRA suspects. It introduced restrictions.

"Every time they changed the rules, it was to benefit murdering terrorists," James said, grinding the word "terrorists" with his teeth. "We got no protection. Next we'll be tried as war criminals."

Even today, James bolts awake when the wind knocks over a plant. His wife said, "One night I woke up, and his hands were around my throat, shaking me. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'There are people in the house.' "

James misses his Irish garden. Give him a few brandies and he'll wistfully sing "The Fields of Athenry." His eyes turned red and watery as he said, "The people of Northern Ireland will never know how many lives were saved."

Worse yet, the people he interrogated "are now running the bloody country." They used to glare, with "venomous looks," and say in Gaelic, "Our day will come."

Chicago, 11:50 p.m.

Lagouranis stares at their faces when he cannot sleep. He stole a CD with pictures of the prisoners he interrogated in north Babil. He ponders the brown-skinned men with mustaches:

"This guy looted an American supply truck. He was waterboarded by a Marine."

Click.

"That guy was old as dirt. I don't know why he was there."

Click.

"This guy -- you can see the contusions around his head."

Click.

Alone in his apartment, awake most nights, he sits in rumpled jeans and desert combat boots, throwing his Gerber knife at his coffee table. Dirty clothes and beer cans litter the floor. His refrigerator is bare, but his footlocker is full of empty bottles of pills the military doctors prescribed for anxiety.

"It feels like fear. Of what? I'm not sure," Lagouranis said. "You know what I think it is? You don't know if you'll ever regain a sense of self. How could Amy love me? I used to have a strong sense of morals. I was on the side of good. I don't even understand the sides anymore."

Next to a mattress on the floor where he sleeps hang his dog tags. Beside it, in the closet, lies a thick brown rope. He has tied it into a noose.

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

[accuracy]

Guantanamo judge questions if he can try Canadian

04 Jun 2007
Source: Reuters

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/NASU60401.htm

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, June 4 (Reuters) - The military judge presiding at Omar Khadr's war crimes tribunal said on Monday he might not have jurisdiction to try the young Canadian because of the way a new law authorizing the trials was written.

Khadr sported a tan prison uniform and shaggy beard during a hearing at the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba, which was recessed to allow time for the judge to review jurisdiction.

Army Col. Peter Brownback said a military review board had labeled Khadr an "enemy combatant" during a 2004 hearing in Guantanamo. But the Military Commissions Act adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2006 said only "unlawful enemy combatants" could be tried in the Guantanamo tribunals.

Brownback said he was not sure Khadr met that definition.

Khadr, who was captured in a firefight in Afghanistan at age 15, is accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade and wounding another in a battle at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

He is also charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism in addition to murder and attempted murder, and with and spying for allegedly conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan.

[accuracy]

Guantanamo judge dismisses charges against Yemeni

04 Jun 2007
Source: Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/NASU060410.htm

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, June 4 (Reuters) - A military judge at the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal on Monday dismissed all the charges against a Yemeni accused of driving Osama bin Laden.

The judge said he did not have jurisdiction to try the prisoner, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, under a 2006 U.S. law authorizing the tribunals for foreign terrorism suspects. It was the second major legal victory for Hamdan, who last year won a U.S. Supreme Court challenge that scrapped the first Guantanamo tribunal system.

**********

[accuracy]

Gitmo Ruling Cheers Family of Detainee

By ROB GILLIES
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19037560/

June 4, 2007

TORONTO - The family of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner was elated Monday when a U.S. military judge dismissed terrorism-related charges and expressed hope the ruling will eventually lead to his release.

For now, Canadian detainee Omar Khadr remains in custody at the U.S. military base. A judge ruled only that Khadr had not been ruled "an alien unlawful enemy combatant" as required for prosecution under a revised U.S. law, leaving open the possibility new charges could be filed.

Another judge later Monday issued a similar ruling in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, who's accused of chauffeuring bin Laden's and being the al-Qaida chief's bodyguard.

"It seems like good news. I guess someone is starting to actually look at the charges and at him as a person rather than just the fact he's allegedly the enemy of the United States," Zaynab Khadr, Omar's 27-year-old sister, said in a telephone interview from the family home in Toronto.

Khadr was 15 when he was captured after a battle in which an American soldier was killed in Afghanistan five years ago.

Zaynab Khadr said her brother should never have been charged. "Besides his age, I don't think someone should be charged with murder since it's war," she said.

She said her brother should have been classified as a prisoner of war instead of "enemy combatant."

"They wanted to go around all the international human rights laws, and the only way to do it was to come up with a new term," she said.

She said the family, which has admitted having close ties to bin Laden, hopes Khadr will be returned to Canada. She said they had spoken to him just once in the last five years.

Canadian officials said they were reviewing the ruling and declined to comment further.

Khadr, the son of an alleged al-Qaida financier, was faced charges of killing U.S. Army Sgt. Christopher Speer with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002. Khadr was seriously wounded during the clash.

In a documentary by Canadian Broadcasting Corp., one of Khadr's brothers, Abdurahman Khadr, acknowledged that their Egyptian-born father, Ahmed Said Khadr, and some of his brothers fought for al-Qaida and had stayed with bin Laden.

One brother, Abdullah Khadr, is being held in Canada on a U.S. extradition warrant, accused of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.

The elder Khadr was killed in Pakistan in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter shelled the house where he was staying with some senior al-Qaida operatives.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[accuracy]

Padilla Jury Begins to Hear Wiretapped Conversations

New York Times

June 5, 2007
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt989.html

By ABBY GOODNOUGH
MIAMI, June 4 — Prosecutors on Monday began playing the wiretapped telephone conversations at the heart of the terrorism case against Jose Padilla, including several in which a co-defendant discussed sending satellite phones, military tents and other equipment to “brothers” in Chechnya in the mid-1990s.

The federal trial is now three weeks old, and until now, prosecutors have spent almost every day seeking to assure the jury that the roughly 120 conversations they plan to introduce as evidence were scrupulously recorded and translated. The defense has tried to suggest that the translators, employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were inept and even biased against Mr. Padilla and his co-defendants, Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi.

Mr. Padilla, an American convert to Islam who was named an enemy combatant after his arrest in 2002, has the highest profile of the three but has not figured prominently in arguments over the calls.

That is because his voice is heard on only seven of the 300,000 or so calls that the F.B.I. recorded from 1994 to 2001. The government added his case to those of Mr. Hassoun and Mr. Jayyousi only after transferring him to civilian custody last year, as the Supreme Court considered taking up the legality of his military detention.

The three are charged with conspiring to “murder, kidnap and maim” people in other countries. The indictment accuses Mr. Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian computer programmer, and Mr. Jayyousi, a Jordanian-born engineer, of sending money, goods and recruits abroad to assist “global jihad.” It paints Mr. Padilla, a former gang member who met Mr. Hassoun at a mosque in Broward County, Fla., as a recruit.

Defense lawyers say their clients are passionate and vocal Muslims with no connection to Al Qaeda and no intent to support terrorism. They merely wanted to support persecuted Muslims, the lawyers say.

Mr. Jayyousi participated in all seven of the telephone conversations that the jury heard Monday. In a particularly tense call from 1996, a representative from Glocom, the company from which Mr. Jayyousi bought two satellite phones, told him the service had been cut off after the Russian government complained that “armed rebels” in Chechnya were using one of the phones.

“This is a very, very, very serious thing,” the Glocom representative said. “This is the first time I’ve ever had this happen.”

The Glocom representative said she might be able to have the service restored if Mr. Jayyousi would tell her who had the satellite phone and why they were in Chechnya. But Mr. Jayyousi balked, saying only that a nonprofit organization he ran, American Worldwide Relief, had “relief work going on” in Chechnya and asking if he could switch to a different carrier or be given his money back.

Jeremy Collins, a witness who testified that he had helped Mr. Jayyousi run American Worldwide Relief, said the satellite phone service was never restored. Nor, he said, did Mr. Jayyousi ever tell him who was using the satellite phone in Chechnya.

Earlier Monday, the jury heard from Herbert Atwell, a former convict who said he had attended a mosque in Broward County with Mr. Hassoun and Mr. Padilla in the 1990s. He said Mr. Padilla had been very quiet and carried a Spanish-language Koran, while Mr. Hassoun gave fiery speeches about the importance of “raising money for mujahedeen fighters all over the world.”

But, in testimony that could paradoxically help the defense, Mr. Atwell said he had never perceived Mr. Hassoun to support terrorism or “mujahedeen fighters” to be terrorists. He said he believed they were “defending Muslims under attack.”

Mr. Atwell told the jury that Mr. Hassoun would often weep while speaking at the mosque about abuse of Muslims in Chechnya, and that he would show video clips of “Muslim sisters in Chechnya and Afghanistan that was being raped and shot in the legs and stuff.”

At that point in the testimony, Mr. Hassoun appeared to become emotional, wiping his eyes. For most of the trial so far, the three defendants have sat solemnly in suits and ties, occasionally conferring with their lawyers but mostly listening without betraying their thoughts.

Mr. Collins also testified that he had helped Mr. Jayyousi publish a newsletter in San Diego called The Islam Report and raise money for Islamic causes overseas. They had medicine, tents, sleeping bags, boots, blankets and other supplies sent to Chechnya, he said, adding that he thought they were for humanitarian purposes only.

Terry Aguayo contributed reporting.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[accuracy]

Secret CIA prisons confirmed by Polish and Romanian officials


Stephen Grey
Thursday June 7, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude tomorrow.
Despite denials by their governments, senior security officials in Poland and Romania have confirmed to investigators for the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America's most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation methods. These included water-boarding which leads detainees to believe they are drowning, which critics have condemned as severe torture.

Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council's report, which has been seen by the Guardian, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons' operations and the identities of some of the prisoners.
The council has also established that within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, Nato signed an agreement with the US that allowed civilian jets used by the CIA during its so-called extraordinary rendition programme to move across member states' airspace.

The report states: "We have sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA's illegal activities on their territories."

That agreement may have been illegal, the council's investigators believe.

The full extent of British logistic support for the extraordinary rendition programme was first disclosed by the Guardian, which reported in September 2005 that aircraft operated by the CIA had flown in and out of UK civilian and military airports hundreds of times.

The 19-month inquiry by the council, which is responsible for promoting human rights across Europe, was headed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator and former state prosecutor. He said: "What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven: large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice."

His report says that there is "now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania".

Mr Marty has told Channel 4's Dispatches, in a report to be broadcast on Monday, that although the jails were run "directly and exclusively" by the CIA with local officials barred from access the prisons were only possible because of "collaboration at various institutional levels of America's many partner countries".

He succeeded in confirming details of the CIA's closely-guarded secret by using his own "intelligence methods", which included tracking and persuading to talk intelligence agents on both sides of the Atlantic, including serving members of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre.

"All the conclusions drawn in this report rely upon multiple sources," he said.

He concludes that in eastern Europe, the CIA had trusted "point-men" who alone knew about the prisons; their partners were Poland and Romania's military intelligence agencies who reported directly to then president Aleksander Kwasniewski in Poland, presidents Ion Iliescu and then Traian Basescu in Romania, and their nearest security advisers.

This meant that civilian intelligence agencies, parliamentary oversight committees, and even the countries' prime ministers could "credibly deny" knowledge of the CIA facilities.

In Poland the main CIA jail was in a former Soviet-era military compound at Stare Kjekuty, near Szmany airport in north-eastern Poland. This prison was for the most high value detainees, known as HVDs. Those held there included Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of 9/11.

It was at the Polish site, said Mr Marty, that some of the CIA's "enhanced methods" of interrogation, such as extreme sleep deprivation and water-boarding were used. "These methods amounted to illegal torture," he told Dispatches.

Mr Marty concludes that the CIA was able to move around Europe, flying prisoners to its secret sites and organising renditions of prisoners to other countries, due to an agreement signed by all Nato members, including Britain, just after September 11.

On October 4 2001, Nato's then secretary-general, Lord Robertson, had said alliance members had agreed to grant "blanket over-flight clearances" as well as basing rights to US forces involved in the so-called war on terror. Although Lord Robertson referred only to military flights, the full text of the agreement has remained classified.

Quoting its own confidential sources, the Council of Europe says a secret part of the agreement also gave total freedom of movement for the civilian jets used by the CIA for its prisoner operations.

Government officials in Poland and Romania have repeatedly denied the existence of CIA facilities or the presence of detainees held by US authorities.

But Mr Marty concluded: "All the members and partners of Nato signed up to the same permissive - not to say illegal - terms that allowed CIA operations to permeate throughout the European continent and beyond; all knew that CIA practices for the detention, transfer and treatment of terrorist suspects left open considerable scope for abuses and unlawful measures; yet all remained silent and kept the operations, the practices, their agreements and their participation secret."

There was no immediate comment from Nato.

· Stephen Grey presents Dispatches - Kidnapped to Order on
Monday June 11 at 8pm on Channel 4

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2097935,00.html

[accuracy]

Campaigners demand US reveals fate of missing 39

Ian Cobain
Friday June 8, 2007
The Guardian


Dozens of people who have vanished after allegedly being detained by the United States during counter-terrorism operations were named in a report published by human rights groups yesterday.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and four other groups are demanding that the US government accounts for 39 people whom they believe have been held at secret CIA prisons since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The detainees include a number of al-Qaida suspects, including a former British resident who has been charged with plotting the 1998 bombings of US embassies in east Africa in which 225 people died.

Children on the list include the two sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, not seen by family members since they were detained in Pakistan during a raid in search of their father. Yusuf al-Khalid and Abed al-Khalid were aged nine and seven when they were taken into custody in September 2002.
If its conclusions are accurate, the report flatly contradicts assurances given by President Bush that the CIA's secret detention programme has been closed down and all the agency's prisoners have been handed over to Guantánamo Bay.Joanne Mariner, of Human Rights Watch, said: "What we're asking is, where are these 39 people now, and what's happened to them since they 'disappeared'?"

Information about the detainees was gathered during interviews with former prisoners and officials in the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Some of the information is sketchy, but information about at least 21 detainees had been confirmed by two or more independent sources, Amnesty says.

The list includes Hassan Ghul and Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi, named as al-Qaida operatives in the official US report into the 9/11 attacks.

Another is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, named as one of the FBI's "most wanted terrorists". US officials have confirmed that he was captured in Pakistan.

According to yesterday's report he was taken into US custody. His current location is unknown.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano dismissed the report, telling Reuters news agency that the agency acts in "strict accord with American law" and that its counter-terrorist initiatives are "subject to careful review and oversight". He added: "The United States does not conduct or condone torture."

One of the authors of the report, titled Off The Record, said she suspects that the secret detention programme is still operating.

Anne Fitzgerald, a senior adviser for Amnesty International, said: "We wanted [the detainees'] names in the public eye because of the impression that this is over, this is finished, and they're not doing this any more. That's clearly not the case."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2098230,00.html

[accuracy]

Inside the Dark World of Rendition

An Italian court will today begin hearing a case against 26 American agents accused of kidnapping the Imam of Milan's most important mosque. The case promises to expose the truth about America's rendition policy. By Peter Popham and Jerome Taylor

08 June 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2631542.ece

Shortly before noon on 17 February 2003, the bulky, bearded figure of the Imam of Milan's most important mosque, Abu Omar, was noticed by a woman called Merfat Rezk.

Wearing traditional Arab dress, he was walking down Via Guerzoni towards his mosque. Ms Rezk also saw a man of European appearance wearing sunglasses and standing on the street, talking into a mobile phone. Moments later there was a loud bang, and a light-coloured van that had been parked across the pavement took off at high speed. The Arabic looking man and the man with sunglasses were nowhere to be seen.

Inside the van, the Egyptian cleric was confronted by men "wearing uniforms similar to those worn by the special forces", as he later wrote, men "who never spoke" but blindfolded his eyes and bound him hand and foot with gaffer tape. When he put up a fight, he was "severely beaten", until he began to foam at the mouth and became incontinent.

The van took him at speed to the Aviano airbase at the foot of the Alps, shared by the US and Italian militaries, where in a "small grey room" he was confronted by his captors. "They stood me upright and untied the plastic tape from my feet," he wrote. "Then they started to remove my clothes and the tape that bound my hands. I guess they used some instruments to tear off my clothes because I did not feel their hands touch me.

"They put new clothes on me and removed the blindfold... In a matter of seconds they took photographs of me and covered both my head and face with a wide blindfold that only exposed my nose and mouth. They also tied my hands to my back and feet with plastic ropes. I was then taken on to an aeroplane."

The imam, whose full name is Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, had become a victim of the process known as "extraordinary rendition", the kidnapping of suspected terrorists from their homes in Europe and rapid removal to countries known for their brutal prison regimes.

From Italy, Mr Nasr was flown to Germany and then to Cairo.

A "great Pasha", in Mr Nasr's words, a high-ranking official, asked him if he was willing to return to Italy as an informer. When he refused he was taken to a notorious Cairo prison and tortured. "I was hung like slaughtered cattle," he wrote, "head down, feet up, hands tied behind my back, feet tied together, and I was exposed to electric shocks all over my body." His incarceration lasted for four years.

The American CIA agents accused of kidnapping Mr Nasr go on trial in Milan today. It is the first time in living memory that CIA agents have been prosecuted for non-espionage offences. None of the 26 Americans, most of them indicted under the false names on the passports they used to enter Italy, will be in court for the trial. None of them will go to prison if convicted. But what the trial will do is to expose in detail the extraordinary arrogance of the remaining superpower, its readiness to grab people legally resident in Europe, immobilise and manacle them and fly them off to be tortured.

Mr Nasr had come face to face, briefly and shockingly, with one of the tough, highly professional and lavishly pampered American special forces teams that brought the War on Terror - in its guerrilla manifestation - to the streets of Europe's cities.

"One of the primary European objections to the concept of a 'war' on terrorism," wrote David Ruivkin Jnr and Lee Casey in The New York Times earlier this year, "is the fear that US forces will treat Europe as a battlefield... Extraordinary rendition gets uncomfortably close to US military operations on European streets."

The phrase and the fact of extraordinary rendition became public knowledge only in 2003, but American anti-terrorism units had been forcibly extraditing suspected Islamists to states with records of torture and extrajudicial executions long before 9/11. The deployment of secret paramilitary squads move captives in CIA-owned or financed planes was first perfected during the late 1990s in the Balkans.

The first known rendition by the US government to a third country with a record of torture occurred in 1995 when an Egyptian Islamist, Talaat Fouad Qassem, went missing while visiting Croatia. Mr Qassem, the leader of a banned Islamic group in Egypt, had been sentenced to death in absentia three years earlier by a military tribunal. The Croatian authorities had originally apprehended Mr Qassem on an immigration charge, but his transport to Egypt was arranged by the US and he was interrogated by Americans on board a ship in the Adriatic before sending him to Cairo's torturers.

Three years later, following reports that an Egyptian terrorist cell based in Albania were planning to attack US embassies in the region, a CIA paramilitary team arranged the arrest and rendition of a further six Islamic militants to Egypt. Many of them, including Mr Qassem, have not been heard of since. Those who have say they were tortured horrendously.

But it was after the terror attacks on New York and Washington on 9 September 2001, when "the gloves came off", that the phenomenon exploded. As Cofer Black, onetime director of the CIA's counterterrorist unit, put it: "There was a before-9/11 and an after-9/11."

Sweden saw one of the earliest examples of a post-9/11 rendition, three months after the attacks on the US. Two Egyptian nationals who were claiming asylum there, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed al-Zery, suddenly disappeared on 18 December 2001. They were flown back to Egypt. Subsequently both said they were tortured.

All those who have lived to tell the tale of the rendition process have given remarkably similar accounts of the brutal, but slick, well-rehearsed procedure that leaves a detainee trussed up and and incapacitated within three to five minutes.

Clara Gutteridge, from the charity Reprieve, which provides legal help for many of them, says the paramilitary teams are highly trained professionals. "They are not necessarily the same people each time," she says. "But what we do see is the 'rendition methodology' ... Namely, a team of 12 to 13 people, dressed in black T-shirts, wearing ski masks and Timberland boots who carry out the actual rendition. The speed at which they operate, the uniformity of the process, and the general level of professionalism is striking. Let's not forget that what they are doing is in plain language kidnap and forcible transfer to torture.

"As we have no reason to believe that any of our clients were rendered by the same team of people, there's already potential for multiple investigations... and the chain of command responsibility goes right to the top."

And when these seasoned teams have done their work, they kick back. Three of the team who who "boosted" Mr Qassem from Milan checked into the Hilton on Via Luigi Galvani, where rooms cost about £160 a night. Others stayed in the Marriott, Sheraton and Westin hotels. Some of them even presented their frequent-flier ID cards for endorsement. The combined hotel bill for the team's short stay in the city was at least $150,000 (£78,000).

Renditions have been happening at least as far back as the Reagan administration. From the point of view of other countries, they are an offensive demonstrations of American prepotency whenever and wherever they happen.

Arguably there are situations where they are justifiable - and fully legal under American law. When Ramzi Yousef, the man who bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993 and planned to blow up a dozen American jet liners over the Pacific, was seized in Islamabad, the Pakistani government was happy to see him flown secretly to the US. "In a perfect world," wrote Daniel Benjamin in Slate, "renditions would not be necessary. But renditions reflect the reality that dangerous people turn up with some frequency in countries with inadequate legal systems that need to shield their co-operation with the United States from domestic opposition."

But then renditions became a way of outsourcing torture. And not the "handful of the worst terrorists in the planet" of George Tenet's description, but unknown dozens, perhaps hundreds, maybe more than a thousand people. Ahmed Nazief, the Egyptian prime minister, says he is aware of "60 to 70" cases in which Egyptian nationals were seized abroad and flown to Egypt. An investigation by the European Parliament revealed that the CIA had operated more than 1,000 flights through European airspace since 2001.

Amnesty International and other human rights organisations said yesterday that extraordinary renditions continues. They released the names of 39 people who they claim have passed through American custody but whose whereabouts are unknown. For the innocent the story is a tragedy. Even for the non-innocent it is a blazing example of American hypocrisy.

But there is another question to be asked. Did it make America, and the rest of the West, any safer? In the case of Mr Nasr from Milan the answer seems to be a resounding no. Mr Nasr had been given refugee status in Italy in 1997 but the Italian secret services were suspicious of him, and his phones and his home were comprehensively bugged. "We knew everything, everything, everything Abu Omar was up to," a senior Italian law enforcement officer told The Chicago Tribune. One reason Mr Nasr's rendition was carried out in such strict secrecy was to avoid alerting the Italians who were bugging him.

Robert Seldon Lady, the CIA's former Milan chief and the only agent to have gone on the record about the Imam Abu Omar case, claims that he opposed the abduction from the start, but was overruled by the station chief in in Rome; the man's name has never been released, but colleagues describe him as an incense-burning Buddhist, an eccentric figure who maintains a shrine to Jimi Hendrix at the CIA's headquarters.

At the Milan trial, the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, will produce evidence to prove that the Rome CIA chief overstated the threat Mr Nasr posed, in order to get approval for the rendition from his superiors.

"We never got any good [intelligence] product from a rendition," one senior CIA officer told The Chicago Tribune.

The CIA also ruptured a good working relationship with their Italian counterparts. The damage to those relationships is something the CIA broods about now. "That is something I do worry about," Tyler Drumheller, the CIA's chief of covert operations in Europe until 2005, said. "The most important thing, I believe, is that we have to work seamlessly with the European services and all round the world. I admit sometimes we're like a bull in a china shop."

They disappeared, but lived to tell the tale

Khaled al-Masri

The German citizen of Lebanese descent was abducted from Macedonia in early 2003 and rendered to Afghanistan. His "crime" was to share a name with a wanted militant. Mr Masri spent more than a year in Kabul's notorious secret prisons before the US realised they had arrested the wrong person

Abu Omar

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was under investigation by Italian security for links to terrorism when the CIA kidnapped him in Milan and flew him to his native Egypt in February 2003 where he says he was tortured. His kidnap led to indictments being issued against 26 Americans.

Binyam Muhammad

The Eritrean national and British resident Binyam Muhammad was rendered by the CIA on multiple occasions. He was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002 then was subsequently flown to prisons in Afghanistan and later Morocco where he claims he was severely tortured.

Maher Arar

The rendition of the Canadian national of Syrian origin from New York to Syria where he was horrifically tortured has become one of the best documented examples of an innocent victim of the CIA's program. Both the Canadian and Syrian governments have publicly cleared Mr Arar of any links to terrorism

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

[accuracy]

http://www.bartcop.com/ted-double-gitmo.jpg

[accuracy]

Powell Calls for Closure of Military Prison at Guantanamo


By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 11, 2007

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/10/AR2007061000451_pf.html


Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he would close down the U.S. military prison for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "this afternoon" because it has become a major problem in "the way the world perceives America."

"Essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like a military commission," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Making it clear that he "would not let any of those people go," Powell said, "I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our more federal legal system." He said he sees no problem in detainees having the right of habeas corpus and getting their own lawyers. "Isn't that what our system is all about?"

Powell was the only member of President Bush's first-term "war cabinet" who argued against the detainee policies. Those policies said the United States was not obligated to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of enemy combatants.

Opened in late 2001 for suspected terrorists apprehended in Afghanistan, Guantanamo now has about 385 prisoners. They have no right to file habeas corpus petitions under a law signed last year, but they have their status reviewed annually by a military panel. Last week, two military judges ruled that the first trials of Guantanamo detainees by military panels could not go forward because the detainees had not been classified as unlawful enemy combatants. The Defense Department is appealing the ruling.

Powell's view comes close to that of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. In March, Gates said that there was a "taint" about Guantanamo and that the more dangerous detainees should be held, but that the military prison should be closed.

In a wide-ranging interview, Powell also said, "We didn't prepare ourselves well enough for the kinds of challenges that occurred in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad," although he and Bush were aware of the postwar problems that the United States would face -- issues addressed in a CIA analysis seven months before the war started.

"We were liberators for a moment," Powell said, "and then we simply did not handle the aftermath." He described the burning and looting of government ministries as the beginning of the insurgency. Turmoil went on, he said, because "we didn't have enough troops there to restore that order, nor did we have the political understanding of our obligation to restore that order."

Powell said that Iraq is a sectarian civil war "that ultimately will be fought out between Sunnis and Shias, Shias and Shias, Sunnis and al-Qaeda." In that turmoil, Powell said, al-Qaeda "is a relatively small percentage of this overall problem, but a very violent percentage."

He said the increase of U.S. troops is only a part of three elements that make up the current policy. The other two -- building up Iraqi security forces and Iraqi political reconciliation -- "are not going well." As for recent changes in U.S. military leadership in Iraq and creating a war czar in the White House, Powell said: "You can move the deck chairs around and you can bring in new people and you can change organizational arrangements, but ultimately the president has the responsibility."

Powell declined to say that he would support the Republican Party nominee for president next year, saying that he would back "the best person I can find." When he joined the GOP in 1995, Powell said that it had moved too far to the right and that he would work to bring it to the moderate center. But he has never been closely involved in party politics and more than a decade ago said he would never run for elective office.

In yesterday's interview, he said he has not ruled out returning to public service and had no favorite in the presidential race. "I make myself available to talk about foreign policy matters with whoever wishes to chat with me," he said in response to a question about his twice meeting with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

Attitudes have changed about gays in the military since he supported the "don't ask, don't tell" policy established when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Clinton administration. He said wartime is not a time to alter the policy, but he thought "gays and lesbians should be allowed to have maximum access to all aspects of society."

Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

[accuracy]

Brown urged to close 'terror flights' loophole

By Brendan Carlin, Political Correspondent
11/06/2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=LPR4PNSTFCGYVQFIQMFCFFOAVCBQ YIV0?xml=/news/2007/06/11/npols411.xml

Gordon Brown faced calls last night to close a loophole that would allow so-called "terror flights" to pass through the UK without the Government's knowledge.

Harriet Harman, the justice minister and a candidate for the deputy leadership of Labour, demanded a radical change in the rules to ensure that the UK was notified if the US or any other country transported prisoners through British airports or airspace.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2007/06/11/npolls411.jpg
The Government did not have any information that CIA flights were actually passing through UK jurisdiction

The Council of Europe claimed last week that the British island of Diego Garcia was used to transport terror suspects in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

And yesterday, there were claims that a CIA-owned plane was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and was immediately surrounded by armed US security forces.

The plane was being linked to the CIA's alleged "torture flight" programme, according to the Mail on Sunday.

Challenged on the report, Miss Harman - one of six candidates contesting to be Mr Brown's deputy - stressed that the Government did not have any information that the flights were actually passing through UK jurisdiction.

But she then highlighted a loophole in international regulations which meant the British government would not necessarily be notified.

"We would not be prepared to be party to kidnap or torture. The difficulty is there is no obligation in international law to report if you are taking prisoners through people's airspace or even landing and taking off again."

Miss Harman called for the loophole to be closed. The Government should renegotiate the Chicago convention, which ensures that signatories are told if VIPs or hazardous substances are being flown in or out of the country but not prisoners, she said.

The convention, signed at the end of the Second World War, should be changed so ministers could prevent the so-called extraordinary rendition flights, she added.

"Then we would be absolutely certain we don't have a situation where we are complicit in torture because our airspace is being used or planes are landing in our country and then taking off again."

Last night, the demand seemed to take Mr Brown, who will be the Prime Minister by the end of the month, by surprise. A spokesman for the Chancellor said he was not aware of the Harriet Harman's suggestion and was unable to make any comment.

But the issue was immediately picked up by Jon Cruddas, the only backbench Labour MP in the deputy leadership race. Mr Cruddas said Britain should be "demanding the truth" on rendition flights.

However, at the weekend, police chiefs insisted that Britain did not allow CIA torture flights to use its airports to take terror suspects out of Europe.

The verdict came after an 18-month inquiry into claims by human rights group Liberty that "extraordinary rendition" flights chartered by the US government through the CIA were landing in Britain, before spiriting away terror suspects.

Michael Todd, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, agreed to investigate the allegations on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

[accuracy]

Police chiefs accused of 'whitewash' over British links to CIA torture flights

By Marie Woolf, Political Editor
10 June 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2640436.ece

The police have been accused of "spinning" the facts on CIA torture flights after they claimed they had conducted an 18-month inquiry that found no evidence of collusion by Britain.

Shami Chakrabarti of the civil rights group Liberty accused chief police officers of a "whitewash" for having denied the UK had allowed the CIA to use its airports to take terror suspects to secret prisons. She questioned the timing of the statement, saying it was "miraculous" that, after 18 months, the police had released their findings just as the Council of Europe, the human rights organisation, found Britain did help the CIA fly terror suspects to prisons.

Last weekend, a plane repeatedly linked to CIA torture flights was spotted land- ing in the UK. The aircraft, which MEPs say has been involved in "ghost flights", was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk.

The CoE report said the CIA ran dark prisons in Poland and Romania after 9/11, and Britain had provided support by allowing agency planes to land at UK military and civilian airports.

The Association of Chief Police Officers had said there was "no evidence UK airports were used to transport people by the CIA for torture in other countries".

Ms Chakrabarti said: "When politicians spin it is disappointing. When police engage in [similar] activity it is dangerous.This spin produced a whitewash."

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

[accuracy]

More Taliban suspects allege abuse

Saturday, June 9, 2007
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/06/09/afghan-detainees.html

The Foreign Affairs Department has adjusted upward the number of detainees who have alleged they were abused after being captured by Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan and transferred to Afghan jails.

There are now six abuse allegations, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said late Friday.

Andre LeMay said the department has been keeping track of reports since Canada signed a new detainee monitoring agreement in May.

On Wednesday, MacKay and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told a joint parliamentary meeting that four allegations of abuse involving Taliban suspects had been reported.

Day said the four prisoners making the claims showed no visible signs of abuse. Taliban fighters have been coached to allege mistreatment while in detention, he added.

LeMay said the Afghan government will be working closely with the country's Independent Human Rights Commission to investigate the claims.

The latest revelation could boost a legal challenge by Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which have applied to Federal Court for an injunction to halt the transfers.

They argue that Canada could find itself complicit in torture if it knowingly hands prisoners over to authorities who will abuse them.

The first two claims, which surfaced in April, set off bitter opposition attacks against the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

After two weeks of contradictory explanations, the Conservatives signed a revised transfer agreement with Afghanistan that allows Canadian officials direct, private access where the condition of detainees can be checked.

The initial agreement, inked by the former government under Paul Martin in the early weeks of the 2005-06 election, did not provide such access.


Copyright © CBC 2007

[accuracy]

Court strikes blow to Bush detainee strategy

It rules that US can't hold legal residents without charging them with a crime.

By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

June 11, 2007
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0612/p25s02-usju.html

Washington - President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered the indefinite military detention of an Arab computer-science student from Qatar on suspicion that he was an Al Qaeda sleeper agent.

In a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration's tactics in the war on terror, a panel of the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ordered the government to release Ali Saleh al-Marri after being held four years in a military brig.

"To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them 'enemy combatants,' would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution – and the country," writes US Circuit Judge Diana Gribbon Motz in the 2-to-1 decision.

"For a court to uphold a claim to such extraordinary power ... would effectively undermine all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution," Judge Motz writes. "We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our republic."

Motz was joined by Judge Roger Gregory in the majority opinion.

Mr. Marri's lawyers were pleased with the outcome.

"This decision is a landmark victory for the rule of law," says Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school, who argued the case for Marri. "It affirms the right of all individuals in this country to habeas corpus and rejects the administration's position that it can lock up people in the US, potentially for life, without charge and without trial."

In a dissent, US District Judge Henry Hudson says that in his view Mr. Bush was authorized by Congress to order the military detention of civilians deemed to be enemy combatants.

Without such broad authorization, the only way to counter Al Qaeda sleeper agents plotting attacks inside the US would be to prosecute them as criminals, he writes.

Under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, Congress empowered the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those ... organizations, or persons" linked to Al Qaeda to prevent future attacks, Judge Hudson says.

"This broad language would certainly seem to embrace surreptitious Al Qaeda agents operating within the continental United States."

Marri, who denied he's an Al Qaeda agent, has been held since June 2003 as an enemy combatant at the Consolidated Naval Brig at Charleston, S.C.

He arrived in the US on a student visa with his wife and five children and had reportedly planned to attend Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. Instead, following the 9/11 attacks, Marri was arrested and interrogated as a suspected Al Qaeda sleeper agent sent to the US to launch a computer attack on American financial markets.

After several efforts to prosecute him, Bush designated Marri an enemy combatant, and he was transferred to the Charleston brig. Lawyers working on Marri's behalf filed a habeas corpus petition, challenging the legality of his detention.

It is that suit that prompted the Fourth Circuit ruling on Monday.

In ruling against the government, the appeals court rejected assertions that Congress had authorized the open-ended detention of civilian, noncitizens who are legally present in the US. The panel also rejected the arguments that Bush's actions were authorized by his inherent powers as the nation's commander in chief.

In rejecting the administration's broad reading of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the Fourth Circuit judges said that a different law, the USA Patriot Act, authorized the attorney general to detain terror suspects under certain extraordinary circumstances – but only for a limited period. The court said if Congress wanted to grant similar – but much broader – powers to Bush, it could have done so by speaking clearly in legislation.

In bolstering her ruling, Motz went back to the US Civil War and a major landmark in constitutional history for the proposition that civilians in the US may not be brought under military jurisdiction absent a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

In embracing the civil war precedent, the majority judges rejected the Bush administration's view that the war on terror is a new kind of warfare without a clearly distinguished battlefield.

"We do not question the president's war-time authority over enemy combatants; but absent suspension of the writ of habeas corpus or declaration of martial law, the Constitution simply does not provide the president the power to exercise military authority over civilians within the United States," Motz writes.

In sending the case back to the district court judge, the panel instructed the judge to issue a writ of habeas corpus directing the secretary of Defense to release Marri "within a reasonable period of time."

The decision adds, "The government can transfer al-Marri to civilian authorities to face criminal charges, initiate deportation proceedings against him, hold him as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings, or detain him for a limited time pursuant to the Patriot Act." Motz adds, "But military detention of al-Marri must cease."

Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved

[accuracy]

Guantanamo 'betrays Nuremburg principles'

June 12, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21891103-5005961,00.html

THE US war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo have betrayed the principles of fairness that made the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg a judicial landmark, one of the US Nuremberg prosecutors said today.

"I think Robert Jackson, who's the architect of Nuremberg, would turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on at Guantanamo," Nuremberg prosecutor Henry King Jr said.

"It violates the Nuremberg principles, what they're doing, as well as the spirit of the Geneva Conventions of 1949."

Mr King, 88, served under Judge Jackson, the US Supreme Court justice who was the chief prosecutor at the trials created by the Allied powers to try Nazi military and political leaders after World War II in Nuremberg, Germany.

"The concept of a fair trial is part of our tradition, our heritage," Mr King said from Ohio, where he lives.

"That's what made Nuremberg so immortal - fairness, a presumption of innocence, adequate defence counsel, opportunities to see the documents that they're being tried with."

Mr King, who teaches law at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, also questioned whether former Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks deserved to be tried as a war criminal. After being held at Guantanamo for more than five years, the Australian pleaded guilty in March to a charge of providing material support for terrorism and was sent home to serve the rest of his nine-month sentence.

"He's not an arch-criminal type, just a guy who was disaffected from the system," Mr King said.

Hicks, who admitted training with al-Qaeda and briefly fighting on its side in Afghanistan, is the only person convicted in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals.

Mr King, who interrogated Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, was incredulous that the Guantanamo rules left open the possibility of using evidence obtained through coercion.

"To torture people and then you can bring evidence you obtained into court? Hearsay evidence is allowed? Some evidence is available to the prosecution and not to the defendants? This is a type of 'justice' that Jackson didn't dream of," Mr King said.

He said the Guantanamo prisoners should be tried in the court-martial system or the US federal courts, under fair rules that leave open the possibility of acquittal. Three Nuremberg defendants were acquitted, Mr King said.

The Bush administration has said it needs to hold the special tribunals at Guantanamo in order to protect national security.

Last year the US Supreme Court struck down the first version of the Guantanamo trials as illegal.

The 2006 Military Commissions Act, which set revised rules for trying suspected terrorists at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "sort of turns its back on Nuremberg", Mr King said. "I don't think it's a credit to us to have this thing."

"The United States has always stood for fairness. That's the important thing. We were the ones who started war crimes tribunals and we're the architects. I don't think we should turn our back on that architecture."

[accuracy]

No signs of phaseout for Guantanamo

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | June 11, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2007/06/11/no_signs_of_phaseout_for_guantanamo/

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has transferred three suspected terrorists to the Guantanamo Bay prison since March, despite recent legal setbacks and President Bush's statement that he would like to close the controversial facility.

The three detainees are the first to arrive in Guantanamo Bay since 2004, with the exception of those who were abruptly transferred last fall when Bush closed secret CIA prisons in Europe after their existence became known. Two of the recent transfers were captured in a sweeping counterterrorism operation in Somalia. The third is Iraqi.

The lack of new arrivals -- and the large number of detainees who were being sent home -- had led many human rights advocates to believe the Guantanamo Bay prison was being phased out amid widespread international outrage.

But now, new detainees are arriving and the flow of releases has slowed significantly -- from 102 last year to 15 this year.

"It's like Guantanamo is getting its second wind, and becoming a permanent option," said Joanne Mariner , director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights organization.

Some legal advocates for detainees expressed concern that the prison is being used for detainees from the Somali operation.

"Rather than closing Guantanamo, they are using it for the next phase, in another front in the war on terror," said Jonathan Hafetz , a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based law institute that focuses on justice and democracy. "It shows that the administration still believes Guantanamo is a viable way to hold people indefinitely without due process."

Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Defense Department spokesman, said that despite the international outrage directed at Guantanamo Bay, the prison remains the administration's best option for holding terrorism suspects.

"While we have long maintained that we would like to close Guantanamo, there are a number of highly dangerous men who -- if released -- would pose a grave threat to the international public," Gordon said.

Last week, the Department of Defense announced the transfer of Abdullahi Sudi Arale , a suspected member of Al Qaeda's network in East Africa and a leader in the Council of Islamic Courts, a political movement believed to be linked to Al Qaeda.

In March, the Pentagon transferred Abdul Malik , who allegedly admitted to involvement in the 2002 attack on a hotel in Kenya that killed 13 and injured 80.

In April, the Pentagon announced the transfer of Abd al- Hadi al-Iraqi , one of "Al Qaeda's highest-ranking and experienced senior operatives." Iraqi is accused of directing cross-border attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan, and of directing plots to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan . US military documents say Iraqi was attempting to return to Iraq.

Gordon did not dispute the idea that hundreds of detainees would be kept in Guantanamo Bay for the foreseeable future, without the option of trial or release.

He said 80 detainees have been determined to be eligible for release to their home countries and 80 more have been identified as candidates for prosecution. But the remaining 220 will stay indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.

"They are going to continue to undergo annual administrative review boards to see if there is something new in their status, if they want to decide to cooperate with authorities, with the system in place," Gordon said. "The reason they are there is because they are so dangerous or they refuse to talk."

Legal rights advocates say that the three new detainees should have been sent to federal court, where they could be tried and convicted, like the perpetrators of the 1998 Al Qaeda embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

"The federal court system is ready and willing to deal with terrorism cases," said John Sifton, another Human Rights Watch researcher. "The federal justice system has broken the back of terrorists since the 1860s."

Gordon acknowledged that the government does not have enough evidence to try the bulk of detainees in a federal court system, yet maintained that releasing them would be foolhardy.

"We don't have battlefield detectives out there finding fingerprints on AK-47s," he said, referring to the type of evidence that would be needed for trials. "It would be difficult to secure prosecutions against the majority of them, but they are dangerous enough that we don't want them to become the next hijacking crew."

David Rivkin , a Washington lawyer who has served in previous Republican administrations, agrees.

"The notion that you can successfully process most individuals in federal district court is utterly implausible," Rivkin said. He said the rules of evidence in US federal court are so strict that they would exclude much of what could be collected in war zones abroad.

Yet federal courts have begun to handle cases coming from the recent counter terrorism operations in Somalia.

Daniel Maldonado , 28, a Boston native who traveled to Somalia in 2006 to join the Islamic Court movement, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Houston to receiving training from a foreign terrorist organization. Maldonado was arrested at the Kenyan border in January and interrogated by FBI officials in Africa.

Hafetz represented the family members of another American, Amir Mashal , arrested by Kenyan authorities with Maldonado.

Mashal, an American of Egyptian descent who says he went to Somalia for religious training, was arrested on the Kenya-Somalia border with scores of others. He was then sent to Somalia for about a week and later to a secret prison in Ethiopia, Hafetz said .

Eventually, US officials released Mashal and let him return home to New Jersey. He has never been charged with a crime.

"They didn't have a case against him," Hafetz said. "But if this guy was not an American citizen, he could have been sent to Guantanamo for years."

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

[accuracy]

Afghans free US 'bounty hunter'

Wednesday, 13 June 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6749677.stm

A former US soldier jailed for running a private prison in Kabul and torturing Afghans has been freed, officials say.

Jack Idema was pardoned by President Karzai in March as part of an amnesty.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39960000/jpg/_39960204_idema-ap203.jpg
Idema claimed he had the backing of the Pentagon

A senior prisons official said Idema left jail in early June and flew out of the country. He served less than three years of his original 10-year sentence.

Idema was jailed with two other US men, also since freed. He said his work was approved by the US and Afghan governments, which denied the claim.

The Pentagon said he was a bounty hunter.

'Unknown destination'

Jonathan "Jack" Idema was one of many former special forces soldiers working privately in Afghanistan - some to provide security, others acting as bounty hunters attracted by the millions of dollars in rewards offered for Osama Bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda suspects.

A senior prisons official in the Afghan justice ministry said the former soldier had been released at the start of June.

"We escorted him right to the airport and onto a plane", the official, Abdul Salam Asmat, told the AFP news agency.

Idema's Afghan lawyer, Rahim Ahmadzai, told the Associated Press news agency that Idema had been freed on 2 June. He said he did not know where he went.

A US embassy official quoted by the agency said that, according to court documents filed in Washington this week, Idema had left for an "unknown destination".

Idema had his sentence cut by half by a court in Afghanistan in March 2005, although it was not clear why.

His two US accomplices - Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo - had their sentences cut from 10 years to three and eight years to two respectively.

They were released from Kabul's Pul-e Charkhi prison last year.

Nato 'duped'

The three men were arrested in July 2004 after Afghan forces raided a house in a Kabul neighbourhood and discovered eight Afghan men being held captive.

Some of the men later testified to having been tortured in the house.

Idema said his group was tracking down terror suspects with the co-operation of Afghan and US authorities.

The US said it had received one prisoner from Idema but the Pentagon denied any ties to him.

Nato forces also said they had been duped into helping the group on three occasions.

Correspondents say their trial was often chaotic and marred by poor translation.

Four Afghans working with the Americans were also found guilty and sentenced to between one and five years in jail.

[waigy]

Stephen Grey presents Dispatches - Kidnapped to Order on
Monday June 11 at 8pm on Channel 4


Maybe you guys already know this or have a link to this on youtube/google e.t.c.
You can watch the programme for free via channel four's 4 on demand site.
You have to register first and the show will only be available for another few days.


Cheers

[accuracy]

Maybe you guys already know this or have a link to this on youtube/google e.t.c.
You can watch the programme for free via channel four's 4 on demand site.
You have to register first and the show will only be available for another few days.


Cheers

Thanks for that, waigy, i did check out Stephen Grey's website, but no video.
The day will come when it's listed on youtube/google !

[waigy]

No probs.
Is that Perth Australia you're from or Perth Scotland?
I'm in Fife, Scotland going to Perthshire tonight.

[accuracy]

Muslim Humanitarian Kidnapped By US Military; Held in Secret Jail

14/06/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=20755

Michael Schmidt and Sapa

The Star




A Johannesburg man studying in Syria is reported to have been secretly abducted by American soldiers and moved to Ethiopia.




Abdul Hamid Moosa, 41, of Robertsham had been in regular contact with his family since moving to Damascus to study in September 2005. But their last contact with him was on December 29 last year.




Last Friday, Claire Gutteridge, a British human rights worker, contacted the family to allege that Moosa was being held without trial in Addis Ababa. The family was sceptical but a call from a Swedish Muslim, Munir Awad, convinced them.




Awad had apparently shared a cell with Moosa before being released after pressure from the Swedish government and Gutteridge's organisation, Reprieve.




Awad claimed the men were being held without trial in Addis Ababa, and that the authorities didn't have any facts to support their indefinite detention.




It was alleged that women, including Awad's pregnant wife, were regularly abused by prison guards and that the male prisoners were tortured.




The family has contacted Foreign Affairs as well as attorney Zehir Omar, who is also representing the family of Khalid Rashid, who was reportedly transported in a charted private jet from Waterkloof airbase in Pretoria on November 6, after American agencies suspected him of involvement in terrorist activities in Pakistan.




The Media Review Network (MRN) on Saturday urged the South African government to secure Moosa's release from the United States military base on the Horn of Africa, which is where they believe he is being kept.




According to MRN chairperson Iqbal Jassat, a report by Reprieve said that Moosa was a victim of "enforced disappearance - abduction or arrest with the connivance of the US government and the host state".




"This lends credence to our suspicion that 'Guantanamo-style' detention camps exist in some north and east African countries," he said. - Michael Schmidt and Sapa






SOURCE: The Star

[accuracy]

No probs.
Is that Perth Australia you're from or Perth Scotland?
I'm in Fife, Scotland going to Perthshire tonight.


Perth, Australia :)

[accuracy]

Torture: the 10 claims against the Army

June 13, 2007
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article1926936.ece

Lawyers for Baha Musa claimed today that the case had uncovered evidence that the Government approved the systematic torture of detainees.

Today a panel of five law lords ruled that Mr Musa, a hotel receptionist who died of multiple injuries after two nights in British military custody, was entitled to the protection of the UK's Human Rights Act while held by British soldiers.

The verdict has set a precedent that the rights of foreign detainees abroad must be protected against torture and abuse in the same way as British citizens in the UK.

But the Musa case is also predicted to have a heavy political fallout when it is remitted to the divisional court of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court.

Today Phil Shiner, a lawyer for the Musa family, alleged that evidence had emerged at the court martial that high levels of the army and the Government were complicit in a systematic policy of torturing detainees in British military custody.

Mr Shiner claimed that the Government had since been trying to cover up the "shocking new revelations" which emerged in the six and a half month court case, including that:

The UK had dropped the 1972 ban imposed by the Heath Government on hooding, stressing, sleep deprivation, food deprivation and noise The UK had a written policy allowing hooding which reflected verbal and written Nato policy UK interrogators and tactical questioners were trained to hood, stress and sleep deprive at the Defence, Intelligence and Security Centre at Chicksands in Bedfordshire It was standard practice for all battle groups to hood Up to three sandbags or even old plastic cement bags were used in temperatures of 140F Many other Iraqis have been killed and tortured in UK custody The Attorney-General advised that the HRA did not apply and soldiers need follow only lower legal standards The medical profession was certifying detainees as fit to sustain hooding, stressing and other ill-treatmentArmy doctors did nothing to protect injured detainees and actually instigated abuse themselves Even when Musa died, after being hooded for most of the 36 hours he survived, there was huge resistance at the highest levels to stopping hooding because of pressure from the US.


"To date the UK Government has managed to suppress much of this material, including all the bundles of documents and evidence from the court martial, and a shocking video showing hooded and cuffed detainees being verbally and physically abused as they were man-handled into the UK’s preferred stress position," said Mr Shiner.

"The implications of this case are enormous."

In response to today’s ruling by the House of Lords, Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, welcomed the ruling which he said provided "helpful clarification of the precise legal framework under which UK forces operated overseas".

“As the Chief of General Staff has already said, Baha Musa died after being held in UK custody and was subject to an unlawful conditioning process," said Mr Browne.

"We have never argued that the treatment of Baha Musa was acceptable or that his death should not have been investigated.

"Credible allegations of serious wrong-doing have to be, and are, investigated. Where evidence is independently assessed as justifying a prosecution, the application of a robust, fair system of military justice must follow."

Mr Browne said that the Musa case was not closed. "As is normal in any case of this nature, the case is currently being reviewed by the Royal Military Police and Army Prosecuting Authority. They will determine whether any further criminal charges should be brought."

The Defence Secretary did not respond directly to the allegation that the "unlawful conditioning process" was UK military policy approved by the Government at the time.

He went on: “Since 2003 we have reviewed our practices in relation to detention, and where necessary made changes. This is a complex judgment, some 60 pages long, and needs careful consideration. However if further lessons or action needs to be taken on board as a result of this judgement we will do so.”

[accuracy]

Abu Ghraib Investigator Points to Pentagon

By Josh White and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, June 17, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/16/AR2007061601074_pf.html

The Army two-star general who led the first investigation into detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq believes that senior defense officials were involved in directing abusive interrogation policies and said that he was forced to retire early because of his pursuit of the issue, says an article to be published tomorrow in the New Yorker magazine.

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba said that he felt mocked and shunned by top Pentagon officials, including then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, after filing an exhaustive report on the now-notorious Abu Ghraib abuse that sparked international outrage and led to an overhaul of the U.S. interrogation and detention policies. Taguba's report examining the 800th Military Police Brigade put in plain terms what had been documented in shocking photographs.

In interviews with New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh, Taguba said that he was ordered to limit his investigation to low-ranking soldiers who were photographed with the detainees and the soldiers' unit, but that it was always his sense that the abuse was ordered at higher levels. Taguba was quoted as saying that he thinks top commanders in Iraq had extensive knowledge of the aggressive interrogation techniques that mirrored those used on high-value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that the military police "were literally being exploited by the military interrogators."

Taguba also said that Rumsfeld misled Congress when he testified in May 2004 about the abuse investigation, minimizing how much he knew about the incidents. Taguba said that he met with Rumsfeld and top aides the day before the testimony.

"I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib," Taguba said, according to the article. "We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."

Taguba could not be reached yesterday. Lawrence T. Di Rita, Rumsfeld's former spokesman at the Pentagon, disputed several of Taguba's characterizations.

"Secretary Rumsfeld appreciated that General Taguba had a tough job to do and did it to the best of his abilities," Di Rita said. "I only observed Secretary Rumsfeld treating him with the respect that a general officer performing a challenging assignment deserved."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

[accuracy]

Judge Orders FBI to Turn Over Thousands of Patriot Act Abuse Documents
By Ryan Singel

June 15, 2007
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/06/judge_orders_fb.html

Just one day after a news that an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1000 times, a federal judge ordered the agency Friday to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency's use of a powerful, but extremely secretive investigative tool that can pry into telephone and internet records.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/fbitoursclosed.jpg

The order for monthly document releases commencing July 5 came in response to a government sunshine request by a civil liberties group, which sued in April over the FBI's foot-dragging on its broad request.

The April request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the FBI to turn over documents related to its misuse of National Security Letters, self-issued subpoenas that don't need a judge's approval and which can get financial, phone and internet records. Recipients of the letters are forbidden by law from ever telling anyone other than their lawyer that they received the request. Though initially warned initially to use this power sparingly, FBI agents issued more than 47,000 in 2005, more than half of which targeted Americans. Information obtained from the requests, which need only be certified by the agency to be "relevant" to an investigation, are dumped into a data-mining warehouse for perpetuity.

An Inspector General report in March found rampant errors in the small sample of NSLs examined and systemic underreporting of the powers usage to Congress. The report also found that agents issued more than 700 "expedited" letters, some containing materially false sworn statements. These letters had no legal basis and essentially asked companies to turn over data by pretending there was an emergency in order to get the data necessary to get a proper NSL. One former FBI agent says its clear the FBI violated the law.

Now the Justice Department must turn over 2,500 pages of documents a month to the EFF, including information on cozy surveillance contracts between the FBI and telephone companies and information on how data captured by NSLs were put into the FBI's massive data mining warehouse.

The Justice Department told the court that there were more than 100,000 potentially responsive documents and that ten people are working full time on filling the request for documents. Look out for a run on thick, black magic markers in D.C.

THREAT LEVEL can't wait to see:

1. All records discussing or reporting violations or potential violations of statutes, Attorney General guidelines, and internal FBI policies governing the use of NSLs, including, but not limited to:

A. Correspondence or communications between the FBI and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concerning violations or potential violations of statutes...

2. Guidelines, memoranda or communications addressing or discussing the integration of NSL data into the FBIís Investigative Data Warehouse; 3. Contracts between the FBI and three telephone companies [...] which were intended to allow the Counterterrorism Division to obtain telephone toll billing data from the communications industry as expeditiously as possible;

4. Any guidance, memoranda or communications discussing the FBI's legal authority to issue exigent letters to telecommunications companies, and the relationship between such exigent letters and the FBI's authority to issue NSLs under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act;

5. Any guidance, memoranda or communications discussing the application of the Fourth Amendment to NSLs issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act;

8. Copies of sample or model exigent letters used by the FBI's Counterterrorism Division;

9. Copies of sample or model NSL approval requests used by the FBIís Counterterrorism Division;

10. Records related to the Counterterrorism Divisionís Electronic Surveillance Operations and Sharing Unit (EOPS).


© 2007 CondéNet, Inc

[accuracy]

Guantanamo Will Close When Bush Goes

June 17, 2007
http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=54030

A leading human rights lawyer said he expected Guantanamo Bay prison to close when President George W. Bush leaves office.

http://www.javno.com/slike/slike_3/r1/g2007/m05/x141400050831310.jpg
GUANTANAMO BAY

A leading human rights lawyer said he expected Guantanamo Bay prison to close when President George W. Bush leaves office but there were still 14,000 prisoners held by the United States in secret jails around the world.
"Guantanamo has achieved a huge amount -- all bad," said Clive Stafford Smith who criss-crosses the Atlantic trying to liberate detainees from the U.S. prison on Cuba.

Fighting the cases of more than 60 detainees -- he has succeeded in freeing 24 -- provoked Stafford Smith into writing "Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons."

He says cooks, shopkeepers and television cameramen were tortured into admitting they worked for Osama bin Laden.

The United States is holding 380 foreign terrorism suspects at the camp which it opened in 2002. Their indefinite detention has provoked widespread international criticism while U.S. efforts to establish a system to try them have run into legal obstacles.

Stafford Smith said most of the 14,000 prisoners in secret jails were in Iraq.

The Bush administration was forced to rewrite the rules over Guantanamo last year after the Supreme Court deemed the old tribunals illegal. And in the latest twist this month, judges decided the fact that two defendants had been designated "enemy combatants" was not enough to try them by military commission.

"That was just another nail in the coffin for Guantanamo," Stafford Smith told Reuters at a literary festival being staged at the ancestral home of Princess Diana's brother Charles Spencer.

The lawyer believes "Guantanamo will definitely close and I think as soon as the current incumbent of the White House is out of office," he said.

A DIVERSION

But the Anglo-American lawyer with dual nationality, who has spent much of his life defending death row inmates in the United States, argued that Guantanamo had become a diversion.

"Just looking at the raw numbers, of the admitted prisoners in secret American custody today, Guantanamo represents just 2.7 percent. There are 14,000 in different prisons around the world," he said.

Bush confirmed in September last year that the CIA had run secret interrogation centres abroad but named no country.

Stafford Smith, legal director of the U.K.-based charity Reprieve, said: "On April 26, 2006 in the Congressional Record the official figure was 14,000 .... The majority, I'm sure, are held in Iraq.

"It is a place that my wife forbids me as a lawyer from going to defend them as it is a bit dangerous."

Reflecting on the fall-out from Guantanamo, Stafford Smith said it had been an effective recruiting sergeant for al Qaeda just as Britain's decision to impose internment without trial boosted Irish Republican Army volunteers in the fight to oust Britain from Northern Ireland.

One of the greatest casualties, the lawyer argued before flying back to Guantanamo to see four new Yemeni clients, was the dissolution of all the goodwill that had been directed towards the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

"I go around the Middle East and the word Guantanamo is synonymous with U.S. hypocrisy. It is very, very sad as it has taken away the American ability or right to propagate democracy," he concluded.

Copyright © 2006-2007 Javno.com

[accuracy]

REVISITED: The Abu Ghraib Prison Torture Photos

18/06/07

"The original story was that some low level military guards got carried away and did this "torturing" on their own. It would take much training from CIA "interrogators" to learn all the punishment that these prisoners suffered.

But of course, Mr. George W. Bush stated, "We do not torture." So these pictures must all be fake."


Photos of torture here

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444

More photos here

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=8560

[accuracy]

Torture 101

A flash animation

http://www.markfiore.com/animation/study.html

[accuracy]

US May Move Detainees to Afghan Prison

By DEB RIECHMANN and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writers

Friday, June 22, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/22/national/w082655D12.DTL

WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The United States is helping build a prison in Afghanistan to take some prisoners now at Guantanamo Bay, but the White House said Friday it is not meant as an alternative to the detainee facility in Cuba.


The Bush administration wants to close Guantanamo Bay and move its terror suspects to prisons elsewhere and senior officials have told The Associated Press a consensus is building among the president's top advisers on how to do it.


The administration is looking to resolve the issue swiftly, White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino told reporters Friday, although she said there's no deadline set.


"Everybody is working towards the goal to meet what the president has asked them to do, which is to do it as soon as possible," she said of shuttering the facility.


However, a scheduled high-level meeting Friday on the matter was canceled after AP reported on it and the White House said no decision is imminent.


"America does not have any intention of being the world's jailer," Perino said. She noted that the United States has announced plans to release about 80 of some 375 detainees, and hopes to transfer several dozen Afghans back to Afghanistan in the near future.


The Pentagon announced Friday that a new detainee had been transferred to the center, but added it was doing its best to reduce the population there, now at the lowest point in its five-year history.


Perino said Bush has directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to work with her counterparts around the world to try to repatriate detainees to their home countries, make sure they are held safely and treated humanely and that they are not allowed to perpetrate acts of terrorism.


State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that Rice continues to work to achieve that goal while she and others in the administration struggle with how to address security concerns that could result from closing Guantanamo.


"The president has said he would like nothing better than at some point to shut down Guantanamo Bay, but there are a number of steps that need to be taken between here and that stated objective and they are tough issues," McCormack said. "There are people down at Guantanamo Bay who are very, very dangerous and you can't just let them walk free."


Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman noted Defense Secretary Robert Gates supports closing the facility.


"I think that's the goal of everybody in the administration and probably most Americans — that we would rather not have to have a place like Guantanamo," he said. "But the fact remains that there are dangerous people out there that are being picked up on the battlefield that have vowed to return to the fight if released and individuals that have committed war crimes and should be held accountable for their actions."


The Pentagon announced the transfer to the center of Haroon al-Afghani, an alleged terrorist captured in the Afghan province of Nangarhar who is suspected of serving as a courier for al-Qaida leadership and commanding multiple cells of the Hezb-e-Islami militant faction.


The Guantanamo Bay prison, set up in 2002 to house terror suspects captured in military operations, mostly in Afghanistan, has been a flash point for criticism of the Bush administration at home and abroad.


Human rights advocates and foreign leaders have repeatedly called for its shutdown, and the prison is regarded by critics as proof of U.S. double standards on fundamental freedoms in the war on terrorism.


Some of the detainees have come from countries that are U.S. allies, including Britain, Saudi Arabia and Australia. Each of those governments raised complaints about the conditions or duration of detentions, or about the possibility that detainees might face death sentences.


A proposal gaining traction among Bush's top national security advisers would have some of the most dangerous suspects at Guantanamo transferred to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., officials say.


White House spokeswoman Perino said the Friday gathering to discuss the issue was canceled because it was determined that a "meeting wasn't necessary at this time."


"There was going to be a meeting in which Guantanamo detainee issues were discussed today, but that has been taken off the schedule," she said. "That doesn't mean that people don't continue to work on what the president has asked them to do, which is work towards getting that facility closed."


Expected to consult soon, according to the officials, are Rice, Gates, Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace.


The move is opposed by Cheney's office and the Justice Department, which argue that transferring prisoners to U.S. soil would give them undeserved rights and pose a threat to the United States.


But pressure on the administration to shut the facility has been mounting in recent months with a series of legal setbacks and some in Congress threatening to mandate it. The pressure has given advocates of closure some leverage in intense internal debate, the officials said.

Associated Press writers Ben Fox in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul, Afghanistan; and Anne Gearan and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report.

[accuracy]

Bush Advisers Weigh Closing Guantánamo Prison Sooner

June 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/washington/22cnd-gitmo.html?ex=1340164800&en=e88fd0ea9635fd6f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

WASHINGTON, June 22 — President Bush’s top advisers have reopened an internal debate over how quickly to close the American detention unit for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to administration officials familiar with the deliberations.

The intensified discussions are being prompted by several deputies of Cabinet members and reflect a growing belief that the continued use of the detention facility is tainting the image of the United States, and as a result hampering America’s campaign against terrorism, the officials said.

President Bush has said repeatedly that he wants to shut down the detention operation at Guantanamo, which holds about 400 prisoners, including more than a dozen suspected Al Qaeda leaders, but that it is not possible to do so in the near future.

But the Cabinet deputies are recommending that the process be accelerated, and at a meeting that had been scheduled for today, they were expected to urge a White House announcement on Guantanamo within weeks, according to the officials wrestling with the issue. Those officials cautioned that a final decision could still be weeks, or even months, away.

The meeting was canceled as a result of a report by The Associated Press on Thursday about the meeting, according to officials who knew about the session. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and their top deputies were among those scheduled to attend.

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said today there is no deadline for closing down the facility. “Everybody is working towards the goal to meet what the president has asked them to do, which is to do it as soon as possible,” she said.

The abrupt cancellation of the meeting prompted a statement on Thursday evening by Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, that was true but did not reflect the state of the debate about the detention camp.

“The President has long expressed a desire to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and to do so in a responsible way,” Mr. Johndroe said. “A number of steps need to take place before that can happen such as setting up military commissions and the repatriation to their home countries of detainees who have been cleared for release. These and other steps have not been completed. No decisions on the future of Guantanamo Bay are imminent and there will not be a White House meeting tomorrow.”

Guantanamo was chosen for the detention camp in the first place because, while it is an American military installation, it is not on American soil, and thus not as unambiguously subject to American law as are prisons within the United States.

Transferring the prisoners from Guantanamo would raise a host of legal, diplomatic and human rights questions, depending on whether they were sent to their home countries, other countries, or to military prisons in the United States. But the continued confinement of the detainees, some from countries that are allies of the United States, has sparked intense criticism of the United States.

The Guantanamo detainees do not fit into easy categories. They are not prisoners of war in the traditional sense, in that they were not uniformed soldiers of countries at war with the United States. And only some of them have been charged with crimes. Most of the detainees are classified as “enemy combatants.” Among the detainees is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Administration hard-liners have opposed housing the prisoners in the United States, at least in part because they would presumably have greater legal rights, and thus be able to challenge the conditions of their confinement and interrogations.

Since the Guantanamo detention unit was opened in 2002, President Bush has said that the terrorist suspects there do not deserve all the legal rights enjoyed by American citizens, and that to grant them would hamper the search for intelligence that can help capture other terrorists and perhaps prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks.

But the administration has suffered repeated setbacks in American courts, which have held that the detainees should at least be able to challenge the basis for their incarceration. Congress has responded with legislation to limit the detainees’ ability to go to court. Lawyers for some detainees have criticized the military tribunals established at Guantanamo, asserting that they are designed not to provide fair trials but to reinforce the impression that the Americans rounded up the right people.

The momentum for closing the camp has come in part from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has argued repeatedly that the detention unit has acquired such a shabby image abroad that legal proceedings involving the terrorist suspects would not be respected around the world.

Mr. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agree on this issue, in sharp contrast to the situation that prevailed under Mr. Gates’s predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who opposed a quick shutdown of the detention camp. And Stephen A. Cambone, who was highly influential as Mr. Rumsfeld’s under secretary for intelligence, and who also opposed closing the camp, has left the administration.

One sign of Mr. Gates’s influence was his success in killing plans to build a $100 million courthouse and detention complex at Guantanamo on the grounds that its construction would signal American intention to keep prisoners there for a long time. A much more modest, less costly facility was approved.

The move toward closing Guantanamo may also have picked up speed because Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who opposes shutting down the camp anytime soon, has lost influence within the administration because of the continuing calls for his resignation over the controversial firings of several United States attorneys and other turmoil within the Justice Department.

Vice President Dick Cheney also opposes closing the camp in the near future and has been silent for some time about the issue.

Ms. Perino, the White House spokeswoman, noted today that the United States plans to release about 80 of the detainees soon. “America does not have any intention of being the world’s jailer,” she said.

Helene Cooper, Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger contributed reporting for this story

[accuracy]

Pentagon sends another detainee to Guantanamo

22 Jun 2007
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N22212386.htm

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Friday it sent a suspected commander of an al Qaeda-affiliated group to the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, increasing detainee ranks at the facility as some U.S. officials in Washington weigh closing it.

The Pentagon said it transferred Haroon al-Afghani from a U.S. military facility in Afghanistan to the detention center at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba this week.

Al-Afghani was captured in Afghanistan but Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know when.

According to the Pentagon, al-Afghani admitted serving as a courier for senior al Qaeda leadership.

The Defense Department said al-Afghani also served as a senior commander of Hezb-i-Islami, a group run by Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and associated with al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It said he commanded cells that used improvised explosive devices, the roadside bombs that have proved deadly to U.S. and coalition troops.

"He is a person with significant knowledge ... and may have additional information with respect to ongoing al Qaeda operations and may have information that is useful to us in thwarting future attacks," Whitman said.

Whitman would not say who had captured al-Afghani.

The United States has faced international criticism over its continued detention of about 375 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Human rights groups and other critics have demanded the Bush administration close Guantanamo and that detainees be charged with crimes or released.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has suggested Congress explore with the White House ways to close the prison while keeping the most dangerous detainees imprisoned.

Senior administration officials had been scheduled to discuss the issue on Friday but canceled the meeting after news reports that the administration was close to agreement on closing the facility.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray and Caren Bohan)

[accuracy]

Court hears appeal of Bush assassination plot

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-06-21-bushappeal_N.htm

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — An American Muslim convicted of plotting to assassinate President Bush had been tortured into confessing and was denied his constitutional right to confront his accusers, his attorney told a federal appeals court Thursday.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali claims Saudi security officials whipped and tortured him into giving a false confession, attorney Joshua Draytel said.

Draytel also claimed his client's constitutional right to confront his accusers "took a ferocious beating" because the Saudis testified from Riyadh while Abu Ali was in a Virginia courtroom.

Abu Ali should have been taken to Saudi Arabia since the Saudi government would not allow its agents to come to the U.S., Draytel said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David H. Laufman countered that Abu Ali's trial in November 2005 was fair and that there was no doubt about the validity of his written and videotaped confessions.

"The sheer detail of these confessions is astonishing," Laufman told the three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which later conducted a closed session focusing on classified information.

The court will likely issue its ruling in several weeks.

Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen born to a Jordanian father and raised in Falls Church, Va., is serving 30 years for conspiracy to assassinate the president, conspiracy to hijack aircraft and providing support to al-Qaeda.

Prosecutors said Abu Ali traveled to Saudi Arabia and joined al-Qaeda out of hatred for the United States. The Saudis arrested Abu Ali in June 2003 as he was taking final exams at the Islamic University of Medina.

Abu Ali gave the Saudis a statement saying he joined al-Qaeda and discussed with some senior members Bush's assassination and other terror plots. The jury in Abu Ali's trial saw his videotaped confession.

Laufman said security concerns precluded taking Abu Ali to Saudi Arabia. He also said the Sixth Amendment "does not guarantee a defendant a face-to-face encounter" with his accuser.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III pressed Draytel on the torture issue, asking how he could argue such coercion when the videotape "showed the defendant rocking back and forth and smiling."

Draytel referred the court to his written briefs, saying he wanted to spend his limited time on the Sixth Amendment issue and his claim that there was insufficient evidence to corroborate the confession.

Wilkinson said only "bare bones" confessions are typically suppressed because of a lack of corroborating evidence.

"These are among the most detailed confessions I've seen," the judge said.

On cross-appeal, the government is challenging Abu Ali's 30-year sentence as too lenient.

He faced a maximum of life in prison, but U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said 30 years was sufficient considering the 20-year term given to John Walker Lindh, who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in November 2001 during the U.S.-led effort to topple the Taliban.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

[accuracy]

Amnesty International to compile dossier of evidence on secret rendition flights

June 24, 2007
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1494225.0.amnesty_international_to_com pile_dossier_of_evidence_on_secret_rendition_fligh ts.php

Justice secretary seeking evidence on ‘torture flights’ that landed at Scottish airports

HUMAN RIGHTS organisations will for the first time compile a dossier of all evidence relating to "torture flights" landing at Scottish airports after a call made by the Executive.

Amnesty International Scotland said they were approached by civil servants on June 15 on behalf of justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, who has asked for all information and reports linked to extraordinary rendition flights landing and taking off from airports in Scotland.

John Watson, director of the civil liberties organisation, said: "I don't believe that it the evidence has been gathered in one place before, it's all buried amongst lengthy lists and reports on our website, in the Council of Europe report and so forth."

He added: "There certainly hasn't been an investigation into the Scottish angle before."

The Scottish Executive's decision to launch its own inquiry comes weeks before the Westminster parliamentary intelligence and security committee is due to publish its findings on rendition flights.

Labour peer Lord Foulkes suggested the Executive should hold off from this inquiry until after the Westminster one is published to avoid "misunderstandings" between Holyrood and the London parliament.

Earlier this month the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) also completed an inquiry, which concluded that there was not enough evidence to warrant a police investigation, a finding which the human rights organisation Liberty called a "whitewash".

A Scottish Executive spokesman explained why a Scotland-specific inquiry was necessary. He said: "Civil aviation is a reserved matter and is the responsibility of the United Kingdom government. However, attempts to commit or conspire to commit torture are crimes under Scots law, and it is for the police to investigate allegations of such offences and for the procurator fiscal to decide whether or not to bring proceedings.

"ACPO have considered information provided to them by the human rights group Liberty. The information examined was already available, and the investigation comprised a consideration of this material and was not a full criminal investigation.

"Hence our intention to meet with these individuals and organisations to discover what information they may have, and if appropriate to pass it on to the Crown and the police in Scotland."

Watson said the Executive had shown a "real shift in attitude and policy".

He said: "We need to have this investigation because quite frankly we can't trust the Westminster government. They have made strong assurances that we're not involved in anything like that but we're not going to tell you any more or give you information about it'.

"Someone saying it's in hand isn't going to convince us, it's too late in the day for that."

Watson said that if "substantiated evidence" came out of the inquiry he hoped it would be acted upon by the appropriate authorities.

"This is fundamental stuff you're talking about, kidnap and torture carried out by government agents. The Council of Europe suggest it's happening on the nod from our own government.

"I don't know if we will be able to get that kind of evidence, I don't even know if that evidence will exist in a format that we could find, but we have to try. Even if we don't find anything, I think we would have to set up systems where this can't happen in the future."

Amnesty International said they would call on Scottish airports to "follow the good example" of Derry airport in Northern Ireland, which has opened its flight records for scrutiny and signed a protocol setting out safeguards to prevent future rendition flights landing there.

The move has been welcomed by Clive Stafford Smith, the acclaimed human rights lawyer who represents many people who are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay and have been subject to extraordinary rendition flights.

He said: "Certainly they should set protections in place, At the moment the British are placed second after Germany in the European league of complicity in these flights, and there is only going to be more evidence that comes out."

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said they have already contacted MacAskill and sent him all the information they have compiled on rendition flights.

She added: "We hope the Scottish Executive's brave move will shame the new UK government into action.

"We have been calling on the UK government and the English police to conduct a similar investigation for over 18 months. Our requests have been refused.

"The next step for Liberty is to continue, along with other concerned organisations, to call for a full, transparent inquiry for the rest of the UK."

[accuracy]

Syria: Seven peaceful activists jailed after unfair trial

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/syr-220607-editorial-eng

http://web.amnesty.org/web/web.nsf/32875f903347b75280257171005b696c/8591d9b6433617bb80257302005a4806/Image/0.84!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif


Seven peaceful Syrian political activists have been sentenced to jail after an unfair trial in Damascus.

The seven advocates for political reform were tried before the Supreme State Security Court (SSSC), whose procedures fail to satisfy international fair trial standards and from which there is no right of appeal.

Maher Isber Ibrahim (26), Tareq al-Ghorani, Hussam Ali Mulhim, Diab Siriyeh, 'Omar 'Ali al'Abdullah (all 22), 'Allam Fakhour (29) and Ayham Saqr (31) – were all convicted of: "Taking action or making a written statement or speech which could endanger the State or harm its relationship with a foreign country, or expose it to the risk of hostile action".

Maher Isber Ibrahim and Tareq al-Ghorani were also convicted of "broadcasting of false news". On 17 June 2007, they received seven-year prison sentences. Their five co-accused, all students except Ayham Saqr, who works in a beauty salon, received five-year terms. An eighth man, 'Ali Nizar 'Ali, was released under an amnesty on 28 December 2006.

The seven are believed to have been arrested and tried because of their involvement in developing a youth discussion group, as well as for publishing pro-democracy articles on the internet. They were arrested by Air Force Intelligence (AFI) officials between 26 January and 18 March 2006, then reportedly detained in solitary confinement until the end of April 2006.

In November 2006, all seven defendants denied the charges when they first appeared in court. They also renounced "confessions" that they alleged had been extracted from them under torture and duress while they were held in incommunicado detention. However, the court failed to undertake any investigation and accepted the contested "confessions" as evidence against the defendants.

During the trial, they were denied access to their lawyers except for in brief meetings. In one of the trial sessions, on 15 April, most lawyers were prevented from meeting the defendants, who were also denied access to their relatives.

Amnesty International is greatly concerned by the imprisonment of these peaceful advocates of political reform. The organization considers all seven to be prisoners of conscience and is calling for their immediate and unconditional release.

[accuracy]

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL


Public Statement

25 June 2007


The UN Convention Against Torture at 20 -- remarkable achievements, formidable challenges

Amnesty International today called on all states to eradicate the scourge of torture and all other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The call came as the world prepard to mark the 20th anniversary, on 26 June 2007, of the entry into force of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted in 1984 for signature and ratification after long campaigning by Amnesty International and other organizations.

On the eve of that anniversary, a substantial majority of the world's states -- 144 in all regions -- will have ratified the Convention and a further eight states will have signed it. Its adoption has contributed to regional treaties prohibiting torture and torture has been included as a war crime and a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Committee against Torture regularly reviews reports of states parties on the implementation of the Convention, making findings and recommendations to states on how to prevent and punish torture and provide reparations to victims. The Committee also examines individual complaints by victims alleging torture. The UN has appointed a Special Rapporteur on torture to address reports of torture and recommend actions by all states, whether they are parties to the Convention or not.

The Convention has a number of important features. It defines torture (Article 1) as both a human rights violation and a crime, involving the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering for purposes such as punishment, intimidation and the obtaining of information, when done by officials, at their instigation or with their consent or acquiescence.

It requires each state party to "take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent torture," makes clear that "[n]o exceptional circumstances whatsoever" justify torture and rules out any defence of superior orders (Article 2). Article 3 prohibits the transfer (refoulement) of anyone to a place where he or she risks torture and Article 4 requires that all acts of torture be defined as a crime. States must investigate when anyone suspected of torture is found on their territory (Article 6), must provide for universal jurisdiction over such persons (Article 5 (2)) and, if such suspects are not extradited, submit the case to their prosecutors (Article 7 (1)). They must investigate promptly and impartially whenever there are reasonable grounds to believe that an act of torture has occurred in territory subject to their jurisdiction or such an act is alleged (Articles 12 and 13). States must train all law enforcement personnel not to torture (Article 10), provide reparations to victims (Article 14) and exclude any statement made as the result of torture in any proceeding, except to prove that torture occurred (Article 15). The Convention also requires states to take measures against other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Article 16).

Last year saw a further major development towards greater protection against torture and other ill-treatment. On 22 June 2006, the Optional Protocol to the Convention, which had been adopted on 18 December 2002, entered into force. To date, 56 States have signed the Protocol, and 34 have ratified or acceded to it. The Protocol mandates independent international experts to conduct regular visits to places of detention within states parties, and requires states parties to set up national mechanism to conduct visits to places of detention and to cooperate with the international experts.

However the Convention, and the struggle to rid the world of torture and other ill-treatment in general, continue to face serious challenges.

These challenges include, first and foremost, the continued infliction, in many countries, of torture and other ill-treatment on detainees, prisoners and others. In police stations, prisons, military detention facilities, interrogation centres and other locations all around the world officials abuse the absolute power they have over defenceless persons deprived of their liberty and inflict pain on them, or else they allow others to inflict such pain with impunity.

Amnesty International's annual reports depressingly show, year after year, that the majority of states in the world still torture or ill-treat persons under their control. Of the 153 states and territories surveyed in the organization's 2007 annual report, at least 102 had resorted to torture or other ill-treatment.

