Crowley Growls

"Movie night" at Guantánamo is the latest product of the Bush propaganda machine. The government has announced screenings will be arranged for the best behaved Guantánamo inmates…..how positively humanitarian!

The idea that people deprived of their freedom for more than five years (men and boys who have literally starved themselves and endured force-feeding to protest their imprisonment) can be placated with a little light entertainment is contemptible.

It seems clear that the purpose of this latest campaign is not to win over Guantánamo’s critics (who would be persuaded by such feeble nonsense?) but to inflame the far-right wingnuts and stir-up Gitmo frenzy amongst the Limbaugh fringe.

Monica Crowley (an Ann Coulter wannabe and a reliable conduit of government misinformation) is duly outraged,

Yes, your tax money is now paying for some of the detainees to chill out to a flick …. some of the world’s most hardened jihadists are getting dinner and a movie. In the Caribbean. With wooing like this, Abu Zabaydah might propose soon.

Crowley casts her darts widely and wildly:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, longtime adviser Karen Hughes, former First Lady Barbara Bush, and the current First Lady have all reportedly advised the president to close Gitmo because it’s “hurting U.S. credibility and image abroad.” And it looks like this gang and their argument is holding sway.

If anything, Crowley's list of "terror-appeasers" only proves how isolated GTMO's supporters have become. As we know, scores of these "hardened jihadists" have been cleared for release by the government's own procedures. These men don't need to "chill out to a flick" they need their human rights respected, their right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus restored, and the unlawful prison camp that houses them closed for good

Cageprisoners Speaks Out

Last week, the good folks at Cageprisoners sent an open letter to Gordon Brown, the U.K.'s new Prime Minister. Tony Blair's complicity in the Bush administration's crimes destroyed his moral and political standing in British public opinion. Mr. Brown should now do the right thing, both by standing up for British residents in Guantánamo as well using whatever influence he has with the American government to help close the prison camp and end the injustice of indefinite detention for all of Guantánamo's inmates.

The Right Honourable Gordon Brown PM

10 Downing Street

Dear Prime Minister

We, the undersigned, relatives of British residents detained in Guantanamo Bay detention facility, former Guantanamo prisoners, lawyers for the prisoners, and concerned individuals, call upon you to use all means at your disposal to obtain the return to this country of all British residents illegally detained at Guantanamo Bay. All have made homes in this country; some, like Omar Deghayes after fleeing possible torture and death in Libya. They have now been detained for five years or more without charge or trial, in a prison where UN officials have documented torture and abuse. We are very concerned about their physical and mental wellbeing.

Today Americans celebrate their Independence Day, rightly highlighting the concepts of equality, liberty and rights enshrined in their Constitution. Today, the Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay sadly celebrates its 2000th day. The Guantanamo Bay prisoners are denied those cherished rights: the ‘unalienable rights’ to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, the rights to a speedy trial, humane treatment and due process contained in the US Bill of Rights. Instead, 375 people are still subjected to arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment, denied the rights that mark civilised society and the rule of law. This is having a devastating effect on the physical and mental health of the detainees. At least four detainees have died within the last 13 months. We are marking this day with the launch of an exhibition and public meeting on Guantanamo at the House of Commons and welcome you to attend.

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said he would have Guantanamo closed 'this afternoon' rather than tomorrow. We call for you, likewise, to add your voice to the calls for its closure.

No-one has been released from Guantanamo as a result of a legal process. The British government’s refusal to act on behalf of the British residents leaves them in a legal black hole. We ask that the British Government accept its moral responsibility for these men and negotiate for them to be reunited with their families here or in a safe place of their choosing.

We urge you to make this a priority in the first days of your premiership. To ignore such abuses will set back any ‘war on terrorism’. Please do everything you can to bring back the British residents before their health and lives are irretrievably damaged.

CLICK HERE to read the letter with its full list of signatories

Defending Abraham

Robyn Blumner in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Soldier's act of valor was not performed on the battlefield Heroism comes in many forms. To be sure, courage is demonstrated through feats of great physical risk on and off the battlefield. But to me, the greatest heroes of the modern era are those who stand for integrity and character when under intense pressure to do otherwise.

