Detainee Transfer Announced by Pentagon

This is the official announcement:

The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of one detainee from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Government of Yemen.

On May 26, 2010, a U.S. District Court ordered the release of Mohammed Odaini from custody at Guantanamo Bay. As a result, the Department of Defense has transferred him to his native country. In accordance with Congressionally-mandated reporting requirements, the administration informed Congress of its intent to transfer Odaini at least 15 days before his transfer.

The suspension of Yemeni repatriations from Guantanamo remains in effect due to the security situation that exists there. However, the Administration respects the decisions of U.S. federal courts, which ordered the release of Odaini. As with all transfers, the U.S. Government will work with the Yemeni Government to the fullest extent possible to implement appropriate security measures.

Since 2002, more than 595 detainees have departed Guantanamo Bay for other destinations, including Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Chad, Denmark, Egypt, Georgia, France, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Palau, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Somalia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom and Yemen.

Today, 180 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.

Andrew Napolitano: Bush and Cheney Should Have Been Indicted for Torturing, for Spying and Arresting Without Warrants

By Heather Monday Jul 12, 2010 4:00pm

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Well, this is something you don't see every day. Ralph Nader hosted this interview segment with Fox News' Judge Andrew Napolitano and discussed his book, Lies the Government Told You. I'm surprised the judge is going to be allowed on Fox after making the statements he did about Bush and Cheney during the interview.

Nader: What about the more serious violations of habeas corpus. You know after 9-11 Bush rounded up thousands of them, Americans, many of them Muslim Americans or Arabic Americans and they were thrown in jail without charges, they didn't have lawyers, some of them were pretty mistreated in New York City. You know they were all released eventually.

Napolitano: Correct.

Nader: Is that what you mean also about throwing people in jail without charges violating habeas corpus?

Napolitano: Well that is so obviously a violation of the natural law, the natural right to be brought before a neutral arbiter within moments of the government taking your freedom away from you. And the Constitution itself, as the Supreme Court in the Boumediene case pretty much said, wherever the government goes, the Constitution goes with it and wherever the Constitution goes are the rights of the Constitution as a guarantee and habeas corpus cannot be suspended by the president ever. It can only be suspended by the Congress in times of rebellion which in read Milligan says meaning rebellion of such magnitude that judges can't get into their court houses. That has not happened in American history.

So what President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantanamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the Constitution was blatantly unconstitutional and is some cases criminal.

Nader: What's the sanction for President Bush and Vice President Cheney?

Napolitano: There's been no sanction except what history will say about them.

Nader: What should be the sanctions?

Napolitano: They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I'd like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you're under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It's a moral crime.

Nader: So you think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should even though they've left office, they haven't escaped the criminal laws, they should be indicted and prosecuted?

Napolitano: The evidence in this book and in others, our colleague the great Vincent Bugliosi has amassed an incredible amount of evidence. The purpose of this book was not to amass that evidence but I do discuss it, is overwhelming when you compare it to the level of evidence required for a normal indictment that George W. Bush as President and Dick Cheney as Vice President participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings.

They go on to discuss how these crimes have gone on unpunished and how the practices have continued under Obama and that as long as our citizens are willing to accept government deception and as long as the Justice Department and the lawyers in this country are not going to pursue these cases in court it's never going to stop. It's a topic that our media is happy to help brush under the rug as well.

UPDATE: If you would like to watch the entire hour long interview from Book TV, C-SPAN has it available in their video library here.

Omar Khadr speaks out.....

Click on the title for Carol Rosenberg's latest on Omar Khadr.

Emptywheel has more here.

Yes. not only will we survive but we will make it right....

Click on the title for more..........

Carol: Welcome back to the Gitmo beat!

The Military has decided not to illegally ban one of the top Gitmo reporters who reports on all things Gitmo.

Click on the title for the story from the Miami Harold about the reinstatement of Carol Rosenberg.

Click here for a further discussion from emptywheel.

CAROL, WE ARE VERY HAPPY YOU WILL BE BACK AT GITMO, keep up the good work.

Another Habeas Win- UPDATED

It was just pointed out to me that the scorecard now reads 37-13...the Government has one less win because of the Circuit Court's reversal in Bensayah (discussed here).

Tip of the hat to Roger Fitch.

