I lost track of these proceedings and h/o to Robert for the reminder and link.
The chief prosecutor at the international criminal court at The Hague is working hard to get the court to look into the war crimes in Afghanistan. What I learned when I worked at the court is that it is ultimately a bureaucratic/political institution but kudos to the chief prosecutor for pushing this.
Hope dies last and all.
We have a very dangerous president here in the US of A. Today some of our congressional representatives are doing the right thing. Unfortunately too many are turning their heads and looking the other way -- because they are more interested in their personal political fates. So, while we wait for the final vote let me leave you with this:
Attorneys Urge Court to Change
Ground Rules for Guantánamo Cases
Contact: press@ccrjustuce.org
Without Due Process,
Detainees Face Detention for Life, Lawyers Warn
December 11, 2019, Washington, D.C. – Today, attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights
urged a federal appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling against Abdul
Razak Ali (aka Saeed Bakhouch), who has been detained at
Guantánamo without charge since June 2002, and to rule more broadly that the
fundamental protections of the Due Process Clause apply to detainees and limit
otherwise limitless detentions there. Mr. Ali had filed a petition for release
together with ten other Guantánamo detainees, arguing that their ongoing
detention is arbitrary and unlawful, particularly in light of Donald Trump’s
stated policy that no one should be released from the prison regardless of the
facts of their case. A lower court held that “the [Constitution’s] due process
clause does not apply in Guantánamo,” which attorneys say
defies Supreme Court precedent.
“During the Bush administration, the Supreme
Court twice struck down attempts to gut Constitutional protections against
arbitrary detention at Guantánamo, but since then the lower courts have made it
effectively impossible to win a case in court no matter how weak the
government’s evidence is,” said Shayana Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney of the
Guantanamo project at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who argued today.
“Today’s hearing asks the court to finally provide detainees the fair process
the Supreme Court envisioned ten years ago.”
In its landmark 2008 decision in Boumediene
v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that Guantánamo “is, in every practical
sense, not abroad,” and because of that the right to challenge one’s detention
in federal court could not be denied. Today, Kadidal argued that the same
principle requires that “due process”—the fundamental substantive and
procedural protections guaranteed by the constitution—should also apply at
Guantánamo.
Attorneys further argued that Mr. Ali’s
continued detention does, indeed, violate the Due Process Clause. He remains
detained—for what will soon be eighteen years—based primarily on
an eighteen day stay in a guesthouse in Pakistan associated
with a suspected jihadi leader. Today, Kadidal told the court that after this
length of detention, the government must demonstrate that there is a continued
purpose for detaining Ali, using more reliable evidence than it has produced to
date, and meeting a higher burden of proof.
“My client lost his first appeal six years ago
even though, in the words of one of the judges, he ‘never planned, authorized,
committed or aided any terrorist attacks,’ because the burden of proof on the
government is lower than what’s required in traffic court,” said H. Candace
Gorman, a Chicago-based attorney who has represented Ali for 13 years. “If the
legal status quo doesn’t change, Ali will die in prison without ever having
been charged with a crime.”
Forty men remain detained at Guantánamo.
Twenty-eight of them have never been charged. Twenty-seven were held by the CIA
at some point during their detention. Five have been unanimously cleared for
release by all relevant agencies (including the State Department, FBI, and the
military).
For those of you in the DC area I invite you to come and watch the oral argument in the DC Circuit Court for my client Razak Ali. The issue is simple but also so very important -- does the due process clause apply at Guantanamo?
The argument is set for 930 tomorrow morning and my co-counsel Shane Kadidal from the Center for Constitutional Law will argue for Mr. Ali.
For the rest of this article and more drawings by Abu Z (click here) (sorry I am having problems copying this so just go to the article...)
What the C.I.A.’s Torture Program Looked Like to the Tortured
Drawings done in captivity by the first prisoner known to undergo “enhanced interrogation” portray his account of what happened to him in vivid and disturbing ways.
