Here's hoping....

 

Support the Guantanamo Survivor Fund

 All funds received through the end of the year will be matched. For some of the men this is the only support they have had or will have. And life for these men and their families has been pretty awful.

so, if you have any spare money consider supporting the survivors of Guantanamo. Click here for more.

FOR OUR FRIENDS IN THE UKRAINE

 HOPING FOR A MORE PEACEFUL 2023:

part 2

 

christmas time in the U S of A

 

FROM ROGER FITCH AND OUR FRIENDS DOWN UNDER AT JUSTINIAN....

 The stolen documents saga ... The attempted coup ... Legal problems piling up for Trump ... 70 million people in America still believe the dangerous fantasies of a disturbed mountebank ... Criminal servitude beckons ... Roger Fitch reports from Washington 

"No other president has refused to concede that he lost an election, attempted a coup and incited an insurrection and then stolen hundreds of government secrets on his way out the door. He always says there's never been anyone like him, and it's true." - Salon

"Would he really give, say, Kim Jong-Un the names of undercover intelligence agents operating in South or North Korea, thus guaranteeing their assassination? If it meant fending off an indictment, he would ... they're sitting around at Main Justice asking themselves how many assets' lives they might be risking by indicting Trump." - New Republic 

In September, it seemed a tipping point had been reached in the legal pursuit of Donald Trump, with the filing of the NY Attorney General's "monumental" civil enforcement action against Trump, his family, and his corporate organisations. 

His accountants Mazars and banker Deutsche Bank have both parted company with their deadbeat client and provided evidence against him; Paris-based Mazars is probably used to official requests for the accounts of crooked politicians.

The man has so many stolen documents that Just Security set up a "Mar-a-Lago Clearinghouse" one can consult.

Even so, just after the elections, Donald Trump announced with astounding chutzpah that he's standing for president again. As Karl Marx observed, historical facts and figures appear twice, first as tragedy and then as farce. 

Trump proclaimed his candidacy in the glitzy ballroom of his Florida home, an estate as tasteless and garish as the man himself. Ivanka and Don Junior were missing, but the disgraced ex-president was bucked-up by the puzzling presence of the Western Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart.

If he succeeds, it will be only the second time an ex-president has managed a second term.

So far, it's all been downhill. 

One investigation in particular - the January 6 insurrection - seems to be moving forward at the Justice Department. Will there be indictments? It seems likely, and for the document heist there's even a model prosecution memo to peruse here. 

In addition, the January 6 committee is winding up its investigation and on December 21 will release its final report in which a number of people will be referred to DoJ for criminal prosecution. 

Many wonder why US AG Merrick Garland hasn't already indicted the principal offender, Donald John Trump. One explanation may have been the AG's wish to avoid filing charges so close to a congressional election. 

In response to Trump's 2024 announcement, AG Garland has appointed a special counsel. Jack Smith, presently Chief Prosecutor of Kosovo war crimes at The Hague, is a man who should be able to find where Trump has buried the bodies, or documents.  

The ex-president is still in legal peril for the latter, although DOJ is said to believe he stole government documents to gratify his unbounded ego - a mere narcissistic hoarder - rather than for the more plausible purposes of blackmail, treason or cash.

READ THE REST HERE.

AND SPEAKING OF HUMAN RIGHTS....

 21 years is a long time to be held without charge.

And remember - being released from Guantanamo does not mean you are free. 

Please donate to this fund that helps former prisoners as they try to heal, support their families, and continue to fight for justice.

International Human Rights Day

 

Anther day in the U.S.....musical interlude...

 

another day in the U.S.

 It is really a sad day in this country when 48% of the people in an election vote for a clearly unqualified individual. The trumpers were willing to vote for this man because their hero asked them too.  But the good news is that Warnock won and our democracy hobbles on.

From our friends down under at Justinian

Fitch looks at some of the high and low notes from the election....