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide (updated)

Last month I reported on the complaint filed against James Elmer Mitchell, one of the architects of the CIA torture program. I am happy to report that the American Psychological Assn has now filed a letter supporting the complaint against Dr. James Mitchell. I hope to have a link to that letter shortly.

On a separate but related note the Center for Justice and Accountability filed a complaint against one of the other masterminds of the CIA torture program Dr. John Leso. Details here.

Thank You PEGS for the link.

Another Habeas Win

Today Judge Friedman issued an order granting the writ to Yemeni Hussain Salem Mohammad Almerfedi, ISN 1015. The merits hearing in his case occurred on March 3-5, 2010. Judge Friedman ordered that an unclassified version of his opinion is to be provided to him by July 22.

The scorecard is now 37 habeas wins, 14 losses.

Congrats to Brian E. Foster and the Covington team.

Plea deal for Gitmo detainee

Yesterday the military announced that it reached a plea deal with one of the Guantanamo detainees. When I read the announcement I knew it stunk to high heaven but it wasn't until last night that I went and read as much as I could find on Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi....

I don't have time to link to the NY Times database right now but you can go to it yourself and paste in his name and do a search....probably wikipedia has links too. It is shameful that this is an example of what our government calls a "war crime."

Roger Fitch at Justian has more here.

Canadian Court coming through for Khadr?

I will try to have a link to this decision later today but the Federal Court of Canada issued an Order yesterday which suggests that they may be getting close to restoring an earlier order requiring the Government of Canada to request Omar Khadr's repatriation from gtmo....stay tuned.

Thanks to PEGC we now have a link to the decision. CLICK ON THE TITLE

Happy 4th continued....

Happy 4th........

On the eve of the 4th ....

I would like to share a few items out there in the news that you might not have seen from some of the websites that I look at regularly.

First, from Pruning Shears: Why looking back matters

Next, from emptywheel: Keep your Declaration of independence right next to your assassination cards

From Scotusblog: an interesting piece on the DC Circuit trying to stop a DC District Court judge from doing her job: Major fight brews on munaf

From Informed Comment (where you can find out more in depth analysis of all things mideast):

Steele blames Obama for Afghanistan

From the Talking Dog: More from the department of "Duh"

And finally from No Comment: a little piece about the country that we broke ties some 234 years ago....Britain moves forward on torture probe...

Seems even the Brits understand that looking back matters.

Finally a DC Circuit opinion helpful to detainees (Updated)

Today the DC Circuit released a declassified version of an opinion from last week in which they reversed a decision by Judge Leon denying the Great Writ. In trying to explain the decision I made a leap that was not correct...... Bensayah was one of several Algerians being held and the Government's case was primarily one suggesting that he was suspicious and that should be enough to hold him: The Government claimed Bensayah had ties to an al-Qaeda operative (but now the Government has given up on the theory that the accused operative was actually connected to al-Qaeda) and Bensayah used fake id's to travel (on occasion) because his Algerian passport had expired and he couldn't go back to Algeria. The Government apparently rested much of his case on the ties to the al-Qaeda operative but more recently the government has backed off substantially on its allegations regarding that other individual....so the bottom line was that Bensayah was being held because he allegedly had ties to someone no longer considered to be connected to al-Qaeda and that he didn't have a current passport so he used fake id's ...on occasion. Of course when Judge Leon ruled the Government had not yet acknowledged that the other individual had no connection to al-Qaeda. Anyway it is nice that the DC Circuit has decided not to rubber stamp every Government win in the district court (fortunately there are not many Government wins.....)

Thanks to Mark Fleming and the Wilmer Hale team for this great victory.

CLICK ON THE TITLE FOR THE LINK.......

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

Roger Fitch Esq • June 21, 2010

Supreme Court wonderland

In a decision the NY Times called disgraceful,
the Supreme Court denied certiorari to the Canadian Maher Arar in his civil damages case against US officials who rendered him to Syria as he transited JFK airport in 2002.

Arar was tortured there for 10 months.

The Canadians exonerated Arar, paid him millions in damages and apologised for their role in his rendition. The US, however, refused to take any action.

The Mounties are now investigating the US

Arar’s lawyer, David Cole (pic), has more to say.

CLICK ON THE TITLE FOR MORE........