Bob Dylan said a hero is ''someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.'' Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham is a hero in this sense. He likely changed the course of history for the better, and he did it armed with a simple statement of truth. READ FULL ARTICLE

Abraham's "Innuendo"

The DoJ is smearing Lt. Col. Abraham, whose affidavit exposes the combatant status review tribunals for the sham that they are.

From the AP:

The Justice Department responded in federal court documents Friday, saying Abraham's affidavit ``reflects a fundamental misunderstanding'' of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. Government attorneys said Abraham did not back up his ``innuendo'' that the process was slanted.

Abraham said he was not allowed to review information from other agencies, but the Justice Department said that's not part of the process. The tribunal is set up to review the best relevant information provided by intelligence agencies after broad searches, not to conduct its own hunt through reams of documents, the government said.

OSCE Calls on U.S. to Close GTMO

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a major diplomatic institution since its founding in the Cold War era, has called on the U.S. government to close Guantánamo. Given the challenges facing the United States in the 21st century, can our leaders afford to alienate the international community any longer?

The latest installment of "Our Man in Washington"

Roger Fitch Esq • July 5, 2007

Our Man in Washington (From Justinian)

It was the Supreme Court’s last orders list, on the last day of the 2006 term. After giving big business everything it wanted this term, Justice Anthony Kennedy had decided to come on board the Guantanamo detention cases. The brief order gave the detainees even more than they sought.

It takes five votes to grant a motion for a rehearing, so when Kennedy joined the four “liberals” on the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in Boumediene/Al Odah, it was an omen of a coming victory of some sort for the Guantanamo detainees. They’d previously had their hopes dashed by the April order of the court refusing certiorari.

Lawyers for the Guantanamo detainees had just filed a new motion in the District Court in Washington, seeking to forestall dismissal of the pending habeas petitions. Their notice summarises the current detainee cases in the federal courts. Now, with the grant of certiorari, all the pending cases should be safe until the October term, when the Supreme Court will take up the Boumediene/Al Odah appeal.

In April, Justices Kennedy and John Stevens left the door open in their opinion for a further cert petition if circumstances changed. Now it seems change has occurred, and many are suggesting it was the Abraham affidavit attached to the petition for rehearing in the Supreme Court.

An insider in the Combatant Status Review Tribunal process, Lt Col Stephen Abraham, filed a statement with the Supreme Court attesting to the institutional irregularity and inherent unfairness of the CSRTs conducted in Guantanamo.

The Abraham affidavit is included in the latest Supreme Court filing in the Al Odah appeal.

There are many things wrong with CSRTs, as we always knew. They were only set up to evade the 2004 Rasul decision, relying on a dictum of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the companion Hamdi case that some other tribunal might be able to provide the rights the Supreme Court was directing the Government to provide to detainees in DC District Court in the form of habeas. Scott Horton has described the whole “enemy combatant fraud” perfectly in Harper’s Magazine.

District Court Judge James Robertson largely ignored the CSRTs, while Joyce Hens Green of the District Court and DC Appeals Judge Judith Rogers openly scorned them. The Congress never explicitly authorised CSRTs, and the real regulations they displaced (eg: those implementing the Geneva Conventions’ Article 5 requirement of PoW hearings) are still on the Pentagon books, awaiting enforcement.

The CSRTs have been further discredited in the recent decisions of military commission judges in Guantanamo, especially the careful opinion of Judge Colonel Peter Brownback in denying reconsideration of the Khadr case.

Another blow to the new Military Commissions Act, and thus to the CSRTs, is the 4th Circuit’s decision in the al-Marri case. It seems that the president of the United States, can’t, after all, unilaterally declare anyone in the US without a US passport to be an “enemy combatant”, and throw him in a US Navy brig. And a CSRT isn’t going to help. A good rundown of the al-Marri case may be found at the National Security Advisors blog.

* * *

An alternative ground for the Supreme Court’s decision to grant certiorari may have been the mala fides of the government, specifically the unseemly rush to forcefully deport Gitmo detainees to possible torture. Human rights organisations have been crying foul at the US government’s refoulement (the internationally forbidden practice of rendering to torture) of Gitmo sufferers to such bastions of human rights as Libya and Tunisia.

Some extralegal deportations have already occurred, without any advance notice to the lawyers, at times in violation of court orders, and always without the consent of the deportee. Where possible, they are carried out against detainees who have never seen lawyers.