Some of the election results:

• Wisconsin, the Republican "laboratory for dismantling democracy", has re-elected Senator Ron Johnson, the most ignorant and (after Ted Cruz) obnoxious US senator. However, the party failed to obtain the veto-proof  legislature needed to frustrate its re-elected Democrat governor, Tony Evers, whose opponent had promised permanent Republican government.

• In Florida, a 25-year-old Afro-Cuban Democrat became the first member of "Gen Z" elected to congress;

• Maryland chose its first African-American governor, the Oxford-educated Democrat Wes Moore;

• Democrats made significant gains in state legislatures and governors;

• The Democrats flipped a senate seat in Pennsylvania while keeping those in Arizona and Nevada;  

• The top cop in Las Vegas has been elected Republican governor of Nevada;

• Ohio elected a Trump-endorsed Republican senator (JD Vance) to an open Republican seat;

• Georgia will hold a run-off for the senate as neither the Democrat incumbent or his woeful Republican opponent obtained 50% of the vote, and Georgia doesn't have preference voting (in the US, "ranked-choice" or "instant run-off" voting);

• Alaska has ranked choice, and will hold a further election this month where four qualifying candidates from November 8th compete (the top two contenders are both Republicans);

• America's worst state attorney general, Ken Paxton, has won his second four year re-election since being indicted for securities fraud; and

• America's most partisan "secretary of state", Kris Kobach, will now make trouble as Kansas Attorney General.

READ THE WHOLE FITCH HERE.

REFLECTIONS...

 

POWER HAS BEEN CRIED BY THOSE STRONGER THAN ME....

  Musical interlude while we see what the American People have to say about democracy. [I will be off to Detroit to monitor the shenanigans by the white supremacists...]

Oldest Gitmo prisoner released

 Saifullah Paracha, 75

Mr. Paracha was held since 2003. He was primarily represented by fellow Gitmo attorney GT Hunt. GT is a remarkable attorney who is also a solo attorney. GT tried everything to get his client out of there-- clearly the man, like so many others-- should never have been held. Mr. Paracha had numerous health problems and had never been charged in his more than 17 years being held and he was cleared for release almost 2 years ago.

The guardian has more but unfortunately they did not interview GT.

The Dog turns 60...

 Yes I mean our friend the talking dog. And of course with the wisdom of these many years he has a few things to say:

Obviously, I could talk about the breakdown in our national discourse, or the fact that like Donald Trump’s mouth, Guantanamo is still open, but I’m already just all joy and sunshine as it is. I have said before that I consider myself pretty lucky that I am playing the back-nine of life now; I am not happy about the pile of crap we are leaving for the Loquacious Pup and the other young ‘uns. But it seems, no one seems interested in taking their noses out of their I-phones long enough to pay attention to terribly much. So I don’t know.

Read the whole thing here.

FREE THE GUANTANAMO ART WORK- FROM THE FOLKS AT "CLOSE GUANTANAMO"

 Free the art from Guantánamo! SIGN THE LETTER TO BIDEN.

Dear friends and supporters,

Six weeks ago, we published an article — folllowing up on a BBC World article — about an outrageous ban on prisoners’ artwork being allowed to leave Guantánamo, which was imposed five years ago, under Donald Trump, and has not been dropped by President Biden.

The ban was imposed after the Pentagon responded with unacceptable hysteria to an exhibition of prisoners’ artwork at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, and immediately led to prisoners no longer being allowed to give their artwork to their attorneys — and, via them, to their families.

This was nothing less than cruel, as art had become a lifeline for many of the men held, but the ban’s damage has now become even more worrying, because some of the men still held are prolific artists, and, having been approved for release since President Biden took office, are facing eventual release from the prison without being able to take any of their artwork with them.

......

The letter is available online here, and is open for signatures by other supporters, to add to those of the former prisoners. Our co-founders, Andy and Tom Wilner, have signed it, and Andy also secured the support of the musician Roger Waters, who is a long-term supporter of the Close Guantánamo campaign.

(read the rest of the article here.