Another challenge is the attempts by some to challenge the absolute prohibition on torture and other ill-treatment, for instance by arguing that they are essential weapons in the "war on terror."
Facing an outcry against such a call for states to adopt criminal conduct as official policy, certain governments have resorted, instead, to playing word-games, making definitional and interpretational manoeuvres including by:


claiming that certain methods of interrogation or forms of punishment do not constitute torture;

claiming that the prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is not quite as absolute as that on torture, and therefore states may ill-treat prisoners in certain circumstances;

"subcontracting" torture to other states and claiming that responsibility rests solely with them;

circumventing non-refoulement obligations through devices such as diplomatic assurances.

Why is the eradication of torture and ill-treatment proving so elusive?

Reasons include lack of political will and failure to enact effective implementing legislation, to provide training, to investigate or prosecute, extradite and to establish effective procedures for victims to obtain reparations no matter who committed them and no matter where the torture occurred.

What must be done? States must take their international obligations seriously. Those which have not ratified the Convention must do so. Those which have attached reservations weakening the Convention's protections must withdraw them. Those which have not allowed individual complaints to be considered by the Committee against Torture must now allow such complaints. Those which have not ratified the Optional Protocol must do so. States must also contribute generously to the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.

States parties should also nominate and vote for independent candidates of the highest calibre in elections to the Committee against Torture which will take place on 8 October 2007. Candidates should possess a broad experience relevant to the Convention, an in-depth understanding of issues relevant to the deprivation of liberty and a long-standing commitment to human rights. Candidates should not hold a position in the executive or legislative branch of government. In order to improve the selection of candidates, states should put in place a process at the national level which is consultative, transparent and well-publicized. Amnesty International urges states parties to ensure that considerations of quality prevail over those of politics in the forthcoming elections.

At the national level, states must amend flawed implementing legislation and enact effective implementing legislation where none exists, provide training, establish special units of police and prosecutors to investigate reports of torture and to prosecute suspects, including on the basis of universal jurisdiction, or extradite them to states able to do so in fair trials without the death penalty or the risk of torture or ill-treatment. Indeed, they must never transfer anyone to any place where they would be at risk of torture or ill-treatment. They must establish independent, professional and adequately resourced national visiting mechanisms in accordance with the provisions of the Optional Protocol.

A positive example of action at the national level is the appeal launched today by Redress in the Parliament in London to enact the Torture (Damages) Bill, introduced in the House of Lords on 5th March 2007 [HL Bill 49]. This bill, strongly supported by Amnesty International, would provide effective procedures for fulfilling the United Kingdom's obligations under Article 14 of the Convention against Torture by permitting any victim of torture to obtain reparation in civil proceedings even when committed abroad.

Torturers must not be allowed to get away with their crimes -- be they perpetrators, their civilian superiors or military commanders or the state as a whole. Victims must not be left to suffer -- their torture must be stopped, their torturers punished, and their right to reparation ensured.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGIOR510042007

[accuracy]

The EU must show leadership in revealing the truth about rendition

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/eur-220607-action-eng

It is time for the EU to take concrete steps to ensure disclosure of the truth about rendition and secret detention in EU territory. It must end the practice once and for all and ensure accountability for past crimes.

http://www.amnesty.org/images/resources/stoptorture/eugraphic_200x150.jpg
EU logo over graphic
© APGraphicsBank

A report by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly confirmed, in June 2007, that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has operated secret detention centres in Poland and Romania. The report does not rule out the possibility that secret CIA detentions may also have occurred in other Council of Europe (CoE) member states.

The report reinforces earlier findings by the CoE and the European Parliament and is further confirmation of Amnesty International’s conclusions that some European Member States have been complicit in the US-led programme of renditions and secret detention.

Both the European Parliament and bodies of the CoE have recommended measures aimed at disclosure of further facts about what has occurred and to prevent further human rights violations of this nature from taking place in the EU.

None of these recommendations has been implemented to date.

The EU and all European governments must take steps to ensure that counter-terrorism measures do not lead to individuals being subjected to rendition, secret or arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture or other ill-treatment, or other serious human rights violations.

They must also ensure that allegations of human rights violations are fully and independently investigated, that those responsible are brought to justice and that the victims receive adequate reparation.

Take action!

As Portugal holds Presidency of the EU from July to December 2007, call on Portuguese Prime Minister José Socrates to ensure that the EU Council publicly condemns rendition and that the recommendations of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe are implemented.

http://www.amnesty.org/images/resources/stoptorture/josesocrates_100x120.jpg
© APGraphicsBank

Dear Prime Minister,

I am deeply concerned about the role that some EU Member States have played in the US-led programme of renditions and secret detention.

Inquiries carried out by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament found that some EU Member States had been complicit in renditions and secret detention and recommended measures to prevent renditions in or through Europe in future. I am deeply troubled that none of the recommendations has been implemented to date.

In view of Portugal’s Presidency of the European Union, from July to December 2007, I urge you to ensure that the EU Council publicly condemns rendition and that the recommendations of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe are implemented, including by ensuring that:

the EU does not allow national or foreign intelligence agencies to operate without effective control on its territory;
Member States encourage and provide full information to independent parliamentary and/or judicial inquiries into allegations of co-operation in renditions;
all Member States provide accurate and thorough information on rendition and secret detention to the European Parliament, the EU Council, the EU Commission and the Council of Europe.

Respectfully,


Name
City, country
Date


http://web.amnesty.org/pages/eur-220607-action-eng

[accuracy]

Slow Death of Man in Guantanamo

27/06/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=20873

CAGEPRISONERS




PRESS RELEASE




26th June 2007




Latest: Slow Death of Man in Guantanamo




Unclassified statements from 59 year old father-of-four Saifullah Paracha, currently being detained at Guantanamo Bay, reveal that his health has seriously deteriorated and could lead to his premature death if his pre-existing heart, prostatic and diabetic disease are not treated urgently.




Saifullah, a Pakistani national and US green card holder, was kidnapped on 5th July 2003 whilst enroute to Bangkok on business. He has since suffered three heart attacks, one of which occurred during interrogation - two in Bagram Airbase and one in Guantanamo Bay.




His lawyer Gaillard T Hunt suggests his medical treatment is at best incompetent and at worst negligent.



"Several of Paracha's brothers and sisters have died of cardiac problems before reaching 65. Paracha is nearly 60, so the problem is not one to be ignored. Paracha has been having fainting spells, so we know the problem is worsening. He couldn't submit to a cardiac catheterization at Guantanamo because the rules require all prisoners in the hospital to be shackled to the four corners of the bed. The cardiologist said this was dangerous for a heart patient, but the prison administration would not compromise. The statements filed in court to assure us that Paracha is getting proper treatment are not signed by the doctors. We have to assume the doctors are as disturbed by the situation as we are. The doctors told Paracha that they were acting as military men first, as doctors second. Paracha is not the worst case. There are people at GTMO literally dying from lack of treatment."




Since the declaration of the "war on terror" post 9/11, various sources have reported the active participation of US military health and medical professionals in a variety of serious offences in the prison of Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantànamo Bay in Cuba.




Family and former detainees are deeply concerned over the health of Saifullah and demand that he be given immediate emergency medical attention that could very well save his life.




Saifullah Paracha’s wife Farhat, said “About my husband's health, if anything goes wrong the entire responsibility is the American Government's.”




Zahra Paracha, Saifullah’s daughter, said: “I always had a very strong gut feeling that one day, my whole family will come together and we'll be like any other normal family. Now I keep feeling, ‘what if he meets God before us?’ I think I have as much of a right as any American kid to meet my parent.”



Former detainee Moazzam Begg, spokesman of CagePrisoners states: “Although it is asserted by the US military in Guantanamo that prisoners often receive 'better medical treatment than they would at home' it is evident through cases such as Mr.Paracha's that health matters are attached to certain prerequisites. Often, as was the case during my time in US custody, prisoners' level of medical treatment would be dependant upon their level of cooperation with interrogators. Simply put, failure to comply could mean failure to receive treatment.”



Saifullah Paracha’s statement can be read in full at:

http://www.cageprisoners.com/downloads/paracha_statement.pdf

[accuracy]

Gitmo Detainee Ill After Refusing Aid

28/06/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=20887

By MICHAEL MELIA

The Associated Press



SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- A Guantanamo Bay detainee who refused to let U.S. military doctors perform a heart procedure is suffering frequent chest pains and fainting spells, his lawyers said Wednesday.




Saifullah Paracha, a 59-year-old Pakistani businessman accused of supporting al-Qaida, wants to be transferred to the United States or Pakistan for a procedure to assess his coronary disease.




"He desperately needs proper treatment and he's just not receiving it," said attorney Zachary Katznelson, of the British human rights group Reprieve.




The procedure, a cardiac catheterization, is used to detect heart problems and determine treatment options. It involves inserting a thin plastic tube into an artery or vein and pushing it into the heart or the coronary arteries.




Paracha reportedly suffered two heart attacks before he was taken to Guantanamo in 2004. His lawyers said last November it was too risky to allow the procedure at the U.S. naval base in southeast Cuba, and complained the military would insist on shackling their client's arms and legs on his recovery bed.




A Guantanamo spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, said Paracha is in stable condition and monitored daily. "Any special symptoms are noted and tended to appropriately," he said.




He said heart specialists discussed possible bypass surgery with Paracha and recommended the catheterization, which the detainee refused after the military brought a surgical team and a mobile cardiac treatment facility to Guantanamo _ at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $400,000.




A hospital devoted to treating prisoners at Guantanamo has more than 100 personnel, with additional specialists flown in as necessary, Haupt said.




The quality of the medical care provided to Guantanamo detainees is lampooned in Michael Moore's new health-care documentary "Sicko," which notes that the prisoners receive better treatment than millions of Americans.




In a statement released by his attorneys, Paracha said his confinement in an individual cell nearly around the clock has aggravated medical problems including heart disease, diabetes and an enlarged prostate.




A federal judge in Washington denied Paracha's bid last November for a temporary transfer to a civilian hospital. Katznelson said lawyers were considering another challenge.




"The more acute his problems become, we would hope that the judge will be willing to take another look," he said by telephone from London.




Paracha was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, in July 2003, held in isolation for 14 months in Afghanistan and then sent to Guantanamo, where the U.S. military holds about 375 men on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.



SOURCE: Washington Post

[accuracy]

Innocent Victims of the African Guantanamo

27/06/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=20876

Christopher Thompson meets a victim of the latest front in America’s war on terror Ethiopia and Somalia - and caught many innocents in the crossfire.



In an echo of Guantanamo, the US is using secret east African prisons to render terror suspects captured in the Horn of Africa.




Zanzibar-born translator Kamilya Tuwein, who lives in the UAE, told The First Post in an exclusive interview how she was captured in northern Kenya on suspicion of being a member of al-Qaeda.




"I was in Kenya in a hotel on January 10 when police broke into the room with guns and arrested me. They took us to Mombasa, then Nairobi. When I arrived they said 'Welcome al-Qaeda'."




According to Kamilya she was then flown at night to the Somali capital Mogadishu where she was kept in an internment camp for ten days at a time when Ethiopian forces were invading the country.




Since December 2006 the US has opened up an African front in its war on terror - centred around Kenya,




Central to the new strategy is the use of Ethiopian jails in the rendering and interrogation of terror suspects. Hundreds of these have been held incommunicado by the Ethiopian and Kenyan authorities on suspicion of terrorism, according to US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).




They accuse the US of complicity in the maltreatment of these detainees in what the UK legal rights charity Reprieve has denounced as 'Africa's Guantanamo', using Ethiopia as an erstwhile ally in its invasion of neighbouring Somalia late last year.




US special forces, along with Kenyan and Ethiopian authorities, have also been arresting suspects along the Kenyan/Somali border since December 2006. An unknown number have been sent to Ethiopia.




In March Ethiopia's Foreign Affairs Ministry acknowledged that 41 people were held "after being captured by the joint forces of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and Ethiopia". It added that 29 were slated for release, including four Britons, and that there were no 'secret' prisons.




But flight manifests held by HRW show at least 85 people were deported from Kenya to Somalia on three planes chartered by two airlines, African Express Airways and Sudan's Bluebird Aviation, on January 20 and 27, and February 10.




Meanwhile, according to former prisoners like Kamilya, Western intelligence agencies are taking advantage of the situation to conduct clandestine interrogations. "I was in Addis Ababa for six weeks. A US man interrogated me. When I asked him who he was, he didn't want to tell," said Kamilya.




Earlier this year the US Government denied the detentions were part of a covert rendition programme but conceded that interviews with detainees have produced "valuable information". The new approach to Africa reflects a heightened concern among US policy-makers about the possibility of militant Islamist groups penetrating Africa, which is already home to large, albeit traditionally moderate, Muslim communities.




"The terrorist challenge has increased in Africa in the past year," said Professor Peter Pham, a US advisor on Africa to the Pentagon. "It's gotten a new lease of life."




This concern is reflected in the Pentagon's construction of a new unified military command for Africa, dubbed Africom, due to be up and running before September this year, according to Pham.




For those such as Kamilya, caught up as a new front in the 'war on terror' opens, there is little hope of explanation or compensation for their ordeals.




SOURCE: TheFirstPost.co.uk

[accuracy]

Russian Freed From Guantánamo Is Killed by Police Near Chechnya
By C. J. CHIVERS

June 28, 2007

MOSCOW, June 27 — A Russian man who had been captured by American forces in Afghanistan and released from the detention center at Guantánamo Bay was killed Wednesday in a police raid near Chechnya, Russia’s intelligence service said.

The man, Ruslan Odizhev, was released by the United States in early 2004, and returned to Russia on the condition that he and six other repatriated Russian detainees would be tried in Russian courts.

Russia did not honor the agreement, however, and the men were freed. Mr. Odizhev had been missing and presumed to be living in hiding since 2005.

He died Wednesday in an apartment building in Nalchik, a city of 275,000 and the capital of the internal republic Kabardino-Balkariya, according to the F.S.B., the principal successor to the Soviet K.G.B.

The F.S.B. said that Mr. Odizhev and another man suspected of being a militant had died in a gun battle. Explosives were found with his body, the F.S.B. said.

The news of Mr. Odizhev’s killing raised questions about the handling of his release, and the possible repatriation of other Guantánamo detainees, which the United States has said it hopes to do.

Three of the Russian men released with Mr. Odizhev have since been arrested, and the other three have apparently fled Russia because of police harassment or torture, according to Human Rights Watch, a private American organization, which has investigated their cases.

The authorities said that Mr. Odizhev had returned home and entered the Islamic insurgency in the North Caucasus, the region where instability has spread with the second Chechen war, which began in 1999.

Kabardino-Balkariya was briefly besieged in late 2005 by frustrated young men and Islamic militants. The attack, the last major offensive by militants tied to the Chechen war, began with bold day raids but ended with Russian counterattacks trapping and killing the militants by the score.

The F.S.B. said Wednesday that Mr. Odizhev had been a spiritual leader in Yarmuk, the group that led the attack. That could not be confirmed.

Carroll Bogert, the associate director of Human Rights Watch, said Mr. Odizhev’s interactions with the police dated to at least 2000, when Russian authorities accused him of involvement in bombings in 1999.

Ms. Bogert said that Mr. Odizhev had been tortured so severely that he fled Russia, apparently for Afghanistan, where he was captured by American forces in 2001. The circumstances of his capture and his relations to the Taliban are not fully known, she said.

Upon his release from Guantánamo Bay in February 2004, Mr. Odizhev was held and interrogated by the police, she said. He was released in June of that year, but denied an internal passport, which would have allowed him to work legally.

His activities since have not been publicly known.

The authorities said Wednesday that Mr. Odizhev had been on the federal wanted list in connection with the 1999 bombings. That complicated the case, raising the question of why he was released in 2004.

The Interior Ministry for the republic declined to comment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/world/europe/28russia.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[accuracy]

Terrorism Suspect Portrayed as 'Slow'

Calls Show Padilla Sometimes Frustrated His Alleged Handlers


By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2007;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/27/AR2007062702389_pf.html

MIAMI, June 27 -- After Jose Padilla was arrested as an accused "dirty bomb" plotter in May 2002, he became an icon of the domestic al-Qaeda threat.

For those who knew him just a few years before, it must have seemed like a startling evolution.

Because from the summer of 1998, when he moved from Florida to Egypt, through the spring of 2000, the former Taco Bell worker appears in his own and in his associates' wiretapped conversations to have been something far less threatening: a somewhat isolated, financially strapped young American in Egypt who was trying to disentangle himself from a marriage back in the United States and seemingly weary at times of trying to find his footing in a foreign country.

When he needed an Army jacket and sleeping bag, he turned to his mother in South Florida to send them. He struggled to learn Arabic, with one of his friends describing him with some exasperation as a "slow learner" -- so lazy that Padilla would learn only if they put a dictionary in bed. Romantically, he was at odds with his American wife, and his friends seem to have been trying to arrange a 14-year-old Egyptian bride for him.

Then, when the South Florida man prosecutors call Padilla's "recruiter" to terrorism began to press him to get active, Padilla complained that his efforts to find "good brothers" in the Middle East were complicated by discrimination against people from the United States.

"It's very difficult [to get a recommendation] 'cause . . . you know, and especially that I'm American, you know? So it's very . . . you know I am an American, so it's very hard," he tells Adham Hassoun, the Florida man whom prosecutors describe as his recruiter. "Listen, I have to let you go, because the phone card is blowing up."

Padilla and two other men, Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi, are on trial here, accused of a conspiracy to commit violence overseas and providing material support for terrorism.

The alleged "dirty bomb" plot has nothing to do with it, however.

Prosecutors say the men formed a U.S.-based support cell for al-Qaeda, and some of the tapes and intercepted faxes being presented to the jury suggest that his co-defendants helped arrange equipment or other support for people in the conflicts in Chechnya and Kosovo.

The evidence unveiled against Padilla so far, however, has proved far less tangible.

The key piece of physical evidence against him is the "mujaheddin identification form," allegedly recovered from an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, that bears Padilla's fingerprints and one of his aliases.

His attorneys, who told jurors that Padilla traveled to Egypt to study to become an imam, have suggested that his fingerprints appeared on the form because it was handed to him by interrogators during his detention after federal authorities labeled him an enemy combatant.

The other evidence against the alleged cell consists of thousands of intercepted phone calls. Padilla's voice is heard on eight of them, and so far prosecutors have presented seven; the eighth is described as inconsequential.

In those calls, and in those in which his associates refer to him -- often as "Ibrahim" and "Abu Abdallah" -- Padilla comes across as a frustratingly evasive project for his associates.

"Is he speaking Arabic, or he hasn't learned anything yet?" Hassoun asks another man, Mohamed Youssef, who is in Egypt with Padilla.

At this point, Padilla has been in Egypt for five months, supposedly studying Islam and Arabic.

"No. He basically, uh basically, he is a slow learner. I mean he is a slow learner," Youssef responds.

"So during the time he spent there, did he learn anything?" Hassoun asks again.

"Basically, he doesn't speak, sheikh. Basically, he doesn't want to speak. I mean, the man doesn't -- doesn't move."

Elsewhere in the tapes, Hassoun seems frustrated by how little he hears from Padilla. "You guys were not supposed to interrupt your communication at all," he says at one point, and "I was, like, why Ibrahim is not calling?" His mother, too, wants to hear from him, Hassoun indicates in the calls.

For his part, Padilla, who finds work teaching English and working at a "weight-lifting place," asks Hassoun somewhat sheepishly for money. He also discusses the difficulty of living in Egypt, even more than a year after he arrives.

After Hassoun tells him "Egypt is wonderful" in one call, Padilla responds: "But sometimes it's very, you know, it's difficult to get used to the culture. The Egyptian people are very tough, you know. I get frustrated sometimes."

Youssef tells Hassoun in an earlier call that Padilla "started, of course, to get psychologically tired, because he was living alone."

After April 2000, however, there are no more calls presented on which Padilla's voice appears.

According to the date on the mujaheddin data form, it was in July 2000 that Padilla reached the al-Qaeda training camp.

What Padilla does after the last call he is heard on in the spring of 2000 has been outlined only partially through the wiretapped conversations of others.

In the fall of 2000, for example, Hassoun was again looking for Padilla, because, among other things, he was supposed to sign divorce papers, according to one of the tapes played so far. He gets a somewhat vague answer, one that prosecutors say suggest he is in Afghanistan.

"Ibrahim is a little farther south. . . . He is supposed to be at Osama's," Youssef said.

[accuracy]

http://www.antiwar.com/photos/gitmo-prisoner.jpg
US Supreme Court, in Reversal, Agrees to Hear Guantánamo Detainee Cases

[accuracy]

Legislation Could Be Path to Closing Guantánamo

By THOM SHANKER and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/washington/03gitmo.html?ex=1341115200&en=f19b892956dde18d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/07/03/us/03guantanamo.600.1.jpg
A guard at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, talking in April with a detainee, whose image has been obscured because of military rules.

WASHINGTON, July 2 — Seeking a legal path to shutting down the Guantánamo detention facility, senior advisers to President Bush are exploring whether the White House and Congress can agree to legislation that would permit the long-term detention of foreign terrorism suspects on American soil, Pentagon and administration officials say.

The idea of creating a new legal category for some foreign terrorism detainees, which is still in its early stages, faces daunting political, legal and constitutional difficulties. But it is gaining support among some White House and national security officials as the most promising course to allow the president to close the site at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that has generated intense criticism at home and abroad.

Essentially, the administration would propose legislation that would result in dividing the estimated 375 Guantánamo detainees into three legal categories. The one that would call for legislative action would include detainees like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 2001 attacks, and others whose trials would risk exposing intelligence operations. This group, estimated at two dozen to 50, would be placed indefinitely in military brigs on American soil.

A second group would also be moved to the United States, most likely to face trial in military courts, but perhaps with more legal guarantees than in the current military tribunal system.

The third, and largest, group would consist of detainees to be released to their home countries.

The emerging proposal was described by administration officials who insisted on anonymity because the idea has not been approved by the White House. In fact, divisions are forming among the president’s senior advisers and aides over the evolving plan, with support for a legislative remedy coming from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

But the concept of closing Guantánamo faces stiff opposition from those close to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Vice President Dick Cheney, who are said to argue that moving the detainees to the United States would invite crippling legal challenges and undermine the broader counterterrorism effort while, in the end, doing little to quiet international criticism of American detention policies.

Some officials who oppose closing Guantánamo have warned that moving terrorism suspects caught on the battlefield into proceedings that more closely mirror traditional criminal trials would undermine a central pillar of the administration’s strategy in its campaign against terrorism, cast as an offensive military campaign on a global battlefield.

One person close to the administration who is familiar with the thinking of those opposed to closing Guantánamo said “the people who are standing firm on this issue have either left” — like former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — “or their bureaucratic influence has substantially waned, like Gonzales and Cheney.” Those urging the closing of Guantánamo, like Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, “are ascendant,” this person said.

Even so, the Bush administration, struggling to preserve support in Congress for the war in Iraq, may be eager for a legislative compromise on the detention center to ease criticism from leading lawmakers of both parties and offer an end to legal scrutiny, which has gone to the Supreme Court.

On Friday, the Supreme Court unexpectedly reversed course and announced that it would review the constitutionality of the system now in place to deal with the most dangerous detainees — military tribunals to try them for war crimes.

At the heart of the discussion within the administration is the concept of legislation that would set out a way to process, classify and incarcerate terrorist leaders and enemy combatants who are regarded as significant, continuing threats.

The most senior administration official to describe the concept publicly is Mr. Gates, who said, “I think that the biggest challenge is finding a statutory basis for holding prisoners who should never be released and who may or may not be able to be put on trial.”

Mr. Gates said the challenge to finding a legislative or administrative solution was “the nature of the information that is against them, if it involves sensitive intelligence sources or something like that.” But, he noted in comments on Friday, “people are working harder on the problem” in the administration.

Prof. Neal K. Katyal of Georgetown University Law Center said that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s announcement on Friday, it might be an opportune time to explore a new legal approach to detaining terrorism suspects inside the United States, perhaps a special national security court with different standards of proof than those of criminal courts.

“Is it possible to draft something that gives less than the full-blown rights of a criminal trial for those facing detention and for that process to survive a Supreme Court review?” he asked. “I think it is.”

Professor Katyal, an opponent of the administration’s detention policies, said nonetheless that “it’s not realistic to think that all people can be tried in an ordinary criminal court.”

Administration officials acknowledged that it was particularly difficult to figure out how to deal with detainees viewed as too dangerous to repatriate and, likewise, pose too great a risk to be offered legal protections granted others brought to American soil under current laws. These are the detainees that would fall into a new legal category envisioned under the possible legislation.

“Detainees that come to the United States could have the full panoply of U.S. constitutional protections, which means you’d have to have a judicial hearing on them in a certain amount of time,” said J. Alan Liotta, principal director for the Office of Detainee Affairs at the Pentagon.

Among these rights would be an assessment of the process of arrest and chain of custody of evidence. But many detainees were captured in combat situations across the Middle East that did not allow the sort of formal collection of evidence required by trials in the United States.

Mr. Liotta’s comments came in an invitation-only conference call with online journalists on June 26; a transcript of the discussion is posted on a Defense Department Web site.

“If you couldn’t have that judicial hearing in a certain amount of time, they could be released,” he added.

While acknowledging that the Guantánamo detention center had tainted the nation’s reputation, he also warned that simply closing it and moving the terrorism suspects to military brigs in the United States would not ease the controversy.

“I think a very real argument could be made that, as long as you’re not changing the basic legal construct of how we’re holding them and why we believe we’re entitled to hold them,” Mr. Liotta said, “no matter where you put them,” the controversy will continue.

Neil A. Lewis and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

[accuracy]

Guantánamo: Judges Deliver Two More Body Blows To An Embattled Administration

02/07/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=20925

by Andy Worthington



On Friday, in two separate decisions, judges in the United States delivered stinging rebukes to the administration regarding its policies of holding around 300 prisoners in Guantánamo without charge or trial, and its plans to try around 80 other prisoners before Military Commissions, the widely-reviled trial system for terror suspects, which permit the use of secret evidence obtained through bribery, coercion and torture.




In a brief order released on Friday morning, the Supreme Court agreed to hear claims by two Guantánamo prisoners – the Kuwaiti Fawzi al-Odah and the Bosnian Lakhdar Boumediene – that they had a right to challenge their detention in American courts. It follows a previous Supreme Court ruling that the prisoners had the right to challenge their detention – in June 2004 – which was swept away in October 2006, when a barely sentient Congress passed the draconian Military Commissions Act, removing the prisoners’ right to file habeas petitions challenging the basis of their detention, and also reinstating the system of trial by Military Commission that was dismissed by the Supreme Court in June 2006 as illegal under US law and the Geneva Conventions.




Friday’s decision, by five of the nine Justices, reversed a decision made in response to an appeal by the prisoners in April. On that occasion, the Supreme Court turned down their request to be heard, although they failed to rule out further intervention: Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony M. Kennedy pointed to the “obvious importance” of the cases, but said it would be premature to intervene, while three other members of the court – Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and David H. Souter – said that they wanted to act immediately.




The move is so unusual that court observers have struggled to recall the last occasion that the Supreme Court reversed an opinion, taking on a case that had previously been denied a hearing, and have concluded that it was 60 years ago. Although the Justices offered no explanation, lawyers for the prisoners have suggested that they may have been swayed by the affidavit submitted with one of the cases last week by Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, an army intelligence officer with 26 years’ experience, and the first ex-member of the tribunals to criticize the process in public, who testified that the gathering of materials for use in the tribunals was severely flawed, and that the whole system was geared towards rubber-stamping the detainees’ prior designation as “enemy combatants.”




The Supreme Court will not begin hearing the cases until autumn, but in the meantime, although the vote tally for the decision was not released, legal observers have been scrutinizing the Justices’ profiles, speculating that the opinion of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was pivotal. Lawyers cited by the New York Times said it was “not possible to predict how he might eventually vote in what could be a divisive issue on the court,” but it’s noticeable that, in June 2006, he was unremittingly harsh in his verdict on the illegality of the Military Commissions, warning the administration that “violations of Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions, which forbids ‘cruel treatment and torture’ and ‘outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment’] are considered ‘war crimes,’ punishable as federal offences, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel.”




On Friday afternoon, a second blow to the administration was delivered by Army Colonel Peter Brownback, the military judge presiding over the Military Commission of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was just 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan in July 2002. Brownback – and his colleague, Navy Captain Keith Allred, who was presiding over the Military Commission of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni accused of being one of Osama bin Laden’s drivers – surprised everyone four weeks ago by ruling that the Commissions could not proceed because, under the terms of the Military Commissions Act, those facing trial had to have been designated “unlawful enemy combatants” in the tribunals that qualified them for trial by Military Commission, whereas Khadr and Hamdan – and, in fact, every other prisoner in Guantánamo – had only been deemed to be “enemy combatants.”




Delivering a second opinion, in response to a renewed legal argument by the Pentagon, Col. Brownback refused to back down, ruling that the government had not resolved a lack of jurisdiction in Khadr’s case. Capt. Allred has yet to deliver a second opinion in Hamdan’s case, but in the meantime Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for the Pentagon, declared that the administration was preparing to file a challenge to the Court of Military Commissions Review, an appeals court that was hastily set up after the Commissions were derailed on 4 June, and added, tellingly, “We’re disappointed with the judge’s decision in this matter.”




On the same day that these momentous decisions took place, 145 members of the House of Representatives – 144 Democrats, led by James Moran of Virginia, and a lone Republican, Walter Jones of North Carolina – sent a letter to President Bush urging him to close Guantánamo and move the prisoners to military prisons on the US mainland. “The closure of the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay would represent a positive first step toward restoring our international reputation as the leader of democracy and individual rights,” the Representatives stated in their letter, in which, like the lawyers for Fawzi al-Odah and Lakhdar Boumediene, they also called for the restoration of the prisoners’ habeas rights, explaining, “This will allow for the implementation of fair and transparent trials to bring enemies of our country to justice.” Quite how swiftly the administration will respond, however, is another matter. Wheeled out to provide a stop-gap reply, White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said that the letter had been received and pointed out that the President had already declared that he wanted to close Guantánamo, adding, “A number of steps need to take place before that can happen, and we’re continuing to work on those.” Despite the escalating criticism, I wonder whether, privately, the obstinate cabal led by the President and Vice President Cheney has decided that one of those steps is the requirement that hell will first have to freeze over.


SOURCE: www.andyworthington.co.uk

[accuracy]

The Guantánamo Whistleblowers

02/07/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=20924

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham is not the First Insider to Condemn the Kangaroo Tribunals



By ANDY WORTHINGTON

Jostling for media space in the last week--and largely losing out to spurious claims that Guantánamo is about to close--is the story of Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, an army intelligence officer with 26 years' experience, who has bravely spoken out against the Guantánamo regime. In an affidavit filed with an Appeal Court petition on behalf of Kuwaiti detainee Fawzi al-Odah, Abraham delivered a damning verdict on the legitimacy of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which ran from July 2004 to March 2005, and were set up to determine whether the Guantánamo detainees had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants."




Currently an army reservist and an attorney in California, Abraham worked at Guantánamo, from 11 September 2004 to 9 March 2005, in the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants (OARDEC) as "an agency liaison, responsible for coordinating with government agencies, including certain Department of Defense (DoD) and non-DoD organizations, to gather or validate information relating to detainees for use in CSRTs." He also served as a member of a CSRT, and, as he described it, "had the opportunity to observe and participate in the operation of the CSRT process," and he concluded from his experience that the gathering of materials for use in the tribunals was severely flawed, and that the whole system was geared towards rubber-stamping the detainees' prior designation as "enemy combatants."




Specifically, Abraham complained that the OARDEC personnel--mostly from the military reserves--who were responsible for compiling the information used in the "Unclassified Summary of Evidence" against each detainee were woefully inexperienced, and that few of whom "had any experience or training in the legal or intelligence fields." He also complained that the tribunals' Recorders were similarly inexperienced, and were "typically relatively junior officers with little training or experience in matters relating to the collection, processing, analyzing, and/or dissemination of intelligence material," and that those who actually aggregated the information--the case writers--"in most instances" had "the same limited degree of knowledge and experience relating to the intelligence community and intelligence products." Given the shortcomings of the majority of the personnel involved, Abraham also noted that, although "large amounts of information" were received, the workers "often had no context for determining whether the information was relevant," and frequently discarded information because it was "considered to be ambiguous, confusing or poorly written," as well as "reject some information arbitrarily while accepting other information without any articulable rationale."




Abraham expressed a similar disdain for the quality of the information produced by the various government agencies, which the largely unqualified workers were required to collate and aggregate. This information, he wrote, frequently consisted of intelligence "of a generalized nature--often outdated, often 'generic,' rarely specifically relating to the individual subjects of the CSRTs or to the circumstances related to those individuals' status," and additional information, contained within the Detainee Information Management System and other databases, was equally "deficient," typically "excluding information that was characterized as highly sensitive law enforcement information, highly classified information, or information not voluntarily released by the originating agency." Neither the case writers nor the Recorders, Abraham asserted, had "access to numerous information sources generally available within the intelligence community."




Further proof that the gathering of information for the tribunals was not geared towards justice and transparency came when, as "one of only a few intelligence-trained and suitably cleared officers," Abraham was tasked with investigating aspects of the "evidence," to confirm "in a statement to be relied upon by the CSRT board members that the organizations did not possess 'exculpatory information' relating to the subject of the CSRT." When he approached the various agencies involved, however, he discovered that he was only allowed "limited access to information, typically prescreened and filtered," was not permitted to request additional searches for information, and was rebuffed when he asked for written statements confirming that there was no exculpatory information. His experience confirmed that the agencies were largely providing or withholding information at their own discretion, without any process of outside scrutiny being available.




His bitterest experience, however, occurred when he was chosen--along with an Air Force colonel and an Air Force major--to take part in a CSRT. After reviewing the evidence, all three men "found the information presented to lack substance," noting that supposedly specific factual statements "lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence," that statements made by alleged witnesses "lacked detail," and that generalized statements were presented "in indirect and passive forms without stating the source of the information or providing a basis for establishing the reliability or the credibility of the source." In addition, Abraham wrote that statements by the interrogators, which were presented to the panel, "offered inferences" from which they were "expected to draw conclusions" that the detainee was an "enemy combatant," but that when they subjected these statements to even the most cursory of questions, the Recorder's only response was, "We'll have to get back to you."




Based on the "paucity and weakness of the information provided both during and after the CSRT hearing," Abraham and his colleagues duly determined that there was "no factual basis" for concluding that the detainee was an "enemy combatant," but that was not the end of the story. The director and deputy director of OARDEC "immediately questioned the validity" of the decision, ordering the tribunal members to prepare statements containing the specific questions they had raised to enable the Recorder to provide "further responses," and reopening the hearing to allow the Recorder to "present further argument." Refusing to bow to the pressure, Abraham and his colleagues failed to change their determination, and as a result, as he declared in a pithy conclusion to the affidavit, "I was not assigned to another CSRT panel." He pointed out, however, that OARDEC's response to the decision was "consistent with the few other instances" when the rigged system had been bucked. In meetings attended by Abraham that followed the sporadic decisions that detainees were not "enemy combatants"--there were only 38 in total, out of 558 CSRTs--he wrote that the focus of inquiry was always "what went wrong."




Speaking after the affidavit was first publicized, Abraham said that he had first raised his concerns about the tribunals during his time at Guantánamo, but had decided to submit the affidavit because "the issues were not adequately addressed." He told the Associated Press, "I pointed out nothing less than facts, facts that can and should be fixed," adding that he had a responsibility to point out that officers "did not have the proper tools" to determine whether a detainee was in fact an "enemy combatant," and explaining, "I take very seriously my responsibility, my duties as a citizen." David Cynamon, one of al-Odah's lawyers--who was put in contact with Abraham by his sister, after she attended a public lecture on Guantánamo given by Cynamon and his colleagues--described Abraham's affidavit as "prov[ing] what we all suspected, which is that the CSRTs were a complete sham," while adding that he feared that his courage was "probably an assurance of career suicide." Cynamon's colleague, Matthew J. MacLean, who pointed out that Abraham was the first CSRT member who has been identified, let alone been willing to criticize the tribunals in the public record, declared, "It wouldn't be quite right to say this is the most important piece of evidence that has come out of the CSRT process, because this is the only piece of evidence ever to come out of the CSRT process. It's our only view into the CSRT."




In fact, MacLean's comments were not entirely accurate. Whilst it's certainly true that Abraham was the first ex-tribunal member to criticize the CSRT process in public, his is not the first reported example of dissent amongst tribunal members. In September 2006, in a Boston Globe article, Detentions over charity ties questioned , Farah Stockman reported on the case of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator, who was captured in May 2002 in Pakistan--where he had been working for 17 years--and sold to the American forces. In his CSRT, Hamad was judged to be an "enemy combatant" because of exactly the kind of "generic" allegations described by Lt. Col. Abraham. The Saudi charity he worked for, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, was described as an organization that "supports terrorist ideals and causes," even though it has never appeared on a terrorism watchlist (despite being investigated by the US Senate), and was one of the favored projects of the late Saudi King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, and another organization that he had worked for previously, the Kuwait-based Lajanat Dawa Islamiya (which also does not feature on any US terrorism watchlist), was described as "one of the most active" Islamic NGOs "providing logistical and financial support" to mujahideen operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which "may be" associated with Osama bin Laden.




An exasperated Hamad refuted all the allegations, at one point telling his tribunal, "arresting employees like myself [who] is not capable of supporting terrorists financially, is this justice? I am an employee who works for a living and I have no connection to the [organization's] political views or its financial resources, so why do you punish me for a crime I did not commit. Why don't you arrest the charities' presidents or the people who support [them] financially instead of arresting a simple employee with no informational value?" Predictably, his tribunal judged that he had been correctly designated an "enemy combatant," but although his pleas appeared to have been ignored, Stockman, who was allowed to examine the CSRT documentation, noted that one of the tribunal members--an unidentified army major, whose name was redacted--had issued a dissenting opinion. Taking into account the fact that neither WAMY nor LDI appears on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, he argued that, "even assuming all the allegations... are accurate, the detainee does not meet the definition of enemy combatant." He added, "These NGOs presumably have numerous employees and volunteer workers who have been working in legitimate humanitarian roles. The mere fact that some elements of these NGOs provide support to "terrorist ideals and causes" is insufficient to declare one of the employees an enemy combatant." Stockman noted, however, that the major was overruled by his colleagues, one of whom--in a single line that discredits the whole tribunal process as effectively as Lt. Col. Abraham's affidavit--wrote that the case "passed the 'low evidentiary hurdle' set up by the rules of the hearings."




In two other cases, the dissenting officer was not a tribunal member, but the detainees' Personal Representative. In a majority of the CSRTs, the Personal Representative fulfilled his intended function as a pale shadow of a legitimate defense counsel, failing to "participate in any meaningful way," as Lt. Col. Abraham noted of the Personal Representative in his tribunal. In February 2006, however, in two articles for the National Journal, Guantánamo's Grip and Empty Evidence , Corine Hegland reported the story of an unidentified lieutenant colonel in the army (whose name was also redacted), who fought a brave, if unsuccessful battle for two of his detainees. Along the way, however, he demolished the tribunals' legitimacy even more comprehensively than either Lt. Col. Abraham or Adel Hamad's dissenting major.