An image drawn by Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, shows how the C.I.A. applied an approved torture technique called “cramped confinement.”Credit...Abu Zubaydah, Courtesy Mark P. Denbeaux
Impunity is meanwhile everywhere. In an action viewed as damaging the US military, Trump handed out pardons to convicted and accused US war criminals, though it's hard to see what votes he will get out of it, especially among service members, some of whom dobbed in their lawless officers and NCOs.
Defence opposed the pardons, particularly that of Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher, one of the most vicious convicted SEALs. Trump, responding to a Fox News beat-up, sought to completely exonerate Gallagher, while the Navy tried to expel him from the SEALs. In an extraordinary action, the president personally ordered Gallagher's retention in the unit, and sacked the Navy Secretary.
Trump's sanctioning of war crimes begs the question, will he attempt to reintroduce torture, a practice he has condoned in the past. It's a timely subject, as a new film about the Senate Torture Report has put the notorious CIA torture program - implemented by George Bush - back in the news.
Barack Obama effectively pardoned participants in the Bush administration program, with dilatory and cosmetic inquiries conducted while the statutes of limitations - except for murder - ran. We now know that, even had Obama's Justice Department prosecuted and jailed those involved, Mr Trump would have pardoned them, given them medals, and, as he actually has done in the appointment of CIA Director Gina Haspel, rewarded them.
Trump has also successfully stonewalled the proposed ICC investigation into torture in Afghanistan and other Rome Statute countries where CIA torture occurred; the matter is now under appeal at the Hague. More here on the international efforts to hold accountable those countries implicated in CIA black site torture.
Today is thanksgiving here in the good old U S of A. A holiday that celebrates the early European settlers making it through a rough period with the help of the native peoples.... then of course we went on to slaughter most of them...
So with that in mind I leave you with this musical interlude.
Impeachment ... Washington's cast of villains ... William Barr joined to Trump at the hip ... The politication of the Department of Justice ... The president's taxes ... His claims of immunity ... The odious consigliere Rudolph Giuliani ... 150 judicial appointments to do Republican Party bidding ... SCOTUS rallies to partisan causes ... Roger Fitch reports from a strife-torn nation
Appalling lower court judges are settling in, a cohort of 150 judicial appointments that Donald Trump's rubber-stamp senate has imposed on the creaky American republic. Many of them appear to be unabashed agents of Republican party policy; among other things, they are doing irreparable harm through election law subversions that keep their party in power.
Of particular concern are three cases involving employment discrimination related to sexual preference and gender identification in which the Trump administration is defending the employers.
Other cases consider whether, consistent with the US constitution, a state can repeal the insanity defence in a criminal case, or allow non-unanimous juries, while the Espinosa case presents a grave threat to the constitution's first amendment separation of church and state
Already, the rogue Republican federal judge from Texas, Reed O'Connor, is teeing up a new case, likely to reach the supreme court, that brings together several strands of the Republican culture wars: a ruling that protections for transgender individuals in the ACA(Obamacare) violate "religious freedom".
Our very own Talking Dog now brings us the ultimate book: Donald J. Putin on American Exceptionalism is THE book the government does not want you to read! If the government actually cared what you read, of course.
Twitter phenomenon (and Brooklyn’s own) Donald J. Putin brings you a satiric (or is it?) composite of the collective knowledge of the current American and Russian presidents (who may, or may not, actually be two people) in a sprawling manifesto that dives right into the issues facing Americans, and answers many of the questions that you have been staring at the ceiling pondering at 3:00 a.m.
● Why are Americans so depressed all the time? (And if you aren’t depressed, there is probably something wrong with you, because you should be.)
● Should we be looking for a new place to live? (Does anyone on the planet still like us enough to let us in? And can we get health care there?)
● If our food sucks so badly, why is it making us so damned fat?
● How come I haven’t had a vacation in so long? Get the book here.