The masters make the rules? Or do they.

 

One way to help the men released from Gitmo

 

Mansoor Adayfi (former Guantanamo prisoner), is in the middle of a 4-day bicycle ride in Serbia (where he was transferred) to raise support for closing Guantanamo and to raise money to help men who have been released.

 

https://twitter.com/mansooradayfi/status/1577277887664730113?s=12&t=zmfo3Hel-Wh-6zeYle7YsA

 

If you want to support, contributions can be made here

WRONGFUL CONVICTION DAY

 Of course my client at Guantanamo, like almost all of the men there, has never been convicted.

MUSICAL INTERLUDE

 

Lybian Ismail al Bakush cleared for release

Mr. Bakush was arrested at the same time as my remaining client.  There is a lot of irony here as the confusion of names will continue until all of the material  surrounding these arrests is cleared and examined. This Mr. Bakush was cleared for release this past week.

From Carol Rosenberg at the New York Times.  link here.

 WASHINGTON — A national security board on Friday cleared a Libyan man who has been held at Guantánamo Bay without charge for 20 years to be transferred to another country if one can be found to take him, continuing the Biden administration’s effort to reduce the detainee population at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

The decision in the case of Ismail Ali Faraj Ali Bakush, 54, means that diplomats are now seeking to reach security agreements for the transfer of 22 of the 36 men currently held as law of war prisoners at Guantánamo.

Mr. Bakush is the last so-called low value prisoner being held as an indefinite detainee in the war on terror that began in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In an apparent nod to the instability of Libya, the Periodic Review Board — an interagency group with representatives from the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies and various cabinet agencies — recommended that he be transferred to a third country “with strong rehabilitation capabilities,” integration support and a willingness to monitor his activities and restrict his travel.

Mr. Bakush was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, in May 2002 and sent to Guantánamo Bay three months later. A U.S. ntelligence report  from January described him as an explosives expert who “probably provided operational support to key Al Qaeda figures.” At Guantánamo, he was held as a member of the Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which the State Department designated as a terrorist organization from 2004 to 2015. 

From Roger Fitch and our friends Down under.. at Justinian

 Trump's attempted document theft ... Missing pages from confidential files ... Trouble for former president's lawyers ... Patsy judge's flawed reasons ... State judges up for election in November ... Republicans working on the judicial stack ... From Our Man in Washington, Roger Fitch 

"Plaintiff has no property interest in any Presidential records (including classified records) seized from the Premises. The Presidential Records Act provides ... that '[t]he United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records' ... Plaintiff [does not] offer any ... colourable argument that he has a property interest in any Presidential records seized ... Plaintiff's Motion, in fact, asserts that '[t]he documents seized at Mar-a-Lago ... were created during his term as President' ... precisely the types of documents that likely constitute Presidential records. 

Because these records do not belong to Plaintiff, [he has] no right to have them returned. And because Plaintiff has no such right, this Court should not appoint a special master to review Presidential records for the purpose of entertaining potential claims of executive privilege ... the former President cites no case ... in which executive privilege has been successfully invoked to prohibit the sharing of documents within the Executive Branch." - US response, Trump v US

Even if Donald Trump escapes punishment for e.g, insurrection, he must be guilty of something: consider the example of the American gangster Al Capone, undone by Internal Revenue. While tax evasion is likely among Trump's countless crimes, his downfall may be the National Archives (NARA), wielding the Presidential Records Act.  

After Trump left the White House, NARA discovered that important official papers belonging to the Archives were missing, and asked for their return. When the requested documents were not provided, but lied about ("only news clippings"), moved about and hidden, the Justice Department was called in.

After months of Trump obstruction, DOJ obtained a search warrant for Trump's hotel-home, Mar-a-Lago, and retrieved a sizable tranche of government papers, many secret and/or highly classified, that the ex-president had secreted and retained. 

A damning affidavit supported the government's search, which yielded "sensitive" documents afterwards compared by Trump lawyers to "overdue library books". 