The first case--that of Farouq Saif, a young Yemeni who went to Afghanistan to teach the Koran--is particularly noteworthy because Saif was judged as an "enemy combatant" because of two false allegations. The first--that he was a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden--was directed at 30 detainees in total, and was made under duress, and later retracted, by Mohammed al-Qahtani. One of several purported "20th hijackers" for the 9/11 attacks, al-Qahtani made the allegations during a seven-week period, from November 2002 to January 2003, when he was subjected to Pentagon-approved "extreme interrogation techniques" (otherwise known as torture). The second allegation--that Saif had been seen at Osama bin Laden's private airport in Kandahar, where he was "wearing camouflage and carrying an AK-47"--proved so intolerable to his Personal Representative that he submitted a written protest, in which he stated that the government's sole evidence that Saif had been at bin Laden's airport was the statement of another prisoner, who, according to an FBI memo that he presented to the tribunal, was a notorious liar. According to the FBI, he "had lied, not only about Farouq, but about other Yemeni detainees as well. The other detainee claimed he had seen the Yemenis at times and in places where they simply could not have been." The Personal Representative wrote, "I do feel with some certainty that [the accuser] has lied about other detainees to receive preferable treatment and to cause them problems while in custody. Had the tribunal taken this evidence out as unreliable, then the position we have taken is that a teacher of the Koran (to the Taliban's children) is an enemy combatant (partially because he slept under a Taliban roof)."




The "notorious liar" actually made false allegations against 60 prisoners in total, as was revealed after the tribunal of Mohammed al-Tumani. A young Syrian economic migrant, who had traveled to Afghanistan with other family members to join his father in Kabul, where he was working as a cook, al-Tumani and his father were captured in Pakistan after fleeing the chaos of post-invasion Afghanistan. In his tribunal, he denied an allegation that he had attended the al-Farouq training camp with such vigor that his Personal Representative decided to investigate the matter further. When he looked at the classified evidence, however, he found that only one man--the same detainee mentioned above--claimed to have seen him at al-Farouq, and had identified him as being there three months before he arrived in Afghanistan. As Corine Hegland described it, "The curious US officer pulled the classified file of the accuser, saw that he had accused 60 men, and, suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every detainee the accuser had placed at the one training camp. None of the men had been in Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at the camp."




The identity of the other 58 detainees falsely accused by the "notorious liar" are unknown, as the dissenting officer involved in unveiling this monstrous injustice--perhaps unwilling to risk "career suicide"--has not come forward to elaborate, but in my forthcoming book, The Guantánamo Files , I report on numerous other examples of patently false allegations masquerading as "evidence," which were ignored by compliant tribunal members accepting the "low evidentiary hurdle" of the process. While I wait to see if Lt. Col. Abraham's principled stand will encourage other insiders to speak out, it's worth pointing out that Adel Hamad, Farouq Saif and Mohammed al-Tumani remain in Guantánamo. Hamad has finally been judged to be "No Longer an Enemy Combatant" and is awaiting release, but Saif and al-Tumani are still damned by the false confessions of a "notorious liar."


[I]Andy Worthington (www.andyworthington.co.uk) is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (to be published by Pluto Press in October 2007).

SOURCE: Counterpunch.org

[accuracy]

Navy still probing 2006 Guantánamo deaths

Mon, Jul. 02, 2007
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/158552.html

More than a year after three Arab captives were found dead at Guantánamo -- the first detainee deaths at the offshore detention center -- the Navy is still investigating the episode that the military described as a group suicide.

Autopsy results and alleged suicide notes are still part of an ongoing investigation and have not been publicly released.

Moreover, the Navy's investigative unit still won't say whether agents have decided conclusively that their deaths were caused by suicide.

''At this point it is not a matter of what we know, but what we are willing to publicly discuss,'' said Ed Buice, spokesman for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), in an e-mail. ``The top priority is to protect the integrity of the investigative process.''

The military said guards simultaneously discovered the three men -- two Saudis and a Yemeni -- before dawn on June 10, 2006, hanging in the same cellblock of the prison camps made of open-air steel and metal mesh cells called Camp One.

Then-commander Rear Adm. Harry Harris said the military would record their deaths as ''apparent suicides'' pending a probe by NCIS. Separately, he ordered a pathologist to determine the cause of deaths and withheld their suicide notes from public release.

In response to a Freedom of Information request filed by The Miami Herald, a Navy attorney in Washington, Navy Lt. Jason Jones, wrote the newspaper on May 16 that the records were part of ''law enforcement records'' associated with ``enforcement proceedings.''

NCIS officials would not elaborate on which proceedings.

As the Navy's version of the FBI, the NCIS has also been the lead agency in investigating detainee abuse by U.S. personnel at Guantánamo Bay. It has special agents, forensic investigators and analysts.

NCIS headquarters near Washington said in a statement last week that its Mayport, Fla., field office is handling the investigations ''into the detainee deaths of June 10, 2006, and May 30, 2007, at Guantánamo,'' which ``remain open.''

It described its investigations as ''quite extensive'' and ``aimed at investigating all aspects of a death to determine whether there was criminal causality or whether this can be reasonably excluded.''

Yemeni Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 30, and Saudis Mani Shaman al Utaybi, 30, and Yassar Talal Zaharani, 21, were the first detainees to die since the Pentagon set up the offshore detention and interrogation center in January 2002. None had ever seen U.S. attorneys who arrange through family and the courts to meet with captives.

The episode stirred controversy in part because lawyers for other detainees blamed their suicides on despair. A since departed prison camp commander, Col. Michael Bumgarner, said he believed ringleaders in the camps incited the men to commit suicide.

Harris called the triple deaths an act of ''asymmetric warfare'' by mentally sound, motivated jihadists -- and a State Department official described it as an al Qaeda propaganda ploy.

Buice said the Mayport office was separately investigating the circumstances of the death of Abdul Rahman al Amri, 34, of Saudi Arabia, who was found dead May 30 inside the maximum-security, intensively monitored Camp 5.

A spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, would not say whether Amri was found hanging like the other men or died of ''apparent suicide'' by another means.

Buice said the results of both probes will go to Rear Adm. Mark ''Buzz'' Buzby, the current prison camps commander, who took over shortly before Amri died, and to the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, where Buzby's immediate predecessor, Harris, is now operations chief.

[tickles]

I wonder how america or britian would react if the shoe was on the other foot. Say if Iran had placed the 14 soldiers they captured in a place like Guantánamo Bay in Iran. I get the feeling there would be an out cry by bush and blair (now some other guy) and the media about the treatment of them.

Sorry about my wording. I'm a lover not a writer :D

[accuracy]

Lawmakers To Work on Closing Gitmo

09/07/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=21019

By Richard Willing, USA TODAY



WASHINGTON — Members of Congress plan to push measures to stop funding for the Guantanamo Bay detention center and grant new legal rights to detainees when Congress returns this week.



"As long as Guantanamo stays open, it undermines our defining principles as a nation of equal justice under law," said Rep Jim Moran, D-Va., author of a funding proposal that would give the Bush administration six months to close the Cuban facility.




The Bush administration wants to close the 51/2-year-old camp if authorities can keep holding dangerous detainees who "should never be released" or put on trial, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said June 29.




Administration officials, he said, were "working harder on the problem."




Moran said the administration needs a deadline to focus on a situation that has "dragged on way too long."




FIND MORE STORIES IN: House | Congress | Senate | Bush administration | Guantanamo Bay | Democratic senators | Robert Gates

The Guantanamo Bay detention facility opened in early 2002 to house Taliban members and al-Qaeda associates captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The administration determined the men were not entitled to prisoner-of-war status because they did not wear uniforms and attacked civilian targets, violations of the Geneva Conventions. Housing the prisoners outside the USA has made it harder for them to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.




Some detainees who were released or who attempted to file legal challenges said they were tortured by interrogators, which the Pentagon denied. The International Committee of the Red Cross has criticized the United States over the detainees' legal status.




Moran says he will propose that funding for Guantanamo, pegged at $150 million a year, be phased out and that most of the estimated 375 detainees be brought to the USA and tried in civilian or military courts. In a bow to Gates, Moran will propose that the government be permitted to hold a small number of the "worst of the worst" detainees without bringing charges.




The proposals will be part of a defense spending bill the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up Thursday or Friday, Moran said.




Moran has been the most active House Democrat pushing plans to either close Guantanamo or transfer some of its detainees. In late June, he wrote President Bush to ask that the Guantanamo center be closed. That letter was signed by 140 other representatives; all but one was a Democrat.




Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wis., the Appropriations Committee chairman, has not taken a public position on Moran's proposal but said he favors closing the Guantanamo detention center.




In the Senate, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., plans to attach to a defense spending bill an amendment that would grant detainees the right to challenge their detentions through habeas corpus petitions, spokesman David Carle said. A law passed by Congress last year eliminated habeas corpus rights for detainees. The defense bill is to be taken up by the full Senate on Tuesday or Wednesday.




Two other Democratic senators, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Dianne Feinstein of California, have filed bills that would close Guantanamo, Harkin spokeswoman Jennifer Mullin said.




Spokesmen for the Justice and Defense departments declined to comment on the proposals.




Though the Bush administration backs closing Guantanamo under certain conditions, some congressional Republicans do not. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, a candidate for president and the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, has called closing Guantanamo "misguided" and "dangerous."




Allowing Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detentions in court would give them more rights than prisoners of war who "play by the rules," said Jeremy Rabkin, an international law professor at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. He said it would help many "potentially dangerous" terrorists win their release in American courts "not designed to try unlawful combatants."




Moran acknowledged that some groups that favor allowing all detainees access to American courts will oppose his proposal to allow the Defense Department to continue to hold some without trial.




Any bill without such a provision was unlikely to get 218 votes to pass the House of Representatives, he said.






SOURCE: USA Today

[accuracy]

A German Guantanamo?

by Perro de Jong*

10-07-2007
http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/ger070710mc

A '007 state' and the legalisation of political assassination, that's how critics have described the anti-terrorism plans of Germany's Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble. Plans which, in any event, don't seem to pay much consideration to German sensitivities.

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/images/assets/13071319
Germany's Interior Affairs Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (photo: ANP)

The most serious terrorist incident on German soil in recent years was the failed attack on two trains in Cologne, in July 2006. Experts had already warned about possible 'sleepers': al-Qaeda terrorists leading unremarkable lives whilst awaiting the call to action. A number of the people who carried out the 11 September attacks in the United States had even received relevant training in Germany.

Applying pressure

At the end of June this year, Minister Schäuble again predicted that the country could be the target of suicide attacks, designed to put pressure on the Berlin government not to extend its participation in the ISAF mission in Afghanistan.

Mr Schäuble says the current terrorist threat is something entirely new, without parallel in history. He employs an argument the United States also likes to use: that the means currently at 'our' disposal are not sufficient to deal with the threat. Consequently, the interior minister wants the police and justice authorities to have far-reaching powers including internment without trial, and a ban on using the internet or mobile phones for 'Gefährder': potential terrorists who have not - yet - done anything illegal.

Frontal attack

The German opposition is furious. "A frontal attack on constitutional democracy," was the reaction from Claudia Roth of the Greens, while the conservative-liberal FDP party warned against the 'Guantanimisation' of the German legal system, a reference to the controversial US prison camp on the island of Cuba.

However, Jacco Pekelder of the Duitsland Instituut (Germany Institute) in Amsterdam believes Mr Schäuble's proposals are not as unprecedented as the minister would have one believe. He says they put him in mind of the much more concrete threat posed some 30 years ago by the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF, or Red Army Faction).

"What's happening in Germany now in the field of Islamist terrorism is by no means as big a deal as that was."

Death penalty

All kinds of wild proposals were made at that time, too, including the idea of reintroducing capital punishment, but Mr Pekelder comments:

"That's all disappeared from our memories, because things ultimately stayed within the limits of a constitutional democracy."

He has his doubts about the proposed ban on internet and telephones:

"That somewhat resembles the ban that was issued in the 1970s on all kinds of left-wing journals which openly philosophised about the armed struggle. That ban had the opposite effect. If Schäuble were really serious about putting this idea into practice, then I think he'd risk a similar reaction of solidarity and further radicalisation."

Mr Schäuble is also courting controversy with a proposal to allow the targeted killing of terrorists. The Greens have labelled this "a licence for political assassinations." However, it's worth noting that it's not the minister's intention that this would apply inside Germany itself. His proposal relates to missions such as the current German operation in Afghanistan . It is intended to provide a 'legal basis' so that, for example, a missile could be launched if Osama bin Laden were suddenly to pop up within shooting distance.

Disadvantage

Under the German constitution, such an act is only permitted when it is made in self defence. Mr Schäuble believes this puts Germany at a disadvantage compared to other countries, and Jacco Pekelder believes he has a point. The German constitution was designed in such a way as to prevent anyone obtaining the same kind of power once enjoyed by Hitler and the Nazis. This is why the room for manoeuvre of current German politicians is sometimes very limited.

Mr Pekelder says that what the German interior minister is trying is a kind of 'salami tactic'.

"By placing the knife half way down the salami, he's trying to ensure that he can at least cut off a new slice. In this way, German politicians can slowly but surely shake off that frustrating feeling that they should really be going a lot further with anti-terrorism measures, but that the constitution simply prohibits that at every turn."

Meanwhile, the ideas launched by Mr Schäuble have sparked off a blazing row within the ranks of the governing coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), with the SPD accusing the minister of 'poisoning' the atmosphere by deliberately coming forward with proposals which it finds unacceptable. It's now up to chancellor Angela Merkel to try and calm the situation.

* RNW translation (tpf/pdj)

[accuracy]

Lawyer: Tunisian man mistreated on returning home from Guantanamo

July 12, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/12/africa/AF-GEN-Tunisia-Guantanamo.php

PARIS: A Tunisian man was mistreated after being sent home from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with Tunisian authorities striking him and threatening to rape him and his wife, his lawyer said Thursday.

While interrogating 49-year-old Abdullah bin Omar last month, Tunisian authorities also threatened to arrest his wife and daughters and have him tortured in front of them, lawyer Samir ben Amor said.

Tunisian officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment, but in the past officials have insisted that Tunisian prisoners are treated according to the law and guaranteed rights, such as the right to see a lawyer.

Human Rights Watch and other groups are concerned about the treatment that some former Guantanamo detainees will receive back home, despite assurances from their governments that they would not be harmed.

"The biggest concern is that the U.S. claims that diplomatic assurances provide sufficient protection against torture and abuse," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. "What is the U.S. doing to monitor and enforce those assurances in this case?"

Vijay Padmanabhan, an attorney for the U.S. State Department, said that it has received reports of bin Omar's mistreatment but it cannot comment on specific cases. But, in general, such allegations are treated "very seriously" by diplomatic officials.

"We take steps to make sure that mistreatment does not happen and if we hear about mistreatment we follow up before making future transfers to that country," Padmanabhan said.

"We get the assurances that are required in our best judgment to overcome our humane treatment concerns. We do not transfer individuals to countries where it is more like than not that they will be tortured."

The United States holds about 375 men at Guantanamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. It has said that about 80 detainees no longer pose a threat and it is seeking to send them back to their home countries provided it can get diplomatic assurances that they will not be mistreated.

Human Rights Watch and others believe that at least 25 of those detainees already cleared for release have expressed fears they will face torture or worse if they are sent back to their own countries.

British human rights group Reprieve said it tried without success to persuade the United States to halt or delay bin Omar's transfer after his family said he had been convicted in absentia and sentenced to 23 years in prison for his involvement with a banned political group.

Bin Omar, who is married and has eight children, fled Tunisia to avoid political persecution, according to Reprieve, and unsuccessfully sought political asylum in Pakistan, where he was living when he was captured by the United States. He was held without charge at Guantanamo from August 2002 until June 18.

Bin Omar is fighting his conviction. He is being held in Tunisia's Mornaghia prison awaiting trial in September.

[accuracy]

From Guantanamo To Worse

15/07/2007

Clive Stafford Smith
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=21082

Much as the prisoners want to leave the gulag, repatriation could take them to a far worse situation




As I flew in to Guantanamo Bay on a small commercial plane recently, I squinted out of the window. A grey aircraft crouched at the end of the runway. Given the Bush administration's maverick rendition policy, I wondered whether the plane had been used for one of those forcible, extralegal transfers of prisoners to a torture chamber.




I had intended to visit a prisoner from Tunisia called Abdullah Bin Omar. The administration once pretended that Bin Omar was among the worst of the worst terrorists on earth. More recently, a military tribunal cleared him for release, finding that he was no threat to anyone. To be sure, such Guantanamo tribunals are themselves a travesty, relying on coerced and secret evidence, but at least Bin Omar was allowed to be present to argue his innocence.




I had planned to advise Bin Omar on his right to asylum. Tunisia has a far longer pedigree than Guantanamo's when it comes to denial of due process. Two colleagues recently travelled to Tunisia on his behalf and found that he had been sentenced in absentia to 23 years in prison. It was clear that he would be better off serving his sentence in absentia. He was almost certain to face torture on his return.




All of this we had communicated to the US government - only Bin Omar did not know the full extent of his peril in Tunisia.




I never got to see my client. The day after I arrived, as evening drew in, that grey plane took off. Having stalled me for a week, the US government then sent us an email saying that Bin Omar had been a passenger on it.




President Bush is becoming increasingly desperate to close Guantanamo. The Caribbean prison has always been a nightmare for its prisoners; it has now become one for the captors, too, who are finally beginning to recognise what creating "the legal equivalent of outer space" has done for the international reputation of the United States.




George Bush has said that there are obstacles to closing the prison. He is right. Unfortunately, Bin Omar was such an impediment. The US originally bought him for a bounty in Pakistan, where he had been minding his own business, safe from Tunisian persecution. The US military had rendered him halfway around the world to Cuba, but now they wanted to get rid of the human detritus left in Guantanamo Bay.




The state department has piously insisted that the US will not release prisoners to places where they face persecution. Yet Bin Omar was taken to Tunisia. This was the same state department that issued its annual report just three months ago finding that the Tunisian "government [had] continued to commit serious human rights abuses" and had "tortured and physically abused prisoners and detainees", likewise noting that "lengthy pretrial and incommunicado detention remained a serious problem".




So Bin Omar was once again rendered against his will to face detention and abuse. Nor will Tunisia allow us to see our client, but he has been able to get word out about his reception by the Tunisian authorities. He has already been tortured, and he has been told that if he does not confess falsely to crimes, his wife and daughters will be raped. There is doubtless worse to come.




There are many other Guantanamo prisoners facing Bin Omar's fate - from Tunisia and from Algeria, China, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Syria and Uzbekistan. Like him, many have been cleared for release. Much as they want to get out of Guantanamo - a purgatory of imprisonment without charge or trial - repatriation may take these men to hell itself.




But President Bush wants to get rid of this embarrassment. Clint Williamson, styled as the "US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues", recently completed a whistle-stop tour around North Africa, meeting with local officials to discuss repatriation "options".




There is no court where I can plead Bin Omar's case now, save for the court of public opinion. The Bush administration wants the American judges to dismiss his case as "moot", because he is no longer in their jurisdiction. Yet a crime has been committed here: a human being has been sent to the torture chamber.




The British government's recent predilection for sending asylum-seekers back to North Africa is little better. If Gordon Brown and David Miliband are to reinvigorate the 1997 promise of an ethical foreign policy, they must stand up for those who face torture.




More prisoners will be leaving Guantanamo for their home countries in the weeks to come. The closure of that appalling gulag may be trumpeted as a triumph of human rights, but the husks of the prisoners who have suffered so long are merely being passed down the line for the next chapter of their abuse.






Clive Stafford Smith is legal director of Reprieve, a UK charity that provides front-line investigation and legal representation to prisoners denied justice by powerful governments across the world. His book "Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons", has just been published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. He writes this column monthly. Contact Reprieve at info@reprieve.org.uk or at PO Box 52742, London EC4P 4WS (tel: 020 7353 4640)




SOURCE: New Statesman

[accuracy]

Campaigns : Bosnia: Urgent Action: Naturalised Bosnians Facing Deportation to Torture

12/07/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/campaigns.php?id=528


Urgent Action: Naturalised Bosnians Facing Deportation to Torture


12th July 2007

Cageprisoners


The ‘War on Terror’ has many faces, and one of those faces is to carry out its policies through the usage of third party States. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is under much pressure from the United States of America to remove all those foreigners who came to Bosnia to fight and bring aid during the Bosnian conflict.



Although all of these naturalised Bosnians have received full citizenship and have settled down with Bosnian wives, the current Ministry of Interior is attempting to revoke their citizenships and have them removed to their countries of origin. These countries would include Tunisia, Syria, Morocco, Jordan, etc. and thus present the very real risk of torture to these individuals. One of the men facing deportation, Fadhil Al Hammadani explains their plight,



“When they extradite me to Iraq, they will do so as a terrorist, not like a man without papers, but as a terrorist. I will more than likely go missing as soon as I land there.”



There is an absolute ban on torture in international law, thus transfers to such countries are completely illegal. No matter what the suspected crime is, sending individuals to a place where they will be tortured is unacceptable and prohibited under every international treaty.



It is possible that the Bosnian government may state they wish to use diplomatic assurances in order to deport these individuals so they can bypass considerations of human rights, however the position must always be maintained that diplomatic assurances do not work.



For a more in depth analysis of the situation of the naturalised Bosnians and their deportations, the following report by Cageprisoners highlights their plight in detail:



www.cageprisoners.com/citizensnomore.pdf (PDF)





Write to the Bosnian government to:



*Stop the revision of citizenship in light of two previous commissions that did not find it necessary to revoke the status of these naturalised men.

*Recognise that many of the naturalised men have settled in Bosnia with families who are from the region and thus should not be deprived of the right to be with them.

*Not allow for any deportation to a country which has a record of torture and refuse to use Memoranda of Understanding.

*Uphold international human rights obligations

Please write immediately to the following institutions:

Muhidin Alic – Minister of Interior
Ministry of Interior
Mehmeda Spahe 7
Sarajevo
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Email: press@fmup.gov.ba

Zeljko Siladji – Director
Office for legislation and Harmonisation with European Union Regulations
Alipasina 41
Sarajevo
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Email: z.siladji@the_fbihvlada.gova.ba

Ivana Boban – Chief of Cabinet
Ministry of Justice
Valtera Perica 15
Sarajevo
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Email: ivanab@pris.gov.ba

Sven Alkalaj – Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Musala St 2, 71000 Sarajevo
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Email: info@mvp.gov.ba

Bosnian Embassy in Washington
2109 E Street NW
20037
Washington
United States of America
Email: info@bhembassy.org

Bosnian Embassy in The Hague
2495 Al,
Bezuidenhoutseweg 223
The Hague
Netherlands
Email: ejerkic@euronet.nl

[accuracy]

16 Saudis transferred home from Guantanamo

July 16, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/16/africa/ME-GEN-Saudi-Guantanamo.php

The Associated Press

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia: Sixteen Saudis transferred from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay arrived home Monday and were immediately detained by authorities investigating possible terrorist connections, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

A total of 77 Saudis have now been returned from Guantanamo, Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki told SPA. He said 53 remain incarcerated at the U.S. military facility in Cuba, a source of tension in U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Washington. Al-Turki's figures correspond to those maintained independently by The Associated Press.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, confirmed Monday that 16 detainees had been transferred from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia.

"These detainees were determined to be eligible for transfer following a comprehensive series of review processes conducted at Guantanamo Bay," a Pentagon statement said.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz expressed his "great joy" over the return of the 16 prisoners, praising "the cooperation by the American authorities," according to SPA. He said he hoped the remaining Saudi detainees would return home in the near future.

The prisoners who were transferred Monday were expected to remain in custody while authorities investigated whether they had links to militant organizations, the report said.

Six groups of Saudis have returned from Guantanamo, the first in May 2006, and all have been detained on arrival.

Three Saudis have died in Guantanamo prison, one in May and two the previous year, in what U.S. officials have said were suicides. Many Saudis don't believe that and think the detainees were abused — a claim the U.S. denies.

The United States began using the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in January 2002 for people captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan who were suspected of having links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Of the 759 people who have been held over the years at Guantanamo, according to Defense Department documents released to The Associated Press, 136 have been Saudis, making them the second-largest contingent of prisoners, behind Afghan nationals.

About 360 detainees remain at Guantanamo, including 80 deemed eligible for transfer or release. The vast majority have been held for years without being charged.

[accuracy]

Guantanamo prisoners find release in poetry

A book will feature their works, though only those approved by U.S. censors.

Nafeesa Syeed | the Associated Press
July 15, 2007
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/lifestyle/orl-detaineepoems07jul15,0,2563202.story

The story behind a book of poetry written by Guantanamo detainees could be as compelling as the poems themselves.

Prisoners, denied pens and paper, wrote some of the poems by scratching verses onto foam cups with pebbles. Other poems were translated into English by linguists with security clearances but no literary credentials.

"It was a long and draining project," says Marc Falkoff, a law professor who represents 18 detainees.

The University of Iowa Press will release Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak on Aug. 15. The volume, featuring 22 poems by 17 detainees, will be only the second English-language book written by Guantanamo prisoners.

The compilation emanated from letters written by prisoners to Falkoff, a law professor at Northern Illinois University who represents one Pakistani and 17 Yemeni detainees. Last year, he received a letter written in verse, prompting him to check with other lawyers and discover that many Guantanamo prisoners were writing poetry.

Falkoff, a former literature professor, hoped that publishing the poetry would provide a fuller understanding of the inmates. But first the work had to endure a gantlet of government censors, who wouldn't release much of the work.

Attorneys initially sent poems written in their original Arabic and Pashtu to a center near Washington, D.C., where translators with security clearances produced English versions. Government officials then determined whether the poems could be released, in either their original or translated versions.

The Pentagon reviews all documents sent between attorneys and detainees to decide whether to classify the information because of concerns that prisoners will send hidden messages, says Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler, a Defense Department spokesman. There also were concerns that poems could reveal private details about Guantanamo, such as interrogation tactics or camp routines.

About a dozen lawyers submitted more than 40 prisoner poems. Officials cleared roughly 30 of them, but most only in English. Some of the approved poems were held from the book at the request of prisoners, often out of fear it would hurt their cases, Falkoff says.

Some poems in the book have been reworked by detainees who have since been released or by language experts who revised translations if the original Arabic or Pashtu was available.

Still, the poems could be flawed, says Flagg Miller, an assistant religious-studies professor at the University of California, Davis who helped rewrite Arabic translations in the book. Although translators are proficient in the language, Miller says they can't be expected to have the skills to pick up on literary nuances.

The translations may also have suffered from linguists who usually work in rushed environments, he says.

"That creates a huge impediment to the original voices," he says. "That said . . . these poems allow a far more complex picture of these folks than we've had before."

Falkoff says detainees, some of whom have been in custody for five years without a court hearing, turned to poetry as an outlet to express their frustration and yearning. For many, it was a way to persevere.

"None of these poems were written with the expectation that they would be read perhaps beyond a small circle of their fellow prisoners," he says. "Some of the poems are exceptional, absolutely stunning; some are more pedestrian."

Joseph Parsons, acquisitions editor for the University of Iowa Press, heard about the poems and approached Falkoff about publishing the work.

"Because it's such a salient topic, a current event, we all felt the sooner we could get it out the better," Parsons says.

Parsons plans to market the book widely at commercial and academic bookstores. Falkoff's royalties will go to the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. None of the poets will earn money from the book.

Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel

[accuracy]

Who are the 16 Saudis Released From Guantánamo?

Posted July 18, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/who-are-the-16-saudis-rel_b_56810.html

Following the recent announcement that 16 detainees had been returned to Saudi Arabia from Guantánamo, the world's media were swift to pick up on the story of one of these men: Juma al-Dossari, a joint Bahraini-Saudi national, who had attempted to commit suicide on at least 14 occasions in Guantánamo, and whose poignant laments -- and blood-curdling narratives of his imprisonment -- had been released to the public by his lawyers, after being declassified by the Pentagon.

But what of the other 15 detainees? After analyzing a list of names released by Arab News, liaising with lawyers and drawing on research I conducted while researching my forthcoming book, The Guantánamo Files, I can reveal that the stories of the other 15 men represent a microcosm of Guantánamo's many failures, both in terms of the sometimes spectacularly unreliable allegations against the men, which were used to justify their long detention without charge or trial, and their status as extra-legal "unpeople."

Despite the administration's attempts to create an illusion of transparency at Guantánamo, the regime is so generally inscrutable that eight of the 15 men had no legal representation at the time of their release, and had never seen any non-military personnel except representatives of the Red Cross, and the stories of three of the eight are completely unknown. Readers can Google Saud al-Mahayawi, Saad al-Zahrani and Khalid al-Zaharni and will find numerous mentions of their names and Internment Serial Numbers (ISNs) -- the dehumanizing replacements for names by which all the Guantánamo detainees are known -- but will find no other information whatsoever. Having refused to take part in any of the tribunals in Guantánamo, these men have returned to their homes as spectral as they were for 2,000 days in captivity.

Fortunately, the stories of 11 of the men are known, because they agreed to take part in the tribunals and administrative hearings that have been conducted at Guantánamo since July 2004, when, in an attempt to stave off the Supreme Court's ruling that the detainees had the right to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts, the administration introduced Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), legally corrupt alternatives to real trials and due process in which, in exchange for being able to tell their stories, they were refused legal representation, and were not allowed to see or hear classified evidence against them, which, as has steadily been revealed over the last three years, could be based on hearsay, or on false confessions obtained through bribery, coercion or torture. Released under Freedom of Information legislation in spring 2006, these transcripts -- and those of their successors, the annual Administrative Review Boards (ARBs), convened to assess whether the detainees still constitute a threat to the U.S. and its allies, or have ongoing "intelligence value" -- are often the only means by which the detainees' stories are known.

The tribunal transcripts reveal that three of the men had no connection with militancy whatsoever. Abdul Rahman al-Juad, a student who was 21-years-old at the time of his capture, had been in Afghanistan on a humanitarian aid mission. Having collected 10,000 Riyals (around $2,700) at various mosques in his hometown, he traveled between Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad, distributing the money to the poor and needy, and was in Jalalabad when he heard that Kabul had fallen to the Northern Alliance, which was when he decided to leave the country (without his passport, which was back in Kabul), subsequently paying a guide to take him over the mountains to Pakistan. When he handed himself in to the Pakistani authorities on the border, he was promptly delivered (or sold) to the Americans, who eventually decided that he had been raising money for al-Haramain, a blacklisted Saudi charity (al-Juad denied the allegation), and claimed that one of his aliases was found on a list of captured al-Qaeda members on a computer hard drive "associated with a senior al-Qaeda member." Al-Juad replied that he never used an alias, adding, "After I turned myself in and was detained in Pakistan, there were people taking my picture. I never saw my picture on the Internet, but the interrogator told me it is on the Internet. If it is, I have no idea how it got there."

Two other men -- 34-year old Muhammad al-Jihani and 22-year old Yahya al-Silami (also captured on the Pakistani border) -- had been teaching the Koran in Afghanistan. A grumpy al-Jihani revealed little in his tribunal, responding to the question, "Did you have a place to do that? Did you already contact the mosque or something where you were going to teach?" by saying, "All these questions are in my files. Go back to the file and read the file," but al-Silami was more forthcoming. After explaining that a friend in Mecca had given him a contact in Khost, where he taught the Koran for four months, he said that he fled to Pakistan, after the U.S.-led invasion began, by following a group of Afghan refugees to the border, and was arrested on arrival, having lost his passport in a river on the way. Al-Silami was one of 30 detainees accused of being Osama bin Laden's bodyguards in a notorious example of confessions obtained through torture. The man who made the allegation -- and later retracted his "confession" -- was Mohammed al-Qahtani, an alleged "20th hijacker" for the 9/11 attacks, who was subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" for several months at the end of 2002. In response to the allegation, al-Silami denied a claim by the U.S. authorities that all 30 bodyguards "were told the best thing they could tell U.S. forces when interrogated was they were in Afghanistan to teach the Koran," and also refuted another allegation, which he said was made by a Yemeni detainee whom he described as "mentally unstable and on medication," that he was "identified as the Emir of a group of 10-15 fighters guarding a river crossing leading to the Tora Bora camp."

The other eight detainees were nominally part of the military training camp system in Afghanistan, in which, as a result of pro-Taliban fatwas issued by radical clerics, and the supportive activities of facilitators, tens of thousands of young men made their way to Afghanistan to support the Taliban in their civil war with the Muslims of the Northern Alliance. In reality, however, the men largely proved to be unsuccessful jihadi recruits: one failed to attend a training camp at all, three failed to complete their training through illness, and two were severely disillusioned.

The first to be captured, Fahad al-Qahtani, was just 19 at the time. Recruited for jihad and aided in his travel by a facilitator, he explained, "I went for jihad to Afghanistan, but when I got there I changed my mind. I saw some things there that were against my religion... Things like worshiping a cemetery where people have died. That has nothing to do with our religion, worshiping graves." Refuting allegations that he attended al-Farouq, the main camp for Arabs, and that Osama bin Laden visited while he was there, he insisted that he spent most of his time in a house in Kabul that was "a cooking facility for the [Taliban] front line," and then fled with others to Kunduz, the last Taliban bastion in the north, "until we were surrounded and there was an agreement to have all the Arabs delivered to Mazar-e-Sharif." Delivered, with several hundred others, to Qala-i-Janghi, a nearby fort, he survived a U.S.-led massacre, which took place after some of the prisoners started an uprising, by somehow escaping from the fort without being killed. "I was present but did not participate in the fighting," he explained. "I escaped during the fighting and turned myself in one day after. I went to the market to turn myself in. I met people in the market who were in the army of [General] Dostum [one of the leaders of the Alliance]. That is where I was when I was recaptured... Dostum sold me to the Americans... They put me in jail and I was tortured by Afghans and made to say things. I was moved to Kandahar. When I got to Cuba I told the interrogators the real story." Despite apparently telling the truth, the most extraordinary piece of "evidence" against al-Qahtani emerged in Guantánamo, when it was shamelessly alleged that he "admitted under duress that he was an al-Qaeda (sic) and had met Osama bin Laden."

Another disillusioned recruit was 22-year old Mazin al-Oufi, a former traffic policeman who said that he went to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 to support -- but not to fight for -- the Taliban government. "I went with good intentions," he explained, "and then realized bad things were happening and I wanted to get out." Captured after crossing the Pakistani border, he told his tribunal in Guantánamo that he had no connection whatsoever to Salah al-Awfi, a name that had, according to the U.S. authorities, turned up on a computer hard drive seized during raids on al-Qaeda safe houses in Pakistan. He was also one of many detainees accusing of being a terrorist because he owned a Casio F-91W watch, a model that the authorities claimed was used as a timer in bombs. Although he admitted owning the watch he was incredulous about the accusation. "Millions and millions of people have these types of Casio watches," he said. "If that is a crime, why doesn't the United States arrest and sentence all the shops and people who own them?"

Of the three detainees who failed to complete their training because of illness, two -- 22-year old Bandar al-Jabri and 28-year old Humoud al-Jadani -- explained that they wanted to receive military training so that they could fight in Chechnya. Al-Jabri, who insisted that he "did not graduate from the training camp" and "had to stop training because he was experiencing asthma attacks," admitted that he had received training from the Taliban, but denied being a member, and added that he had never fought against either the Northern Alliance or the US. Al-Jadani, an airline steward, admitted that he had trained at al-Farouq and had attended two lectures by Osama bin Laden, but said that he too became ill, and both men were arrested after crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan.

A more comprehensive story was told by 27-year old Ghanim al-Harbi, who said that he went to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 because he "felt the need to defend myself and my family." He explained that some of his family members had been killed or imprisoned during the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, and had subsequently moved to Saudi Arabia, and that, in 2000, when it was felt that the Iraqi leader was causing problems again, he decided that he should learn to defend himself. When his attempts to join the Saudi navy came to nothing, his quest led him to Afghanistan. He admitted training at al-Farouq, but added, "I never completed my training because I became ill. Every week I had to travel to Kandahar to receive medical treatment or I was at the camp hospital."

Explaining the circumstances of his arrest, al-Harbi said that, after leaving al-Farouq, he went to Kabul and hired a guide to help him leave the country by Jalalabad, but that, when the guide realized that he was unable to help him cross the border, he took him to the Tora Bora mountains and turned him over to a group of 65 Arabs who were also heading for the border. He said that he stayed for a month with this group, and described them as civilians rather than fighters. "Some of them were teachers," he explained, "some of them were running away from the war and were just regular civilians who were trying to get to the Pakistan embassy so they could get back to their homes." The group finally managed to recruit two guides to take them to the Pakistani border, but as they passed through a village the whole area was targeted in a huge U.S. bombing raid, in which 60 to 70 of the villagers died, "40 of the Arabs with me were killed and 20 were injured," and al-Harbi himself suffered serious injuries to his stomach and one of his legs. He added that he "stayed three days in a valley with the other wounded before a group of Afghanis picked them up," and was then taken to a hospital in Jalalabad, where he stayed for six weeks until he was handed over (or sold) to the Americans.

The detainee who failed even to attend a training camp, Bandar al-Otaibi, a 21-year old mechanical engineering student, explained that he went to Afghanistan for a month's vacation with a friend because "I watched a lot of Hollywood movies and wanted to learn how to use pistols as a hobby." While this seems rather implausible, he backed it up by saying, "Since there was no place to learn how to use a weapon in my country unless you are a soldier my friend suggested that we go to Afghanistan during the school break and learn. I had tried to apply to a military college but was not accepted because I was underweight." After arriving in Afghanistan, two weeks before 9/11, he said that he met up with another Saudi and that the two of them stayed in guest houses in Kandahar and Jalalabad, but did not train at al-Farouq because "we were told that they would not bring us to the training camp because they didn't know us." As the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated, he said that he fled to the mountains, leaving his friend behind, and was captured by Afghan villagers. "Afghans kidnapped me and others and demanded money to be released," he explained. "Some of the others were able to buy their freedom... but I didn't have any money so I was kept in captivity."

The last two stories to be discussed are those of Muhammad al-Qurashi and Bijad al-Otaibi. Neither took part in their tribunals, but it may be assumed that many of the allegations against them - contained in the "Unclassified Summary of Evidence" for their cases, also released to the public in 2006 -- were revealed as inaccurate, leading to the authorities' decision to release them. Al-Qurashi, who was 24 years old at the time of his capture, was accused of traveling to fight with the Taliban after his high school graduation in May 2001, and of training at "a facility used to train and house Taliban soldiers who fought on the Bagram front lines." It was also alleged that his name was found "on an undated letter which listed probable al-Qaeda members incarcerated in Pakistan, along with materials linked to al-Qaeda." This meager fodder was supplemented by claims relating to his behavior in Guantánamo: that he had "struck guard force personnel on multiple occasions," had threatened an officer by saying, "I will cut your throat," and had "encouraged other detainees to harass guard force."

Al-Otaibi, who was 30 years old at the time of his capture, was accused of stating that he traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, that he was trained at a camp near Kabul, and that he fought on the front lines until ordered to surrender to General Dostum at Mazar-e-Sharif. Like Fahad al-Qahtani, he was then imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, where he was one of 86 men who survived in the basement of the fort for a week, despite being bombed and flooded. His story may or may not be true, but it was probably more reliable than the claim that he knew Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, described as one of Osama bin Laden's "closest commanders and the person in charge of al-Qaeda fighters in the Afghani Northern Front" (captured in 2006 and sent to Guantánamo in April 2007) and that, moreover, he knew al-Iraqi "very well" and was, in fact, an assistant commander in the Taliban's "Arab Brigade."

As I bring this article to a close, astute readers will notice that I have only mentioned 15 detainees so far. Such is the obfuscation surrounding Guantánamo -- and the authorities' inability to transliterate Arabic names -- that one of the detainees, referred to by Arab News as Abdullah al-Zahrani, has not yet been identified, as his name bears no resemblance to any of the detainees' names recorded by the Pentagon. This, again, is a familiar story. Lawyers for Bandar al-Otaibi, for example, pointed out that it was difficult to identify him on the list of released detainees because, for five and a half years, he was obstinately referred to by the authorities as Abdullah al-Tayabi.

