HIS OWN FAULT

As I reported earlier this week Judge John B. Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled once again that Guantanamo prisoner Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi was not entitled to any medical care beyond what the government decides he needs, assuming that it is any at all, and that neither Al-Ghizzawi nor his attorney were, are or presumably ever will be, entitled to look at his medical records.… Judge Bates apparently has no interest in viewing the medical records himself because the government's word appears to be sacrosanct if not ex cathedra, and certainly not subject to challenge by some mere arbitrarily held prisoner. Judge Bates held that allowing Al-Ghizzawi access to his own records would allow him to “second guess” the medical care (that he is not receiving) at the base…. Of course it would also allow Al-Ghizzawi to show the court (and the world) that the government of the United States is deliberately lying about his health care… That, of course, is beside the point.

(Click on the title to read the rest of what I have to say about the decision....)

NO MEDICAL CARE FOR AL-GHIZZAWI (updated with link)

(Click on the title to read the judge's order. Many thanks to Charles Gittings and the Project to enforce the geneva conventions (www.pegc.us/ )for posting this so I could link to it...btw one of the many arguments the judge ignored was my geneva convention argument... the judge even gave the government a chance to address the issue which I raised in my reply brief...coincidently giving the government the last word in my motion.... the government threw in one sentence on the subject and spent the other 14 and 2/3rds pages presenting new facts that I was not allowed to rebut and the judge himself ignored the whole question of the geneva conventions issue in his Order...)

Judge Bates entered the order yesterday... I know I shouldn't be surprised that the judge continues to believe everything the government says and refuses to allow us to even see the medical records... but I am. In fact one would think that even if the judge was not going to allow Al-GHizzawi or his counsel to see his records... that he would ask to see the records himself just to be sure (in the off chance that Al-GHizzawi and I are not lying)... sigh...The judge actually goes so far as to blame Al-Ghizzawi for his health problems and trivializes his condition...
I thank everyone who submitted letters and signed petitions.... Judge Bates does not. In a footnote he stated that he found it "inappropriate" but hey, I say if a letter writing campaign was good enough for Scooter Libby in trying to stay out of jail it is certainly good enough for Mr. Al-Ghizzawi in trying to stay alive.

Talking Dog interview with Joanne Mariner

Today the talking dog interviewed Joanne Mariner the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program Director at Human Rights Watch. Click on the title to read the interview... Hats off to the talking dog for continuing his efforts to interview those associated with guantanamo, the policies that led to quantanamo and those trying to remedy this atrocity...

Going after... licenses.. part 3...

Click on the title to go to Scott Horton's discussion today about the duty of the legal bar to police those who advocate torture.... and protect those who have attempted to follow supreme court precedent...

"A system that punishes and shames Matthew Diaz, yet obstructs any investigation into the misconduct of John Yoo and Jim Haynes, and particularly their focal rule in the introduction of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, is corrupt. Indeed, it persecutes the innocent and rewards the guilty. A bar association that disbars Matthew Diaz and leaves Yoo and Haynes free to practice is fundamentally corrupt. In essence, this choice reflects a legal profession that puts upholding the will of the Executive, even when it commands the most egregious and unlawful conduct, over the Rule of Law. It reflects the abnegation of the bedrock principles of the profession and the principles of the American Constitution and the Revolution which gave rise to it."

Going after medical licenses... part 2

Click on the title for the original blog on cabdrollery....

I did a bit of checking into the history of complaints about gitmo personnel with licenses in California... and it seems there is good reason to make this a state statute as opposed to leaving it in the hands of the agencies that police themselves (we know how that goes, don't we....?)

It seems that back in 2005 a complaint was filed against John Edmondson (the former head of detainee care and a CA licensee). First the California Board denied that it possessed jurisdiction over activities at the base. Then a mandamus action was filed in state court against the board alleging that under CA state law the Board not only possesses jurisdiction but was required to investigate complaints of unprofessional conduct. In response the Board conceded that they possessed jurisdiction but that they were exercising administrative discretion not to proceed in investigating complaints (citing budgetary constraints, inherent difficulties in conducting an investigation abroad, etc.) Ultimately the Guantanamo detainees lost on that point. Anyone familiar with administrative law knows that once an agency gets into the realm of discretion it's almost impossible to force action. Maybe there has been a change on that board since 2005...but I can tell you with certainty that they were rather resistant about digging into this issue at all back then. For that matter so was the AMA, WMA, and WHO.

Maybe we can make all of these agencies do the right thing now? and what about the lawyers and the American Bar Association?

Going after medical licenses... but why stop there?