American media initially stressed the "unprecedented" search by the FBI of (gasp) a former president's home, assuming some deference was due. That changed when 11,000 government records were found in Trump's possession and 90 empty folders, half of which were marked confidential.

What's actually unprecedented is the wholesale theft of government documents by an outgoing president, 320 of them classified. Sensitive government documents may have disappeared. 

READ THE REST HERE.

tiny steps.. but steps.

 The military's chief prosecutor in the Guantanamo military trials has taken the prosecutor who was advocating for the death penalty in the USS Cole bombing case off the case. Read more here.

Don't even ask how the Cole bombing which occured in October 2000 became part of the September 11th roundup....

NEVER FORGET

 

9-11, 21 years in...... no hope in sight for my remaining client.

 Every year on this day I turn to my friend the talking dog... who had the misfortune to be in NYC on that day-- and very close to ground zero.

musical interlude

well at least she finally apologized for these particular horrors.... 

musical interlude..

 Happy labor day. 

Art will be confiscated if you are so fortunate as to get out...

 Several of the remaining prisoners have turned to creating art to pass the time. And the art work is quite good-- and quite telling. I guess that is why the powers do not want the art work to leave with the men.

More here.

FROM ROGER FITCH AND OUR FRIENDS DOWN UNDER AT JUSTINIAN...

 

Primary colours

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2022

Democracy US-style ... November elections where Big Lie candidates abound ... Key states in the grip of Trump-nominated electoral officials ... Hundreds of new state laws to reshape the vote ... GOP plan for permanent minority government, with assistance from the Supreme Court ... Trouble in wait for Republicans' Pravda ... Roger Fitch's reports from our Washington bureau  

President Biden has had a legislative victory, despite Democrats struggling with a small house majority and not-quite-majority senate. The upper house, in nominal Democrat control, has been held hostage by Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. 

Republicans had come to rely on the two "Blue Dog" Democrats to obstruct Biden's legislative agenda, and were taken by surprise when the two voted for a reduced remnant of the key Democrat infrastructure bill, the optimistically-renamed Inflation Reduction Act.

There were liberal jokes that Manchin had shocked Republicans by revealing he's a Democrat, but the conservative Bulwark was all praise for Manchin's manoeuvres. 

≈   ≈   ≈

The party pre-selections for this year's November elections are now largely complete in US states, and it's clear the paranoid fringe is becoming the party establishment in most Republican-controlled states, where Donald Trump's election-denying supporters have chosen the nuttiest, coup-supporting, election-liars among their party's appalling range of candidates - some of whom received covert Democrat assistance. 

The Democrats' controversial gamble assumes that genuinely crazy "MAGA-loon" candidates will repel independent voters and be easier to defeat in November; Republicans meddle in Democrat primaries for opposite reasons, spending to defeat progressive opponents. 

The tactic may be working for Democrats in deep-blue Maryland, where the craziest Republicans standing for governor and AG have won pre-selection, and it may work elsewhere, now that the contents of Donald Trump's safe have been revealed.

Already-tainted Republicans, like Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, perhaps the most detested US senator (after Ted Cruz) and an unashamed insurrectionist, could lose to a centre-left Democrat, Lt Governor Mandela Barnes, although Wisconsin remains emblematic of America's two-party decline. 

There's a danger in newly-minted Republican cranks, e.g, in Pennsylvania, where the TV personality Dr Oz (Mehmet Oz) could win a senate seat. 

Missouri's senate primary perplexed Trump cultists, as their hero couldn't decide which of two dreadful Erics to support: the disgraced former governor and wife-beater Eric Greitens, or the current AG, Eric Schmitt, who joined in frivolous and baseless lawsuits to overthrow the 2020 election - (Schmitt won). 

A greater worry: the number of overtly partisan candidates for "secretaries of state", i.e, state election administrators. Big Lie candidates for such offices dominated this year's Republican primaries. 

