LETTER TO STATE DEPARTMENT RE: MY CLIENT SAEED BAKHOUCH

 23 organizations (including the ACLU and Amnesty International) signed on to a letter to the state department demanding that the State department intervene in my client's arrest in Algeria and force the Algerian government to live up to the assurances it made to the State Department when Saeed was released. So far the state department has not responded-- but apparently the state department thinks they are helpless in enforcing the assurances given to them in advance of Saeed's repatriation to Algeria. The state department has also refused to help facilitate my trip to Algeria by making the proper introductions. 

Center for Constitutional Rights spearheaded the organization of the groups signing on to the letter and a big thank you from me (on behalf of Saeed) for their efforts. Read the letter here. 

The Intercept reports on my client

 .........  read the whole article here.

State Shirking Responsibility

Gorman has continued to try to spur the State Department into action on Bakhouch’s behalf. Nearly two full months after Bakhouch was imprisoned in Algeria, Kadainow finally replied with specifics, saying she had “a chance” to speak with relevant diplomatic colleagues.

“Our Ambassador in Algiers was informed that Mr. Bakhouch is being charged under Algerian law for membership/affiliation with a foreign terrorist organization, which is a serious crime under Algerian law,” Kaidanow wrote. “He is currently under pre-trial detention while his case is under review by the Court d’Instruction, which will ultimately decide whether to bring him to trial or dismiss the charges and release him. The information regarding his case is still sealed.”

“Closing Guantanamo is not just about policy, it’s about people — the people who’ve been detained and tortured by the United States.”

 

 

Kaidanow added, “We continue to assert our interest in his humane treatment and legal rights in a variety of high-level settings.”

From Roger Fitch and Our Friends Down Under

 

The infallibility of SCOTUS

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, JULY 11, 2023

US Supreme Court makes it up as it goes along ... Contrived cases to fit a reactionary agenda ... Plaintiffs with no standing ... Further indulgence for religious discrimination ... Under-equipped judges on a rampage ... Roger Fitch reports from Washington 

The supreme court is in free-fall, an outlaw court making extrajudicial decisions. Spurious or controversial legal doctrines, some invented by the court, are deployed to achieve desired results: usually, the rolling-back of progressive legislation. 

A court that once heard 200 cases a year now hears less than 60, yet far from exercising any judicial restraint, the justices seem to relish "culture war" cases that fit the Catholic majority's rightwing agenda.

The cases that the court now agrees to hear, often manufactured by special-interest groups, are designed to give the conservative majority constitutional "cases or controversies" with which they can overturn policy decisions they dislike, and they're not afraid to manipulate standing and jurisdiction in order to hear them.

A common characteristic of these decisions has been the confusion they cause, but more than that, they bring into question the court's legitimacy. There's an apprehension that the court is becoming a super-legislative body from which there is no appeal, infallible because final, and it's borne out by the final decisions of this year's term:

Habeas corpus

The court began by dashing the hopes of prisoners, closing down appeals based on claims of actual innocence, in the appalling Jones v Hendrix, more here.  

    READ THE REST HERE.

No surprises here....

Men, like my Algerian client, were tortured at the hands of the US and have never received the help they so desperately need. 

As reported in The Guardian today:

The first UN investigator to be allowed to visit Guantánamo has called on the US government to provide urgent rehabilitation treatment for the men it tortured in the wake of 9/11 to repair their severe physical and psychological injuries and meet its commitments under international law.

In an interview with the Guardian, the UN monitor on human rights while countering terrorism, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, said that the US had a responsibility to redress the harms it inflicted on its Muslim torture victims. Existing medical treatment, both at the prison camp in Cuba and for detainees released to other countries, was inadequate to deal with multiple problems such as traumatic brain injuries, permanent disabilities, sleep disorders, flashbacks and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

read the rest here.

It is not enough to release the men. Most of the men, like my client, were never charged with a crime. But they were tortured and detained, many for decades. We must help them.