It is official... torturer in chief now heads the CIA

Shame on my country. But this is what my country has become over the past few decades and Obama did nothing to stop it when he was president.

So now we have one of the leaders in the torture campaign as the head of the CIA. And don't forget- in addition to torturing individuals that we were interrogating she also destroyed evidence of that torture.

Haspel is a war criminal and she now heads the CIA.

Shame on my country.

Support Political Art....

Ai Weiwei: A 'misfit' in Chicago, a serious artist/activist who likes Instagram and works in Legos

If you find yourself in Chicago in the near future you must go see this exhibit- below is one of the many portraits of activists by Weiwei- all done in legos. It is amazing.

For more on the exhibit click here.

Happy Mothers Day

The Haspel hearing today

Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel has been following the hearing today. I am providing links to two of her blog reports.
one
two

I will catch up on this in a few days but I will just say that Haspel is what my country has become, in a word....cruel.

Today the senate votes on whether a torturer will be in charge of the CIA

Another dismal day in this country of mine. We don't know all of the illegal things Ms. Haspel has done- we know she was involved in torturing suspects into confessing to crimes they did not do and to crimes they did not know about. We also know she destroyed evidence relating to those torture sessions -- including videos of the torture itself.

One of the men charged at the military commission at Guantanamo asked for permission to explain to the senate what she did to him. It probably will not be allowed but even if it is we will never get to see it.

Read more here.

YES, IT IS TRUE....

I am sure Trump is very sad about the release of Mr. Al-Darbi to Saudi Arabia but the fact of the matter is that Mr. Al-Darbi entered into a plea agreememt years ago and under that agreement he was supposed to be returned to Saudi Arabia earlier this year to serve out the rest of his sentence. The Trump administration was in violation of the agreement.
So, the short answer is "no" we are not seeing a change-- only someone convinced the moron that they had to abide by the court order.
Read more about the release here.

Photos from Guantanamo and beyond...

From Mother Jones.... "These photos plunge you into the inner Madness of Guantanamo"

h/o to Walt.

The future of Guantanamo...

I guess, in theory, we will know what Trump wants to do with our Gulag by the end of today...

Read more here.

And this news from Witness Against Torture....

Former detainees in Senegal  deported to Libya Charlie Savage writes in the NY Times,  "...a decision this month by Senegal  to deport two former detainees to their chaotic birth country of Libya has  raised the prospect that the resettlement  system is starting to collapse  under President Trump. After a traumatic  journey, the Libyans apparently  fell into the hands of a hard-line   militia leader who has been accused  of prisoner abuse — and then they   vanished."  Read his article here.  WAT states: "The U.S. has the obligation first and foremost to ensure that former  prisoners are resettled without fear of  additional retribution, and the decision  to deport Khalifa back to Libya  demonstrates a total and utter lack of  commitment to prisoners it unjustly  detained and whose lives remain  irreparable."

The day the music died...

In January I posted about an exhibit in NYC at the International Center for Photography. I finally made it to the exhibit this past weekend and I recommend it to anyone finding themselves in Manhattan.

For the specifics, click here. The show ends in a few weeks (May 6)

Freedom Highway

Rest in peace Yvonne Staples...

Now we are abandoning the men we transferred to safe countries....

Those of you who have been following this blog over the years understand that I have many complaints regarding the Obama's administration and Guantanamo (other issues too but that is beside the point...). Even though the administration was terribly slow at transferring the men who could not go back to their native countries those men were, for the most part, settled in countries where they could live a semblance of a normal life. It seems that all of that is out the window now too- In the past few weeks I started to hear from other attorneys that their clients were suddenely unaccounted for. Now this story has appeared in the New York Times. By way of background you need to understand that deals were reached to convince these countries to take the men who could not go home. It seems that the Trump administration is not abiding by those deals...and so, these men that we wrongly detained for years are now in harms way once again.

Cancer cluster issue....

You may recall last year several of the attorneys for men being charged at the military commission raised an issue regarding the safety of the area where they were being housed and where they worked- because of an alarming cancer cluster amongst personnel assigned to those areas. When the military refused to take any action the attorneys filed a federal lawsuit.... now the judge in that case has denied a preliminary injunction:
This from the National Law Journal:

The lawyers say the area they are required to live and work in at Guantanamo Bay could be contaminated and unsafe.

By Cogan Schneier | March 30, 2018 at 01:37 PM

A federal judge on Friday refused to force the Defense Department to provide defense attorneys alternative housing at Guantanamo Bay amid fears their current quarters are unsafe.
The four plaintiffs, U.S. Judge Advocate General’s Corps and civilian lawyers who represent detainees before the military commission at Guantanamo, sued the Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy and the director of the Office of Military Commissions and Convening Authority last year, alleging they failed to properly investigate environmental hazards at Camp Justice.
The lawyers, who are assigned to work and sometimes live there, asked U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District of Columbia for a preliminary injunction requiring the DOD to further investigate the alleged hazards and offer alternative living and working accommodations.
In denying the preliminary injunction, Collyer wrote that the plaintiffs failed to show a likelihood of success on their arguments because it appeared the department had “examined the relevant data and articulated ‘a rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.’”
Collyer added that the plaintiffs failed to show they would suffer an irreparable injury without the injunction.
“While the alleged harm—risk of cancer—is no doubt ‘great,’ the record does not show that it is currently ‘certain,’ ‘actual,’ or ‘imminent,’” Collyer wrote.
The judge also dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims that the DOD unreasonably delayed the completion of a risk assessment and implementation of controls to address the hazards, as well as their request for a writ of mandamus requiring the department to finish both tasks, for mootness. She said the department fully completed its report, which is now public, as well as completed the appropriate implementations.
“Plaintiffs’ argument does not overcome the fact that the actions sought in their complaint have been undertaken and, to the extent demanded, completed,” the judge wrote.
However, the judge denied the government’s motion to dismiss with respect to the plaintiffs’ allegation that the DOD violated the Administrative Procedures Act by arbitrarily and capriciously deciding Camp Justice is safe.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, which include Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll’s Dan Small and Johanna Hickman and Venable‘s Michael Davis and Margaret Fawal, were not available to comment Friday. The DOD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Navy assigns housing for military and civilian lawyers, as well as support staff, when they’re working at Camp Justice. The camp is located on an old airfield last used in the 1970s.
In July 2015, a lawyer who worked at Camp Justice asked the DOD’s inspector general to investigate whether conditions there may be linked to seven different cancer diagnoses of former employees. Later that year, the Miami Herald reported nine individuals who had worked there were diagnosed with cancer afterward.

And more on Trump's pick to head the CIA

From Juan Cole-

Trump’s Pick to Head CIA Did Oversee torture at Thai black site.  More here. 

And from the Daily Beast- here

Pompeo and Guantanamo...

So the person Trump would like to be the new secretary of state has said these things about Gitmo and torture.

On terrorism, prisons and interrogations:

Pompeo opposes closing Guantanamo Bay detention camp. After a 2013 visit to the prison, Pompeo said, of the prisoners who were on hunger strike, "It looked to me like a lot of them had put on weight."

Pompeo criticized the Obama administration's decision to end secret prisons and its requirement that all interrogators adhere to anti-torture laws.

h/o to the mound of sound