Along with Tunisians, Libyans seem the preferred targets of the government’s zeal to send released detainees to possible torture or death.

Those of us who thought the sadistic mistreatment of detainees was likely rooted in George Bush’s west Texan childhood – never afterwards effaced by any amount of Andover, Harvard or Yale – have now learned that the real author of the torture policy may be the vice president.

The Washington Post has a new series on Cheney that sheds considerable light. According to the series, Cheney’s legal counsel David Addington actually wrote the offending “torture memo” signed by John Yoo:

“The vice president’s lawyer advocated what was considered the memo’s most radical claim: that the president may authorise any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line of torture. US and treaty laws forbidding any person to ‘commit torture’, that passage stated, ‘do not apply’ to the commander-in-chief, because Congress “may no more regulate the president’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.”

Also interesting was this revelation of where Cheney draws the line:

“That same day, Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo signed off on a second secret opinion, the contents of which have never been made public. According to a source with direct knowledge, that opinion approved as lawful a long list of specific interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA including waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that the US government classified as a war crime in 1947. The opinion drew the line against one request: threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

* * *

Just lately, several of the Bush regime’s more conspicuous miscarriages of justice have been back in the news. As noted, the al-Marri experiment has been defeated in the DC Court of Appeals. In Miami, the Padilla case is going badly, with the FBI’s own witness exculpating Padilla. Even the case of John Walker Lindh is being reappraised.

And yet another stateside “enemy combatant” is back in court. The American Abu Ali, who was persuaded by Saudi police to confess a desire to kill George Bush, has been serving a 30-year sentence. His appeal is being considered by the 4th Court of Appeals, where it was argued by David Hicks’ civilian lawyer, Josh Dratel.

Ominously for the government, the Munaf case seems headed for the Supreme Court.

Even the help of DC Appeals Court Judge David Sentelle couldn’t save Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff and all-purpose flunkey, from fronting jail for perjury and other offences.

As mentioned in my article of June 4, it would not have been the first time Judge Sentelle had a shot at ameliorating Republican convictions; in fact he is an old hand at this sort of thing. But when he declined to keep Scooter out of jail pending his appeals, George Bush did what Sentelle couldn’t – he commuted Libby’s sentence.

Libby was an official in the office of the vice president, but his old boss has rather surprisingly decided that OVP is not part of the executive branch, and therefore does not have to comply with executive orders, even George Bush’s. The Vice is now claiming that he is not even part of the US government! That absurd claim brought many comments including this, from Dan Froomkin of The Washington Post.

Finally, Antonin Scalia has shown his (bloody) colours on the torture issue. At one of their Bar Association functions, Canadian lawyers were astonished to hear Scalia, the US Supreme Court justice with perhaps the greatest intellectual pretensions, commending the efficacy of torture, and doing it based on (shudder) a popular TV program, the torture-every-week-for-patriotic-purposes 24. Human Rights First was shocked.

Maybe it’s time Cheney and Scalia went duck-hunting again. No torture would be necessary. Anything could happen, and the world would be a safer place.

Judge Brownback holds his ground:

Prosecutors have had no luck in reinstating the charges against Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was detained as a teenager in Afghanistan. The charges were dismissed in early June when an upstanding military military judge ruled that the military commissions have no jurisdiction over "enemy combatants" because the insidious Military Commissions Act, (which established the commissions system) applies to only "unlawful alien enemy combatants."

"Guantanamo judge rejects charges for Canadian" Reuters (via Ottawa Citizen)

A Guantánamo Digest:

• Jesus Christ joins "the worst of the worst" in a hit play - Somerville Journal
• Mitt Romney, torture advocate and presidential candidate, also tortures animals - Wonkette
• Shaker Aamer's nine-year-old daughter begs for her father's release from GTMO - The Independent
• Bush/Putin Kennebunkport sleepover party besieged by demonstrators - Fosters Online
• In this era of torture and secret prisons, the "Family Jewels" are no big deal - Baltimore Chronicle

CERT GRANTED!

Congrats to the Boumediene and Al-Odah teams:

CERTIORARI GRANTED

06-1195 ) BOUMEDIENE, LAKHDAR, ET AL. V. BUSH PRESIDENT OF U.S., ET AL.