Remember Omar Khadr? The 15 year old canadian kid that was tortured and held at Guantanamo until finally released in 2015? Well he is still trying to have his appeal heard by the military. His attorney finally filed in federal court and the DC Circuit has ordered the military to respond. As usually happens with the military they take baby steps when pushed. The military has now appointed a panel to hear his appeal. Read the rest here.
The (IMHO) notorious Col. Bogdan has landed a cushy job at UNC Charlotte as Vice Chancellor for Safety and Security. That must make the students and faculty feel safe! Read more here.
The periodic review boards have been doing their thing.... which is nothing. More here.
And of course secrecy is still the name of the game with all things Guantanamo, even after more than seventeen years. Read more here.
As everyone knows, the Guantánamo internment camp is a colossal waste of public money, at a cost of $13 million a year per prisoner. Sadly, the people who facilitated it remain unpunished. Seventeen years after the shocking Yoo-Bybee "torture memo", its authors are still enjoying comfortable positions as a tenured Berkeley law professor, and 9th circuit justice, respectively, while their partner in crime, Gina Haspel, has been made CIA director and sanitised by the Wall Street Journal, which often prints John Yoo op-eds.
The 9th circuit called Zubaydah's treatment "torture", but the Pentagon prefers other words for the "tendency to deviate from ethical standards under the pressure of circumstances and in the absence of external oversight".
In a new directive it's called "behavioural drift", unethical or abusive behaviour "commonly observed in detention and other settings in which individuals have control or power over others' activities of daily living or general functioning".
* * *
Waterboard display at the International Spy Museum
Washington has a tasteless new Spy Museum, and two CIA ruffians, the contract "psychologist" James Mitchell and interrogation-tape destroyer José Rodriguez, have contributed audiovisuals for the museum's popular Guantánamo exhibit, to provide a "balanced" view of the CIA's at times controversial aggressive debriefings.
The museum's exhibits include demonstration water-boards and a mock-up of the house where Osama bin Laden met his extrajudicial end.
Welcome to September 17th -- Constitution Day here in the good ole U S of A.
Our Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787. ... of course it was another few years before the Bill of Rights was formally added to our constituion (December 15, 1791). Perhaps that is the day we really should celebrate (although those rights are disappearing too and for too many those rights never really existed).
Anyway, back to the disappearing part -- one of the supposed hallmarks of our constitution was the notion of three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) that would "check" and "balance" each other.
Ha. In recent years we have had an executive running the show with both the legistative --- and to a large part the judiciary -- asleep at the wheel. I am not just talking about the Trump administration either and I am not just talking about republicans... although Trump does lead the pack with his executive actions and the republicans in congress have no interest in doing anything but appeasing him. However, this has been a problem for decades and the Obama administration did nothing to stem the tide. Absolutely nothing.
So on this constitution day I ask you to put your fuckin flags away, pick up the constitution (and the bill of rights) read both documents- and start demanding that this country start abiding by those principles. It would be a start anyway!
According to Carol Rosenberg at the New York Times that is the cost of running Guantanamo....
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Holding the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess as the lone prisoner in Germany’s Spandau Prison in 1985 cost an estimated $1.5 million in today’s dollars. The per-prisoner bill in 2012 at the “supermax” facility in Colorado, home to some of the highest-risk prisoners in the United States, was $78,000.
Then there is Guantánamo Bay, where the expense now works out to about $13 million for each of the 40 prisoners being held there.
According to a tally by The New York Times, the total cost last year of holding the prisoners — including the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — paying for the troops who guard them, running the war court and doing related construction, exceeded $540 million.
The $13 million per prisoner cost almost certainly makes Guantánamo the world’s most expensive detention program. And nearly 18 years after the George W. Bush administration took a crude compound called Camp X-Ray and hastily established it as a holding station for enemy fighters picked up in the war on terrorism, it has taken on a sprawling and permanent feel, with the expense most likely to continue far into the future.
Intercept has a new report on the FBI's involvement in the torture program from the get-go.
Read it here.
They also have links to thirteen newly declassified documents related to the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammad. Link is here.
