Seattle church campaigns to free Guantanamo prisoner

Adnan Latif was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Pakistani authorities .arrested him, his supporters say.

Nine years later, it seems he’s still in the wrong place: detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Soldiers there keep him isolated in a psychiatric ward and frequently beat him, according to his lawyer, David Remes. Because Latif joined a hunger strike in 2007, they also continue to force feed him through his nose.

In August 2010, a judge ruled there was no evidence that Latif, originally from Yemen, had ever raised a hand against the United States and ordered his release. But the Obama Administration has appealed the order and is fighting to keep him locked up.

Local activists are now fighting back, hoping to free a man they say is not only innocent but also mentally ill, the result of an earlier accident, or perhaps, incarceration.

“I’m outraged that he’s being so badly treated and there’s no justification for it,” said Betty Blakney, co-chair of University Temple’s social justice committee.

Members of University Temple United Methodist Church have taken up Latif’s cause and started a letter-writing campaign for his release. They also plan to meet with their members of Congress about Latif’s case.

Forty-one church members signed a March 27 letter to Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Rep. Jim McDermott urging they take action to release Latif, who was 24 at the time of his arrest. They plan to ask other University District churches to do the same.

Political realities

David Remes, Latif’s attorney in Washington, D.C., said he welcomes the effort. But he and Jamie Mayerfeld, a political science professor who teaches a course on Guantanamo Bay at the University of Washington, say political barriers stand between Latif and freedom.

Foremost among them: President Obama has continued the Bush Administration policy of indefinite incarceration without trial, Mayerfeld said.

Of the 779 people who have been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay for suspected terrorism since it opened in 2002, only a half-dozen have been convicted, Mayerfeld said. Today 172 people remain at the prison. Of these, 57 are Yemenis cleared for release by the Obama Administration.

In an email, Lt. Col. Tanya J. Bradsher, a Pentagon spokesperson, confirmed 172 detainees are housed at Guantanamo Bay, approximately half of them hailing from Yemen.

But Latif and his fellow Yemeni prisoners can’t get out because they have nowhere to go and no way to get there. President Obama banned returning any Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Yemen in January, after the Christmas Day incident in which a Yemeni man tried to blow up an airliner. Then Congress passed a law prohibiting the transfer of any Guantanamo Bay prisoner to any country, Remes said.

“Adopting” a prisoner

Latif first came to the attention of the University Temple community after several church members attended a workshop on torture at Garfield High School on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Professor Mayerfeld led the workshop and raised the idea of churches “adopting” a prisoner by writing letters. University Temple members followed up with Mayerfeld, who suggested Latif because his case is so egregious.

In 1994, at the age of 18, a car accident left Latif with a severe head injury and blindness in one eye. His family was destitute, so the government of Yemen paid to send him to Jordan for an operation, Remes, his lawyer, said.

The operation was only partially successful, however. In 2000, Latif met a man who promised him free medical help in Afghanistan. He was arrested near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan border in 2001 after the U.S. invasion, Remes said, and his life has been a living hell ever since.

As a result of his head injury or his incarceration, Latif is mentally ill and suffers from a number of physical ailments, Remes said. From many hunger strikes, he weighs less than 100 pounds and has to wear what’s called a suicide smock because he’s tried to kill himself so many times.

When he gets out of control, a prison response team in black riot gear beats him until he’s subdued, Remes said. Bradsher, the Pentagon spokesperson, declined to comment on Latif’s condition.

Defining torture

Torture is a loaded term, said Remes, who represents 17 other Yemeni prisoners at Guantanamo. But the conditions are clearly cruel, inhumane and degrading violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Latif should be released, he said. The Department of Defense recommended it in 2004, the Bush Administration approved it in 2007, and the judge ordered it last year in response to a habeas corpus petition, Remes said.

“It’s incomprehensible they’re holding this poor man and that [the Obama Administration is] continuing to fight for the right to hold him.”

Lawsuit filed to compel investigation of Gitmo "psychologist"

The Psychologists and Psychiatrists that helped the interrogators at Guantanamo have - like everyone else involved in the torture of the men and boys at Guantananmo- gotten off pretty easy. When the state of Ohio refused to even do an investigation of Dr. Larry James' role in that torture a group of students from Harvard law school's International human rights clinic filed a lawsuit.

For a summary of the law suit and an excellent look at the children held at Guantanamo take a look at this article by Jeff Kaye at Truthout.