Using the "stolen elections" pretext, candidates for state election administrators obliquely promised to throw the November elections for Republicans, and many of these candidates won party pre-selection.

Alarmingly, Republicans in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania chose Big Lie candidates for offices that regulate or rule on elections, based on the hope they would conduct elections for the benefit of Republicans. These nominees will be well-placed to tamper with the presidential vote in 2024 if they win office this November. 

READ THE REST HERE.

You really cannot make this shit up

 In today's news one of the detainees is seeking release- he has been cleared and the Judge is holding the government's feet to the fire to get him out of Guantanamo. The prisoner Majid Khan says that he is being held in solitary confinement and this is what the government said in response:

According to the Biden Justice Department, Majid Khan is not held in solitary confinement because he “socializes with F.B.I. agents, prison guards, military lawyers and top prison officials during ‘religious feasts, social meetings and meetings regarding detention-related issues,’ Colonel Jemmott said in an affidavit.”

oh man. The guy would probably prefer solitary confinement than to be "socializing" with those guys...

read the rest here.

just a little fact... missing

 Seems that one of the prisoners facing the death penalty reported that he was water boarded while being interrogated but that little detail was left out in official reports...Carol Rosenberg at the New York Times reports :

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — A prisoner accused of plotting Al Qaeda’s bombing of the U.S.S. Cole warship in 2000 told federal interrogators years later that he was waterboarded by the C.I.A., an interpreter testified Thursday. But that detail was omitted from the official account of the interrogations that prosecutors want to use at his death-penalty trial as evidence that he confessed.

At issue in the hearings is whether the military judge will accept a 34-page memo written by agents who questioned the prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, at Guantánamo Bay for three days in early 2007. The account of the interrogation is considered critical trial evidence. Defense lawyers say it is tainted by torture and want it excluded.

“He talked about the waterboarding,” said John J. Elkaliouby, who worked for the F.B.I. as an Arabic linguist from 1994 to 2015. “He said, ‘I was waterboarded by the C.I.A.,’ and I reported that to the whole team.”

read the rest here.

Time for a musical interlude--

 and what could be better than Joni Mitchell -- after 20 years of no public singing...

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian...

 

The Revolutionary Tribunal

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2022

The US Supreme Court has become a Republican law enforcement tribunal ... Abortions, guns, religion, environment ... Cherry-picked legal reasoning ... Historical inaccuracies ... Worse to come ... Same sex marriage in Texas ... Washington correspondent Roger Fitch files 

"[I]n future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [same-sex relationships], and Obergefell [gay marriage] ... Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous' ... we have a duty to 'correct the error' established in those precedents".
Clarence Thomas, concurrence overruling Roe v Wade. 

"The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them. The majority thereby substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law." 
Dobbs dissent. 

"They did it because they could. It was as simple as that."
Linda Greenhouse.

The supreme court's first full term with three Trumpistes ended with a week from hell.

No longer a court, it's become a revolutionary tribunal, a Comité de Salut Public of six instead of twelve. 

Six radical justices, led by Alito and Thomas, achieved a trifecta: public funding for religious schools (the First Amendment separation of church and state notwithstanding), unlimited guns on the streets of "blue" states (despite long-standing regulations in those states) and then, the greatest prize of all for dutiful evangelicals and right-wing Catholics, the end of legal abortions in Republican-ruled states, whether regulated, medically-required or any other reason, including rape and incest.

READ THE REST HERE.

more on the first plea deal for a "high value detainee"

 As we approach another grim milestone in Guantánamo’s history — 20 and a half years of its existence, on July 11 — there is, at least, some mildly positive news from the prison’s largely dysfunctional military commission trial system, where Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a “high-value detainee,” and one of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo, in April 2007, recently agreed to a plea deal that could see him leave the prison by 2024.

read the rest here.

July 4th... sigh.

 

Afghani detainee is home now...

 36 men remain. including my remaining client who was cleared for release earlier this year and is ready willing and able to go to his home country of Algeria. The only incentive is reducing the number of detainees and that apparently is not enough.