On September 11th I always turn my eyes to my friend the talking dog. Who, unlike me, was actually in New York City on that day--- and within a block or so of the twin towers. This year technical problems got in the way of posting yesterday.... so with no more ado here is the talking dog.
if so, whether the Bush administration's torture meets the standard of "outrageous government conduct" justifying dismissal of the charges or other serious sanction against the government; and
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri has been unexpectedly passed over for promotion by the Pentagon, possibly for too-vigorous representation of his client.
The Nashiri case - probably the most lawless of all the commissions - is receiving attention in a new film about the CIA torture program; Nashiri was one of the program's first victims and received the personal attention of the former Thai torture camp commandant - now CIA director - Gina Haspel.
And finally: it's a bit late in the day, but an Obama-bolstered DC circuit panel has brought back full habeasfor Guantánamo internees, more here.
Rear Admiral Ring was fired earlier this year after he made public statements about the need to upgrade the medical facility at the base to comply with Geneva conventions and to accomodate the aging population at Gitmo.
Now the military is claiming that he was not fired because of those statements but because he mishandled classified information.
Since anything embarassing at the base is classified it is not hard to see how they could trump that one up...
A federal appeals court has cleared the way for a trial in a decade-old
lawsuit accusing a military contractor of responsibility for torture of
prisoners at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but one judge assigned to
the case warned the ruling could have "dangerous" results. That one judge was a Trump appointee.... Read more here.
Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba – The prosecution team in the Sept. 11 case argued this week that the past abuse of the five defendants at CIA black sites does not meet the standard of “outrageous government conduct” that would lead to dismissal of the charges or other serious sanction against the government. Defense attorneys received more documents about the torture but there is a gag rule so they cannot publicly discuss. "The defense teams have received more than 15,000 pages of discovery about a program that they say subjected their clients to multiple years of torture in violation of U.S. and international law. The latest tranche included instant-messenger chats between personnel involved in the interrogations at CIA black sites.
In a meeting with reporters after Monday’s session, James Connell, the lead attorney for Ammar al Baluchi, said he could not discuss specific details of the chats. However, he referred to them as “depraved.”
The military has for years conducted a dog and pony show for the press -- allowing them to come in and look (at certain areas) and take photos but then censoring the photos. Carol Rosenberg has been attending these dog and pony shows for years, letting the outside world see as much as the military will let her show.
This latest trip is from April of this year-- just prior to the firing of the latest commander. Nothing much seems to have changed since my last visit... you can view the photos here.
As mentioned below there are two new important reports out. This is the second and it looks at the medical care of the detainees (or more precisely, the lack thereof) and the psychological trauma from the years of being imprisoned without charge and with no end in sight.
From the executive summary:
There have been many more such assertions in the intervening years and since. Following an in-depth review
of publicly available information related to medical care at Guantánamo—both past and present—as well as
consultations with independent civilian medical experts and detainees’ lawyers, the Center for Victims of
Torture and Physicians for Human Rights have determined that none of those assertions is accurate.
To the contrary, notwithstanding Guantánamo’s general inaccessibility to independent civilian medical
professionals, over the years a handful of them have managed to access detainees, review medical
records, and interface with Guantánamo’s medical care system to a degree sufficient to document a host
of systemic and longstanding deficiencies in care. These include:
• Medical needs are subordinated to security functions. For example, prosecutors in a military
commission case told the judge explicitly that the commander of Guantánamo’s detention
operations is free to disregard recommendations of Guantánamo’s senior medical officer.
• Detainees’ medical records are devoid of physical and psychological trauma histories. This is
largely a function of medical professionals’ inability or unwillingness to ask detainees about
torture or other traumatic experiences during their time in the CIA’s rendition, detention, and
interrogation program, or otherwise with respect to interrogations by U.S. forces—which has led
to misdiagnoses and improper treatment.
• In large part due to a history of medical complicity in torture, many detainees distrust military
medical professionals which has led repeatedly to detainees reasonably refusing care that they need.