06-1196 ) AL ODAH, KHALED A. F., ET AL. V UNITED STATES, ET AL.

The petitions for rehearing are granted. The orders entered April 2, 2007, denying the petitions for writs of certiorari are vacated. The petitions for writs of certiorari are granted. The cases are consolidated and a total of one hour is allotted for oral argument. As it would be of material assistance to consult any decision in Bismullah, et al., v. Gates, No. 06-1197, and Parhat, et al., v. Gates, No. 06-1397, currently pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, supplemental briefing will be scheduled upon the issuance of any decision in those cases.

Correcting Col. Moe

Some of our favorite people (Mark, Wells, Gita) wrote letters to the editor of the NY Times in response to Col. Morris Davis' laughable op-ed.

Here is a selection:

Col. Morris D. Davis (“The Guantánamo I Know,” Op-Ed, June 26) describes a pristine prison where detainees are given three meals a day. What he ignores is that Guantánamo’s new prison facilities subject detainees to virtually total and continuous isolation in tiny windowless cells.

Particularly galling is Colonel Davis’s assertion that David Hicks, the only person to be convicted by military commissions, stipulated that he had been “treated properly.” In fact, this carefully worded statement, which Mr. Hicks had to make as a condition of his plea agreement, said only that he had not been “illegally treated.” This concession means little for a government that has interpreted waterboarding as compliant with United States law.

In a previous court filing, Mr. Hicks alleged being beaten repeatedly, sodomized and forced into painful stress positions while in United States custody. If one of Colonel Davis’s soldiers were picked up by Iran or North Korea and held for years in solitary confinement in a small, windowless room, do you think he would be praising the detention as “clean, safe, and humane”?

Jennifer Daskal

Senior Counterterrorism Counsel

Human Rights Watch

Washington, June 26, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Col. Morris D. Davis paints Guantánamo as a model, humane prison in which the rule of law reigns. If only it were so.

My clients are enduring their sixth year of detention at Gitmo. None have even been charged with a crime. Because they are unlikely to ever face trial, they will never have the opportunity to see the secret evidence against them. They will never have a chance to refute the coerced, hearsay statements that have so far justified their detention.

The government claims that it can hold them in this legal limbo for the duration of our war on terror. The extreme isolation and conditions my clients face are unbearable.

Many have been punished for disciplinary infractions by having their beards shaved. Most have been stripped of their trousers so that they cannot pray while modestly dressed. Some have been interrogated at gunpoint and threatened with rendition.

One of my clients recently tried to slit his wrists, explaining to me afterward that death would be more merciful than life here.

There is nothing “contrived” about these facts. Marc Falkoff

Chicago, June 26, 2007

The writer, an assistant professor of law at Northern Illinois University, represents 16 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo.

•

To the Editor:

The Guantánamo that Col. Morris D. Davis knows is obviously not the same prison where our clients have been held without charge or trial for more than five years.

Majid Khan and Mohammed Al Qahtani have been tortured so badly that any evidence against them would be inadmissible under any legal standard.

Hundreds of men waste away in isolation in small metal cells that any regularly constituted court would reject as a violation of United States and international law. None have received a fair hearing. The results are predictable: four detainees are dead, nearly a hundred suffer from mental illness, and countless others continue to suffer abuse daily.

Guantánamo Bay is a failure. Its existence demeans and threatens our nation. It must be closed now.

J. Wells Dixon

Gitanjali S. Gutierrez

New York, June 26, 2007

The writers are staff attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

•

To the Editor:

Col. Morris D. Davis paints a rosy picture of Guantánamo Bay and the military commissions. I traveled there three weeks ago; the Guantánamo I came to know is starkly different from the place he describes.

The commissions fall well short of international standards, including by permitting the use of evidence obtained under coercion. The likelihood is high that someone on trial before the military commissions will have been coerced during his detention.

The Defense Department’s own investigations document that detainees have been kept awake all night, subjected to loud music and extreme hot and cold temperatures, and beaten.

Regardless of actual conditions, the arbitrary deprivation of liberty is inherently inhumane. When people can be held without being charged, and denied real opportunities to challenge their detention, America’s image and authority in the world are undermined.