While this is, perhaps, a good note on which to leave the released detainees to be reunited with their families, I must add one final observation. Heartening though it is that these 16 men -- none of whom were among the "worst of the worst" -- have finally been released, it remains apparent that the process by which they were released remains as arcane and impenetrable as ever, and that no statement will be forthcoming to explain why some of the other 60 Saudi detainees -- some of whom were also either innocent or inept -- are still in custody. As the Supreme Court prepares, once more, to debate whether the detainees should be given habeas rights (which were shamefully removed in last year's Military Commissions Act), the cases of the 16 Saudis released this week demonstrate, yet again, that imprisonment without charge or trial, brutal treatment in detention, forced confessions, hearsay and innuendo are poor substitutes for due process.

Copyright © 2007 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc

[accuracy]

Over 800 Fully Operational Concentration Camps in the USA, Waiting For You

FEMA Concentration Camps:
Locations and Executive Orders
Friends of Liberty (undated) 3sep04




There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached.

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/FEMA-Concentration-Camps3sep04b.gif

(Read on):

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/FEMA-Concentration-Camps3sep04.htm

[accuracy]

Pistachios at Guantanamo


By Jackson Diehl
Monday, July 23, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/22/AR2007072200882.html?hpid=opinionsbox2

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Via a monitoring camera, I saw a snippet of an interrogation session here one day last week inside one of the high-security complexes where foreign detainees are held. No faces were visible, but I glimpsed the jingling bracelets, open-toed sandals and skirts of two young women, who were seated in soft leather chairs around a table with a man in prison garb. One woman was the interrogator; the other was a translator. The means of persuasion, apart from the evident feminine charm, was a generous bag of pistachios -- a usually unavailable treat.

Yes, I was on a tour organized by the Pentagon; but no, the scene I witnessed was not a staged departure from a norm of pressure and pain. Rather, it was a sign of what five years of experience have taught Guantanamo's interrogators about the most effective means of collecting intelligence from the "enemy combatants" captured in the fight against al-Qaeda. "Most of the productivity we see over time," said a top intelligence official, "comes from the milk of human kindness."

That's not a message often heard from administration officials in Washington, who continue to insist that the CIA requires authority to use "alternative procedures" -- sleep deprivation, temperature extremes and other harsh methods -- to extract information from captured al-Qaeda operatives. President Bush, who issued an executive order on Friday that would reauthorize many of those techniques, claims that such treatment has broken the resistance of militants trained to resist standard questioning and yielded intelligence that has helped prevent terrorist attacks.

Guantanamo tried the harsh approach during the first year detainees from Afghanistan were held here, in 2002; the result was a disciplinary and diplomatic disaster that has made the camp into an enduring global symbol of American human rights abuses. After prisoners here were stripped and hooded, sexually humiliated, and threatened with guard dogs, the practices spread to Afghanistan and Iraq, where they led to the horrific photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison.

Now Guantanamo offers a different model. Interrogations of the 360 remaining prisoners still go on, at the rate of some 100 sessions a week. But for the past year they have been conducted in accordance with a new Army manual on interrogations that complies with the Geneva Conventions and specifically bans the abusive methods introduced here by former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Humiliation, threats and stress positions have been replaced with painstaking relationship building and positive incentives.

According to the officials charged with conducting interrogations and gathering intelligence -- under the ground rules of my tour they can't be directly identified -- the results have never been better. "You can't impress these people with harshness," said one senior official, noting that some of the Guantanamo inmates survived the infamous shipping containers in which one Afghan warlord suffocated prisoners. The most effective interrogators, he added, "are those who approach the subject in a friendly and businesslike manner, who have studied the subject thoroughly, and who over time earn respect that makes it harder for the subject to evade the questions."

How is that done? Detainees being worked by the staff of 21 interrogators are invited to leave their small cells for private rooms typically equipped with televisions and comfortable chairs. About five times out of seven, one official told me, the prisoners are asked no questions; instead, pistachios, Subway and McDonald's sandwiches, and other food treats are served, and the session consists of light conversation or the watching of a movie. Special treats are offered to those who cooperate: One prisoner, I was told, has become an avid reader of the Harry Potter books and was offered access to the latest installment in exchange for responsiveness.

Officials here say that even after years of detention -- all but a handful of the prisoners have been in the camp at least three years -- Guantanamo is still a source of intelligence. There are detainees who are experts in roadside bombs, for example, or in remote parts of Afghanistan where NATO forces are fighting. Some only recently began talking, after years of suasion.

The question is whether the value of the intelligence -- and of keeping potential fighters off the battlefield -- is worth the continuing harm of a detention system that most of the world sees as illegitimate. The administration's own actions suggest not: With painful slowness, Guantanamo is winding down. Fifteen Saudi prisoners were sent home last week; 80 other detainees have been cleared for transfer. One senior official said that he believed only 50 to 75 prisoners here cannot be either sent home or put on trial. It's hard to believe this sprawling, sun-baked camp, which even now does more harm than good in the fight against global jihadism, will house them once the president who created it leaves office.

© Copyright 1996-2007 The Washington Post Company

[accuracy]

Intel director doesn't want US 'not torture' tactics used on Americans

David Edwards
Published: Sunday July 22, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Intel_Dir._doesnt_want_U.S._not_0722.html

In an interview Sunday with Tim Russert on "Meet The Press", the director of National Intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell, parsed his words carefully on the President's new "Executive Order", and the use of torture on American citizens.

McConnell stated that whatever it is they do to the prisoners, it's not torture and even if they used it on US citizens, there would be no permanent damage. He would not go into what "enhanced interrogation measures" were, but did say he would not "want" a citizen to go through the process.

The United States will persist with techniques of interrogating terror suspects that have saved "countless lives," but will stop short of torture, the top US spymaster said Sunday.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell refused to spell out whether methods such as the alleged practice of "waterboarding" were permitted under a new executive order of President George W. Bush.

"The United States does not engage in torture. This executive order spells it out," McConnell said on NBC television.

But he indicated that the implied threat of torture had reaped dividends in extracting life-saving information from detainees.

"And so this is a program where we capture someone known to be a terrorist, we need information that they possess, and it has saved countless lives," McConnell said, without detailing any plots that might have been broken up.

"Because they believe these techniques might involve torture and they don't understand them, they tend to speak to us in a very candid way."

Under his order issued Friday, Bush forbade the Central Intelligence Agency to torture suspected terrorists in its detention and interrogation program instituted after the September 11 attacks of 2001.

The order says that the CIA program, confirmed to exist in September 2006, must abide by the Geneva Conventions on wartime detainees and directs the CIA director to enforce that standard.

It lists no specific practices that are affected, or punishments for violations, and does not describe in any further detail a secret CIA prison network that has drawn outrage from US allies in Europe.

Human rights groups said the executive order left out critical details, such as controversial tactics that administration officials often describe as "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Those are said by critics and former detainees to include waterboarding, or simulated drowning, sleep deprivation, prolonged captivity in "stress positions" and sexual humiliation.

Bush spokesman Tony Snow said the order barred "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" and "acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation, and cruel and inhuman treatment."

McConnell said that he had been "quite frankly appalled" at the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US guards at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail. "My view was America risked losing the moral high ground."

But that was not a program administered by the CIA, and it was "not the program that the president approved in the recent executive order."

Fewer than 100 people have been subject to enhanced interrogations, and they were kept under medical supervision and "not abused in any way," McConnell added.

However, Human Rights Watch slammed Bush's new order as "contrary to the Geneva Conventions" because it essentially affirmed CIA secret detentions, a program which is "illegal to its core," according to a statement.

"The key aspect of this is all the parts that aren't said," added Jennifer Daskal, HRW senior counter-terrorism counsel, who charged that the order allowed "a system of incommunicado detention to continue, with the blessing of the president."

"What we have here is an administration basically reciting a number of legal principles and saying 'trust us.' And that's hard to take from an administration that refuses to renounce waterboarding," she said.

CIA director Michael Hayden told employees in a statement that the order was necessary to ensure that detentions and interrogations were in step with recent US Supreme Court rulings.

"Simply put, the information developed by our program has been irreplaceable," he also said.

(with wire reports)

The following video is from NBC Meet the Press broadcast on July 22.

Transcript of interview:

#
MR. RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday -- what is the real terrorist threat to the United States homeland? How good is our intelligence gathering, and nearly six years after September 11th, why is Osama bin Laden still at large? With us -- the director of National Intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell, in his first television interview.

Then -- briefings, debates, and votes -- the Iraq war front and center. With us, Democratic senator from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold. And in our roundtable, insight and analysis from New York Times Columnist, David Brooks; The Washington Post, Bob Woodward; and The Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes, author of "Change, The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President."

But, first, this week, this document, the National Intelligence Estimate entitled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," was released. How serious is this threat and what can we do about it? Joining us for an exclusive interview is the director of National Intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell -- welcome.

MR. MCCONNELL: Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you a key judgment from this report, "We judge the U.S. homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years."

In laymen's language, for the American viewers watching today, what is the most serious threat facing our country?

MR. MCCONNELL: Tim, the most serious threat is that the plotters that are being observed will be successful in penetrating our defenses and conducting an attack that would result in mass casualties. Their intent is to effect and attack with mass casualties. A secondary attempt would be a political or infrastructure targets to even include economic targets that would have long-lasting impact.

MR. RUSSERT: Is it biological and chemical, or did they achieve nuclear?

MR. MCCONNELL: They have not achieved nuclear based on our current understanding. The intent is either chemical, biological, nuclear radiological, or even nuclear to include a nuclear yield. I would add what we see currently is primarily a focus on explosives -- explosives that can generate a large explosion, but they're put together with commercially available material.

MR. RUSSERT: Why aren't we seeing more suicide bombers the way we see in the Middle East?

MR. MCCONNELL: In the United States, you mean? The efforts that the United States and our allies have gone through over the past five years have been significant in establishing barriers. So the terrorists perceive us as a much more difficult target, very different from what it was at 9/11.

So barriers have been established, databases have been established, the National Counterterrorism Center, which conducts three times a day a teleconference with all the players -- federal level, state level, international -- to try to coordinate these things, and if someone can be identified, they'll be taken out of the pipeline in their process to come into the United States.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me read another key judgment, "Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al Qaeda's senior leadership since September 11th, we judge that al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here."

But there are people in the United States, you are saying, who have direct ties to al Qaeda senior leadership?

MR. MCCONNELL: The way we describe it is we have strategic warning, we know what al Qaeda and their safe haven in Pakistan intends to do. We're watching them train and recruit, and their effort is to put someone inside the United States.

There have been some clues in some cases where there would be attack, but we do not have tactical warning currently that there are sleeper cells tied directly to al Qaeda inside the United States. So we have the strategic warning not the specific tactical warning, but we know their intent.

MR. RUSSERT: But you say there are handfuls of individuals in the United States with ties to al Qaeda senior leadership.

MR. MCCONNELL: That's correct, and that's in the form of raising money or being sympathetic to. But we haven't identified individuals who are actively plotting or planning. But there have been some that have been sympathetic to al Qaeda's cause.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe there are sleeper cells in the U.S.?

MR. MCCONNELL: I worry that there are sleeper cells in the U.S. I do not know. There is no specific on a sleeper cell. There are some elements under surveillance because we're not sure, so it's warranted -- court-approved, warranted surveillance. We have some ties. This is what I meant when I said we've raised the barriers and made it more difficult.

MR. RUSSERT: This intelligence report that came out this month raised a lot of concern and alarm in the U.S., and it seems to be in stark contrast to the National Intelligence Estimate from last April -- this one. Let me read that key judgment to you, "United States- led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged leadership of al Qaeda and disrupted its operations. We assess the global jihadist movement is decentralized; lacks a coherent global strategy; is becoming more diffuse.

That seems so different than your assessment in July of '07. What a difference a year makes. What changed? We were told that the al Qaeda had been, in many ways, close to being destroyed or dismantled.

MR. MCCONNELL: Following the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, about two-thirds of al Qaeda's not only leadership but their soldiers, the foot soldiers, had been eliminated. And at that point in time, that was an accurate assessment of where we were.

Now, what happened? What's different? What changed? In Pakistan, where they're enjoying a safe haven -- the government of Pakistan chose to try a political solution. A political solution meant a peace treaty with the region that's never been governed -- not governed from the outside, not governed by Pakistan. The opposite occurred. Instead of pushing al Qaeda out, the people who live in these federally administered travel areas, rather than pushing al Qaeda out, they made a safe haven for training and recruiting.

And so in that period of time, al Qaeda has been able to regain some of its momentum. The leadership is intact, they have operational planners, and they have safe haven. The thing they're missing are operatives inside the United States. So that's the difference between last year and this year in our assessment.

MR. RUSSERT: Why haven't we captured Osama bin Laden?

MR. MCCONNELL: Think about attempting to capture a single human being whose primary purpose and emphasis is to remain unobserved or hidden. It's a very difficult challenge. From having been in intelligence for most of my professional life, it's not difficult to find something large -- an armored division, ships that are being built or airplanes or whatever, but a single human being that wants to be unobserved, who is being assisted in that process, it just makes it very, very difficult.

MR. RUSSERT: If we captured Osama bin Laden, we might lose General Musharraf and Pakistan because of unrest such apprehension might create in his country. Would it be worth losing Musharraf but apprehending Osama bin Laden?

MR. MCCONNELL: Well, first, I wouldn't agree that if we capture or kill Osama bin Laden it would be a particularly increased or direct threat to President Musharraf. President Musharraf is one of our strongest allies. He agrees with capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, and while he tried the political arrangement, the peace agreement, last fall, he has made decisions over the last few weeks -- you are aware of the Red Mosque and cleaning that out -- and he's gone on the offensive to go back into this federally administered travel area, FATA, is the shorthand we use to refer to it.

Now, in doing that, there's been a price. He has lost already, I would say, 100 troops. Broadly, across Pakistan, the number is probably approaching 300 from suicide bombs and roadside attacks. So there is a price to pay, but President Musharraf is a moderate, he has a moderate view, and he is attempting to cause the nation of Pakistan to rally around a moderate's view to eliminate the extremists.

MR. RUSSERT: If his government fell, how detrimental would it be to the U.S.?

MR. MCCONNELL: It would have severe impact. It would depend -- if it fell, it depends on who would replace him. It's a democratic nation, if they continue down this current path, so if the process of turnover happens in a democratic way, it may not have severe impact.

One of the things that I would like to highlight, however, is President Musharraf is one of our most valued allies, and let me just highlight this -- Probably, the majority of the senior leadership have been captured or killed or is the direct result of assistance and cooperation and participation by the Pakistanis.

MR. RUSSERT: Are you convinced Osama bin Laden is alive?

MR. MCCONNELL: We have not heard from Osama bin Laden for over a year. There's a recent video where he appeared. Many people thought that was current. That was actually old videotape. So it's been a year. There are rumors about his illness. My personal view is that he's alive, but we don't know because we can't confirm it for over a year.

MR. RUSSERT: And living in Pakistan?

MR. MCCONNELL: I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan, and how he conducts his affairs, only speaking to a courier, staying complete removed from anything we could exploit to find him, I think he's in that region.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you about the executive order the president issued about enhanced interrogation measures. What does that allow a CIA-held target? What kind of measures can you use to get information from them?

MR. MCCONNELL: Well, Tim, as you know, I can't discuss specific measures. There's a variety of reasons for that. One, if I announce what the specific measures are, it would aid those who want to resist those measures to train, to understand it, and so on, so I won't be too specific.

Let me go back to a higher calling in this context. The United States does not engage in torture. The president has been very clear about that. The executive order spells it out. There are means and methods to conduct interrogation that will result in information that we need, and what I would highlight -- I was concerned and worried and, quite frankly, appalled by Abu Ghraib. My view is America risked losing the moral high ground, and so I focused on this when I came back.

What I can report to you is that was an aberration. The people who were responsible for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib have been held accountable, and they're serving a sentence for that. That is not the program the CIA was administering. It is not the program that the president approved in the recent executive order.

MR. RUSSERT: But by use of the term "enhanced interrogation measures," there clearly are things that are used to elicit information. Have we eliminated water-boarding? Can you confirm that?

MR. MCCONNELL: I would rather not be specific on eliminating exactly what the techniques are with regard to any specific. When I was in a situation where I had to sign off, as a member of the process, my name to this executive order, I sat down with those who have been trained to do it, doctors who monitor it, understanding that no one is subjected to torture. They are treated in a way that they have adequate diet and not exposed to heat or cold, they are not abused in any way, but I did understand when exposed to the techniques how they work and why they work -- all under medical supervision, and one of the things that's very important, I think, for the American public to know -- in the history of this program it's been fewer than 100 people.

And so this is a program where we capture someone known to be a terrorist, we need information that they possess, and it has saved countless lives because they believe these techniques might involve torture, and they don't understand them, they tend to speak to us, talk to us in a very candid way.

MR. RUSSERT: Does this new executive order allow measures that if were used against a U.S. citizen who was apprehended by the enemy would be troubling to the American people?

MR. MCCONNELL: I can report to you that it's not torture.

MR. RUSSERT: How do you define torture?

MR. MCCONNELL: Well, torture is -- an attempt to define torture in the executive order gives examples of mutilation or murder or rape or physical pain, those kinds of things.

Let me just leave it by saying the techniques work. It's not torture, you're not subjected to heat or cold, but it is effective, and it's a psychological approach to causing someone to have uncertainty and, in a situation where they will feel compelled to talk to you about what you're asking on that.

MR. RUSSERT: Then you would find it acceptable if a U.S. citizen experienced the same kind of enhanced interrogation measures?

MR. MCCONNELL: Tim, it's not torture. I would not want a U.S. citizen to go through the process, but it is not torture, and there would be no permanent damage to that citizen.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq, another key judgment from the National Intelligence Estimate, "We assess that its association with AQI, al Qaeda in Iraq, helps al Qaeda to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources and recruit and indoctrinate operatives including for homeland attacks."

That seems to suggest that the Iraq War has been a very effective recruiting tool for al Qaeda.

MR. MCCONNELL: It has served as a recruiting tool to draw additional terrorists into Iraq, but it's a mutually beneficial situation for both organizations.

Now, the debate often is -- was al Qaeda in Iraq prior to the U.S.-led coalition invasion? Some members of those who associate with al Qaeda were there -- Zarqawi, who had served in Pakistan with Osama bin Laden, was the principal lead. In 2004 he swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden. As you know, he was subsequently killed about a year ago -- June 2006. The person that replaced him as sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

So al Qaeda finds it beneficial in that it's in the press. It draws in recruits, and al Qaeda in Iraq found it beneficial because it unites in a broader context.

There's one thing I think is very important is in the NIE that's often overlooked -- there is an element of extremism in the Middle East that runs from North Africa down into South Africa into the Levant, Syria, into Iraq and over to Afghanistan, even Pakistan. What al Qaeda has done is find a method for uniting those extremist views, and so what we see now is groups who are predisposed to extremism and terrorism are uniting under the al Qaeda banner.

MR. RUSSERT: But al Qaeda is a much more robust and larger presence in Iraq now than it was before the war?

MR. MCCONNELL: That's fair to say, that's fair to say. Now, but, let me just highlight one thing that's also important -- At one point in the war, al Qaeda controlled the huge expanse to the west, it's called Anbar Province. What's happened is because of the atrocities in their approach that leadership, tribal sheikhs in that region, collaborated with the coalition and turned on al Qaeda.

So has al Qaeda defeated in Iraq -- no. But in some areas, they're back on their heels for two reasons. The local citizens have turned against -- Iraqi citizens have turned against al Qaeda, and the coalition has been much more effective. As you know, the troops in this surge arrived in about the middle of June, and so the effort has been to take the fight to al Qaeda, and they have a very high level of success in doing that.

MR. RUSSERT: In terms of the balance in Iraq, which creates more of the violence? Which is the greater cause for violence? The sectarian conflict or al Qaeda?

MR. MCCONNELL: I think it is both. In some cases, we even have Shi'a on Shi'a sectarian violence. But, for the most part, it is Sunni versus Shi'a, and al Qaeda is the one that takes -- is the organization that attempts purposefully to serve as an accelerant attacking things like the mosque, the Grand Mosque that was destroyed over a year ago, and then revisiting with attacking the two minarets that were still up.

The whole purpose is something massive against the Shi'a or against something Shi'a holds sacred to act as an accelerant to stimulate the violence.

MR. RUSSERT: But there seems to be, Admiral, a coordinated campaign by the administration to elevate al Qaeda is the threat in Iraq, and yet the Pentagon quarterly report, which came out in March, said this, "The conflict in Iraq has changed from a predominantly Sunni-led insurgency against foreign occupation to a struggle for the division of political and economic influence among sectarian groups and organized criminal activity," the Pentagon quarterly report on Iraq to Congress.

The Pentagon report also said sectarian violence has become "the greatest impediment to the establishment of security and effective governance in Iraq." Do you agree with that?

MR. MCCONNELL: I agree with that, it's true. But what I would highlight is al Qaeda is part of that sectarian violence, al Qaeda is part of that crime. In some neighborhoods, it would be a classic shakedown -- "We will provide security if you give us money and resources." So al Qaeda is a major portion -- not the only. It's had significant impact, but there are other sectarian disagreements and criminal activity going on, as I mentioned, even Shi'a on Shi'a in some cases.

MR. RUSSERT: Stephen Hayes has written his book on Vice President Cheney, and as I was reading it, I found an interview with you about your views of the administration and some of their methods of gathering intelligence, and I want to share that with you and have a chance to talk about it.

It says here, "In November of 2006, Michael McConnell, who had been working on intelligence issues in the private sector since resigning from the NSA in '96 was asked to consider joining the Bush administration as the nation's top intelligence official. McConnell was honored to be asked but had serious reservations. He had been unimpressed with many aspects of the Bush administration and its conduct of the war on terror, particularly what he felt was a politicized use of intelligence and lead-up to the war.

All of these current players, Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and the president,' McConnell said in an interview in late November '06, 'must come through from me as a citizen. I am no longer on active duty, so I can say these things. They had, first and foremost, very strong political convictions. My sense of it is their political faith and convictions influence how they took information and interpreted it, how they picked up and interpreted outside events. As a former intel pro, when you don't like the answer, and you set up your own thing, you tend to get the answer you want. You hire people that think like you do or want to satisfy the boss. I've read much more about the current set of players, and they did set up a whole new interpretation because they didn't like the answers. They got results that, in my view, now have been disastrous.'"

That's pretty harsh.

MR. MCCONNELL: We're all influenced by what we see and hear and read. I am a concerned citizen. I read those things and read those accounts. What I was taking greatest exception to was to have a secondary unit established in the Pentagon to reinterpret information.

The problem I have with that is the way you do intelligence is all sources considered. You have to factor one issue against another and balance it. If you start an independent effort with a point of view, it's not infrequent that you would take a single piece of data to make a point as opposed to consider everything.

So what I was referring to and talking about at that time is I was worried that in the Pentagon there had been established this separate unit, and I thought it would have been too influential. Now, you can imagine, I consider myself an intelligence professional, I've been doing this either on active duty or serving this community for 40 years. The first responsibility of an intelligence professional is ground truth, and the second responsibility is to speak truth to power.

So when I was asked to consider this nomination, that was the condition under which I would consider it, and I focused on it very intently once I came back. What I found, or what I discovered, was quite refreshing. As you know, I meet with the president and vice president six days and, on occasion, seven days a week. That dialog is open and frank and direct, and the thing that the president and the vice president frequently will do, whether they're talking to me or one of the analysts that go in with me, is that we're not telling you what to think or how to think or what your conclusion should be. We need your information. We can challenge your assumptions or your assessment, but we want to know what your opinion is.

MR. RUSSERT: But leading up to the war in Iraq, you strongly suggest that many Americans believe that we went to war on Iraq on faulty intelligence, skewed intelligence, or cherry-picked intelligence.

MR. MCCONNELL: I would just report what came out of the WMD commission and even the 9/11 commission, to some extent, the assessment that was concluded, I think it was October 2002, determined or made an assessment that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I believed it at the time, and I mostly believed it because of my experience as intelligence officer for General Powell in the first Gulf War. I knew they had them, I knew Saddam had killed 300,000 of his own countrymen. He had engaged in two wars. He had those weapons, so I believed it.

What I believe happened is that the community allowed itself to be lulled into making the call on information, in some cases, from people who thought they had them -- even Saddam's generals thought they had weapons of mass destruction. So those threads took us to a place that turned out to be not valid.

MR. RUSSERT: But did the policymakers hype the intelligence?

MR. MCCONNELL: That's a judgment that I think the American people will have to make. I have paid very close attention to hyping of intelligence, and what I can tell you from personal experience is the decision-makers are making every attempt to call it straightforward based on the information that we provide to them, and we are not being asked to cherry-pick or to go down one path or another path but to give them complete information or the best assessments we can.

MR. RUSSERT: Admiral Mike McConnell, we thank you very much for coming here and sharing your views this morning.

MR. MCCONNELL: Thank you so much.

#
See link for youtube video

[accuracy]

Former Guantanamo inmate blows himself up in Pakistan

Tue Jul 24, 2007
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/24/1987384.htm?section=world

A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan has blown himself up with a grenade during a clash with security forces.

One-legged Taliban militant Abdullah Mehsud killed himself to avoid capture after troops raided his hideout, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said.

The Islamic rebel's death comes amid intensifying US pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to take military action against Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

"Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided his hideout. Three of his accomplices were arrested," Brig Cheema said.

Mehsud, 32, became the leader of Pakistani Taliban insurgents based in South Waziristan in 2004, after Pakistani forces launched military operations in the troubled tribal region.

In October 2004, Islamic militants led by Mehsud pressed their demand for an end to the army moves by kidnapping two Chinese engineers working on a multi-million-dollar hydroelectric dam project in South Waziristan.

One of the hostages died in a botched rescue bid in a major embarrassment for Pakistan, which counts China as its closest ally and biggest military supplier.

Mehsud, who spent 25 months in the US-run "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba until his release in March 2004, escaped after the incident.

He had been hunted by Pakistani forces ever since.

Officials said he had recently been involved in lauching cross-border attacks on NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan.

- AFP

[accuracy]

European critic of U.S. terror detention facility urges world to take detainees

July 26, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/26/europe/EU-GEN-OSCE-Guantanamo.php

VIENNA, Austria: One of Europe's most vocal critics of the U.S. terror detention facility at Guantanamo Bay turned the tables on fellow opponents Thursday, urging the world's nations to speed its shutdown by agreeing to incarcerate detainees.

Belgian senator Anne-Marie Lizin, a special envoy on Guantanamo for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told the 56-nation group there have been few countries willing to imprison 80 detainees who are ready for transfer.

Lizin said only tiny Albania, a staunchly pro-U.S. nation, has expressed willingness to host Guantanamo prisoners of any kind. Albania already has taken in eight former Guantanamo inmates.

Her message to Guantanamo critics: "Criticizing the U.S. is easy — but they also have to look at reality and maybe take some responsibility."

"It has to be closed, because it's a negative symbol for the United States," she said. "We would like to continue this pressure until the prison is closed."

Lizin, who made her second visit to Guantanamo Bay last month, told the OSCE that conditions at the facility in Cuba have noticeably improved since her first visit in March 2006.

At the time, she called for the complex to be phased out of existence by the end of this year.

Lizin said she no longer thinks that is an option. But she urged countries to accept inmates deemed less dangerous so Guantanamo ends up being used only for the most hard-core terror suspects — "high-value" detainees in CIA parlance.

About 360 men are still being held at Guantanamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

"The situation has changed inside the jail. They have a very clear procedure for interrogation," Lizin said. Officials who question detainees "realize that today, they are observed by the entire international community ... they can no longer make the slightest error," she added.

"Clearly a great effort has been made," she said, crediting U.S. authorities for "very good cooperation and a very good flow of information."

Lizin visited Guantanamo at the invitation of the U.S. government, although she was not allowed access to detainees, which is reserved only for representatives of the International Red Cross.

She said she continued to insist that all detainees have access to a lawyer and a means of redress.

Ideally, Lizin said, Middle East and North African nations such as Libya and Qatar should consider taking some of Guantanamo's detainees. She said her native Belgium has taken in two prisoners, and that Denmark, Lithuania and Germany have expressed conditional interest.

Lizin conceded that some Guantanamo prisoners who were returned to their countries of origin, such as Yemen, subsequently were found to engage themselves again in attacks on U.S. interests — and that nations might be reluctant to take detainees as a result.

"Some (prisoners) are considered extremely dangerous, and a number, no doubt, are exceedingly dangerous," she said. "There's no question of considering them in terms of pure and simple innocence."

The Associated Press

[accuracy]

CIA discounted British concerns, say MPs

· Americans ignored caveats on intelligence
· 'Serious implications' after British residents seized

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday July 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2134803,00.html

MI5 contributed to the seizure of two British residents by the CIA, which secretly flew them to Guantánamo Bay in a move with "serious implications for the intelligence relationship" between Britain and the US, a cross-party committee of senior MPs said in a damning report released yesterday.
The security service passed information to the Americans on Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi, and Jamil el-Banna, from Jordan, as they flew to the Gambia to set up a business there in 2002. Both had lived in Britain for many years.

Mr Rawi was released from Guantánamo in March after evidence emerged in a British court that he helped MI5 monitor Abu Qatada, the radical cleric. Mr Banna is still held in the US base on Cuba. Though the US has said he can leave, the British government said his UK residence status had expired because of his absence.
In its report yesterday, the parliamentary intelligence and security committee said MI5 was "indirectly and inadvertently" involved in the rendition of the two men by passing on the information, which included claims about their Islamist sympathies.

The committee said it was satisfied MI5 did not intend the men to be arrested and had used "caveats" specifically forbidding the CIA to seize the men as a result of the information it handed over. The case showed a "lack of regard on the part of the US for UK concerns - despite strong protests - and that has serious implications for the intelligence relationship," the MPs said.

In unprecedented criticism of Britain's security and intelligence agencies, the committee said both MI6 and MI5 "were slow to appreciate [the] change in US rendition policy" - a reference to the practice of seizing terrorist suspects and flying them to secret destinations where they risked being tortured.

The report was sent to the prime minister on June 28 but released by Downing Street only yesterday. The committee recognised there was a "great deal of 'tough talk' being used by the US". But it added that MI6 and MI5 should have detected sooner what the CIA was up to.

The brushing aside of British concerns had been "surprising and concerning" in "this usually close relationship". The MPs said: "Secret detention, without legal or other representation, is of itself mistreatment. Therefore, where there is a real possibility of 'rendition to detention' to a secret facility, even it would be for a limited time, we consider that approval must never be given."

The full extent of British logistic support for America's "extraordinary rendition" programme was first disclosed by the Guardian, which reported in September 2005 that aircraft operated by the CIA had flown in and out of UK civilian and military airports hundreds of times. The Council of Europe and European parliament have since reported that the CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured.

In their report, the MPs said there was no evidence any British agency had been "directly involved" in America's rendition programme. Paul Murphy, the former Labour cabinet minister who chairs the committee, castigated the government over its failure to keep proper records.

"Our inquiry has not been helped by the fact that government departments have had such difficulty in establishing the facts from their own records in relation to requests to conduct renditions through UK airspace," he said.

Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, which represents prisoners open to abuse, said last night: "The report makes clear some awful facts about the arrest and rendition of Jamil el-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi. The British government sent the Americans incorrect information that led directly to the arrest of these men ... Jamil remains in Guantánamo Bay while the UK dithers about whether to allow him home to his wife and five British children. The UK started this chain of suffering. It must end it and bring Jamil back."

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative who chairs the all-party group on rendition, said: "In response to a question from me, the prime minister refused to condemn extraordinary rendition."

British officials last night stressed that the report concluded that intelligence-sharing relationships, particularly with the US, were crucial to countering the threat posed to the UK by global terrorism.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

[accuracy]

http://calendar.boston.com/images/internal/4/0/5/3/img_73504_primary.jpg

This is the premise behind “Jesus: The Guantanamo Years” – a controversial comedy show which opens in the Boston area on July 12, at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater in Somerville, Mass.

The show arrives direct from the West End in London, following sold out performances in Dublin, Belfast, Galway and Edinburgh.

The show’s creator and star, Irish comedian Abie Philbin Bowman, claims there is a serious message behind the jokes.

In the show, Christ is detained under the Patriot Act and sent to Guantanamo Bay. In His first one-man show for almost two millennia, Jesus talks candidly about His time in Guantanamo, His relationship with His Father, and His on-going legal battle with Monty Python’s Life of Brian.


Price: $20; Discounts: Students w/ ID 50% off; Groups of 10 or more 10-20% off

Phone: (866) 811-4111

Web Page: http://www.jtoffbroadway.com

Age Suitability: All Ages

Creator: boston.com

http://calendar.boston.com/events/show/30548351-Jesus-The-Guantanamo-Years

[accuracy]

Deadline set for decision on fate of Guantanamo inmate

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Published: 27 July 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article2809188.ece

The High Court set a deadline yesterday for Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, to decide whether a terrorist suspect held at Guantanamo prison should be allowed back into the Britain.

She was given until 4pm on 9 August to decide whether Jamil el-Banna, 45, can return to Britain. His arrest in The Gambia after a tip-off by MI6 to the CIA led to a row between British and American intelligence.

A committee of MPs warned the Prime Minister that Mr el-Banna's case had undermined the relationship between the CIA and MI6. Mr el-Banna, a Jordanian Palestinian, was held with Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi, and taken to Guantanamo in Cuba as part of the US "rendition" of suspects.

Mr al-Rawi was released in March after evidence emerged in a British court that he helped MI5 monitor the radical cleric Abu Qatada. But the Government said Mr el-Banna's leave to stay in Britain expired while he was in prison.

His family solicitor, Irene Nembhard, said Mr el-Banna's family could not understand why the Government would not give the "simple reassurance" that he would be allowed back into the UK.

She said it was against the background "of the security services admitting to the Intelligence and Security Committee sending uncorrected misinformation about Jamil to the US security services. This is especially painful as the security services still have done nothing to assist in clearing Jamil of suspicion."

In May, after four-and-a-half years of interrogations, the US military concluded he was not a threat and cleared him for release, said Ms Nembhard. "Yet still the British Government has refused to act to clear the way for his speedy return home."

"Again, Mrs el-Banna has had to resort to the courts to persuade the British Government to offer minimal assistance to her husband. Her heart is aching," said Ms Nembhard.

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

[accuracy]

With Terrorism Charges Dropped, Return of Doctor Is Celebrated

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/07/30/world/30australia.600.jpg
Dr. Mohammed Haneef, 27, arriving in his native India Sunday. His lawyer said Dr. Haneef would try to regain his Australian work visa.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 30, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/world/asia/30australia.html?ex=1343448000&en=8017bc91733b7b82&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss


BANGALORE, India, July 29 (AP) — Mobbed by television cameramen, journalists and supporters, a 27-year-old doctor flew home to a hero’s welcome Sunday in southern India after terrorism charges against him were dropped in Australia and he was freed.

Looking relaxed and smiling, the doctor, Mohammed Haneef, was whisked from the airport to his family’s home, where a celebratory feast was being held, after flying from Brisbane, Australia, earlier in the day. Dr. Haneef’s jailing had aroused waves of sympathy in his native India.

“What can give a mother more happiness?” said Qurrath-Ul-Ain. “My child is free and he is coming home.” She spoke as she passed around sweets to cousins and neighbors at her home, which was decked out with strings of jasmine flowers, balloons and streamers.

In an emotional television interview earlier, Dr. Haneef said he had no knowledge of involvement by relatives of his who have been accused of playing a role in a failed terrorist attack in Britain last month. He said he would not have kept quiet if he had.

Dr. Haneef was arrested July 2 at an airport in Brisbane as he was about to fly to India to see his wife and newborn daughter — just days after his second cousins in Britain were arrested in a failed terrorist plot.

Dr. Haneef was released Friday after Australia’s chief prosecutor, Damian Bugg, said there was no evidence to support the charge that he provided reckless support to a terrorist organization. Dr. Haneef had given his cellphone SIM card to his cousin Sabeel Ahmed — who is now accused in one of the June bomb plots — when he left Britain for Australia a year ago.

In a paid interview broadcast Sunday on the Nine Network in Australia, Dr. Haneef said supporting a terrorist organization was against his nature.

Appearing close to tears, he said if he had suspected that his relatives — Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed — were planning bombings in Britain, he would not have kept it to himself.

“I would have let the parents know first, who are the main sufferers now,” Dr. Haneef said. “I really feel for them.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[accuracy]

No Haneef apology

LAURA ANDERSON and AAP
July 30, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22155215-5006301,00.html

DR MOHAMED Haneef will not receive an apology from the Federal Government, Prime Minister John Howard said today as he threw his support behind embattled Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews.

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5588235,00.jpg
Dr Mohamed Haneef arrives in Bangkok after flying from Australia in the first class cabin of a Thai Airways 747.

Mr Howard brushed off reports the Government is distancing itself from Mr Andrews over the bungled terrorism case and insisted Dr Haneef would not receive an apology.
Dr Haneef spent more than three weeks in detention on one count of "reckless" support for a terrorist group, but the charge was dropped on Friday and he was later released.

Despite the collapse of the case, Mr Andrews has vowed not to reinstate Dr Haneef's visa unless the Indian national's lawyers successfully appeal the decision in the Federal Court.

Dr Haneef has a baby daughter in Bangalore he has never seen, but Mr Andrews said the fact he had flown back to India within days of his release "actually heightens rather than lessens my suspicions".

Mr Howard today said he supported "Mr Andrews' handling of the matter".

"I notice that there have been some suggestions in the papers this morning that I'm in some way distancing myself from Mr Andrews - that is not true," Mr Howard added.

He said Australia would not be apologising to Dr Haneef, rejecting suggestions the doctor was victimised.

"I don't think that the Australian authorities victimised him - I reject that," Mr Howard said. "It's better to be safe than sorry".

Mr Howard said the Government was still waiting on advice from the Solicitor-General about whether Mr Andrews can reveal the information that led him to cancel Dr Haneef's visa.

Dr Haneef spent more than three weeks in detention in Australia on one count of "reckless" support for a terrorist group, but the charge was dropped on Friday and he was later released.

Dr Haneef flew into the southern Indian city of Bangalore overnight and was whisked from the airport to be reunited with his wife and to see his one-month-old child for the first time.

"It's an emotional moment being with my family at home after a long wait of 27 days," he read from a short statement.

"I was victimised by the Australian authority and the drama played by the Australian federal police."

The freed doctor was received by joyous relatives at his home, which was decorated with flowers and special lights. Indian officials said Dr Haneef would be offered a job in a Bangalore hospital.

Before leaving Brisbane earlier yesterday, he said he had never been a terror threat and that even police investigators did not know what to ask him during his detention.

Australian police had alleged Dr Haneef provided a mobile phone SIM card to members of the terror group behind last month's attempted attacks in Britain.

But Dr Haneef said he had merely given away the card in Britain before moving to Australia to take up a job as a hospital registrar.

"It is a tremendous amount of trauma that I have gone through, that I have never imagined in my life," he told 60 Minutes in an interview taped before leaving for India.

"People need to be detained, but not with such a long period."

Dr Haneef, whose second cousin Kafeel Ahmed was allegedly involved in the failed attack on Glasgow airport, was detained on July 2 as he attempted to leave Brisbane on a one-way ticket to India.

The doctor said while he understood why he had been questioned, he had done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, prominent lawyer Peter Faris, QC, says Dr Haneef deserves an official apology and compensation.

"I think he's probably owed a lot of money - I would have thought we would have a very substantial claim arising out of a bungled investigation and the bungled charges against him," Mr Faris said.

"I am very surprised that the press conference that (Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick) Keelty and (Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Damian) Bugg had last week that neither of them saw fit to apologise to him, that was disgraceful.

"The work of the federal police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has just been incompetent."