The afghani who is now home is home because there was a court order -- but even that didnt do the trick until his attorneys and the judge kept on the government by requiring them to come in and explain the progress- repeatedly.

Read about the latest release here.

h/o to Walt.

two things need to be further explained...

In my post about my client's 20 years at Guantanamo I mentioned his black feet and the "socks." Let me explain a little further. It seems one of the torture methods was to soak the socks in a chemical that burned my clients feet and of course caused excruciating pain. His feet were still blackened from that chemical the last time I saw him.

I also want to explain what I meant when I mentioned the court transcript from the "hearing." I said, "if he did not change that too." What I was suggesting was that the judge changed the official transcript from the hearing. I did not say that lightly or facetiously.  The judge actually had the transcript changed - a couple of the more outrageous statements the judge made were taken out of the official transcript. I actually wrote down those quotes during the hearing and wanted to use them in one of my many many motions following the hearing. Both were missing. I filed a motion asking for the recording because the transcript had been altered but the judge said there was no recording. That too was false.

twenty years and still counting....

 

On June 18^th, 2002, my client left for Guantanamo Bay from Bagram airbase. He had been picked up at a guesthouse in Lahore, Pakistan 3 months earlier and spent the three months being tortured at various military sites in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The flight to Guantanamo took 24 hours with a stop somewhere in between where he switched planes. On the plane he was strapped to the floor of in a semi-prone position with no ability to move. He was hooded and bound the entire time. No food, no water, no bathroom. On June 19, 2002 he landed at Guantanamo.

According to my client, “When I arrived at Guantanamo I was sent to a room where a person looked over my body. The person asked what caused the incisions on my back but I told him I was hooded and could not see what was used on me. The person also asked about what had caused my feet to be black and I told him about the socks. I also showed him the other scars on my body. I was not provided any medical attention for my wounds.” The medical records also showed numerous cigarette burns on his body but Mr. Bakhouch was not asked about those. Presumably, the medical staff knew those were caused by cigarettes being snubbed out on his body.

 Mr. Bakhouch has now been at Guantanamo for over 20 years. He has never been charged with anything. He is cleared for release, but who knows when or if that release will actually happen.

 The military does not have an accurate photo of my client. The official photo is of a man who I believe (but I am not 100% sure) was released from Guantanamo very early on. That man was from Saudi Arabia. According to my records, that man was at Bagram at the same time as my client. The information that was gathered by the military about my client was based on interviews with other detainees who were showed the photo of this other man.

I put together all of this information and much much more at my clients “habeas hearing.” I put that in quotation marks because this was not a hearing in the normal legal sense. My client was not allowed to attend and much of the information I learned about his plight was gathered from classified information which I was not allowed to share with my client. I was not allowed to show him the photo of the man the government claimed was my client. I was the only person at the “hearing” that had ever seen or met with my client.

 I do not usually talk publicly about my personal feelings about judges; however, I will break with that tradition in this case. Let me start out by saying that I have great respect for the judiciary, and I know most judges work extremely hard and care a great deal about the independence of their office. Win or lose I respect every judge I have ever been in front of, except for this particular judge. Judge Leon is a sorry excuse for a judge. He made it clear from day one that he was not going to rule for my client no matter what the evidence. He even said at the beginning of the hearing (and I am paraphrasing although the transcript is cleared, and I could look up his actual quote- if he did not change that too) I could just rule now against your client now just because of the guesthouse he was arrested at. I was tempted to let him make that ruling but I wanted to make my record. And when he ruled against my client his ruling was replete with false facts. I filed at least three, maybe four,  motions to reconsider to force him to get the facts right. And when the facts were all (or mostly) corrected the judge was forced to rule consistent with his threat at the beginning of the hearing. Mr. Bakhouch has been held these 20 years because of the guesthouse he was arrested at. That was the only evidence against Mr. Bakhouch and there were many other people staying at that same guesthouse who, like Mr. Bakhouch, had no connection to terrorism.