Guantánamo and the military commissions are unworthy of a nation that prizes justice and aspires to lead the world.

Priti Patel

Associate Attorney

Law and Security Program

Human Rights First

New York, June 26, 2007

Dick the Torturer

It should come as no suprise that Dick Cheney's people played a key role in setting the interrogation guidelines for prisoners captured in the "war on terror." According to the Washington Post,

Cheney and his allies ... pioneered [emphasis added] a distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

These brave pioneers in Office of the VP have now homesteaded well beyond the frontiers of fantasy. As we have learned in recent days, Dick Cheney now functions as senator at large and operates within the legislative as well as executive branch. What future powers will the VP assume? Supreme Court Justice? Commissioner of Baseball? Holy Roman Emperor? Pope?

Portrait Of A Gitmo Propagandist

(Originally on Huffington Post)

Colonel Moe is at it again. Perhaps you remember when Moe wanted Major Mori, the military attorney that was appointed to represent the Guantánamo detainee from Australia, brought up on charges for doing too good of a job for his client? Aside from the fact that Moe apparently prefers intimidation as a legal technique, the Colonel also fancies himself a master of spin. In 2004 the chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions wrote a how-to guide for manipulating the media complete with a six-point plan, "Effective Engagement in the Public Opinion Arena: A Leadership Imperative in the Information Age" which he published in Air & Space Power, an official journal of the Air Force.

In this telling little treatise, Moe concedes that the public has "questions about operations in Iraq, prisoner abuse allegations at military confinement facilities, etc. Moe maintains that these challenges require the Armed Services to seriously beef up their public relations campaign. As the Colonel so eloquently puts it,

For better or worse, public opinion matters. Public opinion affects the political arena and can influence funding, oversight and direction to the Department of Defense ... military's historical approach to responding to controversy is inadequate in today's instantaneous information age. The military's rules of engagement in the competition for the public's opinion need to be reassessed.

Moe reminds military authorities to craft a message and "stay on the offensive" and notes approvingly that Air Force training now involves extensive media relations instruction including such courses as The War for Public Opinion: Propaganda, Public Affairs and the Military-Media Relationship, which might as well be called Misinformation 101.

Today, Moe was given one of the most prized bullhorns in American media, an op-ed in the New York Times, the "paper of record." In his editorial, Moe maintains that the Guantánamo he knows really isn't that bad; he brags that the facilities are similar to high security prisons in Indiana and Michigan! Of course, the crucial difference between lawful civilian jails in the United States and Bush's illegal prison camp is not the architecture but the fact that prisoners in the United States have been charged or convicted of crimes whereas the vast majority of Guantánamo's inmates have never and, according to the government, will never be charged with anything at all. Many of these men have been cleared for release by the government's own procedures and yet they continue to languish in Bush's gulag in solitary confinement under the harshest of conditions. Many of these men are being held in cells constructed entirely of metal. The cells admit no natural light or air and they cannot converse with anyone while in their cell unless they kneel on the floor and attempt to shout greetings through the tiny gap where the food is pushed in. They pass their days in tedium and loneliness.

Unlike the prisoners being held in our supermax facilities the men at Guantánamo are not allowed any family visits or phone calls, they are only allowed one book per week, they are given no newspapers, they are not allowed to watch television, they cannot listen to a radio, they cannot take classes (they are forbidden from learning English) and most of these men are not allowed to touch another human being...not even thru the mesh link fence of the outdoor pens.

Moe is quite simply lying when he says that Guantánamo prisoners are offered "at least two hours of outdoor recreation each day." First, there is nothing recreational about standing outside in the blistering sun in a six foot by four foot pen (no shade allowed). Second, prisoners in Guantánamo's newest Camp 6 have gone for days and weeks without being allowed into those stifling pens. It is also a regular practice of the authorities to wake prisoners in their sleep and offer them outdoor "recreational time" time in the middle of the night. In the spirit of dignified resistance, the prisoners often refuse.