Click on the title to get to the blog "cabdrollery".... for a discussion about a bill being introduced in California to take away the medical licenses for doctors and psychologists involved in torture ("Thats the Ticket") .... at the end of the article you will notice a discussion that was initiated by one of the gitmo attorneys, suggesting going after the law licenses too... wonder who that was??
I actually sent out emails to a couple of my favorite legal bloggers trying to understand their position on this topic... some seem to have no opinion and others feel as I do... that those who advocate torture on a policy level do not deserve the honor of being an attorney at law.

Latest appellate argument on gitmo issues

On Friday Sabin Willett argued before the U.S. Circuit Court in DC in the case of Parhat vs. the bush gang. The Panel was Sentelle, Garland, Griffith. There are at least two interesting things to report (I am not reporting from an eye witness view as I was not there)... one is the panel didn't seem to be accepting everything the government argued (a nice change for the DC Circuit) in fact the government tried to argue that the standard of review under the Detainee Treatment Act should be a "some evidence" standard (like everything else coming out of the "justice" department it heretofore was not heard of in the law) but interestingly one of the judges was prepared for this nonsense and reminded the government attorney that the solicitor argued in front of the supreme court that the standard was "preponderance of evidence" .. a slightly different standard than "some evidence".
When the transcrip is available I will try to figure out a way to post it... but that brings me to the second interesting part of the argument... part of the argument was done behind closed doors...because of the secrets... you know "national security"... what a crock.
So the Courts might finally be figuring out how they have been hoodwinked these past 7+ years but they still fall for the governments ploy of doing things in secret so the rest of the world can't see or hear the bogus arguments.

NEW TORTURE MEMOS AND "CLASSIFIED INFORMATION"

Click on the title to read the Washington Post story about the latest release of Yoo's illegal memos that justified and made torture legal in these United States.
There are really two stories here... the memos again show how third rate lawyers with no ethical principles have been running the "justice" system in the United States but beneath that is the story about the classification system being misused by our criminal government to keep inconvenient information from the rest of us. Although we have long known about these additional memos they were withheld all these years "for national security reasons."
I have written about the things withheld on the basis of national security in Mr. Al-Ghizzawi's case but to remind you.... They have tried to keep half of his torture secret (Al-Ghizzawi wrote a six page letter outlining his torture at US hands... the first three pages are "classified" the last three pages are "cleared".) A letter describing Al-Ghizzawi's still failing health has recently been "classified" and I have to fly to DC to the "secret facility" and have a "cleared" translator meet me there to translate the letter for me... and the letter must remain at the secret facility in my secret drawer. (last time that happened the letter was about Al-Ghizzawi's health and the fact that he misses his family..I resubmitted the letter for clearance in English and it cleared, go figure...)... The complete record of Al-Ghizzawi's CSRT (combat status review tribunal) is "classified" but the full version only shows that there is no evidence against him.. a fact found by the first panel that reviewed his case and found him to not be an enemy combatant. Clearly the classification is used to make it seem like there is some secret evidence that warrants his continued imprisonment.
Most recently drawings from Guantanamo prisoner and Al-Jazeera reporter, Sami Al Haj, have been "classified." His attorneys found an artist to reconstruct the drawings based on a description by Al Haj of his pictures (the descriptions of the pictures were cleared!) So we have an artist on this side of the wire redrawing Sami's pictures so we can have a look at his suffering.... (go to Reprieve's website to view the artist's rendition of the 4 pictures that are apparently classified because of national security concerns). (http://www.reprieve.org.uk/Press_Sami_Al_Haj_Fourth_Sketch_2008.03.28.htm)

So who's national security is at stake and why does everyone accept this?

FROM ROGER FITCH AND OUR FRIENDS DOWN UNDER

(click on title to go to original)

Roger Fitch Esq • March 23, 2008

Our Man in Washington

As President Bush vetoes an anti-torture Bill the CIA pays liability insurance for its employees who face the prospect of lawsuits over their “harsh interrogation techniques” ... Further discredit for military commissions as the government is found to have doctored Guantánamo trial documents

George Bush’s torture problem continues to bubble along, helped by a new ruling against torture by the European Court of Human Rights and fresh human rights reports condemning “extraordinary rendition” and torture.

One report, by Amnesty, deals with the personal nightmare of Khaled al-Maqtari, who was rendered to CIA “black sites” and lived to tell about it.

Human Rights First also has a report, Tortured Justice, with a handy list of Bush’s favourite “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

Washington Monthly and Mother Jones have devoted whole issues to torture.