BREAKING NEWS

Obama Orders Guantánamo Prisoners Transferred To Next President

April 13, 2011 | ISSUE 47*15 WASHINGTON-After two years of false starts and protracted legal wrangling, President Barack Obama signed an executive order Tuesday authorizing the transfer of all 172 Guantánamo detainees to the next chief executive of the United States of America. "The president's bold decision to move these enemy combatants to the subsequent administration should finally quiet critics who have accused him of inaction and impotence concerning this issue," White House press secretary Jay Carney said after noting that Obama had-in favor of the more politically pragmatic alternative-passed on several opportunities to relocate the inmates to correctional facilities in the continental United States as a first step toward affording the prisoners due process of law. "This will not be an easy process by any means, but all of the detainees should be transferred by 2012, or 2016 at the very latest." With the Guantánamo issue finally resolved, President Obama has reportedly already begun efforts to address another of his 2008 campaign promises by calling for the removal of the Bush-era tax cuts from the current political dialogue.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-orders-guantanamo-prisoners-transferred-to-n,19979/

ANY JUDGE THAT REFUSES TO FOLLOW THE LAW SHOULD BE IMPEACHED

You heard it hear first.

And we should start with Senior Judge Silberman From the DC Circuit Court. He apparently has decided to ignore the oath he took as a judge and announced that he will never release a man from Guantanamo as long as the government can muster together some evidence that the person was connected in some way with either the Taliban, al-Qaeda or some associated force.... "some evidence" sometimes referrred to as "whatever shit you can pull together"....is not the standard in our courts....well let me take that back, it has been the standard in the DC Circuit court since they started hearing these cases --but it is not the proper standard, and now Judge Silberman is admitting that that is the standard the circuit has been following....the whatever shit standard. In the coming weeks and months we must determine whether or not he speaks for the whole court, as he suggests in his concurring opinion,....and if he does then the whole DC Circuit Court should recuse itself from hearing any additional Guantanamo cases...and those judges who proudly boast that they will not follow the law as laid out by the US Supreme Court must be impeached.

You can read his fear mongering rant here, it is the last two pages of the decision.

The war at Home....

I try to confine my blog to issues relating to Guantanamo because I simply do not have time for the other issues-important as they are. But today I make an exception and I do it not only because of its importance but also because it ties in with Gitmo- ties in with the article immediately preceeding this one on this here blog- is another example of the general state of my pathetic country at this time --and finally, because I was a philosophy major before I turned to the noble pursuit of the law.

So read this....it is important and well written.

AND FOR ME- I AM OFF- ONCE AGAIN- TO OUR OFFSHORE GULAG-GUANTANAMO.....

AND SPEAKING OF WAR CRIMINALS

If you have not seen this piece by Jason Leopold and Jeff Kaye.....read it now.

Based on the handwritten notes by a man that has often been described as the architect of the psychological torture inflicted on the men at Guantanamo-and who knows where else....Bruce Jessen.

From the article:

"But the handwritten notes obtained exclusively by Truthout drafted two decades ago by Dr. John Bruce Jessen, the psychologist who was under contract to the CIA and credited as being one of the architects of the government's top-secret torture program, tell a dramatically different story about the reasons detainees were brutalized and it was not just about obtaining intelligence. Rather, as Jessen's notes explain, torture was used to "exploit" detainees, that is, to break them down physically and mentally, in order to get them to "collaborate" with government authorities. Jessen's notes emphasize how a "detainer" uses the stresses of detention to produce the appearance of compliance in a prisoner. "

And boy I would love to see that other report mentioned in the article "prisoner handling recommendations."

This article goes a long way in explaining what many of us have witnessed in the men we are representing at Guantanamo and it is one more distressing piece of the war crimes being carried out by my country.

From our Friends down under at Justinian

USA's new found regard for international law

Monday, March 21, 2011
Justinian in Guantanamo, Law of war, Roger Fitch Esq

Batting Padilla around the federal circuit courts ... The varied meanings ofhabeas corpus ... "Material support for terrorism" up for review in CMCR ... The Raymond Davis case - Vienna Convention applied to CIA agent ...Roger Fitch, Our Man in Washington

Donald Rumsfeld just published his memoirs, and he's receiving conservative accoladesfor "defending the constitution".

Rummy gave Guantánamo his seal of approval as "one of the finest prison systems in the world", though it's far more likely he'll be doing time in, say, Europe.

The former defence secretary and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz have meanwhile succeeded in getting the civil suit against them by José Padilla thrown out.