[accuracy]

Revealed: MI5's role in torture flight hell

· British source tells of betrayal to CIA
· 'I was stripped and hauled to US base'

David Rose
Sunday July 29, 2007
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2137144,00.html

An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal 'torture flight' under the programme known as extraordinary rendition.
In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador in Europe'. He was abducted and stripped naked by US agents, clad in nappies, a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA 'black site' jail near Kabul in Afghanistan.

He was taken on to the jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released last March and returned to Britain after four years' detention without charge.
'All the way through that flight I was on the verge of screaming,' al-Rawi said. 'At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over. But it wasn't - it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were hours still to go ... My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight. All the time they kept me on my back. Once, I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side. Then I felt someone hit my hand. Even this was forbidden.'

He was thrown into the CIA's 'Dark Prison,' deprived of all light 24 hours a day in temperatures so low that ice formed on his food and water. He was taken to Guantanamo in March 2003 and released after being cleared of any involvement in terrorism by a tribunal.

A report by Parliament's intelligence and security committee last week disclosed that, although the Americans warned MI5 it planned to render al-Rawi in advance, in breach of international law, the British did not intervene on the grounds he did not have a UK passport. The government claimed he was the responsibility of Iraq, which he fled as a teenager when his father was tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime.

The report confirmed that al-Rawi, 39, was only held after MI5 sent the CIA a telegram, stating he was an 'Islamic extremist' who had a timer for an improvised bomb in his luggage. In reality, before al-Rawi left London, police confirmed the device was a battery charger from Argos.

The committee accepted MI5's claim, given in secret testimony, that it had not wanted the Americans to arrest him, in November 2002, concluding the incident had damaged US-UK relations.

But al-Rawi alleged that the CIA told him they had been given the contents of his own MI5 file - information he had given his handlers freely when he was working as their source. He said an MI5 lawyer had given him 'cast iron' assurances that anything he told them would be treated in the strictest confidence and, if he ever got into trouble, MI5 would do everything in its power to help him.

When al-Rawi was in Guantanamo, he asked the American authorities to find his former MI5 handlers so they would corroborate his story but, because he did not know their surnames, MI5 said it could not assist.

The committee report cited MI5 testimony claiming that when al-Rawi was transported in December 2002, it could not have known how harsh his treatment might be. Yet eight months earlier, Amnesty International had published a lengthy report on US detention in Afghanistan, quoting several ex-prisoners who described conditions very similar to those experienced by al-Rawi.

He had conveyed messages between the preacher Abu Qatada and MI5 when Qatada was supposedly in hiding in 2002. At MI5's behest, he came close to arranging a meeting between the two sides.

Al-Rawi has now spoken out in an effort to help his friend Jamil el-Banna, who remains in Guantanamo. A Jordan-ian who also lived in London for years, where his wife and five children are British citizens, he too has been cleared by the Americans. However, he has been unable to leave Guantanamo because Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, says she is reviewing his right of residence on national security grounds.

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East in London, where el-Banna lives, said his case revealed 'decrepitude at the heart of the government'. The government had 'no regard for the welfare of his children'.

His lawyers have filed a statement from al-Rawi as part of a judicial review case. In the action, they accuse MI5 of having a 'causative role' in both men's ordeals, stating it was 'complicit' in the illegal rendition and guilty of an 'abuse of power'.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

[accuracy]

It's not torture, it's sex

Why is it the more the White House refines the rules, the pervier things get?

By By A.S. Hamrah
July 30, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-hamrah30jul30,0,1775266.story?coll=la-tot-opinion&track=ntothtml

When a group of 50 high school students visiting the White House in June handed President Bush a letter urging him to stop the torture of suspected terrorists, the president took their letter, read it, then told the students that "the United States does not torture."

By the time a president has alienated even high school overachievers, the cat is out of the bag; it is now general knowledge that the United States of America tortures people. We know that torture rarely if ever works. So what are government officials getting out of it?

Right before his recent colonoscopy, Bush announced that he had issued an executive order banning cruel and inhumane treatment in interrogations of suspected terrorists. This clarified interrogation guidelines he had issued last fall banning techniques that "shock the conscience." While the guidelines appear to be a step toward more concrete protection of human rights, the administration's constant rejiggering of the border between interrogation and torture reveals something else: a Sadean interest in the refinement of torture, a desire to define what is and is not "beyond the bounds of human decency," as the order puts it.

The claim that there is an element of sexual perversity in the government's interest in prisoner abuse may seem broad, but consider how officials discuss it. And when it comes to pictures documenting torture, they react in ways that should be as interesting to psychoanalysts as they are to constitutional lawyers, civil libertarians or investigative reporters.

In April, former CIA Director George Tenet appeared on "60 Minutes," telling interviewer Scott Pelley -- between swigs from a tiny bottle of Evian and his insistent, repetitive bark that "we don't torture people" -- that the reason he has never personally seen the evidence of the interrogation techniques he refuses to talk about is because he is "not a voyeur."

Tenet's reference to voyeurism -- which the dictionary defines as "the practice of obtaining sexual gratification by looking at sexual objects or acts, especially secretly" -- would seem to imply that these unmentionable techniques are sexual in nature and therefore inappropriate. But Tenet can never know if that's the case because he, not being a voyeur, claims never to have seen them. So why bring up voyeurism at all?

A quote from an unidentified lieutenant general in Seymour Hersh's article, "The General's Report," in the June 25 issue of the New Yorker exposes a similar unwillingness to confront scenes of torture. "I don't want to get involved by looking" at photographs and videos of torture, the officer told Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba during the torture investigation at Abu Ghraib, "because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?"

When babies cover their eyes, they assume the world has disappeared because they can't see it; they think they're invisible too and that the world can't see them. Donald Rumsfeld, in Hersh's article, comes off like an innocent child rubbing his eyes and waking in a world he never made. "My God! Did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy's head and telling him all his buddies knew he was a homosexual?" asks the former Defense secretary. Heck, was it all just a dream?

Maybe the reason members of the Bush administration are reluctant to look at evidence of torture is that if they did, they would be forced to admit that, for them, what happened at Abu Ghraib really wasn't torture. For them, evidently, it was sex, and that's why they won't watch.

It's not like government officials have never come right out and said that. In 2004, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) bridged the gap between the painful and the erotic by dismissing the Abu Ghraib abuses as a mere "sex ring": "I've seen what happened at Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture. It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops who were involved in a sex ring." When asked to clarify, Shays backtracked and dug himself in deeper at the same time. "It was torture because sexual abuse is torture

This is more about pornography than torture."

Last winter, when an Australian TV network released photos and videos from Abu Ghraib, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, speaking for the coalition forces, called the report "unnecessarily provocative." He didn't say the images were wrong or criminal.

Instead of just banning torture outright, as the high school students asked him to do, Bush's new executive order, which purports to be an "interpretation of the Geneva Convention Common Article 3," reduces torture to a series of deviant acts. It dwells on "sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation, forcing the individual to perform sexual acts or to pose sexually, threatening the individual with sexual mutilation."

It's the exact kind of list you'd expect to find from the kind of people who go on TV and announce to the public that they're not voyeurs. Now that they've defined torture so carefully, it should be much easier for them not to look at it.

A.S. Hamrah is a writer and brand analyst living in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

[accuracy]

You do not abandon your own...

By Bettmann / Corbis

07/28/07 -- -- - What does the chivalric tradition that originated in America’s Civil War mean to the US today? Of all the scandals to come out of the Iraq war – Abu Ghraib, Haditha, the gang-rape and murder of 14 year old Abeer Qassim Hamza – the most dishonorable to date is the Bush administration’s refusal to protect Iraqis who risked their lives by working as translators, interpreters, drivers for the US army. Targeted by insurgent groups, denied help from the US army, the Iraqis who cast their lot with America are being kidnapped and executed every day, and no news report or televised pleas of help have caused a stir in the American conscience.

This story of betrayal is nothing new. At the twilight of the Vietnam war, the US abandoned 3,300 of the 3,500 Vietnamese employees of the US Army, leaving them at the mercy of vengeful nationalists. Every war since, the US has brought war and lofty ideals of freedom and democracy to faraway lands, leaving a cruel fate to the locals who believed in them. Just like in Vietnam 40 years ago, America is demonstrating to the world that it has no honor, and that its word does not mean very much.

*As of February 2007, the US has opened its doors to 466 of the 2 million Iraqi refugees displaced since 2003. Sweden has accepted 70,000, Jordan 750,000.

© BETTMANN/CORBIS

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18083.htm

[accuracy]

Guantánamo detainee a hero at home

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/07/28/2003810594.jpg
Sami al Hajj, 38, has been held as an "enemy combatant" for the past five years

July 29, 2007
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003810832_sudangitmo29.html

By Shashank Bengali

McClatchy Newspapers

KHARTOUM, Sudan — He's all but unknown in the United States, the country of his jailers, but in his homeland of Sudan, Sami al Hajj is a national hero. The president has spoken out about him, demonstrations have been held in his name, and a bakery in Khartoum has printed his picture on its packaging.

A 38-year-old cameraman for the Arabic news network Al-Jazeera, Hajj has been imprisoned as an "enemy combatant" at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for five years, but never charged with a crime. He was arrested by Pakistani police in December 2001 while on his way to a news assignment in Afghanistan, but he's denied having any links to terrorism.

The independent, Qatar-based network earned the wrath of top U.S. officials after the Sept. 11 attacks for airing statements by Osama bin Laden. Hajj has been interrogated approximately 130 times, according to his attorneys, and nearly every question has been about whether the network or its journalists are connected to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

Hajj had been with Al-Jazeera for only a few months at the time of his arrest, and he's told military interrogators that he knows nothing about the network's corporate structure or financing. Before he joined the network, he had a succession of low-level jobs with private companies in Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.

Interrogators offered to secure Hajj's release if he agreed to spy on Al-Jazeera, his attorneys say, but Hajj has refused.

Sudanese officials and international human-rights groups and press-freedom groups have demanded that Hajj be tried or released. Neither appears likely. Documents released by the military suggest why Hajj continues to be held: He's alleged to have couriered money in the late 1990s to the Azerbaijan branch of al Haramayn, a Muslim charity that provided support to extremist groups, and to have once met an unnamed "senior al-Qaida lieutenant."

Hajj's attorneys said both allegations, which surfaced in an August 2005 review-board hearing, stemmed from his work as an assistant to the head of a soft-drink distribution company in Dubai.

According to Hajj's attorneys, on his boss' orders Hajj once picked up Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, the al-Qaida official, at the airport in Dubai, but didn't know he had links to terrorism. As for the funds, Hajj told his lawyers he once brought $220,000 in cash into Azerbaijan on behalf of his boss, but he thought the money was for charitable purposes.

"The money was destined for Chechen rebels and not for humanitarian support as the detainee was told," an unidentified U.S. military officer said, according to a transcript of the hearing.

Zachary Katznelson, one of Hajj's lawyers and senior counsel at the British legal-aid group Reprieve, said that comment indicates that U.S. officials don't have evidence that Hajj knowingly transported funds intended for terrorism.

But military interrogators haven't questioned Hajj about those allegations, Katznelson said. In previous hearings and documents, the military made other allegations — that Hajj was part of an Al-Jazeera crew that interviewed bin Laden, that he tried to sell Stinger missiles to Chechen rebels, that he operated a jihadist Web site — that subsequently were dropped.

Since Jan. 7, he's been on hunger strike. Soldiers force-feed Hajj and other hunger strikers by tying them down with 16 straps, snaking a tube through their noses and down to their stomachs, and pumping water and a vitamin-fortified milkshake into their bodies, according to Hajj's attorneys.

Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon said there was a "significant amount of evidence, both unclassified and classified" that justifies holding Hajj as an "enemy combatant." Gordon also said Hajj had repeatedly declined to answer "any substantive questions about his alleged ties to terror despite being given ample opportunities over the years."

Al-Jazeera, widely watched in Sudan and throughout the Arab world, regularly reminds viewers of Hajj's case. The network has launched a campaign for his release and produced a documentary — each named for his Guantánamo ID number, Prisoner 345. Hardly a day goes by without a Sudanese newspaper or broadcast station mentioning his story.

He's become Sudan's most famous journalist, even though he was only on his second-ever assignment. In mid-2001, soon after completing an internship program, he was assigned to research a story on Chechnya and met several times in Qatar with the exiled former president of the rebellious Russian republic, who was alleged to have ties with al-Qaida.

Ahmad Ibrahim, a producer for Al-Jazeera's English service, said Hajj was given the assignment because of his experience in the region — his wife is from Azerbaijan — but the project eventually was scrapped.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was asked to go to Afghanistan. Hajj was on vacation in Damascus, Syria, with his wife and baby son when the call came. Other cameramen had turned down the assignment, and Hajj hesitated.

He finally took the job, family members said, because he wanted to prove himself with his new employers.

In early October 2001, he and four other Al-Jazeera staff members traveled to Pakistan, obtained visas for Afghanistan and crossed into Kandahar. For about 50 days, the team covered the U.S. bombardment of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold, and lived in guesthouses alongside journalists from CNN and other news organizations.

While in Kandahar, U.S. officials said, Hajj interviewed several officials, including Abu Hafa al Moritani, a bin Laden adviser who was the leader of the al-Qaida cell in the northern African nation of Mauritania.

In December, the team returned to Pakistan, but Hajj soon was asked to go back to Afghanistan to cover Hamid Karzai's newly formed government. At the border, he was stopped by Pakistani authorities when his name appeared on a watch list, according to U.S. officials. After three weeks he was transferred to American authorities and taken to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

According to Amnesty International, Hajj described his 16 days at Bagram as "the worst in my life."

"He states that he was severely physically tortured and had dogs set upon him, that he was held in a cage (in) a freezing aircraft hangar and was given insufficient, often frozen food," Amnesty reported.

He then was taken to Kandahar and, on June 13, 2002, transferred to Guantánamo in chains. Not until this time did Hajj's family learn that he was in U.S. custody, from a letter he wrote to his wife.

His family in Sudan kept the news from his ailing father for several months, but when they finally told him, the news sent him into shock. He died a few days later.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

[accuracy]

Padilla won't put on defense at terror trial

August 1, 2007
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/law/08/01/padilla.trial.ap/

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Attorneys for Jose Padilla told the court they will not put on a defense case, meaning the jury could soon be deciding the fate of the former "enemy combatant" and two co-defendants charged with supporting al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.

http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/US/law/08/01/padilla.trial.ap/art.padilla.jpg

"At this point, we're not calling any witnesses," Padilla attorney Anthony Natale told U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke on Tuesday.

Cooke recently rejected the lawyers' request to acquit Padilla based on lack of government evidence.

Only a handful of witnesses remain for Padilla's co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi.

Jayyousi attorney William Swor indicated he could finish with his witnesses as early as Thursday, meaning prosecutors could put on brief rebuttal testimony next week.

Closing statements are expected to take about two days, then the case goes to the jury.

Hassoun's and Jayyousi's attorneys have struggled at times to refute the prosecution's claims that the two provided recruits, money and supplies for Islamic extremist causes around the world.

They have called six witnesses since July 23, with none producing major bombshell evidence.

One, FBI agent John T. Kavanaugh, had already spent three weeks on the stand for the prosecution and seemed to rehash the same FBI wiretap intercepts that form the backbone of the U.S. case.

Padilla is accused of being one of the cell's recruits and completing a form in 2000 to attend an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

He initially was accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the United States and was held as an enemy combatant for 3½ years, but the "dirty bomb" allegation is not part of the Miami trial.

All three men face life in prison if convicted on all charges.

The trial had dragged on for 12 weeks, with the jury spending almost as much time out the courtroom as in the jury box. The jurors often have been sent out of the room or dismissed early as prosecutors and defense lawyers battle intently over evidence admissibility and the way witnesses are questioned.

One such argument grew so heated late Monday that Cooke ordered a recess, prompting an apology Tuesday from Swor.

"I was, I would say, close to being totally out of control," he said. "I would like to apologize to the court."

Cooke then made Swor say he was sorry to prosecutor John Shipley, the object of his ire, "to complete your atonement process."

"I do apologize to Mr. Shipley. It was unprofessional," Swor said.

© 2007 Cable News Network LP,

[accuracy]

Cuban migrants on hunger strike over Guantanamo detention

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-07-31-guantanamo-migrants_N.htm

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Almost two dozen would-be Cuban migrants detained at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay have begun a hunger strike to protest their confinement, an exile group said Tuesday.
The 22 migrants who began their protest on Sunday are among 44 Cubans, including three children, who were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard at sea but not repatriated because authorities deemed they had a credible fear of persecution, said Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of the Miami-based Democracy Movement. Some have been at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. base in southeast Cuba, for more than two years, he said.

U.S. authorities are seeking to settle the Cubans in another country but Sanchez said they should be released immediately and allowed to live in the United States, where they have relatives.

"All of these people are dissidents," he said. "They were actively involved in the democracy movement in Cuba."

The Cubans migrants are not confined with the approximately 360 men detained on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban at Guantanamo — and their protest is not connected to the long-running hunger strike among the detainees held by the U.S. military.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Cuba | Guantanamo Bay | Cubans | Navy base
Some of the Cubans hold jobs at the Navy base such as bagging groceries at the post exchange. Sanchez said some have been able to phone him and other activists in the United States to discuss their plight. Among their complaints, he said, are that they are treated like "prisoners" by the private contractor that runs the migrant operation center on the base.

"What they are doing is asking for more humane treatment and for their cases to be resolved," Sanchez said.

The 22 Cuban men on hunger strike have taken nothing but water since Sunday morning and said "'We want to be free or die,"' he said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said the agency rejected the Democracy Movement's claims that migrants detained at the U.S. base were mistreated. She said there were 17 migrants — not 22 — on a hunger strike since Sunday and that naval medical staff were closely monitoring their health.

Spokesmen at Guantanamo Bay refused to comment.

Cuban migrants who are detained on American soil are generally allowed to remain in the United States while those intercepted at sea are sent home unless they can demonstrate a credible fear of persecution. The American base is not considered U.S. territory.

The U.S. adopted the so-called wet-foot-dry-foot policy after tens of thousands of people fled Cuba by boat in a chaotic mass exodus in the 1990s.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[lydia78]

Hi Accuracy,


Was wondering if you could tell me more about Qatar's motives in this scenario?

"The independent, Qatar-based network earned the wrath of top U.S. officials after the Sept".


In 2004 I found myself working on a 95metre yacht called Al Mirqab, the boss was Sheik Hamad Jassim Jabor Althani Doha (bloody long name ain't it!) and he was the foreign sectary for Qatar at the time.......might interest you to know the whole yacht was literally covered in gold (it was my goddamn job to clean it)! Saw a lot of interesting things take place on that yacht, least to say they are massive hypocrites....they come to the west on a holiday from their own laws! But then it's hardly surprising.....remembered thinking about his 20 yr old wife, that she lived in a 'beautiful prison'.....anyway, I also used to clean the photos of the sheik with sadam hussan and in others the sheik with bush snr and jnr.

So, don't suppose you could enlighten me as to where Qatar fits in all of this, or have I answered my own question?;)

[accuracy]

I'm a assuming you've answered you're own question, lydia78, about the Qatar
as i couldn't enligthen you more on it:)

Thanks for you're interest in this thread.

accuracy

[accuracy]

The Abu Ghraib whistleblower's ordeal

By Dawn Bryan-- Sunday, 5 August 2007

Producer, BBC Radio 4's The Choice
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6930197.stm

The US soldier who exposed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison found himself a marked man after his anonymity was blown in the most astonishing way by Donald Rumsfeld.

When Joe Darby saw the horrific photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison he was stunned.

So stunned that he walked out into the hot Baghdad night and smoked half a dozen cigarettes and agonised over what he should do.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44038000/jpg/_44038231_joedarby203b.jpg
Joe Darby was commended by the military for his actions

Joe Darby was a reserve soldier with US forces at Abu Ghraib prison when he stumbled across those images which would eventually shock the world in 2004.

They were photographs of his colleagues, some of them men and women he had known since high school - torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners.

His decision to hand them over rather than keep quiet changed his life forever.

The military policeman has only been allowed to talk about that struggle very recently, and in his first UK interview, for BBC Radio 4's The Choice, he told Michael Buerk how he made that decision and how he fears for the safety of his family.

Photos of abuse

He had been in Iraq for seven months when he was first handed the photographs on a CD. It was lent to him by a colleague, Charles Graner.

Most of the disc contained general shots around Hilla and Baghdad, but also those infamous photos of abuse.

At first he did not quite believe what he was looking at.

"The first picture I saw, I laughed - because one, it's just a pyramid of naked people - I didn't know it was Iraqi prisoners," he says.

"Because I have seen soldiers do some really stupid things. As I got into the photos more I realised what they were.

"There were photos of Graner beating three prisoners in a group. There was a picture of a naked male Iraqi standing with a bag over his head, holding the head, the sandbagged head of a male Iraqi kneeling between his legs.

"The most pronounced woman in the photographs was Lyndie England, and she was leading prisoners around on a leash. She was giving a thumbs-up and standing behind the pyramid, you know with the thumbs-up, standing next to Graner. Posing with one of the Iraqi prisoners who had died."

Promised anonymity

Joe Darby knew what he saw was wrong, but it took him three weeks to decide to hand those photographs in. When he finally did, he was promised anonymity and hoped he would hear no more about it.

But he was scared of the repercussions from the accused soldiers in the photos.

"I was afraid for retribution not only from them, but from other soldiers," he says.

"At night when I would sleep, they were less than 100 yards from me, and I didn't even have a door on the room I slept in.

"I had a raincoat hanging up for a door. Like I said to my room mate, they could reach their hand in the door - because I slept right by the door - and cut my throat without making a noise, or anybody knowing what was going on, and I was scared of that."

When the accused soldiers were finally removed from the base, he thought his troubles were over.

And then he was sitting in a crowded Iraqi canteen with hundreds of soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld came on the television to thank Joe Darby by name for handing in the photographs.

"I don't think it was an accident because those things are pretty much scripted," Mr Darby says.

"But I did receive a letter from him which said he had no malicious intent, he was only doing it to praise me and he had no idea about my anonymity.

"I really find it hard to believe that the secretary of defence of the United States has no idea about the star witness for a criminal case being anonymous."

Rather than turn on him for betraying colleagues, most of the soldiers in his unit shook his hand. It was at home where the real trouble started.

Labelled a traitor

His wife had no idea that Mr Darby had handed in those photos, but when he was named, she had to flee to her sister's house which was then vandalised with graffiti. Many in his home town called him a traitor.

"I knew that some people wouldn't agree with what I did," he says.

"You have some people who don't view it as right and wrong. They view it as: I put American soldiers in prison over Iraqis."

That animosity in his home town has meant that he still cannot return there.

After Donald Rumsfeld blew his cover, he was bundled out of Iraq very quickly and lived under armed protection for the first six months.

He has since left the army but did testify at the trials of some of those accused of abuse and torture. It is Charles Graner he is most afraid of.

"Seeing Graner across the courtroom was the only one that was difficult during the trial," he says.

"He had a stone-cold stare of hatred the entire time - he wouldn't take his eyes off me the whole time he sat there. I think this is a grudge he will hold till the day he gets out of prison."

Mr Darby and his family have moved to a new town. They have new jobs. They have done everything but change their identities.

But he does not see himself as a hero, or a traitor. Just "a soldier who did his job - no more, no less".

"I've never regretted for one second what I did when I was in Iraq, to turn those pictures in," he says.

You can hear Joe Darby being interviewed by Michael Buerk on BBC Radio 4's The Choice on 7 August at 0900 BST.

[accuracy]

Campaigns : Babar Ahmad: Babar Ahmad Petition to PM Will Close on 18th August - Target 10 000 Signatures

http://www.cageprisoners.com/campaigns.php?id=540

05/08/2007
Babar Ahmad Petition to PM Will Close on 18th August - Target 10 000 Signatures


PETITION TO PRIME MINISTER WILL CLOSE ON SATURDAY 18TH AUGUST.

CURRENTLY UNDER 4000 SIGNATURES-
TARGET SIGNATURES 10,000
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BabarAhmad/


Dear Friends and Supporters,

Thank you for your continued support Free Babar Ahmad Campaign.

On Sunday 5th August 2007 it will be the 3rd anniversary of Babar's incarceration without trial or charge. As you may know, British citizen Babar Ahmad has lost all of his appeals in the UK against extradition to the US.

The European Court of Human Rights has blocked the extradition for the time being whilst they consider the case. If Babar loses at the European Courts, he will be extradited to the US where he will be subjected to an unfair trial and likely to suffer Human Rights' abuses.

The Free Babar Ahmad Campaign is submitting a petition to the Prime Minister to stop the extradition of Babar Ahmad to the US and put him on trial in the UK.

The deadline for this petition is Saturday 18th August 2007, after which no more signatures can be added.

At present there are just under 4000 signatures. Our aim is at least 10,000

We are urgently requesting all supporters to sign the petition if they have not already and encourage others to do the same. Time is running out and we want to give a strong message to the Government through this petition.

Please take a few moments to click on the link below (cut and paste into browser if window does not open) and follow the online instructions to add a signature

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BabarAhmad/

Thank you for your time. Please circulate this message as a matter of urgency.

Free Babar Ahmad Campaign



www.freebabarahmad.com

You must be a British citizen or resident to sign the petition. Or, if you're an expatriate, you're in an overseas territory, a Crown dependency or in the Armed Forces without a postcode, please select from this list:

[accuracy]

Rights Group Faults Anti-Terror Tactics

http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=21363

06/08/2007

By Otsieno Namwaya




A new report makes startling disclosures about the hitherto unknown operations by the Kenyan and foreign security forces in the ongoing crackdown on terror in the country.




The Muslim Human Rights Forum’s report accuses the Government of allowing the US, Israeli and UK soldiers to interrogate and deport terror suspects, although some have proven Kenyan citizenship and ancestry.




In the process, the rights group estimates that at least 20 Kenyans were deported to Somalia at a time when war raged and many were fleeing the country.




Another Kenyan, says the report, was eventually deported to the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba by foreign soldiers who chided, tortured and mocked the suspects that they were in a lawless country, hence had no rights worth talking about unless they confessed to links with terrorists.




Mr Abdulmalik Mohammed, a Kenyan who had been arrested in Mombasa in mid-February, was, after a month in police custody, flown to Guantanamo Bay in March.




Injustices against the suspects




The US Department of Defence later issued a statement saying Abdulmalik had admitted to being involved in 1998 terrorist attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.




The chairman of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, Mr Al-Amin Kimathi says the report, Horn of Terror, is a product of months of research and interviews with the victims, their families, friendly Kenyan security officers and eye-witnesses since last December when a combined force of Ethiopian and US soldiers routed the Islamic Courts Union from Somalia.




Muslim Human Rights Forum, says Kimathi, is a Nairobi based consortium of at least four community – based organisations, most of which work very closely with the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims.




When contacted, Ms Beatrice Kamau, who has extensively researched on the cases of terror suspects in Kenya along with lawyer Mr Haroun Ndubi, corroborated the rights’ group findings. "When I interviewed suspects in the Paradise Hotel bombing, I realised they were being interrogated by American and Israeli security agents," says Ms Kamau, who was then working for the Kenya Human Rights Network.




She says the Kikambala bombing suspects would be arrested, charged and, just when the case was midway, the authorities would drop the case and prefer fresh charges.




"It was as if they were not really sure of what they were doing," she says.




She says when relatives applied for suspects to be produced in court, the Government would produce them in a court in Nairobi, which is miles away from Mombasa.




Describing what has transpired as "one of the largest episodes of extra-ordinary deportations of prisoners in the war on terror", the Muslim Human Rights Forum report has been circulated to nearly all the diplomatic missions. By circulating the report widely, the rights group would expose what it describes as injustices against the suspects.




The suspects, who are from at least 21 countries, are all said to have been arrested in January this year either as they fled the war in Somalia or simply taken from their homes.




But Police spokesman, Mr Eric Kiraithe, denied allegations in the report. "We do not have expatriates in the Kenyan police. There are all manner of groups who find it convenient to attack police for their own selfish reasons," said Kiraithe when contacted by The Sunday Standard.




The report says, so far, only a small portion of the 152 suspects it tracked has been released while the rest are still being held in Ethiopia, Somalia, US and Guantanamo Bay. It is unclear whether any of the suspects are still being held in Kenya, although the Government played a role in their capture and deportations.




"Only 37 of them may have been released with no official disclosures of the actual number and identities of those released or the captives still in custody. Worse still, the whereabouts of some of those said to have been released remains a mystery," it says.




It points at the possibility that some of the suspects could already be facing undisclosed charges before a military court of a country whose identity is yet to be established.




Out of the 37 said to have been released, says the report, 30 were either released in Kenya or repatriated to their home countries, four were charged in court while the rest are yet to be accounted for. The other 117 were first taken to Somalia and later to Ethiopia on diverse dates in January and February this year, although the Ethiopian government has only acknowledged receiving 41 ‘suspected terrorists’.




A violation of international law




But the human rights organisation says it is now perturbed by the fact that the whereabouts of these so-called terror suspects remains unknown, as only a few are still being held in Ethiopia.




The fate of most of those being held by the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia is also unknown.




"We are most dismayed by the conduct of the Kenya Government, which is in disregard of the national and international law such as denial of due process to the captives, denial of basic rights such as access to legal counsel, consular representation, family, doctors or international monitors, holding most of them, including children and expectant women, incommunicado and beyond the legally permissible period before rendering them to countries where they feared harm," says the report.




It says the Government allowed US forces to launch aerial strikes against the Islamic Courts Union from Kenyan soil and later gave active support to both the US and Ethiopian intelligence in the raging war in Somalia.




"Those who crossed the border to Kenya were rounded up, put on trucks and dumped inside Somalia. Close to 200 were detained by police at the border before eventually being airlifted to Nairobi. It is from these captives that extra-ordinary deportations took place," says the report.




The suspects, it says, were shuffled, blindfolded and shackled, mostly at night, from one police station to another in Garissa, Nairobi, Malindi and Mombasa.




The suspects were interrogated by US security agents, who were in charge of the exercise.




And, going by the flight manifests produced in court during an application requiring Government to produce 85 of the suspects in court, senior Kenyan police officers would then be left by US soldiers to escort deportees to either Ethiopia or Somalia.




"The veil of secrecy, the silence and denials without giving full, frank and public disclosures may have, at worse, aided in the disappearance of an unknown number of people and, in the least, brought about so much confusion and anxiety," says the report, which says at least 70 suspects are missing.




It is not known how many members of Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) arrested in Moyale and Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) arrested in Mandera were deported to Ethiopia, the country from which they were fleeing.




This, says the report, is in violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of victims of war, as OLF and ONLF are known rebel movements against the Ethiopian government.




The human rights forum says it has proof that at least 100 suspected OLF and ONLF insurgents were handed over to the Ethiopian government.




Of these, it says, at least 18 were people with proven Kenyan identity and ancestry. It says this information has been given to the Kenyan Government, which had all along been asking for it, and now the suspects risk being left stateless.




Eight detainees; five of them Kenyans, were said to have been released from Addis Ababa early this month and handed to the Kenyan authorities at Moyale border.




While two Tanzanians were returned home and eventually set free, the whereabouts of the Kenyans is not known, as they neither reached home nor did the Kenya Government officially acknowledge receiving them.




The eighth suspect was a Rwandese national, Ibrahim Clement Muhibitabo, who was registered in Kenya as a refugee and lived in Nairobi with his wife and three children.




"He was promptly jailed on being returned to Rwanda, the country he had fled. Fears that he could be harmed were very real," says the report.




It says a similar fate, or worse, could have met the Eritreans, the Oromos and the Ogadenis who were handed to the Ethiopian authorities.






SOURCE: East Standard.net

[accuracy]

Cheney: Don't Close Guantanamo Yet


By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 1, 2007

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073101725.html

Cheney: Don't Close Guantanamo Yet


Vice President Cheney said yesterday that he would not immediately close the prison housing terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, because there is no other place to send some of the world's most dangerous men.

President Bush has said repeatedly that he wants to close the prison once administration officials figure out what to do with several hundred remaining detainees. But senior administration officials have been divided about how to accomplish that, given practical impediments such as the reluctance on the part of some countries to accept the return of their citizens detained there.

Cheney gave voice to his position in an interview with CNN's Larry King, who asked whether Cheney agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell that the facility should be closed "yesterday."

"I think you need to have someplace to hold those individuals who have been captured during the global war on terror. I'm thinking of people like Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This is a man we captured in Pakistan. He's the mastermind of 9/11," Cheney replied. "There are hundreds of people like that, and if you closed Guantanamo, you'd have to find someplace else to put these folks."

Cheney also came to the defense of a former aide, Eric S. Edelman, now an undersecretary of defense. Edelman recently stirred controversy when he responded to a request from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) for a briefing on withdrawal plans from Iraq by accusing her of reinforcing "enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies" by discussing a timetable for withdrawal.

Cheney said he thought Edelman wrote "a good letter" and added that "we don't get into the business of sharing operational plans -- we never have -- with the Congress."

A spokesman for Clinton noted that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates took a more "conciliatory tone" after the Edelman letter and reaffirmed Congress's role in overseeing the administration. "It seems the right hand doesn't know what the far-right hand is doing," said Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines.

Cheney also disclosed that he recently had dinner with his former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, whose 30-month sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice was commuted by Bush. Cheney said earlier this week that he disagreed with the verdict.

"He's doing well," Cheney said. "He obviously went through a very, very difficult time, very hard for him and for his family. I think having the commutation of sentence decided has been a huge relief for him, but he still has a very difficult road. He's got -- obviously he needs to find work. He's got legal bills. He carries the burden of having been convicted. All those are not easy problems. But he's clearly in -- he's in good spirits and getting on with his life."

© Copyright 1996-2007 The Washington Post Company

[accuracy]

2 former Guantanamo detainees go on trial in Tajikistan

August 7, 2007 The Associated
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/07/asia/AS-GEN-Tajikistan-Guantanamo.php

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan: Two former Tajik detainees of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo went on trial in their home country Tuesday on charges of illegal border crossing and mercenary activity in neighboring Afghanistan, the presiding judge said.

Mukit Vokhidov and Rukhiddin Sharopov are suspected of links with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an al-Qaida connected militant group responsible for several bombings and armed incursions across ex-Soviet Central Asia, said Supreme Court judge Masammir Urakov.

The two are accused of illegally crossing into Afghanistan in 2001 and serving as IMU mercenaries, said their lawyer, Lutfullo Saidov. They were detained by the U.S. military in northern Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to the U.S. Guantanamo base in Cuba. In March, they were handed over to Tajik authorities.

The IMU is blamed for bomb blasts outside the Tajik Emergencies Ministry in 2005 that killed two people and injured three.

Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune

[accuracy]

Britain seeks release of Guantanamo detainees

By Tom Hundley - Tribune foreign correspondent
August 7, 2007

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070807-britain-gitmo,1,5926149.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

LONDON - In a significant policy shift for the British government, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has asked the United States for the release of five British residents imprisoned at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The request came in a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from Britain's new Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

According to a statement from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Tuesday, "The Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary have decided to request the release from Guantanamo Bay and return to the UK of the five men who, whilst not [United Kingdom] nationals, were legally resident here prior to their detention."

In the past, the government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair sought and obtained the release of nine British nationals held at Guantanamo, but it claimed it had no responsibility to intervene on behalf of non-citizens who lived in Britain.

Some analysts here saw Tuesday's policy shift as an attempt by Brown to pursue a tougher stance toward the U.S. in line with Britain's long-standing opposition to the existence of Guantanamo. But the move is likely to be welcomed by the Bush administration, which is eager to downsize Guantanamo and has been critical of countries, including Britain, that have chastised the U.S. for alleged human rights violations at the facility while refusing to accept the repatriation of Guantanamo prisoners.

"Britain is taking these people off America's hands. That's not something America is going to complain about," said Robin Shepherd, a political analyst with Chatham House, a London think tank.

In Washington, the State Department said the request was being reviewed in line with the Bush administration's stated desire to reduce the detainee population at Guantanamo.

"Our policy has been for quite some time to work with countries who have an interest in either having their nationals returned or taking responsibility for third-country nationals," spokesman Sean McCormack said.

But the policy shift does have domestic political significance in Britain. Blair was widely perceived to be too acquiescent to Bush on matters related to Iraq and terrorism, and Brown appears to be looking for ways to differentiate himself from his predecessor without damaging Britain's special relationship with the U.S.

"Brown's public relations strategy on this is brilliantly constructed," said Shepherd. "It's a low-cost approach in terms of political damage to the relationship with the U.S, but it yields high returns in terms of his image in Britain."

The new British prime minister met with Bush last week at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

Brown's hand may have been forced by a decision from Britain's High Court last month ordering a judicial review of the government's failure to decide whether one of the five prisoners, Jamil el-Banna, would be allowed to return to London where his wife and five children, all British nationals, currently live.

The court set a Thursday deadline for the Home Office to make up its mind.

In Tuesday's statement, the Foreign Office said: "The Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary have reviewed the Government's approach to this group of individuals in light of these ongoing developments, our long-held policy aim of securing the closure of Guantanamo Bay, and the need to maintain national security. They have decided to request the release and return of the five detainees who have links to the UK as former residents..."

The four other detainees are Shakar Aamer of Saudi Arabia, Omar Deghayers of Libya, Binyam Mohamed of Ethiopia and Abdennour Sameur of Algeria.

The decision was hailed by human rights activists.

"This change of policy is extremely welcome, especially if it signals a bigger change of approach on both sides of the Atlantic," James Welch, legal director of the civil rights group Liberty, said in a statement.

In Parliament, Menzies Campbell, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, said: "This is a belated recognition of our moral responsibility toward these men. Up to now the government's attitude has been supine in the face of systematic violation of all known legal principles. It has been left to opposition MPs to make the case for their return to the UK."


Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

[accuracy]

Jane Mayer reveals how government torture programs come to be.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Monday, Aug. 6, 2007,
http://www.slate.com/id/2171773/fr/rss/

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v508/newlife71128/torture107.jpg


There are two ways to think about the Bush administration's willingness to torture prisoners in the wake of 9/11. One is the story we were sold after we learned about Abu Ghraib: A few "bad apples" at the lowest levels of the military went a little crazy and tortured some prisoners on their own initiative, for which (some) were duly punished. The second is confirmed in a new and devastating piece of investigating by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer: A systematic and rigorous program of highly abusive interrogation was approved at the highest levels of government at so-called "black sites" around the world. This second version of the national torture story reveals not so much the bad apples as a profoundly diseased tree.

http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123087/2156534/2171507/070806_Juris_gonzoTN.jpg
Alberto Gonzales

Mayer's piece is important enough to warrant reading in its entirety. President Bush's recent executive order purported to lay out the boundaries of legal detention and interrogation but in fact left enormous gaps as to what is defined as permissible, making questions about who can do what to extract information from whom less than academic. What is devastating about Mayer's report is the sense that everyone along the way was willing to sign off on this program of state-sanctioned abuse, without evidence of its efficacy, either because the White House was bearing down and demanding more information, or because nobody could come up with a better torture system on short notice.

Mayer describes a Red Cross report on the black sites that has been kept quiet (the Red Cross is afraid of forfeiting access to other prisoners). The report evidently characterized the "agency's detention and interrogation methods as tantamount to torture" and found that "American officials responsible for the abusive treatment could have committed serious crimes." The most striking aspect of Mayer's report is the extent to which the interrogators who invented the torture program at these black sites did so almost wholly on the fly: While the abuse itself may have been rigorous and systematic, apparently no rigorous or systematic thought was given to the larger program, which seems to have been cobbled together from the greatest hits albums of torture regimes past and present. According to Mayer, since the CIA had almost no trained interrogators, they simply mined Vietnam-era torture programs; practices borrowed from Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia; and the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program that had been created during the Korean War. That the SERE was designed to teach American captives to resist torture, not as a system of interrogation in itself, was apparently immaterial.