Meanwhile, the ACLU has sued for the interrogation records of the “High Value Detainees” at Gitmo.

Despite all this, George Bush sent a new “HVD” to Gitmo from somewhere in the CIA gulag.

The new man, Muhammad Rahim, was bin Laden’s translator, so his crimes must be serious indeed.

Naturally, Mr Bush vetoed the Intelligence Act in which Congress explicitly outlawed water torture by the CIA.

Bush accompanied his veto with offensive remarks called shameful by the Los Angeles Times.

Among other things the President said that CIA interrogators can’t be confined to techniques allowed by the Army Field Manual, “because the manual is publicly available and easily accessible on the internet”, which deprived the United States of the element of surprise.

The New York Times, on the other hand, attracted wide criticism with the headline, “Bush’s Veto of Bill on CIA Tactics Affirms His Legacy”, followed by a story that said Bush had “cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers”.

The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin (pic) was one of many who disagreed with the Times’ characterisation: “The legacy that Bush affirmed … was one of torture.”

The media now talk incessantly about Bush’s “legacy”, but more apt expressions spring to mind. Toxic fall-out, for instance.

The CIA is more worried about the fall-out, and has announced it will now pay the entire cost of legal liability insurance for its employees.

As the AP reported:

“A change in administrations could make it more likely lawsuits will be filed against CIA interrogators for … the use of harsh interrogation techniques and the secret movement of prisoners.”

* * *

In my last post, I referred to the Guantánamo lawyer Eric Lewis and his client who was sent to Pol-i-Charkhi prison in Afghanistan. I mistakenly said the transfer was from Gitmo, when it fact it was from Bagram prison.

While not considered as bad as P-i-C, the Bagram prison has an evil history as well. That history has now caused problems for Gitmo prosecutors due to the time spent in Bagram by the defendants in this month’s proceedings.

The military commissions have been hearing motions by the Canadian Omar Khadr (pic), and two other cases.

One was an arraignment for Ahmed al-Darbi, who is charged with “war crimes” occurring mostly before there was any war and, in any case, outside any theatre of war – two requirements of the Hamdan decision.

The other case involved Mohamed Jawad, an Afghan who was 16 when he is alleged to have thrown a grenade that injured two US soldiers and their Afghan translator.

Ben Wizner of the ACLU covered the hearings here and here. Human Rights First also filed a report.

The Khadr case took centre stage, and this time the Canadian media were keenly interested. The Toronto Star has a two-part profile on Khadr here
and here.

However, just when it seemed impossible to further discredit the Guantánamo military commissions, the high-profile Khadr case began to implode.

In my post of February 8, I related the history of Khadr’s detention and how US soldiers, after bombing an al Qaeda house, had charged into the ruins and killed one survivor while shooting the other (the 15-year old Khadr) twice in the back, while he was hors de combat – formerly, a war crime.

Now it seems that, two months later, the government changed its initial report, which had identified the dead “terrorist” as having killed an American, in order to implicate the injured Khadr for the “crime” of throwing the fatal grenade.

The LA Times headlined the story, Pentagon Accused of Doctoring Guantanamo Tribunal Evidence.

Next, it emerged that a well-known thug at the US prison at Bagram, Damien Corsetti (pic), had been Khadr’s principal inquisitor and that another likely interrogator, Sgt Joshua Claus, had been jailed for mistreating prisoners.

Sgt Claus was even reported to have used the water cure on the prisoner Dilawar who died at Bagram.

All this resulted in rulings for the Khadr defence lawyers that constituted a “victory” of sorts.

Incredibly, however, the Pentagon succeeded in blocking public release of defence motions that contained “negative information”.

The Miami Herald has more.

* * *

Guantánamo lawyers are also representing clients jailed in Iraq. Last year (June 4 and July 5) I reported how two US citizens in Iraq had been charged, and in the case of one of them, summarily tried and sentenced to death, in Baghdad’s Central Criminal Court.

Shawqi Omar and Mohammed Munaf have been held in US prisons in Iraq such as Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper, but the Bush administration perversely claims they are held pursuant to a UN resolution and therefore enjoy no protections as US citizens, for example, habeas corpus hearings on their confinement.

The families of Omar and Munaf filed habeas cases in Washington DC. Omar’s case was allowed to proceed by the Court of Appeals.

A different panel of the DC Circuit, however, ruled for the government in Munaf’s case.

The Munaf case has since been appealed to the Supreme Court, where it will be argued on March 25, along with the Omar case, which the government is appealing.

NYU Law School’s Brennan Center is representing both men and has filed a combined brief.