Padilla is the American citizen seized in a civilian courtroom in New York, taken to a military brig in South Carolina, and subjected to years of pointless punishment and cruelty.

Scotusblog has the new ruling. It's a shocking decision in which an Obama appointee in South Carolina dismissed a torture suit, because it's inconvenient for important people.

It was the reverse of the decision in California in Padilla's lawsuit against John Yoo. Glenn Greenwald and Emptywheel comment.

Click here or on the title for more....

Military Commission Appeal Tomorrow- UPDATED

BELOW-IS THE AUDIO FROM THE COMMISSION APPEAL AND BRIEFS OF THE PARTIES:

The audio of the Bahlul argument is here: https://webspace.utexas.edu/rmc2289/Bahlul%20oral%20argument.MP3   Bahlul's reply brief is here: http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/U-S-v-al-Bahlul-Reply-on-Specified-Issues-15-March-2011-2.pdf   The US brief is here: https://webspace.utexas.edu/rmc2289/2011.03.12%20Al%20Bahlul%20government%20response.pdf   Bahlul opening brief, preceded by CMCR order specifying issues, is here: http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Al-Bahlul-Specified-Issues-25-Jan-to-24-Feb-2011.pdf  

The Search for Crimes to Support Conviction at Guantánamo....

Al Bahlul is the first appeal of a Guantánamo military commission conviction to proceed

before the Court of Military Commission Review. It is notable because it involves a

conviction and life sentence in search of supporting war crimes offenses.

Mr. Bahlul has been imprisoned at Guantánamo for nearly a decade. After two

presidential administrations, one Supreme Court decision, two acts of Congress, three

sets of charges, a trial that concluded more than two years ago, appellate proceedings that

began more than a year ago, a reshuffling of the Court of Military Commission Review

and a decision to hear the appeal en banc, the government has all but conceded that the

offenses for which Mr. Bahlul was originally convicted before a military commission –

conspiracy, solicitation and providing material support for terrorism – were not

established law-of-war offenses under U.S. or international law at the time they were

allegedly committed.

The court appears to recognize this as well, because on January 25, 2011, it issued

certified questions on its own and ordered the parties to address whether Mr. Bahlul’s

conviction can nonetheless be supported under a “joint criminal enterprise” theory of

liability, or on the grounds that he “aided the enemy,” despite the fact that he owed no

duty or allegiance to the United States. These questions are the subject of tomorrow’s

hearing.

The court’s action is highly irregular because the government expressly withdrew

reliance on a “joint criminal enterprise” theory of liability and never argued a charge of

“aiding the enemy” at Mr. Bahlul’s commission trial. Common sense also dictates that

attempting to justify a life sentence for an alleged “enemy” who owes no duty or

allegiance to the United States because he “aided the enemy” is illegal bootstrapping.

Military commission judges, no less than other military officers, are sworn to uphold and

defend the Constitution, not to devise creative legal theories never argued by the parties

at trial in order to uphold law-of-war convictions. Although the government may have

badly botched the prosecution of Mr. Bahlul, the court should reject the invitation in the

government’s response to the certified questions to search out some legal theory – any

legal theory – to support his conviction. Nothing less is demanded of a regularly

constituted court.

The court should also reject the government’s notable reliance on the “Seminole Wars”

of the 1800s, a genocide that led to the Trail of Tears. The government’s characterization

of Native American resistance to the United States as “much like modern-day al Qaeda”

is not only factually wrong but overtly racist and cannot present any legitimate legal basis

to uphold Mr. Bahlul’s conviction.

Sadly, however, the removal and attempted eradication of Native Americans is not unlike

the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo in that each stands alongside slavery and Jim

Crow, the targeting of immigrants, and the internment of Japanese Americans, among

other examples, as a stark reminder of how in times of fear and xenophobia our nation

has brutalized and demonized human beings as “others” who are unworthy of the rights

most Americans take for granted in order to deny them equal protection of the law.

Guantánamo was designed to be a prison where no laws applied. Today, it remains a

prison reserved exclusively for Arab and Muslim men, many of whom the president

recently announced would be subjected to military commissions, an ad hoc system

intended to manufacture convictions unattainable in federal court. This secondary system

of justice should be abandoned. Mr. Al Bahlul’s conviction should be overturned, and the

prison, which administration officials continue to recognize threatens and demeans the

United States, must be closed now.

wimpy sack of shit

I was going to try to keep this professional....but screw it. He doesn't deserve anything more professional. Yesterday G W Obama officially reinstated the military commissions. In this fact sheet found here they actually try to claim that this is somehow an extension of his promise to close Guantanamo and reinstate the rule of law- the promise he made in an executive order the day after he took office. That is almost as shameful as his speech the other day calling for the end of tax breaks to the rich....right after he of course agreed to the deal to extend the tax breaks because of course....he is a weasel who knows nothing about leadership....and if he has any principles he sure is not willing to stand up for them.