DEPRIVATION AND DESPAIR: The Crisis of Medical Care at Guantánamo
4
• Guantánamo officials withhold from detainees their own medical records, including through
improper classification.
• Both expertise and equipment are increasingly insufficient to address detainees’ health needs.
For example, a military cardiologist concluded that an obese detainee required testing for
coronary artery disease, but that Guantánamo did not have the “means to test” him, and so the
testing was not performed. With regard to mental health, effective torture rehabilitation services
are not, and cannot be made, available at Guantánamo.
• Detainees have been subjected to neglect. One detainee urgently required surgery for a condition
he disclosed to Guantánamo medical personnel in 2007—and they diagnosed independently in
2010—but he did not receive surgery until 2018 and appears permanently damaged as a result.
• Military medical professionals rotate rapidly in and out of Guantánamo, which has caused
discontinuity of care. For example, one detainee recently had three primary care physicians in the
course of three months.
• Detainees’ access to medical care and, in some cases, their exposure to medical harm, turn
substantially on their involvement in litigation. For example, it appears extremely difficult, if not
impossible, for detainees who are not in active litigation to access independent civilian medical
professionals, and for those who are to address a medical need that is not related to the litigation.
For detainees charged before the military commissions, prosecution interests have superseded
medical interests, as with a detainee who was forced to attend court proceedings on a gurney
writhing in pain while recovering from surgery.
These deficiencies are exacerbated by—and in some cases a direct result of—the damage that the men
have endured, and continue to endure, from torture and prolonged indefinite detention.
There are several new reports that I want to bring to your attention. I hope to have a link to one other report relating to the health of detainees in the next day or so but meanwhile: This report published at Common Dreams looks at the senate torture report -- which has still not been released (only a redacted summary):
In December 2014, the Bureau, alongside The Rendition Project, began a major project to trace the history of the RDI programme. The impetus for our investigation came from the long-awaited publication of a report into CIA torture by the US Senate Select Intelligence Committee. The authors of this report had high-level access to internal CIA documents, which they mined to produce a damning assessment of the torture programme's brutality, mismanagement and ineffectiveness. But they were compelled by the Obama administration, and by the CIA itself, to censor — "redact" — all parts of the report that could identify specific times and places where abuses had occurred.
This is important, because without being able to tie illegal activities to specific times and places, the quest for redress is hamstrung, and meaningful accountability — legal, public, historical — remains a mirage.
We've brought to light further details of how deeply implicated the UK was in the overall running of the CIA's torture network
The Senate report did offer a crucial insight, however: the first complete list of prisoners held in the CIA's black sites. 119 names, each with a date of custody (redacted) and a record of how many days they were held (also partly redacted).
In the days after the publication of the Senate report, we set to work reconstructing this list to reveal the hidden dates. Figuring out a date often meant that we could match it to a flight record; matching to a flight record meant that we could determine where a prisoner was brought from or sent to. As we cross-correlated thousands of data points — from declassified government documents, footnotes in the Senate report, aviation data, records of corporate outsourcing of rendition flights, legal cases, media reporting and NGO investigations — the contours of the CIA's programme of secret detention and torture began to emerge more clearly. Rather than just understanding certain individual histories, we could begin to discern the entire scope of the programme's development.
Key Findings include:
• Identification of the 28 individuals whose
renditions were facilitated using UK territory as crucial staging and
refuelling posts. This includes the at least two individuals who were rendered
using the British-owned island of Diego Garcia: Mohammed Iqbal Madni and Umar
Faruq.
• It identifies the individual to whom the ISC
referred as the “unknown detainee” – Umar Faruq – believed to have been
rendered through Diego Garcia in September 2002.
• Included in this list of individuals rendered
using UK territory or airspace is Abd Al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was tortured in
Thailand among other places while current CIA Director Gina Haspel allegedly
ran the black site there.
• This includes the use of Glasgow airport in the
rendition of Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, whose torture in Egypt led to the false information
which provided part of the case for the Iraq War. The ISC report revealed that
an MI6 officer stood by and watched as he was rendered to Egypt in a coffin.