Another contrast between the abuse at the black sites and at Abu Ghraib? The cold, precise way in which this rigid system was administered. In one striking passage, Mayer quotes an outside expert familiar with the interrogation protocol saying that "at every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you've heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process." A system ostensibly designed to elicit information seems to have become a program designed merely to break detainees. Mayer details cavity searches, caging, nakedness, prolonged sensory deprivation, suspension from one's arms, waterboarding, and sleep deprivation as part of the larger program. One of the most haunting images is of desperate prisoners driven to attempt suicide and repeatedly being stitched up by doctors in order to be abused some more.

The governing CIA objective here, "learned helplessness," required that prisoners be humiliated and disoriented and broken. As Mayer points out, this was goal of the KGB model. But the purpose of the KGB was to obtain false confessions, she adds, not good intelligence. Where was the evidence that systematically breaking down and degrading prisoners leads to accurate information?

The most damning part of this damning article comes at its conclusion, when Mayer explains that, following years of brutal interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, it remains entirely unclear which parts of his voluminous confessions are true and which were fabricated—either to end his abuse or to inflate his ego. According to Mayer, "cables carrying Mohammed's interrogation transcripts back to Washington reportedly were prefaced with the warning that "the detainee has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead." In Mayer's hands, the story of our torture program becomes the story of interrogators driven to do anything to elicit information—be it truthful or not—and the doctors, lawyers, and scientists who signed off without question on the banal day-to-day abuses that were put into practice to achieve that end.

In the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, President Bush expressed horror at what he characterized as the "abhorrent" practices there; promising the world that, "those mistakes will be investigated and people will be brought to justice." The question Bush, Cheney, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, and others must now be pressed to answer is how the "abhorrent" practices at Abu Ghraib differed from those that allegedly happened at the black sites and whether the only difference between abusive and permissible interrogation is the existence of a formal government program.

2007 Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co.

[accuracy]

Hurdles Frustrate Effort to Shrink Guantánamo

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
August 9, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/washington/09gitmo.html?ex=1344312000&en=5cb31e38e4ca4edc&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The decision this week by the British government to request the return of five Guantánamo detainees with British ties was welcome news for Bush administration officials eager to cut the detention center’s population.

But officials quickly suggested that several of the men might be too dangerous to be set free, indicating that sensitive negotiations over how Britain will treat them are probably needed before they can leave Cuba.

The episode illustrates why the administration has had such a difficult time reducing the detention center’s population. The effort has been hampered by a laundry list of diplomatic, legal and political challenges, including the unwillingness of some countries to accept detainees and concerns about human rights abuses in others, officials and critics of the administration say.

Even as the administration is working to keep men it considers dangerous behind bars, it finds itself fighting legal battles to free other detainees. This week, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is considering a request from a detainee, Ahmed Belbacha, to stop his planned transfer to his native Algeria.

Lawyers for Mr. Belbacha have said he is at risk of torture or death by Islamist radicals because he once served in the Algerian army, and by the government, which is likely to view him as a terrorist because of his tenure at Guantánamo.

In a filing on Wednesday, the Justice Department opposed any order barring a transfer of Mr. Belbacha, saying that “as the United States has explained, it is in no one’s interest to detain enemy combatants longer than is necessary.”

That case could open courthouse doors to dozens of similar claims by detainees who do not want to be sent home.

In recent weeks, Pentagon officials have publicly described a vision of a pared-down Guantánamo. Their goal is to release as many as 150 of the 360 men currently there, which would leave about 210 who they say could be eligible for war crimes trials or should be held indefinitely.

But the shrinking of Guantánamo has been painstaking, even though President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have said they would like to close the camp, which has drawn increasing criticism around the world.

“Many countries just are not moving very quickly” to accept detainees, Sandra Hodgkinson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs said in an interview on Wednesday. “In some instances, they don’t want them back. In some instances, they are not willing to cooperate with us to find a solution to Guantánamo.”

But critics say the United States has complicated the situation by making stringent demands about how the released detainees be handled. In the case of the British detainees, American officials wanted some of them to be jailed for a period of time and closely monitored upon release, including having their communications intercepted, according to documents in a lawsuit in England.

In some instances, detainees have been quickly freed by their home countries and have become public figures, adding to the chorus of criticism about Guantánamo. In addition, the Pentagon has recently asserted that some 30 former such detainees have “returned to the fight,” including one who blew himself up last month as Pakistani forces closed in on him.

Practical considerations have also made progress slow. The transfer of scores of Afghans has been delayed while a new prison has been readied for them in Afghanistan.

“You can’t just ‘close Guantánamo,’ ” said Bobby Chesney, a national security law expert at Wake Forest University School of Law who has written about the legal issues involved in transfers.

“It is a time-consuming and elaborate process, and I don’t see any reason why it is going to get quicker,” Mr. Chesney said.

If and when the Pentagon reaches its stated goal of transferring as many as 150 detainees, the remaining Guantánamo population would fall into two categories, military officials said. They estimate that they might have sufficient evidence on as many as 80 to try them for war crimes.

As for the final 130, some officials have said that while there might not be the kind of evidence against them to support a prosecution, they may be deemed too dangerous to release.

Britain’s request for the return of five detainees who were not British citizens but had been residents could encourage other countries to take a more active role in accepting noncitizen detainees. “We don’t want to be the world’s jailers,” the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said Tuesday. “At the same time, we also don’t want to see very dangerous people allowed to walk the streets freely so that they can pose a threat to our citizens as well as others.”

But G. Brent Mickum IV, the American lawyer for one of the detainees with British ties, said the administration was continuing to portray many of the detainees as extremely dangerous, while insisting that other countries have a duty to accept them.

He said that the exchange between Britain and the United States over the five detainees this week “demonstrates that the Bush administration really would like to winnow down the numbers if it could, but it has backed itself into a terrible corner.”

The transfer of detainees to countries with poor human-rights records is one of the most contentious issues. The administration has said in court papers that it obtains diplomatic assurances that any country that receives former detainees would “treat the detainee humanely and in a manner consistent with its international obligations.”

But human rights groups have countered that there is no check on such promises and have worked to draw public attention to planned transfers to countries including Libya and Tunisia.

“We don’t believe those assurances provide sufficient protection against the likelihood of torture,” said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch.

In the recent case of a Tunisian detainee, Abdullah Bin Omar al Hajji, his lawyers sent a series of e-mail messages to government officials in May and June trying to stop a planned return to Tunisia, a court filing shows.

The lawyers told the officials he had apparently been convicted in absentia in Tunisia for affiliation with a nonviolent political party at a time when human rights monitors had said such trials were not fairly conducted.

They warned that he would face torture and a 23-year prison term without having had the chance to defend himself. On June 15, one message shows, the lawyers demanded to see their client when they were to arrive at Guantánamo on June 17. But that day, he was shipped back to Tunisia. Not long after, according to an affidavit by his Tunisian lawyer, he was put in jail, where he was slapped and threatened with rape and told that his wife, too, would be raped.

The Tunisian government has denied that he was mistreated. An embassy official did not respond to a call seeking comment on Wednesday. The military spokesman in Guantánamo, Cmdr. Richard W. Haupt, said that the military’s records showed only that the lawyers arrived after their client had already been sent back to Tunisia.

In the case of the Libyan, Abu Abdul Rauf Zalita, federal courts declined to halt the transfer even though he said he feared he would be tortured and killed. But after a spate of publicity and some letters from members of Congress, the Defense Department suddenly appeared to drop its plan to send him to Libya. He is still at Guantánamo.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[accuracy]

German journalists face prosecution over rendition documents

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 09 August 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2846547.ece

Seventeen German journalists from leading national publications are being investigated for having quoted from classified documents in covering the "rendition" of terror suspects.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent organisation which is based in New York, has expressed its concern that the reporters were being targeted.

The investigation, launched after the head of a parliamentary investigating committee complained about leaks to the press, also concerns several members of parliament.

"We are deeply worried about the criminal proceedings launched against our German colleagues and call on state prosecutors to drop the probe immediately," said the CPJ head, Joel Simon. "With respect to the sensitivity of the information published, whoever leaked the classified documents should be investigated, not the journalists. It is their duty to publish matters of public interest. They should not be criminally charged for doing their job."

At the root of the complaint is alleged German government complicity in CIA-run prisoner flights to countries where detainees were alleged to have been tortured. The CIA flights had stopovers in Germany.

The parliamentary panel is also looking into the alleged involvement of the German foreign intelligence service BND with the CIA at the start of the Iraq war. The remit also includes investigating the kidnapping and rendition of Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin, and the detention at Guantanamo Bay of a German-born Turkish citizen Murat Kurnaz.

The journalists under investigation for breach of secrecy include reporters for Der Spiegel, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit and Die Welt. The editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel, Stefan Aust, who is under investigation with four of the weekly magazine's reporters, called the inquiry an attack on press freedom.

German prosecutors confirmed the criminal investigation after the ARD television network broke the story last Friday.

A Free Democrat deputy, Max Stadler, accused the parliamentary panel of "going over the top" by complaining about the journalists who had "a duty to inform the public".

The inquiry was launched after the head of the parliamentary investigating committee, Siegfried Kauder, told ARD: "You could read more from the classified documents in the press than what was available to the committee."

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

[accuracy]

Specific Defense Barred in Padilla Case

By CURT ANDERSON 08.09.07
Associated Press
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/09/ap4006756.html

MIAMI - Jurors who will soon debate the guilt or innocence of Jose Padilla and two other men on terrorism support charges cannot consider whether their actions were justified by Islamic law, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke agreed to a request from prosecutors to instruct the jurors that each of the men can be convicted even if they "may have believed that the conduct was religiously, politically or morally required, or that ultimate good would result."

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations after closing statements Monday and Tuesday. Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi are charged with being part of a North American support cell that provided finances, supplies and recruits to al-Qaida and other Islamic extremist groups.

A cornerstone of the defense during the nearly three-month trial was the idea that Islamic teaching provides for legitimate "defensive jihad," which differs from terrorism because it is meant to counter aggression against Muslims and does not threaten innocent people.

But Hassoun attorney Ken Swartz said his closing argument will not focus on whether violent actions might have been justified. Swartz said he plans to emphasize that any money or supplies provided to overseas groups was meant for humanitarian assistance.

"It's all about relief," Swartz said. "That is not giving aid for military purposes."

To find the three guilty of the most serious conspiracy charge - the one carrying a possible life sentence - jurors must conclude that each defendant "specifically intended" that people overseas would be murdered, kidnapped or maimed through their actions.

The prosecution case never linked any defendant directly to a specific violent act or victim, focusing instead on large groups subjected to attack such as the Russian Army and general conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, Lebanon, Somalia and elsewhere.

Padilla, Hassoun and Jayyousi are also charged with providing material support to terrorist groups and conspiracy to provide such support, each of which carries a maximum 15-year sentence. Padilla is charged with providing himself as one of Hassoun's recruits to al-Qaida by allegedly filling out a form in 2000 to attend a training camp in Afghanistan.

Not included in the Miami trial are the initial 2002 allegations that Padilla, a U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, had returned to the United States to build and detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb." Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant before he was added in late 2005 to the Miami terrorism support case.


Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

[accuracy]

Six released from Guantanamo

By CAROL ROSENBERG
McClatchy Newspapers

Aug. 09, 2007
http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation/story/225999.html


MIAMI | The United States has sent home from Guantanamo five captives from Afghanistan and the lone Bahraini citizen held at the remote prison camps in southeastern Cuba.

The Defense Department announced the “detainee transfer” on Thursday, saying it had reduced the prison camps’ population to “approximately 355.”

The latest transfer comes amid a campaign to find foreign countries to agree to receive some of the long-held captives — nearly all held for more than five years without charge or trial.

The Pentagon statement also came a day after the U.S.-allied Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain disclosed the latest transfer, crediting persistent efforts by the king and the crown prince to get the Bush administration to free Bahrain’s last national from Guantanamo.

Isa Murbati, a 41-year-old father of five who had been held more than five years without charge, arrived in Bahrain on Wednesday night on a flight through Germany, Bahraini media reported.

In all, six Bahraini men, including a member of the royal family, had been held in the prison camps at the U.S. Navy base since soon after they opened in January 2002.

The United States says it holds the Muslim men as enemy combatants at Guantanamo because they have had ties or sympathies with al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Murbati was sent home three weeks after the United States sent another Bahraini captive at Guantanamo, Jumah Dossari, to Saudi Arabia.

[accuracy]

US terror interrogation went too far, experts say

Reports find that Jose Padilla's solitary confinement led to mental problems.

By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
August 13, 2007

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0813/p01s03-usju.html?page=1

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0813/csmimg/APADILLAONE_P1.jpg
A juvenile delinquent and Muslim convert, Padilla became an Al Qaeda recruit, prosecutors charge.
Reuters/file

Miami - Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush ordered him detained in 2002 as a suspected Al Qaeda operative. But he does now.

The Muslim convert was subjected to prison conditions and interrogation techniques that took him past the breaking point, mental health experts say.

Two psychiatrists and a psychologist who conducted detailed personal examinations of Mr. Padilla on behalf of his defense lawyers say his extended detention and interrogation at the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., left him with severe mental disabilities. All three say he may never recover.

Padilla's psychological condition is important because his situation marks the first time an enemy combatant in the war on terror is in a position to present a verifiable claim of abuse at the hands of US interrogators. Padilla's mental health itself is a form of evidence, mental-health experts say, and it strongly suggests that – at least in Padilla's case – the government's harsh interrogation and confinement tactics went too far.

Padilla is currently on trial in Miami on terror conspiracy charges. Prosecutors say he was a willing Al Qaeda recruit who attended a training camp in Afghanistan. He denies the allegations. Closing arguments in the three-month trial are slated to begin Monday.

Beyond the outcome of his Miami trial, larger issues loom. Chief among them, legal scholars say, is whether Mr. Bush acted within his constitutional authority when he ordered Padilla, a United States citizen, held without charge as an enemy combatant at the brig for three years and seven months.

Padilla's treatment in the brig raises another issue, these scholars say: whether the Constitution ever permits the government to force a man to confess to involvement in terrorist plots and, in doing so, risk destruction of a portion of his mind.

Defense Department officials reject charges that Padilla was mistreated. "The government in the strongest terms denies Padilla's allegations of torture – allegations made without support and without citing a shred of record evidence," writes Navy Commander J.D. Gordon, a spokesman for the secretary of Defense, in an e-mail. "Any credible allegations of illegal conduct by US military personnel are taken seriously and looked into in painstaking detail."

He adds, "There has never been a substantiated case of detainee abuse at Charleston Navy brig."

The Padilla mental-health issue arises as the Bush administration faces increasing pressure to balance the requirements of the criminal justice system against the demands of its intelligence-collection system. Information about Padilla's detention and interrogation at the brig is classified. But his mental health status can't be kept secret.

Rare window into detention

His psychological reports are on file in his Miami court case. The three reports total 34 pages and offer a rare window into the psychological effects of Padilla's experience in the brig. The mental-health experts were retained by Padilla's lawyers for testimony during pretrial motions. The reports reflect their professional judgments offered to a reasonable degree of medical certainty.

In Padilla's case, these experts say, the pattern of signs and symptoms clearly suggest their origin is the brig . Unlike many allegations of harm from interrogation methods, Padilla's mental condition – and the probable cause of his mental disabilities – can be critically assessed and verified by an independent panel of mental-health professionals, provided Padilla cooperates, these and other psychology experts say.

The judge in Padilla's criminal case has already ruled that Padilla is suffering from a mental disability, but she refused to allow defense lawyers to explore the issue of whether the disability was caused by Padilla's treatment in the brig.

US intelligence officials had good reason to want to learn what Padilla knew. He was detained on suspicion that he was plotting with Al Qaeda to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" in the US. He was arrested eight months after the 9/11 attacks as he stepped off a plane in Chicago from the Middle East. Officials were worried about the possibility of a second wave of terror attacks and the presence of sleeper cells in the US.

Padilla's interrogation was designed to overcome his will to keep silent, and then to wring from him every detail of what officials thought he might know of Al Qaeda's plans and operations.

Bush and other administration officials have repeatedly said that America does not use torture. They stress that all terror suspects are treated humanely.

"There have been 12 major reviews conducted of detention operations over the past several years, none of which found there was any policy that ever condoned abuse," says Commander Gordon, the Pentagon spokesman. "The reviews have resulted in numerous recommendations which have been implemented and have improved our detention operations."

The mental-health experts say their focus is on Padilla, not on policies.

"He is not the same man who was taken into custody in 2002," says Angela Hegarty, a forensic psychiatrist in New York who spent 22 hours examining Padilla. "Whatever happened to him in there has radically changed him."

Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, says Padilla's experience in the brig has left members of his family stunned and frightened. "People who have known him and loved him before his military detention don't feel they can even bear to see him because he is so clearly mentally ill."

Tricky issue: US citizenship

The administration has faced criticism for using harsh interrogation tactics on foreign enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay and other locations overseas. But Padilla's situation is unique.

Padilla is a US citizen who was arrested and detained on US soil. Because of this status, his case was closely followed at the highest levels of the US government. The president himself signed the order authorizing Padilla's detention.

In 2002, the Justice Department produced a "torture" memo stating that victims would have to experience pain equivalent to organ failure to prove torture.

"The development of a mental disorder such as post-traumatic stress disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression, which can last a considerable period of time if untreated, might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement" to prove torture, the memo says.

Drs. Hegarty and Grassian say Padilla's psychological condition exceeds even the high standard for mental damage set by the 2002 torture memo. "This whole issue of torture turns on the question of what are the types of effects that one would expect from putting a person in this situation in the brig," says Grassian. "If you would expect a person to become so deranged as to become psychotically terrified, to me that constitutes torture."

The issue is not new. Lawyers representing Padilla in his criminal case in Miami filed motions last year charging that their client had been tortured while in military custody. They said the abuse rendered Padilla mentally incompetent to assist in his own defense at trial.

But in a February hearing, US District Judge Marcia Cooke sidestepped the torture accusations. She ruled that even though mental-health experts had identified mental disabilities, Padilla was competent enough to face prosecution.

"The mere fact that the defendant is suffering from a mental disease or defect does not render the defendant incompetent to stand trial," Judge Cooke declared.

Mental-health experts say that a legal determination of competence to stand trial doesn't undercut the severity of Padilla's existing mental disabilities.

Throughout his three-month trial in Miami, Padilla has sat quietly at the defense table. He looks more the part of a legal assistant in his charcoal gray suit with neatly cropped hair and eyeglasses than the radical jihadist he is alleged to have become. He turns and smiles to his mother when she attends the trial. But unlike his two codefendants he rarely interacts with his lawyers.

'I saw this individual happy ... joking'

A Bureau of Prisons psychologist who examined Padilla prior to the court competency hearing, found that Padilla was suffering from mental disabilities. But Dr. Rodolfo Buigas disagreed with the other mental-health experts on the severity of Padilla's conditions, painting a somewhat rosy picture of the onetime military detainee. "I saw this individual happy. I saw this individual joking in the context of the evaluation. I saw the full, broad range of emotions," Dr. Buigas testified.

The psychologist also testified that Padilla declined to answer most of his questions, including his date of birth, and refused to participate in any psychological testing during the six hours the two men spent together.

Others with more significant interaction with Padilla say his brig experience has left him in a state of mental disorganization.

Some psychological tests place him on par with individuals who have suffered brain damage, according to the reports prepared by Hegarty, Grassian, and Patricia Zapf, a New York psychologist and psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Padilla's treatment in the brig is classified as a state secret.

Ironically, no one knows this better than Padilla himself. When Hegarty, the psychiatrist, asked him about his interrogation in the brig, Padilla responded: "I can't talk about what happened to me because it is classified."

Although Padilla has been meeting with his Miami lawyers for more than a year and a half, he refuses to discuss his treatment in the brig in any detail.

The torture allegations made last year in the Miami court case were raised as a result of repeated sessions asking Padilla "yes or no" whether he'd endured the kinds of harsh interrogation tactics reported in the press. He reluctantly answered yes to some, and no to others. But his lawyers could pry no details or narrative from him.

They asked Hegarty for help.

He changed the subject and twitched

She spent days attempting to establish a rapport, days trying to get him to open up. "The first two hours were utterly useless each day. I got no data at all," Hegarty says. Eventually he would relax and talk about relatively minor subjects. When Hegarty tried to steer him toward the brig or the evidence in his criminal case "he would just stop, change the subject, and twitch," she said.

.... continued on next page.....

[accuracy]

...continued on from the previous page...

During her week-long effort, Hegarty would arrive each morning to discover Padilla once again unwilling to talk. She says the experience was like the movie "Groundhog Day," in which the same events repeat over and over. "The 22 hours I spent with him, it was like it never happened," Hegarty says. "It was chilling."

Grassian relates in his report that Padilla's mother found it emotionally difficult to visit her son in Miami because it involved observing his diminished mental condition. Padilla tried to reassure her that he was fine, that the government was treating him very well. At one point, Grassian says, Padilla suggested that his mother write directly to Bush to help her speed through red tape to arrange her next visit. The president was sure to help her out, Padilla assured his mother.

"It was utterly irrational," Grassian writes in his report. "After all, it was President Bush who had ordered him detained as an enemy combatant."

Padilla's mother became increasingly anxious. Finally she confronted her son: "Did they torture you?" she asked.

"He turned towards her, his face grimacing, his eyes blinking, and in panic and rage he demanded: 'Don't you ever, ever, ask that question again,' " the Grassian report says.

What makes Padilla's case especially challenging from a psychological perspective is that he denies having any symptoms of psychological distress. Experts say it is an attempt by Padilla to avoid being viewed in any way as mentally disturbed.

"He was told not to talk about what happened in the brig and that if he ever spoke about what happened, people would think he was crazy," Hegarty says. "This admonition has power over him," she says. "He becomes visibly terrified as he is saying it."

Critical focus on the brig

Hegarty, Grassian, and Zapf all agree that Padilla exhibits symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and that he has become psychotically disorganized. They say that Padilla's ordeal in the brig was so psychologically unsettling that it has left him terrorized. Any reminder of the ordeal through questions by his lawyers or others, triggers a recurrence of the disorganizing terror Padilla experienced in the brig, they say.

"As soon as you try to approach a subject related to the brig he starts grimacing and you can just see he becomes mentally disorganized. Anyone who watched this with a reasonably unbiased eye would find it so creepy," Grassian says. "You can see the terror come out of him."

Padilla has been on trial in Miami since May on charges that he became a willing Al Qaeda recruit. The government never presented any part of the alleged "dirty-bomb" plot in the case, and some analysts say the government's cobbled-together case against Padilla is weak.

It is unclear what Padilla thinks about the possibility of an acquittal in Miami. But Hegarty says that if Padilla's lawyers win the case it could mark the worst possible outcome for him. That's because the president might try to move Padilla back to his old cell in the brig.

"There is no question in my mind that his first and most important priority is to not go back to the brig," Hegarty says. "This is what leaves me chilled, if one were to offer him a long prison term or return to the brig, he would take prison, in a heartbeat."

She adds, "He told me more than once that if he went back to the brig he knew what he had to do." Her notes reflect Padilla's hints of suicide.

Worst outcome: a return to the brig

Although it is still unknown exactly what happened to Padilla during his three years and seven months in the Charleston brig, Hegarty says this much is certain – for Padilla returning to the brig would be a fate worse than death.

Legally, Padilla isn't at a dead end. Last year, three justices of the Supreme Court issued a highly unusual warning. If the government attempts to take Padilla back to the brig, they said, Padilla could, if necessary, appeal directly to the highest court in the land.

Some longtime court-watchers suggest Padilla already has the support of at least five of the nine justices, and maybe more.

When Padilla's case originally reached the high court in 2004, it was dismissed on technical grounds by a 5-to-4 vote. The vote allowed the continued harsh treatment of Padilla.

Justice John Paul Stevens, a US Navy intelligence officer during World War II, filed a dissent. He quoted a 1949 opinion by then Justice Felix Frankfurter.

It said: "There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men."

When did Padilla's mental problems begin?

If Jose Padilla's mental disabilities are evidence that US coercive interrogation tactics are too harsh, a key issue is when the disabilities began.

It's possible they began before he was detained by the US military.

In a pretrial hearing in Mr. Padilla's terror conspiracy case in Miami, a prosecutor said that perhaps they stemmed from his time in Pakistan or his alleged time in Afghanistan. Padilla was in the region during US operations in Afghanistan in 2001 and early 2002, a time of massive US bombing raids and other military action. But the prosecutor offered no evidence.

Conversely, several pieces of evidence suggest that the problems began at the Navy brig in South Carolina.

In May 2002, a month before he entered the brig, Padilla was taken into custody, held in New York City, and given access to a court-appointed lawyer, Donna Newman. Two years later, when the Bush administration first allowed Padilla to see his lawyers again, Ms. Newman and another attorney visited.

"There is no question he had changed," Newman says. "Prior to his being held in South Carolina there was no reason to suspect that he had any kind of [mental] problem."

She adds, "After his being held in the brig ... his focus seemed less direct, his eye contact was similarly diminished, and he was more taciturn."

"Mr. Padilla had no evidence of any mental illness prior to his arrest and incarceration in 2002," writes Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, in his report for Padilla's defense team. He examined medical documents and interviewed Padilla's family, including his mother, siblings, and ex-wife.

Patricia Zapf, a New York psychologist, also retained by the defense, quotes Padilla's mother in her report as saying that her son had "never suffered from any mental illness or received treatment for any psychological or psychiatric problems." His mother said she had visited him eight or nine times but that it was becoming too hard emotionally to "see Jose that way." She added that he did not have facial ticks prior to being incarcerated.

"Mr. Padilla shows extreme anxiety," Ms. Zapf said at a pretrial hearing. "He said he will go back there. He will die there. He is fearful of his time in the brig. Everything that he talks about is with respect to the time at the brig, no other time point."

Jose Padilla timeline

1970 Born in Brooklyn, N.Y.

1974 His father dies; the family later moves to Chicago.

1980s * Several run-ins with the law, including gang involvement and convictions for battery and armed robbery. A robbery turns deadly after a friend stabs a victim. He enters a juvenile detention center and remains until age 18.

1989 * Moves to Florida with mother.

1991 * Serves 10 months in Broward County jail for firing a shot after a road-rage altercation. He becomes interested in Islam.

Mid-1990s * Employed with his girlfriend, Cherie Maria Stultz, at a Taco Bell managed by the cofounder of an Islamic school. Eventually, they both convert. He changes his name to Ibrahim. They marry.

1998 * Travels alone to Egypt to study Islam and Arabic with funds collected at his mosque. Eventually, he and Stultz file for divorce. He marries an Egyptian.

2000 * Visits Saudi Arabia for the hajj, then Yemen and Pakistan. The US Justice Department claims he meets with Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and attends a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

2002 * Reportedly talks with Al Qaeda leaders about a "dirty bomb" plot. On his return to US to see family, FBI agents arrest him in Chicago. President declares him an "enemy combatant" and he begins 43 months of detention and interrogation in a naval brig.

2003-2006 * Courts wrestle over whether the president has authority to order the military detention of a US citizen arrested on US soil. The administration indicts him in criminal court. The US Supreme Court dismisses a case challenging the legality of his military detention.

2007 Is tried in criminal court on terror conspiracy charges in Miami.

– Compiled by Leigh Montgomery

Sources: George Mason School of Law; FBI; court filings; news reports

[accuracy]

Flash-back :February 16, 2007

Was Jose Padilla tortured by US military?

The accused terrorist's lawyers hope to use a competency hearing to show alleged mistreatment.

By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0216/p02s01-usju.html

MIAMI - When suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla was taken into military custody in 2002, his interrogators set out to crush any hope he might have that a neutral judge or a defense lawyer would come to his aid.

It is difficult to convince a US citizen that legal protections guaranteed in the Constitution no longer exist for him. But that was the mission of US military interrogators ordered to extract as much intelligence as possible from Mr. Padilla.

"Only after such time as Padilla has perceived that help is not on the way can the United States reasonably expect to obtain all possible intelligence information from Padilla," explained Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby in an affidavit to an inquiring federal judge.

The statement was made seven months into what became 21 months of strict isolation in a military brig without access to a lawyer or any other human contact besides Padilla's jailers and interrogators.

Now, Padilla is facing an April trial in federal court here on charges that he became a willing Al Qaeda recruit in a violent global jihad. But his lawyers complain that Padilla's harsh treatment during nearly four years of military detention and interrogation has left him so psychologically damaged that he is unable to help wage his own defense.

US District Judge Marcia Cooke is being asked to decide whether Padilla is mentally competent to stand trial.

In a hearing before Judge Cooke Friday, federal prosecutors are expected to urge the judge to ignore everything that took place during Padilla's military detention. They say his harsh treatment is irrelevant to whether he is mentally competent to stand trial.

Padilla's lawyers disagree. They say their client was tortured by the military and they are asking the judge to order the government to fully account for its treatment of Padilla.

"Mr. Padilla is suffering from mental defects stemming from his incarceration in the naval brig," writes Anthony Natale, an assistant federal public defender, in a brief to the court. "The effects of that incarceration ... have left Mr. Padilla in such a psychologically frail posture that he cannot bear to revisit his past and, hence, cannot assist counsel in defending him against the government's allegations."

Mr. Natale adds, "It is the government that is squarely to blame for his current mental state and his concomitant inability to assist counsel."

Federal prosecutors deny that Padilla was subject to torture or any other mistreatment while in military custody, and they point to a recent report by a Bureau of Prisons psychiatrist that finds Padilla is competent to stand trial.

The key issue, according to the government, is Padilla's present mental functioning. Since he is mentally competent today, there is no need to investigate his past treatment by the military, prosecutors say.

The issue of the scope of the judge's inquiry into Padilla's mental condition is important because it could open the door to the first detailed examination of torture allegations made by an alleged enemy combatant.

Was he tortured? Was he subjected to stress positions and forced hypothermia? Was he administered mind-altering drugs?

Defense lawyers alleged each of these abuses and more in a motion pending before Cooke to dismiss the entire case against Padilla because the government engaged in outrageous conduct during his military detention.

"What you have here is a battle of conflicting theories about the entire case," says Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Miami Law School.

Federal prosecutors are trying to restrict the scope of any competency hearing. The difficulty from the government's perspective, analysts say, is that even if Cooke eventually rules Padilla is competent to stand trial, there is no guarantee that she might not also dismiss the case because of facts uncovered during a wide-ranging inquiry into Padilla's earlier treatment by the military.

"There is every reason to believe that the defense will improperly seek to use a competency hearing as a vehicle to engage the court in detailed fact-finding about the alleged conditions of Padilla's detention," writes Assistant US Attorney John Shipley in a brief to Cooke. "There is no reason for the court to head down that path."

But the government itself headed down that path when its psychiatrist contacted individuals and reviewed reports dating to Padilla's military detention.

Padilla's lawyers want the same access in part so they can cross-examine the government's psychiatrist in a competency hearing set for next week.

Defense lawyers say the government's competency report suggests its psychiatrists were misled about the conditions of Padilla's confinement in the naval brig. And they want Cooke to find out what happened during a mysterious 72-hour gap in recordings of Padilla interrogations.

The lawyers say Padilla was subject to 24-hour video surveillance during his entire military detention –except for 72 hours of missing tape. "What could have been done to Mr. Padilla in those seventy-two, or so, hours that the government turned off the camera when for almost four years every one of Mr. Padilla's bowel movements were videotaped?" asks Natale in his brief.

Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor.

[accuracy]

Guantanamo Five branded dangerous

Press Association
Sunday August 12, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6844075,00.html


Britain has signalled its intent to press ahead with a bid to have five terror suspects returned from Guantanamo Bay despite reports that a US official had dubbed them "extremely dangerous".

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has requested the former UK residents be sent back from the US detention centre in Guantanamo, Cuba, in a reversal of previous UK policy.

The US is considering the request but the Sunday Times said the Pentagon's head of detainee affairs had warned some of the men had close associations with senior al-Qaeda figures.

Sandra Hodgkinson, deputy assistant secretary of defence for detainee affairs, reportedly said: "Among these men are some extremely dangerous individuals... if they are sent back to the United Kingdom they could pose a risk.

"Because of some of the extensive ties these individuals have with well known al-Qaeda leaders, we have concerns that they will try to reconnect with some of their old counterparts and return to the fight in the sense that they will try to carry out attacks, whether it's in England or elsewhere."

Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who represents the men, dismissed the allegations as "a blatant attempt to smear my clients".

The men are Shaker Aamer, a London resident originally from Saudi Arabia; Jamil El Banna, whose family lives in Dollis Hill, north-west London and who was a refugee from Jordan; Omar Deghayes, who lived in Brighton and was a refugee from Libya; Binyam Mohamed, who lived in Kensington, west London, and had applied for asylum from Ethiopia; and Abdennour Sameur, a refugee from Algeria who lived in Bournemouth.

They are not British nationals but were legally resident in the UK before they were detained.

A Foreign Office source indicated that the Government was prepared for "long and complex negotiations" with the US, adding: "Clearly the US would not release them and the UK would not be requesting their return if they presented a risk to international or national security."

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said national security was Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's "foremost concern" but that the request still stood.

Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2007, All Rights Reserved.

[accuracy]

Released man claims U.S. troops beat him

By The Denver Post
08/11/2007
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_6602892

TUNIS, Tunisia

Released man claims U.S. troops beat him

A Tunisian man released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, says he was beaten by U.S. soldiers while in custody in Afghanistan, his attorney said Saturday.

The man also says U.S. medics amputated his frostbitten fingers unnecessarily and against his will, according to the attorney, Samir Ben Amor.

Lotfi Lagha, who was returned to Tunisia in late June, spoke with his attorney for the first time Thursday. He was held five years at the U.S. detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay and is currently detained in Tunisia on charges of associating with a criminal group.

[accuracy]

Padilla called "star recruit" for U.S. terrorist cell

Mon Aug 13, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSNASU8130120070813?pageNumber=1

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was the "star recruit" for a Florida terrorism support cell that sent the former dirty bomb suspect to an al Qaeda camp to learn how to kill, a prosecutor told jurors in closing arguments on Monday.

The high-profile terrorism case against Padilla and two co-defendants is expected to go to the jury on Tuesday.

All three face life in prison if convicted on charges that they provided material support for Islamist terrorist groups and conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other countries from 1993 to 2001.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier told jurors that the three were associated with al Qaeda, "which is really just a murder conspiracy with a name."

He said defendants Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi recruited and financed the training of Islamist fighters who plotted to kill anyone who opposed their plan to establish strict Taliban-style governments everywhere Muslims lived.

Hassoun recruited Padilla at a south Florida mosque both attended and arranged for him to go to an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, Frazier said.

"Training with al Qaeda was a crime because al Qaeda trained people to kill," he said.

Wiretapped phone conversations between Padilla and Hassoun demonstrate that Padilla was patient and secretive, Frazier said.

"This is why he was a star recruit," he said.

Padilla's lawyers, who did not call any witnesses during the three-month trial, argue that he went to Egypt to learn Arabic and study Islam, and that members of the Florida mosque donated money to finance his studies.

Lawyers for Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Jayyousi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Jordan, said they worked with charities that provided legitimate aid to Muslims who were being slaughtered in Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere.

AL QAEDA "APPLICATION FORM"

The main evidence against Padilla is what the government calls an al Qaeda application form bearing his fingerprints, birthdate and similar background. It was recovered in Afghanistan and says the author speaks English, Spanish and Arabic, graduated from high school and trained as a carpenter, as Padilla did.

It used a name prosecutors contend was Padilla's alias, and lists as his sponsor a man whose name was in Padilla's address book when he was arrested.

Padilla's defense is expected to argue his fingerprints could have got on the form when investigators handed it to him to examine after his arrest.

The government has presented only indirect evidence Padilla ever went to Afghanistan. In other secretly recorded phone calls, another alleged recruit tells Hassoun that Padilla has gone to Afghanistan via Yemen and has entered "the land of Osama."

Padilla, 36, was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in May 2002 upon returning from Egypt and was accused by the Bush administration of plotting to set off a radioactive bomb.

President George W. Bush declared him an "enemy combatant" and ordered him imprisoned by the military. Padilla was held without charge for 3-1/2 years before being indicted in a civilian court in November 2005 on charges that do not mention any bomb plot.

The bomb allegations came from alleged al Qaeda operatives who have said they were tortured during interrogation before being sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Anything Padilla might have told interrogators in the military brig about such a plot would be inadmissible because he was denied access to an attorney for most of the time he was there.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke told jurors that in order to convict, they must find the defendants knew their donations would be used for illegal purposes. But the defendants, who are all Muslims, cannot use their faith as a justification for any acts they knew to be illegal, she said.

© Reuters 2007

[accuracy]

Gitmo: Should Doctors Force-Feed Prisoners?

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Sections/Newsweek/Components/Photos/Mag/070820_Issue/070811_PS11_wide.hlarge.jpg
Hunger Strikers Pose a Dilemma for Captors: The mother of an inmate holds a photo of her son

Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226456/site/newsweek/

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - Hunger strikers confront their captors with a dilemma. When women suffragists went on hunger strikes in the early 20th century, authorities pried open their mouths and forced down chunks of food (several women choked to death). During Northern Ireland's Troubles, British authorities allowed IRA and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners to starve themselves to death; 10 did.

Is it ethical for a doctor to force-feed a prisoner on a hunger strike? An opinion piece in the Aug. 1 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests doctors should refuse to force-feed detainees at Guantánamo Bay as long as the prisoners are capable of making rational choices. This month Dr. S. Ward Casscells, the new assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, went to Guantánamo to "look at it with my own eyes," he told NEWSWEEK. Of the 355 detainees still in Gitmo, about 20 are on hunger strike at any one time, he says. Prisoners who skip nine straight meals go under "observation"; the forced feeding usually begins when they dip 15 percent beneath their ideal weight. (Overeating is actually a problem at Gitmo; Casscells says many prisoners take drugs for diabetes and high cholesterol.)

A prominent Houston cardiologist before he came to the Pentagon (he also served a four-month tour as a doctor in Iraq), Casscells watched as a half-dozen Gitmo prisoners went through the 45-minute procedure. They were strapped into "restraint chairs" and a L/jo-inch soft rubber tube was fed through their noses. (Prisoners may request a local anesthetic to ease the discomfort.) The patients ingest a tasteless high-protein mix, and guards watch them for an hour to make sure they do not self-induce vomiting. "Nobody kicked or screamed," Casscells says. The prisoners "complained," he says—not about the feeding but about not getting their day in court. He says some hunger strikers have told guards they would be happy to stop, but fear being "reported back to the detainee chain of command." There are seven doctors at Gitmo, and according to Casscells, none has objected to the forced feedings. "The doctors think they have a duty to keep the patients alive," says Casscells. The forced feeding, like the hunger strikes, will go on.

—Evan Thomas

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

[accuracy]

Bell ready for Guantanamo cases

The former U.S. attorney takes the oath a second time.

8/14/2007
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/081407/geo_191177120.shtml

By Terry Dickson, The Times-Union


BRUNSWICK - Former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell took the oath of office Monday to serve as the chief judge on an appeals court that will hear cases from Guantanamo Bay detainees.


It was the second time Bell had taken the oath and the second time Senior U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo administered it, which Bell pointed out after the brief ceremony in federal court in Brunswick.

"I guess it didn't take," Alaimo joked about the need for Bell to take the oath a second time.

"They need me to get on with my duties as chief judge," Bell explained. His most pressing duty is to appoint a three-judge panel to hear an appeal, Bell said.