The Colonel touts Guantánamo's medical services, which are administered by "the same practitioners who treat American service members." In fact, Guantánamo's medical authorities have been cruelly negligent with my Libyan client, Al-Ghizzawi who is racked with abdominal pains that may indicate life-threatening liver cancer. The GTMO medical staff keeps the prisoners entirely in the dark about their medical condition and my client was not informed that he had been diagnosed with hepatitis b and tuberculosis until these facts were revealed in a government brief. I was the one to give Mr. Al-Ghizzawi the news of his condition. Finally and perhaps most egregiously, medical personnel in Guantánamo violate their Hippocratic oaths by participating in punitive force-feeding, an excruciating and degrading procedure in which a tube is forced down a prisoner's esophagus long before the prisoner is in any health risk from a hunger strike (which is itself an act of conscience undertaken by powerless and victimized persons throughout history).

Moe refers to PR work as "engagement in the public opinion arena." In military terminology, "engagement" means combat or a hostile exchange and indeed, Moe's articles and interviews constitute a propaganda assault on the American people. The Colonel has become a central figure in a DoD propaganda campaign against a public that is growing increasingly aware of, and hostile to, the Bush administration's program of illegal indefinite detention, endless war and secrecy. Colonel Moe Davis: remember his name and remember that he is a propagandist by trade.

A disturbing window into the CSRT process:

Lieutenent Colonel Stephen Abraham of the U.S. Army Reserves, (a Newport Beach attorney in his civilian life) has seen the CSRT (combatant status review tribunal) process first hand. He has been on a tribunal himself and has served as a go-between various agencies compiling information for the tribunals.

In a sworn statement submitted to the Supreme Court in the Al-Odah and Boumediene cases, Abraham makes it clear that the CSRT is a sham process and that the limited review of the CSRT findings provided by the Detainee Treatment Act are an inadequate substitute for habeas corpus. In poking around various intelligence agencies and offices, Abraham found that there was never any serious attempt to compile possible exculpatory information regarding a prisoner, and that the officers involved in compiling information for the CSRT recorder were often inexperienced and had no legal or intelligence expertise.

Abraham's description of his own experience on a CSRT does not inspire any confidence in the process:

On one occasion, I was assigned to a CSRT panel with two other officers, an Air Force colonel and an Air Force major, the latter understood by me to be a judge advocate. We reviewed evidence presented to us regarding the recommended status of a detainee. All of us found the information presented to lack substance.

What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence. Statements allegedly made by percipient witnesses lacked detail. Reports presented generalized statements in indirect and passive forms without stating the source of the information or providing a basis for establishing the reliability or the credibility of the source. Statements of interrogators presented to the panel offered inferences from which we were expected to draw conclusions favoring a finding of “enemy combatant” but that, upon even limited questioning from the panel, yielded the response from the Recorder, “We’ll have to get back to you.” The personal representative did not participate in any
meaningful way.

On the basis of the paucity and weakness of the information provided both during and after the CSRT hearing, we determined that there was no factual basis for concluding that the individual should be classified as an enemy combatant.

After reaching its decision, the Director of OARDEC, Rear Admiral McGarrah, immediately questioned the panel's findings and ordered the CSRT reopened. The panel stuck to its guns and decided that the prisoner could not be classified as a non-enemy combatant. Needless to say, Abraham was never asked to be on a CSRT again. If the detainee in question was one of those unlucky ones that went through multiple "do-over" CSRTs, it may be that another panel later found him to be an "enemy combatant." This even could have been our client Mr. Al-Ghizzawi. In Mr. Al-Ghizzawi's "first" CSRT he was found to not be an enemy combatant. Six weeks later a new panel was convened and based on the same evidence they found him to be an enemy.

Press release from the Australian Bar Association:

Honorary Membership for Major Dan Mori

June 19 2007

The Australian Bar Association will present Major Michael D Mori USMC with Honorary Membership at its Conference dinner on 29 June 2007. The award of honorary membership made for exceptional service to justice and the rule of law is due recognition of Major Mori’s passionate and fearless advocacy for Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, an Australian convicted of providing material support for terrorism.

Stephen Estcourt QC, President of the Australian Bar Association, said: “This award of honorary membership recognises the work done by Dan Mori in consistently seeking to have his client dealt with fairly and in accordance with the rule of law. It is the time-honoured role for an advocate to stand between the state and an individual. Major Mori did that and did it in the best tradition of an advocate.”