• Among these detainees rendered with the
assistance of UK territory or airspace was Saifullah Paracha, currently the
oldest detainee in Guantanamo, who was rendered to torture and arbitrary
detention for what has now been almost 19 years.
• The report lists a total of 28 cases of UK
territory or airspace being used for renditions, which compares with the 28
cases the ISC report identified in which it found the UK “suggested, planned or
agreed to rendition operations proposed by others”. While the number itself may
be a coincidence, the new report raises the question of whether the UK
agreed to the use of its territory and airspace to facilitate these renditions
as part of these plans and agreements.
• The report names Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, who
faced severe torture after his rendition to Egypt in January 2002, and who may
be one of the “29 renditees” referred to in the ISC report as having been
rendered to a country believed to be Egypt.
If only Barack Obama had possessed the cojones to prosecute and convict malefactors from the Bush administration for corruption and war crimes, lawless abuses of the "war on terror" and the CIA's torture regime, the Republican brand might have been so badly damaged that the party would have been unable to regroup and gain power under a Donald Trump. Leading party people would have been unavailable, in jail or tainted by disgrace.
The Obama DoJ's cautious approach was to conduct narrow investigations that declined to hold anyone responsible, and allowed Bush villains to emerge unscathed, claim vindication and hold high office again, along with sundry pardoned criminals from previous Republican administrations, e.g. odious neocons like Eliot Abrams.
The preferred instrument for these cosmetic inquiries has been John Durham, a career US Attorney who conducted superficial reviews of CIA misbehaviour at the behest of both the Bush and Obama attorneys general, each time conveniently absolving those involved.
Durham first considered the CIA's notorious destruction of torture tapes, a violation of various laws and court orders that was carefully carried out by the current CIA director, Gina Haspel. Durham's other absolution was even more shameful, letting the CIA off the hook for torture that led to death. The only CIA-related cover-up Durham didn't manage was the exculpation of the CIA's accomplices, the torture memo hacks in the Bush administration, carried out by a DoJ fixer in-house.
Curiously, John Durham has now been selected by Donald Trump's AG to conduct an investigation where the government desires an incriminatory finding, and it involves both the CIA and FBI. A cynic might say the CIA faces critical examination for - daring to investigate Trump.
If Durham had found wrongdoing in his Bush/Obama investigations, any resulting prosecutions and convictions might have been erased by Trump. Under the uniquely-American practice of a single person setting up the whole government, the president could have proceeded to resolve all staffing problems by pardoning and rehabilitating party operatives that previous governments had convicted and put away.
As it is, Trump continues to pardon undeserving rightwing martyrs, and dodgy businessmen like Conrad Black, who perspicaciously penned an adulatory biography of the president. Having few convicted Republicans left to pardon, the president now seems set on a mischievous course of pardoning accused or convicted US war criminals. More here and here.
He evidently admires their grit and determination, and has, as a model, Richard Nixon's "patriotic" intervention on behalf of William Calley. There's more history here, and a list of Trump's pardons for crimes he evidently finds acceptable or praiseworthy.
Probably the most important book of 2014 as it gives a comprehensive look at the extent this country of mine has creeped into the bedrooms of all of us across the world-and the importance of hero EDWARD SNOWDEN- in risking his freedom to let all of us know. What we do with that knowledge will say alot about all of us...
If you have not read Ron's book then you do not have the whole story about what I have been doing to try to get my clients out ofGuantanamo. Ron kept up with my activities and even followed me around on occasion to get the full story... then he weaved my story in with the stories of other individuals who are concerned with the direction of the United States. I recommend the book to all of you out there who also care about the direction that the US has gone these past eight years and want to work to change things.
![Donald J. Putin on American Exceptionalism : It's Not You, It's Just America Being America by [Putin , Donald J.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41sgaLfw%2B%2BL.jpg)
Waterboard display at the International Spy Museum
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