After the appeals panel was first appointed by the Bush administration in 2004, the court was challenged. The Supreme Court ruled Congress should also have a say in the court, so the court had to start over the second time "with Congress' blessings," Bell said.

All the judges were reappointed, he said.

With the court itself tied up in court, it has yet to hear its first case, but that will change soon, Bell said.

Most judicial appointments break on party lines, but Bell has been appointed by Republicans and Democrats during his long career.

John F. Kennedy appointed him to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961, and he stayed on the court 15 years. Bell served as U.S. attorney general for three years during the Carter administration and then accepted Bush's call to service.

"I'm sort of ecumenical," Bell said.

Bell spends time at homes on Sea Island and in Americus, where he was born in 1918.

"This is my main place," he said of Sea Island.

© Copyright The Florida Times-Union.

[accuracy]

As last Iraqi POW released, Noriega only U.S. POW

Thu Aug 16, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1633856020070816

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - The U.S. military will soon release the last Iraqi held as an enemy prisoner of war, leaving former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega as the country's only formally recognized POW.

Iraq's former Air Force commander, Hamid Raja Shalah Al-Tikriti, was captured in June 2003 and is the last enemy POW held by coalition forces, a U.S. military spokeswoman said.

He was the 10 of spades on the Pentagon's deck of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. The military declined to give details of his release but said recently it would take place within two weeks.

"The threat that he would join active insurgency, terrorist groups or otherwise be a threat to security has been assessed as low," Air Force 1st Lt. Angela Webb, a U.S. military spokeswoman for detainee operations in Iraq, told Reuters by e-mail.

The United States has been criticized for its stance that foreign captives it holds at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base in Cuba and elsewhere are not prisoners of war.

Shalah commanded Iraq's air force from 2001 to 2003, during the rule of Saddam Hussein. That air force was once one of the Arab world's most formidable but it failed to launch a single operation during the U.S.-led war to topple Hussein in 2003 and its planes were later found hidden under camouflage netting.

Shalah's release will leave Noriega as the only captive the United States recognizes as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions. He is due to be released in September from a federal prison in Miami where he is serving a drug trafficking sentence.

Noriega was a general who led Panama's military, which made him de facto leader of the country. A U.S. judge presiding over his drug-smuggling trial in Miami granted him POW status because he surrendered to U.S. troops that invaded Panama in 1989.

"He's the only POW in the United States," said Simon Schorno, a spokesman in Washington for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors enforcement of the Geneva Conventions.

ONCE HELD THOUSANDS

U.S. and coalition forces once held thousands of enemy POWs in Iraq, many of them members of the Iraqi military or government. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the number at more than 7,000 three weeks after the war began.

About 20 are still being held for criminal prosecution in the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that convicted Hussein and condemned him to hang, said Sandra Hodgkinson, the Pentagon's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs.

They are no longer classified as POWs because they are in the legal custody of the new Iraqi government, she said.

But thousands more captives are still being held in U.S. and coalition custody in Iraq under authority of United Nations Security Council resolutions allowing detention of those who pose a security threat, she said.

"The current estimate is somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000," Hodgkinson said recently.

They can continue to be held until the Security Council revokes that authority, she said.

Like the 355 captives at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, they are not considered prisoners of war because they are not members of a regular, uniformed national military with a clear command structure and because they are accused of targeting civilians.

The ICRC said it has been allowed access to U.S.-held detainees in Iraq, as it has at Guantanamo. It also checks in on Noriega.

"We visited him twice in 2006 in Miami, according to our traditional methods of visits. This year we visited him once," Schorno said.

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.

[accuracy]

Jury reaches verdict in Padilla terror case

August 16, 2007
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/law/08/16/padilla.trial.ap/

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Jurors reached a verdict Thursday in the trial of Jose Padilla and two co-defendants charged with supporting al Qaeda and other violent Islamic extremist groups overseas.

The jury's verdict is scheduled to be read at 2 p.m. EDT before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami's downtown federal courthouse.

http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/US/law/08/16/padilla.trial.ap/art.padilla.jpg
Former "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla squints in the Miami sun after his transfer from a Navy brig.

The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about a day and a half following a three-month trial.

Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face possible sentences of life in prison if convicted of all three charges in the case.

Prosecutors argued that Padilla was a "star recruit" for a terrorism support cell that provided Muslim extremist soldiers to fight around the globe with al Qaeda.

His defense attorneys, who put on no evidence, told the jury that the charges were overblown and U.S. government prosecutors were preying on post-9/11 fears. The defense said prosecutors repeatedly invoked Osama bin Laden's name to scare jurors.

The verdict followed a three-month trial in which prosecutors have tried to prove that Padilla, 36, and two others provided support to terrorists.

Padilla was held for three-and-a-half years as an enemy combatant after his 2002 arrest in a purported al Qaeda "dirty bomb" plot. His trial with co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi on conspiracy and material support charges does not include those allegations.

Padilla was the centerpiece of the case, largely because prosecutors say he links the other two to al Qaeda and bin Laden.

Prosecutors wanted jurors to convict Padilla largely on a five-page "mujahedeen data form" he supposedly filled out in 2000 to attend an al Qaeda terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Padilla is a U.S. citizen.

"You are already inside the al Qaeda organization when you get this form to fill out," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier told jurors in his closing argument. "He provided himself to al Qaeda for training to learn how to murder, kidnap and maim."

Padilla has been in custody since his May 8, 2002, arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. His journey through the legal system was unprecedented.

His lawyers fought for years against President Bush's decision to designate him an enemy combatant, taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. With that case drawing closer, the Bush administration decided in late 2005 to add Padilla to an existing Miami terror support indictment and drop the enemy combatant designation.

The CIA recovered the al Qaeda "mujahedeen data form" that is central in the case in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in late 2001. It contains seven of Padilla's fingerprints, one of his alleged Muslim alias names, his true birthday, notes the applicant's ability to speak English, Spanish and Arabic and has other identifying details.

But there was little other hard evidence linking Padilla, a Muslim convert, to al Qaeda or to the alleged North American terror support cell prosecutors say was operated by Hassoun, Jayyousi and others. Thousands of hours of FBI wiretap intercepts from 1993 to 2001 include many conversations between Hassoun and Jayyousi, but Padilla's voice is heard on only seven.

Padilla's defense called no witnesses on his behalf and introduced no evidence. His lawyers adopted the risky strategy of suggesting to the jurors that prosecutors failed to prove he conspired with the others or provided material support to terrorists.

Prosecutors contend that Hassoun and Jayyousi, both 45, were U.S.-based operatives for al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups, providing recruits such as Padilla as well as money and supplies for violent organizations around the world. Another alleged recruit, Mohamed Hesham Youssef, was also indicted in Miami but has remained in custody in Egypt.

Evidence in the case includes checks written by Hassoun and Jayyousi to various organizations that prosecutors say were involved in terrorism. Defense lawyers contend the assistance was intended to help persecuted Muslims in conflict zones such as Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Lebanon and elsewhere.

FBI agents testified that the telephone conversations were often in code, with "football" or "tourism" meaning "jihad" and words such as "zucchini" and "eggplant" meaning weapons or ammunition. Yet Padilla was never heard using such code, testimony showed.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

[accuracy]

Jury Convicts Jose Padilla of Terror Charges

Two Co-Defendants Also Found Guilty

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 17, 2007; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/16/AR2007081601009_pf.html

MIAMI, Aug. 16 -- A federal jury convicted former "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla on Thursday of terrorism conspiracy charges, handing a courthouse victory to the Bush administration, which had originally sought to imprison him without a criminal trial.

Padilla was arrested in 2002 for allegedly plotting a radiological "dirty bomb" attack, but prosecutors chose not to pursue those allegations in court here. But after a three-month trial, they had convinced the jury that Padilla, 36, participated in a South Florida-based al-Qaeda support cell that in the '90s began to send money and people to wage holy war in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo and Somalia.

Padilla and co-defendants Adham Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Kifah Jayyousi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Jordan, were found guilty of one count of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim overseas, an offense with a maximum penalty of life in prison. They also were convicted of one count of conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists and one count of material support for terrorists. Sentencing is set for Dec. 5.

"The conviction of Jose Padilla -- an American who provided material support to terrorists and trained for violent jihad -- is a significant victory in our efforts to fight the threat posed by terrorists and their supporters," Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said.

The conviction essentially accomplishes through the criminal-court system what the administration had tried to do five years ago by executive fiat. For 3½ years after he was arrested upon reentering the country, Padilla was held without charges at a Navy brig in South Carolina, where he was housed in solitary confinement. The tactic drew fierce criticism from civil liberties advocates.

Padilla's lawyers charged that during his confinement, he was deprived of sleep, kept in a 9-foot-by-7-foot cell, chained in painful positions and injected with mind-altering drugs. Those conditions left him unable to participate in his own defense, the lawyers said. Padilla, like his co-defendants, did not take the stand.

Prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials called the conviction a reflection of their agencies' hard work. However, legal critics said the verdicts show that terrorism suspects can be tried in criminal courts and that there was no reason for the Bush administration to have declared Padilla an "enemy combatant" and to hold him for years without formal charges.

"This trial clearly undermines the Bush administration's unfounded fear that terrorists cannot -- in their view -- be tried in our criminal courts," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida. The verdict proves, he said, "that the Bush administration should close Guantanamo and pursue terrorists in the criminal justice system, not outside the confines of the rule of law."

Entering the courtroom before the verdicts were read, Padilla smiled at his mother in the audience and seemed to crack a joke with one of his lawyers. Padilla was stone-faced as a clerk announced the guilty findings. One of his relatives began to sob loudly.

"No evidence, and they found him guilty," his mother, Estela Lebron, said, seeming stunned.

At the same time, co-defendant Jayyousi tried to offer encouraging grins to his wife in the audience. She seemed stunned, too, staring back wordlessly, not returning his smile.

During the long trial, jurors were presented with dozens of wiretapped calls, and the charges against the three men were complicated. Many observers were thus surprised that the panel took little more than a day to reach a decision.

The jury did seem to be an oddly cohesive group. On the last day of trial before the Fourth of July holiday, jurors arranged to dress in outfits so that each row in the jury box was its own patriotic color -- red, white or blue.

Jurors chose not to speak with reporters after the trial.

But in finding him guilty on all three counts, they appear to have endorsed prosecutors' allegations that Padilla was recruited by a co-defendant and that, in July 2000, he attended a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

The key piece of physical evidence against Padilla was a "mujahideen data form" -- basically, a personnel form that a CIA witness testified had been recovered from an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. Although defense lawyers attacked its authenticity, it bore Padilla's fingerprints and some of his personal information.

The other evidence was the wiretapped calls, of which Padilla's voice is heard on seven. These, however, offered few specific clues of his intentions.

In one typically vague call in April 2000, his alleged recruiter talked to Padilla about having prepared him "psychologically" and then seemed to press Padilla, then in Egypt, to become more active.

"Yeah, I mean . . . but I need training," Padilla responded. "This is the problem -- I mean, I don't have a recommendation."

Three months later, according to the "mujahideen data form," Padilla was attending the training camp.

To find him guilty of the murder conspiracy charge, the jury had to believe that Padilla intended, when he left the United States in 1998, to commit murder overseas.

On this point, the evidence was relatively thin.

On none of the calls does he explicitly call for killing or any other type of violence. A prosecution witness said that he attended the same training camp as Padilla -- to help defend Muslims in places where they might be under attack, not to become a terrorist.

Moreover, prosecutors never identified exactly whom Padilla and his co-defendants wanted to kill.

But in closing arguments prosecutors mentioned al-Qaeda more than 100 times, by one defense count, and urged jurors to in essence think of al-Qaeda and groups affiliated with it as an international murder conspiracy.

They told jurors to look beyond each piece of evidence -- many of which seemed weak in isolation -- and view it in its totality.

None of the defendants testified at trial.

Padilla "trained to kill," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier told the jury in closing arguments this week. "That is why this is a murder conspiracy."

After the verdict Thursday, defense lawyers said they were disappointed. During closing arguments, they asked jurors to reject the government's "overreaching" in a time of terrorism fears.

After the verdict, they attributed the jury's findings to "scare tactics" by the prosecution -- specifically, the playing of a 1997 CNN interview with Osama bin Laden.

The prosecution introduced the video as a way of providing context to a wiretapped conversation in which Padilla's co-defendants appeared to discuss the al-Qaeda leader with approval.

"Yea, Osama bin Laden!" Hassoun, the alleged recruiter for the cell, told Jayyousi in the call.

"Allahu Akbar" ("God is the greatest"), Jayyousi responded, according to a translated transcript of the call. "Please tape it."

Since none of the defendants is alleged to have spoken with bin Laden, defense lawyers complained that the interview was used only to arouse in jurors passions and memories associated with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"We thought from the beginning that the Osama bin Laden tape was terribly damaging and terribly irrelevant," said Jeanne Baker, one of Hassoun's attorneys. "It will be one of the issues on appeal."

[accuracy]

Abu Ghraib's ex-director charged

August 20, 2007
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070820/NATION/108200053/1002

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — The former director of the Abu Ghraib prison's interrogation center, accused of approving the use of dogs and nudity to intimidate inmates, is the last person charged in the scandal to face a court-martial.



Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, due to stand trial today at Fort Meade, is the only officer of 12 defendants charged in an investigation triggered by photographs showing low-ranking U.S. soldiers assaulting and humiliating naked detainees at the prison in Iraq in late 2003 and early 2004.



Col. Jordan, who isn't in any of the pictures, has pleaded not guilty to six charges, which could bring a 16½-year prison sentence if he is convicted.



Prosecutors, led by Lt. Col. John P. Tracy, plan to call witnesses including Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, who investigated the abuses. Gen. Fay concluded in his report that Col. Jordan's tacit approval of violence during a weapons search on Nov. 24, 2003, "set the stage for the abuses that followed for days afterward."



The weapons search, known as the "roundup," followed an episode in which a Syrian detainee fired at Col. Jordan and other soldiers with a handgun he obtained from Iraqi police officers, according to investigative records.



Col. Jordan's defense, led by Capt. Samuel Spitzberg, argues that although he was the titular head of the interrogation center, he spent most of his time trying to improve U.S. soldiers' deplorable living conditions. At a hearing in October, the defense contended that interrogation conditions were set by two other officers: Col. Thomas Pappas, an intelligence brigade commander who was the highest-ranking officer at Abu Ghraib, and Capt. Carolyn Wood, leader of a unit within the interrogation center called the Interrogation Command Element.



Neither Col. Pappas nor Capt. Wood has been charged with crimes. Col. Pappas was reprimanded and fined $8,000 for once approving the use of dogs during an interrogation without higher approval.



Col. Jordan and lawyers for both sides declined to be interviewed by the Associated Press about the court-martial.

Three of the counts refer to the treatment of prisoners: cruelty and maltreatment; dereliction of duty for failing to stop the abuse; and failure to obtain permission to use dogs. But the harshest penalties — totaling 13 years — are for two counts saying he lied to Gen. Fay about his knowledge of abuses and one count accusing him of disobeying the general's order barring him from discussing the investigation with others.


Eleven enlisted soldiers have been convicted of crimes at Abu Ghraib. The longest prison term was given to former Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., of Uniontown, Pa., who was sentenced in January 2005 to 10 years for assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment, indecent acts and dereliction of duty.

All site contents copyright © 2007 The Washington Times, LLC.

[accuracy]

New Zealand Refuses Guantanamo Detainees

Aug. 20, 2007

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - New Zealand refused several times to take detainees the U.S. wanted to relocate from its Guantanamo Bay military prison, a senior official said Monday.

"In 2005 and early 2006, New Zealand declined several requests from the United States to resettle Guantanamo Bay detainees as refugees in New Zealand," the Labor Department's refugee services director Kevin Third said in a statement.

He was responding to questions after it was revealed that Washington had asked Canada to accept detainees of Uighur descent, because they were likely to be at risk if sent back to China.

Earlier this month, The Canadian Press reported that notes prepared for former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in February indicate the Bush administration asked Canada to accept Guantanamo Bay detainees of Uighur decent from China's Xinjiang region who were deemed to be no threat to national security.

Canada balked at the requests to provide asylum, according to the documents.

The U.S. was not prepared to resettle the men in its own territory, but could not send them back to China for fear they would face persecution.

The Pentagon has confirmed the U.S. government had talks with other countries over the possible transfer of detainees.

"The government has long stated that we have no desire to be the world's jailer. To that end, we continue to discuss with other governments the possibility of transferring detainees once humane treatment and continuing threat concerns have been satisfactorily addressed by the receiving country," Pentagon spokesman Greg Hicks told The Associated Press in an e-mail last week.

China takes a hard-line on dissidents from its oil-rich Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, also known as East Turkestan.

The 22 Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) men were transferred to U.S. custody by Pakistani bounty hunters after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Several of the Muslim men maintain they were simply trying to escape Chinese persecution and were en route to Iran and Turkey to seek refugee status when they were picked up.

The U.S. holds about 360 men at Guantanamo suspected of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban but that is about half the number held at its peak in 2003. It is struggling to empty it further.

Faced with rising international pressure to close the military prison in Cuba, the U.S. has identified dozens of detainees who can be released or transferred to other countries.

Third said New Zealand accepted a quota of 750 refugees each year that had been "prioritized" by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

"Prior to accepting any quota refugees, the Department of Labor considers New Zealand's capability to resettle particular groups and any support mechanisms available to assist this process," he said.

"The UNHCR has not prioritized Guantanamo Bay detainees as a group for resettlement in New Zealand under this program," Third added.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

[accuracy]

Families of Sudan Detainees in US Prison Protest

http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=21536

August 19, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Families of nine Sudanese detained in the U.S. Guantanamo prison camp protested at the U.S. embassy in Khartoum on Sunday demanding their release, following news that one may be freed soon.




Last week the brother of detained Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj said Washington had outlined a conditional release for Hajj provided he does not leave Sudan.




Hajj’s brother Asim al-Hajj told Reuters the conditions were unfair but welcomed his possible release. He said the group was marching outside the embassy in solidarity with all nine.




"We are here in solidarity to demand the release of our brothers, sons, and fathers from Guantanamo and for their return to their families," he said.




"This suffering needs to end ... it has continued for longer than 67 months, without any hearing for the detainees before a court, and without charge," he added.




The U.S. holds nine Sudanese at the internationally criticised prison camp, all detained in Pakistan and Afghanistan on suspicion of "terrorist" activity and later transferred to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, family members leading the protest said.




Family members of the nine said the possibility for Hajj’s release was good news but they wanted all to be freed.




"This news gladdens us, news of the release of any one of the detained brothers is good news," said Adil al-Tayyib, holding a banner picturing his brother-in-law Adil Hassan Hamad who was arrested by U.S. forces while working as an aid worker in Pakistan.




One of the protesters presented U.S. embassy official Joel Maybury with a petition of 5,000 Sudanese signatures for the release of the detainees.




Maybury said the embassy would convey the message to Washington.




He said review of Hajj’s case was a regular procedure.




"It gives an opportunity for people who know them or governments who are responsible for them ... to provide any information that might help in determining the person’s status," he added.




Maybury declined to comment on the likelihood of the release of any of the prisoners.




(Reuters)



SOURCE: SudanTribune.com

[accuracy]

Al-Jazeera Cameraman in Worse Condition at Gitmo, Lawyer Says

22/08/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=21556

The Associated Press



SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: The health of a hunger-striking TV cameraman at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay has deteriorated sharply in recent months, according to notes released Tuesday by his lawyer after they were censored by U.S. authorities.




Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for the Al-Jazeera TV network, has lost (18 kilograms) 40 pounds since he began his strike late last year and has developed intestinal problems and other conditions, according to the notes from attorney Clive Stafford Smith.




Al-Hajj, who has been held at Guantanamo since June 2002, seemed anxious and "even paranoid," and had difficulty concentrating or speaking his previously fluent English during a meeting with the attorney, the notes said.




"He's just losing it," Stafford Smith said in a telephone interview. "He's definitely deteriorating physically and mentally from the hunger strike."




The meeting was in early July but Stafford Smith said he received the notes only late last week.




Today on IHT.com

China raising interest rates in bid to cool inflationCIA criticizes former chief over terror readinessIran releases U.S. academic on bailAttorneys for Guantanamo Bay detainees must submit notes from meetings with prisoners to U.S. authorities for review to prevent the release of classified information, a process that typically takes several weeks. Stafford Smith said portions of his notes were barred from disclosure.




A Guantanamo Bay spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, denied that al-Hajj has lost 40 pounds (18 kilograms) and said the detainee is at 100 percent of his ideal body weight.




Haupt said no Guantanamo Bay hunger striker is in immediate medical danger "thanks to the heroic efforts of the medical staff who strive to preserve the life and health of detainees."




The spokesman said there were 22 detainees on hunger strike as of Tuesday, including 20 who are force-fed nutritional supplements through a nasal tube to prevent them from starving themselves.




Guantanamo detainees began a hunger strike in August 2005 to protest their indefinite confinement and the number of participants has fluctuated, at times dwindling to just two men. Military officials have described the hunger strike as a "voluntary fast" intended to draw international sympathy.




Through his attorney, al-Hajj said that medical staff have begun using larger tubes to feed the detainees and at times have inserted them incorrectly, reaching the lungs instead of the stomach, or have forgotten to use a lubricant. The military denied both allegations.




Al-Hajj also complained hunger strikers are stripped of all personal items except their clothes and have only a thin mat on which to sleep. Military officials say hunger striking is considered a violation of camp rules and they confiscate "comfort items" such as extra clothing, a thicker mattress and access to library books as a consequence.




The U.S. holds about 355 men at Guantanamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Officials said they plan to prosecute about 75 with military tribunals and hope to transfer more than 150 back to their home countries or other nations that will accept them.




A newspaper in al-Hajj's native Sudan reported that the U.S. planned to release him soon, but Stafford Smith said his family has since been told by their government that the report was not accurate. "I'm afraid they are just rumors," he said.




At their meeting, al-Hajj appeared haggard and complained that a guard had broken his toe by shoving him while escorting him to recreation — an allegation also denied by the military.




His lawyer said the detainee seemed nearly incoherent at times and "obsessed" with death. "I'm afraid it reflects his deteriorating mental health," the lawyer said.




Al-Hajj, 38, is believed to be the only journalist from a major international news organization held at Guantanamo. He was stopped at the Afghanistan border by Pakistani authorities in December 2001, turned over to U.S. forces and taken to Guantanamo six months later.




Authorities accused him of transporting money in the 1990s for a charity that allegedly provided money to military groups, but no charges have been filed against him.




SOURCE: International Herald Tribune

[accuracy]

US Psychologists Scrap Interrogation Ban

21/08/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=21547

By SUDHIN THANAWALA, Associated Press Writer




SAN FRANCISCO - The nation‘s largest group of psychologists scrapped a measure Sunday that would have prohibited members from assisting interrogators at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military detention centers.




Instead, the group approved a resolution that reaffirmed the association‘s opposition to torture and restricted members from taking part in interrogations that involved any of more than a dozen specific practices, including sleep deprivation and forced nakedness. Violators could be expelled and lose their state licenses to practice.




"If we remove psychologists from these facilities, people are going to die," said Army Col. Larry James, who serves as a psychologist at Guantanamo Bay.




"If psychologists have to be there so detainees don‘t get killed, those conditions are so horrendous that the only moral and ethical thing is to leave," said Laurie Wagner, a psychologist from Dallas.




SOURCE: Newsone.ca

[accuracy]

Human Rights Group Alleges Torture in Kurdish Prisons

By Brian Padden
Irbil
21 August 2007
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-08-21-voa38.cfm?rss=middle

At a security prison in Irbil, capital of the largely autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, many detainees say they have not been charged, have not seen a laywer or had a judge review their case. VOA's Brian Padden visited the prison and filed this report.

The Irbil security prison looks more like a school gymnasium than a jail. In the center of the facility, which was built in 2005, is an open air arena. Officials say inmates often play football (soccer) here during their daily exercise periods. But for most of the day, the 200 inmates are confined to their cells, with more than 20 prisoners in each cell.

In a holding facility, recently charged detainees await trial. Many say they have not seen a lawyer or had a judge review their case.

One such detainee is Ali Jasim, a Sunni Arab from a village near Tikrit, an area outside the Kurdish autonomous region. He says he was mistakenly captured along with 20 others during an American-led operation. He says he is innocent.

He says he has been here more than 70 days and still has not been charged or seen a judge, although he does not allege he has been tortured.

Prison officials say he was involved in terrorist activities. While Jasim may not have seen a judge, officials say a judge has reviewed his case and that he will be formally charged shortly.

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch detailed human rights abuses in Kurdish prisons, alleging that prisoners were being held in poor and overcrowded conditions, were denied basic rights, and were being mistreated and even tortured.

The group visited prisons in Irbil, Sulaymaniyah and other areas of the Kurdish region and interviewed 150 detainees. Human Rights Watch researcher Ayub Nuri says a number of prisoners said they were tortured.

"They hold detainees for long periods of time in solitary confinement," said Nuri. "Plus they hang some of the detainees. Most of them said they were hanged from ceiling fans, their hands tied very tightly behind their backs and they were beaten. They were kicked. They were abused."

According to the report, abuse included beatings with cables, wooden sticks and metal rods. Human Rights Watch said some detainees had been held for as long as five years without facing trial.

The Kurdish regional government says it takes the allegations seriously. Yousif Aziz, the Kurdish human rights minister, says the report by Human Rights Watch overstates the severity of conditions in Kurdish prisons. He agrees that torture is not an acceptable practice.


"We have to change this manner," said Aziz. "We have to ... to use the experience of other countries [to learn how] to deal [with], how to investigate ... the suspects of terrorism."

He says the Kurdish government recently released over 650 detainees and is working to bring more judges and lawyers into the system.

He says though that preventing terrorist attacks in the relatively peaceful Kurdish region will remain the government's top priority.

The autonomous region, in northern Iraq, has stayed mostly violence-free although suicide bombers have occasionally managed to detonate thier explosives in Kurdish towns.

[accuracy]

Military Interrogators are Posing as Lawyers at Gitmo


Making a Mockery of the Constitution

August 17, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/sross08172007.html

By SHERWOOD ROSS

Military interrogators posing as "lawyers" are attempting to trick Guantanamo prisoners into providing them with information, The Catholic Worker (TCW) reports.

This incredible and illegal practice contributes "to the prisoners' suspicions that the (real) lawyers are not to be trusted and could be aiding the government," TCW says in its July issue.

This subterfuge is only one of the many treacherous tactics the government is employing to sabotage the efforts of lawyers to represent their clients.

As Newsday, the Long Island, N.Y. daily, reported: "The military has set up a system that delays legal correspondence for weeks and requires lawyers from around the country to write motions at a single secure facility in Virginia. Detainees have alleged that interrogators have tried to turn them against their lawyers."

Lawyers have to wait for months for security clearances to visit their clients, and the military insists on seeing any legal papers they plan to show prisoners, and reserves the right to censor them or ban them entirely.

After meeting with their clients at Guantamo, Newsday reported, lawyers must turn their interview notes over to guards, who send them on to the Pentagon facility in Virginia that is the only place lawyers can go to write their motions. There, the military tries to edit out detainees' claims of mistreatment from the public record.

Some military lawyers have been gagged from speaking to the media after they made allegation that guards are routinely beating Guantanamo prisoners. Australian Broadcasting reported defense lawyer Lt. Col. Colby Vokey and legal aide Sgt. Heather Cerveny, who represent a Gitmo prisoner, were ordered not to talk to reporters after they filed a formal complaint to the Pentagon about the beatings.

"I think all the other military defense lawyers have got to be feeling a little bit afraid," Muneer Ahmed, an American University law professor, told AB. "There's a chilling effect that this type of gag order has." He added, "It further undermines what we know to be a broken system of justice."

Worse than gagging, is imprisoning lawyers who speak out. The Pentagon literally hammered Lt. Commander Matthew Diaz who, in January, 2005, disclosed information about the Guantanamo prisoners, including their names. For this act of civility, Diaz was sentenced to six months in a military prison, TCW reported.

(At Guantanamo and U.S.-run prisons in the Middle East, the Pentagon and CIA reportedly keep "ghost" prisoners --- captives whose names do not appear on any documents and whose presence is not reported to the Red Cross as required by international law.)

According to Newsday, guards and interrogators peruse prisoners' private legal papers and warn them that prisoners who have lawyers will wait longer to get out. Tom Wilner, a lawyer for 12 Kuwaiti detainees, said an interrogator asked one of his clients, "Did you know your lawyers are Jews?"

The Justice Department and Pentagon have claimed inmate lawyers are creating "unrest" among the prisoners, provoking hunger strikes. That's in case you mistakenly thought it is the harsh conditions at Gitmo that have driven so many prisoners to hunger strikes and suicide.

The U.S. government is "not only trying to deny counsel to the prisoners, but is actively trying to remove Guantanamo from any scrutiny, legal or otherwise" as well as "marginalizing the lawyers representing the prisoners," TCW said.

Who needs attorneys anyway? In describing the conviction of Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested on terrorism charges in 2002, "USA Today" noted August 17th he was held for three years "without charges, without seeing an attorney and without recourse to the courts." Why should any citizen have the right to a lawyer if the Bush regime wills it otherwise?

The jury that convicted Padilla found him guilty of conduct that amounts to terrorism. Be warned, though, the system that convicted him amounts to totalitarianism.

[accuracy]

Cuba blasts Hungary for granting asylum to 29 migrants at Guantanamo base

August 22, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/22/news/CB-GEN-Cuba-US-Hungary.php

HAVANA: Cuba on Wednesday branded Hungary an "imperial accomplice" of Washington for agreeing to grant political asylum to 29 Cubans who were held at Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base.

Those given Hungarian visas were among 44 Cubans picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard. Authorities deemed the group at risk of persecution if repatriated to Cuba and held them at the base while officials sought a third country to take them.

Many were dissidents and some were at the base more than two years.

The Cubans at the Guantanamo base included 17 who staged a hunger strike to protest conditions, but it ended Aug. 17 when Hungary announced it would take 29 migrants.

A third country was expected to take seven more and five others were approved to go to the United States. One chose to return to Cuba for family reasons, and the status of a couple who were offered Hungarian visas but apparently refused them, was unclear.

Cuba's Foreign Ministry issued a statement that "the government of Hungary acts as an accomplice to the empire," and said it would be later rewarded by the U.S. government.

It said that "servile" Hungary "insists on demonstrating to its powerful and aggressive master that it can count on its abject loyalty."

In Budapest, Hungarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Gyorgy Odze said "for now we are examining the statement of the Cuban government but have no further comment."

He added that it was unclear when the Cubans granted asylum are expected to arrive in Hungary: "I could be this year or even next year."

Cuba's statement also accused U.S. officials of flouting international law by sending the migrants to Guantanamo, saying that arranging asylum for them will encourage more unsafe sea voyages by Cubans leaving the island.

It said the U.S. now fails to repatriate 16 percent of the Cuban migrants intercepted at sea, even though American policy mandates that Cubans caught on the water are sent home while most making it to U.S. territory can stay.

The 81-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to cede power to his younger brother more than a year ago, and his condition remains a state secret.

Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved

[accuracy]

Defense wraps up in Abu Ghraib trial

By DAVID DISHNEAU, Associated Press Writer
Thu Aug 23,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_us/abu_ghraib_jordan;_ylt=AgMjQdbjsThDe55r.L7edu5vzwc F

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070822/capt.4159b602843045b087ec1a63ca513816.abu_ghraib_j ordan_mdsr101.jpg
AP Photo: Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan arrives for his general court martial at a military court...

FORT MEADE, Md. - Lawyers for the only Army officer charged with abusing Abu Ghraib detainees rested their case at his court-martial Thursday after defense witnesses testified he was a helpful administrator, but he wasn't the commanding officer.

The 10-member military jury will hear closing arguments Monday and begin deliberating the fate of Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, 51, of Fredericksburg, Va.

Jordan faces up to 8 1/2 years in prison if convicted of four counts stemming from his stint as director of an interrogation center at the Iraqi prison in 2003. He didn't appear in any of the infamous photos of prisoner humiliation by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib, but investigators concluded that as the highest-ranking officer, he fostered an atmosphere conducive to abuse.

Defense attorneys maintain that Jordan, a civil affairs reservist with a military-intelligence background, took no part in interrogations and had no chain-of-command responsibility for the 11 military intelligence and military police already convicted.

They asked the military judge to acquit Jordan of all charges, but the motion was denied.

In less than 90 minutes of testimony Thursday, defense witnesses supported their claims and praised Jordan for working to improve living conditions at the prison, even after being wounded in a mortar attack within days of his arrival in September 2003.

"He got us tables, chairs, extra fans, TV, VCR — things to make life better for us," said Stephen Pescatore, who worked as a civilian interrogator. "He seemed to be about the only senior officer who really cared about the troops there at Abu Ghraib."

Jordan wasn't in the chain of command of either the soldiers who guarded prisoners or the military intelligence soldiers who interrogated them, according to a stipulated statement of facts read to the jury.

But that fact alone doesn't void an officer's obligation to stop wrongdoing by lower-ranking soldiers, said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington.

"He may not have had responsibility in the sense of what his duties were but he certainly had authority. And if he saw something irregular going on, it was within his power to tell people to stop it and make that stick," Fidell told The Associated Press.

On Wednesday, his attorneys hammered at the flawed memory of the government's last witness, Maj. Gen. George Fay.

Fay, an assistant deputy chief of staff at the Pentagon, investigated the role of military intelligence soldiers at the prison.

His report concluded that Jordan fostered an atmosphere conducive to abuse as director of the prison's interrogation center in the fall of 2003.

At the outset of the trial Monday, prosecutors dropped two of the most serious charges — both alleging Jordan lied in statements to Fay — after Fay remembered that he forgot to read Jordan his rights before interviewing him in spring 2004. The revelation contradicted Fay's testimony at a hearing in March.

Dropping those charges reduced Jordan's potential prison term by eight years.

The most serious charge Jordan faces — punishable by up to five years in prison — involves disobeying an order from Fay not to talk to others about the investigation.

He also is charged with failing to obey a regulation by ordering dogs to be used for interrogations without higher approval, punishable by up to two years; cruelty and maltreatment for allegedly subjecting detainees to forced nudity and intimidation by dogs, punishable by up to one year; and dereliction for allegedly failing to properly train and supervise soldiers in interrogation rules. The latter carries a six-month maximum prison sentence.

Jordan is the only officer among the 12 people charged in the scandal, and the last to go to trial. Eleven enlisted soldiers have been convicted of crimes, with the longest sentence, 10 years, given to former Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., of Uniontown, Pa., in January 2005.

[accuracy]

Padilla sues US officials over confinement

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0824/csmimg/ASUIT_P1.jpg
His lawyers are suing federal officials, alleging that they played key roles in his military detention and interrogation.
Shirley Henderson/AP

August 24, 2007
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0824/p03s03-usju.html

Despite his conviction on terror conspiracy charges, his lawyers say he suffered 'psychological abuse' during military detention.


Convicted Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla is seeking to hold former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 59 other US officials responsible for what his lawyers say were abusive and unconstitutional tactics used against Mr. Padilla while he was held in military custody as an enemy combatant from 2002 to 2006.

Lawyers working on Padilla's behalf filed the civil lawsuit earlier this year in federal court in South Carolina. It was publicly disclosed by the lawyers this week.

"Mr. Padilla suffered gross physical and psychological abuse at the hands of federal officials as part of a scheme of abusive interrogation intended to break down Mr. Padilla's humanity and his will to live," the 30-page complaint says.

"The grave violations suffered by Padilla were not isolated occurrences by rogue lower-level officials," the suit says. Besides Mr. Rumsfeld, it names Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lowell Jacoby, among others, who "personally ordered and/or approved Mr. Padilla's detention and interrogation program."

Last week, Padilla was found guilty by a Miami jury of conspiring with Al Qaeda to engage in violent jihad. Federal prosecutors said he attended a training camp in Afghanistan. He faces a potential life sentence in prison.

Some analysts have pointed to Padilla's conviction as vindication of the Bush administration's alleged harsh treatment of him at the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., prior to his transfer to the criminal justice system in early 2006. But other analysts say that regardless of the guilty verdict in Miami, significant constitutional and other legal issues surrounding Padilla's treatment by the military remain unresolved.

Chief among them is whether a US citizen, like Padilla, who was arrested on American soil, can be stripped of most of his constitutional rights while being held in military custody and interrogated as an enemy combatant. Padilla was held at the brig for 43 months.

According to the court docket, a Justice Department lawyer is representing each of the named defendants. Andrew Ames, a Justice Department spokesman, said the government would have no comment on the pending case.

The defendants have been ordered to respond to the suit by Oct. 15.

A Defense Department spokesman also offered no specific response to the lawsuit, but repeated earlier statements that all detainees in the war on terror are treated humanely.

Padilla's lawyers are asking US District Judge Henry Floyd to declare Padilla's treatment in the brig unlawful and in violation of the Constitution. They are also asking the judge to award damages of $1 against each of the potential 60 defendants.

Although Padilla's lawyers are not asking for millions of dollars in damages, the case raises landmark constitutional issues dealing with the scope of the president's power as commander in chief to sweep aside many of the constitutional rights of citizens whom he determines are enemy combatants. The suit is also significant because it is the only means available of subjecting Padilla's military detention to the independent scrutiny of the federal judiciary.

"This is the American people's last chance to know what happened behind the closed doors in Charleston, and the last chance for a court to determine if what happened is consistent with our Constitution and values," says Jonathan Freiman, one of Padilla's lawyers who also works with the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School.

Unlike the Abu Ghraib scandal, which has involved the prosecution of a few low-level individuals, the Padilla lawsuit seeks to hold the chain of command accountable. In addition to cabinet-level officials, it seeks to identify and hold accountable key brig staff members, military and other government lawyers, medical and psychological staff members, brig guards, and Padilla's interrogators. Most of the prospective defendants have not yet been identified by name in the suit.

Padilla was subjected to sleep deprivation, stress positions, prolonged isolation, and sensory deprivation, among other interrogation techniques, the suit says. "These procedures were calculated to and actually did disrupt profoundly his senses and personality," the complaint says. It was done to "destroy Mr. Padilla's ordinary emotional and cognitive functioning and break his will, in order to extract information from him and punish him."

The government held Padilla for two years without any outside contact, including with his lawyers. When that policy changed, government officials warned Padilla not to reveal any conditions of his confinement to his lawyers. They told Padilla that his lawyers were not trustworthy and were actually working for the government, the suit says.

If true, this would amount to a government effort to undermine the ability of Padilla's lawyers to learn of Padilla's actual conditions of confinement and effectively challenge them in court.

Padilla was denied access to mental health care, the complaint says. Military officials "deliberately caused Mr. Padilla to undergo extreme psychiatric stress without providing any psychiatric care," the suit says. They denied this access even after Padilla's lawyers reported "signs of psychiatric distress in Mr. Padilla, such as involuntary twitching, and self-inflicted scratch wounds on his body."

The suit also says that two years into his military detention brig staff grew so concerned about Padilla's psychological distress from his prolonged isolation that they asked for permission to at least allow him to eat his meals with another prisoner. The request was denied.

One major hurdle for Padilla's civil suit is whether the government will ask Judge Floyd to dismiss it on grounds that any open-court discussion of Padilla's interrogation and treatment in the brig would reveal state secrets.

Legal analysts are divided on whether a judge would throw out Padilla's case should the government invoke the so-called state secrets privilege. A lawsuit filed by a German citizen mistakenly held and interrogated in secret locations overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency was dismissed on those grounds by a federal judge in Virginia. In March, the action was upheld by the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals, which also has jurisdiction over cases in South Carolina. That case has been appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.