The Times’ Linda Greenhouse (pic) reported the Supreme Court’s decision last year to accept the case.

In a late development, an Iraqi appellate court has overturned Mohammed Munaf’s dodgy death sentence.

* * *

The Attorney General’s support for waterboarding has spread to the private sector. A Utah newspaper reports that it is now used as a “motivational” technique by one private company.

The waterboard victim is suing the company, Prosper Inc, whose president, Dave Ellis, defended the practice:

“The exercise was a dramatization of a story in which a young man asks Socrates to become his teacher. Socrates responds by plunging the student’s head underwater and telling him he will learn once his desire for knowledge is as great as his desire to breathe.”

The Socratic Method, perhaps?

Ridenhour award to Matthew Diaz

Click on the title to go to the webpage and sign up to attend the award luncheon in DC on April 3rd
from noon to 2.
One of the awards goes to Matthew Diaz a Jag officer who tried to get the list of the names of detainees to attorneys when the government refused to release the names to protect the "privacy" of the prisoners...

The Nation Institute and The Fertel Foundation are pleased to honor the winners of the 2008 Ridenhour Prizes: Bill Moyers is awarded the 2008 Ridenhour Courage Prize in recognition of his fierce embrace of the public interest and his advocacy of media pluralism, and for contributing an unyielding moral voice to our national discourse. Learn More... James D. Scurlock is awarded the 2008 Ridenhour Book Prize honoring an outstanding work of social significance from the prior publishing year. Scurlock’s book, Maxed Out: Hard Times in the Age of Easy Credit is a disturbing account of America’s unsustainable relationship with debt, revealing the vulnerability of the average person to the predatory and unethical lending methods of banks and credit card companies. Learn More... Matthew Diaz has been awarded the 2008 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling. Diaz is a former JAG officer who, while stationed at Guantánamo Bay, was the first person to release the names of the prisoners at the detention camp. In early January 2005, on the last night of his tour, he mailed a list—with the names and corresponding serial numbers of the 551 prisoners—in a Valentine’s Day card to a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Diaz hoped that his actions would help lawyers file habeas corpus petitions on the prisoners’ behalf. Learn More... The prizes will be presented at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on April 3, 2008. The Ridenhour Prizes seek to recognize and encourage those who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society. The prizes memorialize the spirit of fearless truth-telling that one-time whistleblower and lifetime investigative journalist Ron Ridenhour reflected throughout his extraordinary life and career. Each award carries a $10,000 stipend.

Soldier Speaks Out About Guantanamo Torture

The link below (or you can click on the title) is to a video of a brief but telling testimony given by Chris Arendt at the Winter Soldier Hearings in Washington, D.C., on March 15. Arendt joined the military at age 17 and soon found himself guarding detainees at the U.S. prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

http://www.alternet.org/asoldierspeaks/79980/

American War Crimes....

--(hats off to Robert for sending me this....)

The latest is that the torturer of Khadr (the canadian kid who was 15 when we picked him up and sent him to Guantanamo) is being offered immunity in order to be a witness for the prosecution http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/20/news/Guantanamo-Canadian-Detainee.php.

Lets hope some of the media will connect the dots as to what that means: that perhaps there was something irregular about his questioning if the interrogator had to get immunity from criminal prosecution in order to talk about it.

At least the officer freely admitted he was considering committing murder and a war crime, which may prove helpful for pattern behaviour testimony in some other extrajudicial military murder case...and it seems the lawyers for Khadr are now going to argue that it was the American soldiers who should be charged with war crimes http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-03-20-guantanamo-canadian_N.htm.

And then there is this astonishing story http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jHVIsuOkdrLZ1ZL7ERUNzbxJE1iA

No wonder that the Canadian Supreme Court is about to get involved http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN20415669

Begging the European Community

For those of you who have been wondering what else I have been doing to help secure the release of Mr. Al-Ghizzawi you can listen to this interview.


http://download.omroep.nl/rnw/smac/cms/tswi_080315_rendition1_mp3_en_080315_44_1kHz.mp3

The Government's Response

The government filed its response last week. They continue to claim that Al-Ghizzawi does not want medical help... and anyway he isn't that ill anyway! (The fact that he can't swallow the pills because they won't give him warm water is further evidence, according to these war criminals, that Al-Ghizzawi is refusing medical care....)
I don't know when the judge will rule but I will post something when he does.

Withholding medical treatment

This story was sent to me yesterday and today I received the actual underlying court order... what it shows is that the medical treatment that is being withheld from Al-Ghizzawi is U S government policy.... whether you be at guantanamo or on the mainland....

Click on the title to read the story...