Talking Dog Interviews Pardiss Kebriaei

Pardiss is a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Read her interview here.

From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under at Justinian

As the Guantánamo prison approaches its 16^th year, there's renewed media interest in miscarriages of justice, and individual Dreyfuses held at America's Devil's Island.  

The Boston Review has an article on the long-suffering Mohammedou Slahi, author of a bestselling Gitmo narrative, and Politico has a piece on the CIA-tortured Abu Zubaydah, a man who's been waiting seven years for his habeas hearing. Pleadings recently unsealed in the DC habeas include Zubaydah's own accounts of his torture.  

CIA torture has been further illuminated by the disclosure of shocking advice by the agency's nameless medical staff, here and here, and the release of the agency's chilling "applied research" contracts with the "enhanced interrogation" psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

It's damning evidence against health professionals who would fit neatly in a Nuremberg dock - alongside the Bush Gang's torture lawyers.

The Pentagon's drumhead Court of Military Commission Review has allowed the Limberg MV charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri to go forward in Nashiri's military commission trial. The offence, which resulted in the death of a Bulgarian crewman on a Malaysian-chartered, French-flagged tanker in international waters, had no connection with any war, or indeed, with the United States.

Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri meanwhile have cases pending in the European Court of Human Rights against Lithuania and Romania for hosting their CIA torture camps, more here. 

Read the rest here.....

Fair Trials Not Needed..... UPDATED

The continuing saga of the circus at the military commission at Guantanamo has this accusation from the defense- the government in Khalid Shaikh Mohammad's case conspired with the chief judge to destroy crucial evidence of the torture that Mohammad was subjected to. They have asked the judge to recuse himself from ruling on the motion- since he is the one accused of conspiring with the military but the judge has refused. Read more here...

MORE INFORMATION ON THE EVIDENCE THAT WAS DESTROYED CAN BE FOUND HERE....

Slahi- author of the "Guantanamo Diary" has been cleared for release

I have written about Mr. Slahi on several occasion and his heavily redacted "diary" was a best seller. I am now happy to report that Mr. Slahi has been cleared for release.
This press release from his attorneys explains more about the efforts made by his attorneys and others to obtain his release.
Let us hope he will actually be released soon.

The prison population remains at 76: 31 are cleared, 35 are awaiting clearance, and 10 are in the military commission system (of those, 7 are in “active” “trial” proceedings while 3 have been “convicted”).

Of the 31 cleared, 22 (70.97%) are Yemenis and 9 are non-Yemenis. 

Of the 35 awaiting clearance, 15 are Yemenis and 20 are non-Yemenis.

The connection between Saudi Arabia and 9-11-UPDATED

Finally the 28 pages that have been withheld for years has been released- showing the connection between the Saudi government and the 9-11 attacks. It is hard to know who my government was trying to protect.....
read about those 28 pages here.
MORE HERE FROM EMPTYWHEEL.

Mon coeur est avec le peuple de Nice

3 detainnees released....

One to Italy. More here.

Two to Serbia. More here.

76 detainees remain.

Happy 5th of July.....