Michael Dante Mori (born October 4, 1965) is a major in the United States Marine Corps. He spent four years in the enlisted ranks, reporting for training at the USMC Recruit Depot at Parris Island, South Carolina. After attending Norwich University, a military college, he became an officer in the Marine Corps. In 1994 he graduated from the Western New England College School of Law in Springfield,Massachusetts, before being admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts. He is married and has twin boys. A sister lives in Australia.

Mori was appointed by the United States Department of Defence to represent Hicks in November 2003, and continued to handle Hicks’s case until May 2007. Mori has been featured on numerous occasions in the Australian media in relation to developments in Hicks’s case, and he frequently expressed concern over Hicks’s extended interrogations and the delays in bringing his client to trial. Major Mori has defended his client in the public and political sphere both in Australia and the USA. He was one of the 2005 recipients of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award, which was presented “to the five military defence lawyers who represented the first round of defendants at the Guantánamo Bay tribunals and challenged the entire military commission system.”

On November 10, 2006 Mori attended the signing of the Fremantle Declaration by the Attorneys-General of the States and Territories of Australia. The declaration urges judicial fairness to protect the legal rights of Australians at home and abroad. Mori said “It’s disheartening that federal ministers won’t fight for an Australian citizen to have the same rights as an American.” On February 15, 2004, during an interview for one of Australia’s leading current affairs television programs, Mori summarized his passionate belief in justice and the rule of law: “America’s always had a proud tradition of ensuring fairness and due process. Now’s not the time to sacrifice those values.”

Following Hicks’s departure from Guantanamo Bay to complete his sentence in Yatala Prison, South Australia in mid May 2007 - Mori was re-assigned as a staff judge advocate, or legal adviser, to the commanders of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.

Read the original version HERE.

The Assault on Lawyers

Scott Horton, a New York-based attorney and the author of the weblog No Comment has a article coming out in the July issue of Harpers, examining the Bush administration's assault on habeas counsel. As Horton notes,

The habeas laywers have been tarred with ethnic slurs and accusations of homosexuality, accused of undermining national security, subjected to continual petty harassment. They have also had their livelihoods threatened through appeals to their paying clients. These events have been reported as separate incidents in the press, but this conduct results from a carefully orchestrated Bush Administration policy that goes under the rubric of "lawfare."

Horton is, of course, referring to the gay-baiting of Clive Stafford Smith, the Jew-baiting of Tom Wilner, Cully Stimson's ill-conceived scheme to organize a boycott of firms involved in pro bono Guantánamo work and a host of other abuses and attacks on Gitmo lawyers by the Bush gang.

On this blog and through Candace's articles, we have tried to draw attention to this campaign against habeas counsel and military defense lawyers (most notably Major Mori). Here is a selective digest (ah, the memories!):

Locking Attorneys out of Guantánamo
Is there a Larry Lurking in the Bushies?
The Gagging of Michael Mori
Moe and His-Six Point Plan
Moe Davis Takes a Page from Ho Chi Minh's Playbook
An Open Letter to Cully Stimson

Candace herself has been subjected to outrageous bureaucratic games and harassment. When Candace tried to meet with Razak Ali, her Algerian client, the authorities at the base effectively pretended that no such person existed although Candace had the correct spelling and ISN number (not to mention a court order authorizing the visit). Upon returning from Guantánamo she filed a motion to show cause asking why the government should not be held in contempt of court; the judge gave the government a thorough dressing down.

Since that date, Candace has been "punished" with a special military escort who follows her every move at the base. Candace actually enjoys this special treatment (it means shorter lines). She does not enjoy the fact that her notes are reviewed by the authorities and military personnel have made unsettling and alarmingly well-informed remarks about her client meetings, her work and her family. Candace was also part of a group of lawyers who were informed that a FOIA request had been made about habeas counsel violations of the protective order governing attorney-client access and communications. In the past, these conveniently timed requests have come from government-friendly right-wing media outlets ... all part of the Bush administration's assault on lawyers.... So what was Candace's violation? Apparently on one occasion she filed a court document without sending it in for prior review... of course the document was for her client Razak- Ali for whom she has no classified, confidential or protected information, so the fact that she even had to send it in for approval befpre filing is annoying to say the least.... but it is the rule and Candace humbly apologized for her oversight..,.