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.