 And so, Mr. Bakhouch has wasted over 20 years of his life sitting at Guantanamo without any charges ever filed against him, because he was staying at a guesthouse in Lahore Pakistan where another man was arrested that my government wrongly thought was a terrorist.

 If my client should ever be released I will have much more to say about this disgrace but for now this will suffice.

New Photos from the early days of Guantanamo

 I know that not everyone can access the New York Times because of the paywall. But if you are able- this is worth looking at. 

These are photos, just now released, from the arrival of the first men at Guantanamo in January 2002. 

There is of course always good reason why the government withholds photos and information. And no, it has nothing to do with security. It is because of the shameful methods of our treatment of these men and the dishonesty in the reports. 

Imagine if the reports that I saw in relation to my clients could have been shared widely. Not only would I have had the help of others in researching the lies but the ugly lies would have knocked the narrative out of the governments claims that most (or even many) of the men at Guantanamo were terrorists. 

Again, thanks to Carol Rosenberg for staying on this story all of these years.

Of Course She Did....

 Carol Rosenberg reports:

Gina Haspel Observed Waterboarding at C.I.A. Black Site, Psychologist Testifies

WASHINGTON — During Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing to become director of the C.I.A. in 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein asked her if she had overseen the interrogations of a Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, which included the use of a waterboard.

Ms. Haspel declined to answer, saying it was part of her classified career.

While there has been reporting about her oversight of a C.I.A. black site in Thailand where Mr. Nashiri was waterboarded, and where Ms. Haspel wrote or authorized memos about his torture, the precise details of her work as the chief of base, the C.I.A. officer who oversaw the prison, have been shrouded in official secrecy.

read the rest here.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

 

SCOTUS hollows out America

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2022

US Supreme Court ... Overturning Roe v Wade and other travesties ... Using religious beliefs to alter secular law ... Gutting civil rights remedies ... Looser gun regulations ... The malignant Fifth Circuit ... From Our Man in Washington, Roger Fitch 

"…[I]t's time to discuss religion whether we like it or not, because it's no longer knocking on the door: Sam Alito just sent it in the house with a no-knock warrant and stun grenades that threaten to catch the place on fire" - Thom Hartmann

With Trump gone, the focus in Republican psychopathology has turned to individual supreme court justices, e.g, the ethically-challenged Clarence Thomas, yet one should never forget his fellow-traveller, Sam Alito, because Justice Alito is one angry man. 

There's been an unprecedented leak of Alito's draft majority opinion in the forthcoming abortion decision, Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health, set to overrule Roe v Wade, and the justice's grasp of history has been faulted: resurrecting ancient common law, he applies a legal narrative more consistent with the 17th century than a US history with remedies for "quickening".  

Some see an intellectually-dishonest exercise designed to mask Alito's orthodox, powerful, but legally-irrelevant Roman Catholic beliefs: consider his alarming footnote on a shortfall in adoptable infants. 

It seems a foot in the door for a faith-based system in the US where religiously-defined morality displaces law, a nation where religious adherents become the most sympathetic plaintiffs before a court that intends to use religious belief to alter secular law.

Overturning Roe v Wade is, in this analysis, but one front in a religious war against America, and the draft opinion suggests that the conservative justices don't plan to stop with Roe. The impression that they don't mind being an extension of the Republican Party has lawyers wondering what's coming next. 

Dobbs will have consequences, as many civil rights will be threatened, e.g, same-sex marriage. The leak itself may affect decisions in other cases: e.g, guns and environmental protections..

Most fundamentally, the Dobbs draft endangers the right to privacy first formulated in 1890 by the revered future supreme court justice, Louis Brandeis, and the 1923 decision adopting it. 

Alito: intellectually dishonest

According to law prof Melissa Murray: 

"A decision overruling Roe v. Wade would threaten an entire line of jurisprudence rooted in the 14th Amendment's guarantee of liberty ... [going] back to a 1923 decision guaranteeing parents the right to raise their children free of undue state intervention, and it includes the right to marry, the right to engage in adult sexual relationships and the right to use contraception." 

Besides birth control, medical assistance in pregnancy is in question, even after miscarriages, and creation of life in vitro. 

Sherry Colb believes IVF treatment won't be a problem: for Alito: 

"... women are soil where men can plant their seeds, and soil has no right to uproot the plants that start growing. People who seek IVF, by contrast, do not challenge the role of women in our society. IVF places women in a state of pregnancy, which is where [Alito] wants them."

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READ THE REST HERE

memorial day 2022 part 2

 

memorial day 2022

 

Under the Torture Convention statements made while tortured should not be used....

 I have been a little slow to get this up but I was glad to see my senator (Durbin) and senator Leahy push Biden on what he is going to do about the men at Guantanamo who were tortured and made statements. The bottom line is that those statements should not be used.

This is from their statement and press release:

Durbin, Leahy Seek Clarification of Administration's Position on Use of Torture-Derived Evidence

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, are calling on the Biden Administration to uphold U.S. obligations under the Torture Convention by putting an end to the repeated efforts by Guantanamo military commission prosecutors to use evidence derived from torture.  Guantanamo Bay military commission prosecutors again argued in court that evidence obtained through torture can be used in the capital case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is currently being held at Guantanamo.  In a letter to Attorney General Garland, Defense Secretary Austin, and Secretary of State Blinken, the Senators argue that, despite the Administration’s pledge to “eradicate torture in all its forms,” the military commission prosecutors are not adhering to U.S. obligations.

READ THE REST HERE.

Musical interlude --for our friends in Ukraine....

 

TO SAEED'S MOTHER AND THE MOTHER OF ALL THE DISAPPEARED

 I am not sure if my client's mother is still alive. I hope she is and I hope she will welcome Saeed with open arms.

From Roger Fitch and Our Friends Down Under at Justinian

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When tiring of Trump's unpunished crimes, we can reflect upon those of George Bush, and one of Mr Bush's greatest crimes, official government torture, is back in the news. 

In March, the supreme court decided Zubaydah, accepting the government's "state secrets" claim which blocked the testimony of CIA contractors accused of torture.

Captured by the FBI and CIA, Abu Zubaydah was the first to endure the CIA's "Enhanced Interrogation" (Gestapo "verschärfte Vernehmung"), a program for the systematic torture of "war of terror" prisoners. 

 Zubaydah spent four-and-a-half years in CIA torture camps operated at sundry sites including Thailand, Poland and Lithuania (both paid damages), and Guantánamo. He's been held now for 20 years.

The FBI agents John Kiriakou, who led the capture of Zubaydah, and Ali Soufan, who first interviewed him, opposed the takeover of the case by the CIA, who sent Zubaydah to Thailand for "interrogation" by  James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. 

Water-boarding began, Zubaydah nearly died, and no productive intelligence was derived. Nevertheless, water-board torture continued under the new camp director, Gina Haspel. 

Later, when Zubaydah was held in Poland, the morbidly-curious CIA agent Alfreda Bikowsky made an unauthorised visit just to see him being tortured. 

Where are they all now? John Kiriakou is out of prison (another story) and blogging on Zubaydah. Ali Soufan heads the Soufan Group security consultancy, and sponsors Fordham Law's Center on National Security, and Mitchell and Jessen aren't testifying in Poland's investigation, thanks to the supreme court.

Gina Haspel, since rewarded as Trump's CIA director, advises King & Spalding clients on cybersecurity.

Scheuer: torture team

And Alfreda Bikowsky? Since retiring, the Agency's "Queen of Torture" has been hawking beauty products and life advice for a living. The fabled red-haired member of the Agency's torture team, now married to the equally-odious torture team member Michael Scheuer, recently gave an unrepentant interview to Reuters. 

Is this a great country, or what? 

READ THE REST OF FITCH HERE