You can find the newest piece of shit executive order here.

I am still reviewing all of this....trying to find a glimmer of hope but I don't really hold out much hope between this asshole of a president and a judiciary that has given up on checks and balances (and forget about congress).

Have I mentioned lately just how much I hate him?

It just goes on and on my friends.

A tale of two writs

Last week the New York Times provided an editorial a right without a remedy asking the supreme court to accept cert in the case commonly known as Kiyemba (link to Petitioner's reply brief). The long and the short of the issue is that the supreme court held in 2008 that habeas corpus can be utilized by the men at Guantanamo to challenge their detention. It seemed a great (if late) victory for the many men who had already been held at Guantanamo for more than six years. But the DC Circuit court- which happens to be the only appellate court to hear Guantanamo habeas cases continues to refuse to give life to any of the Supreme Court decisions regarding Guantanamo. In the Kiyemba case the DC Circuit held that yes, the men can file habeas cases-but winning those cases does not mean the men necessarily will be released. In particular, one judge on the court, Judge Randolph -who somehow, even though he is on senior status-seems to be the writer of a great many of the guantanamo decsions from that court- is particularly hostile to the notion that the Supreme Court has the final say in these matters.

Following the NY Times editorial Jonathan Hafetz reflects on both the editorial and the DC Circuit in this must read:

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2011/03/a-tale-of-two-writs

New Seton Hall Report

In recently declassified memos Rumsfeld made clear that he knew the men detained at Guantanamo were not the worst of the worst... In fact he complained that most of the men should not have been brought to Guantanamo.

In response Rumsfeld's "people" are trying to rewrite history by claiming that he never said the men at Guantanamo were the worst of the worst....

Read the Seton hall report here:

http://law.shu.edu/ProgramsCenters/PublicIntGovServ/policyresearch/upload/guantanamo-report-Rumsfeld-Knew.pdf

And read the Washington Post follow up story here:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2011/03/rumsfeld_complained_of_low_lev.html

Conditions of confinement for the "war criminals"

So far we have convicted in our military kangaroo proceedings: a kid, a cook, a man who worked at a "training camp" that closed two years before 9-11, and a man who refused to defend himself.

Carol Rosenberg from the Miami Herald (the only reporter that has consistently followed the Guantanamo beat) reports on life for these unfortunate men after conviction.

Under the Obabush administration it seems there are really only two ways out of Guantanamo: feet first or take a plea for something that you did not do ....the plea, by the way, is under laws that were not even on the books when the men (and child) were arrested....and then hope that my government lives up to the plea bargain.

Sweet land of liberty.

Spain to investigate torture claims of former gitmo prisoner

The Spanish high court has given the go-ahead to do what the US government refuses to do- investigate the claims of torture and other abuses at Guantanamo. The Spanish investigation is on behalf of a moroccan man who has lived in Spain for more than 13 years. Click on the title for a report (complete with links to the court documents) from the center for constitutional rights-which has been a leader in the demand for accountability.
Emptywheel has more here.

The Tortured Journey

It is hard to know where to start with this piece by Jason Leopold. I guess I will start by asking you to read it (click on the title).
I think it is fair to say that everyone who gets involved in the guantanamo litigation (on behalf of the detainees) is forever changed. I have watched this with the many attorneys I have worked with over this years and with other people I have met along the way. For those of us who are U.S. citizens we also have to deal with the shame of what our country has done and is continuing to do.
As many of you know I first became involved in the Guantanamo litigation in 2005 when I took on the representation of one man being held there. Shortly thereafter I took on the representation of a second man. Soon Guantanamo and everything that it symbolizes literally took over my life....to the point that I closed my law practice and solely focused on my two guantanamo clients and the institution itself.
I have been an attorney now for almost 30 years and when I started on this probono project I thought two things "how hard could it be?" and "this will probably last about a year." Both of those questions were really point on...because this litigation should not have been hard and it really should have been over in a year---years ago.
But I did not realize just how dishonest the department of "justice" had become and I did not realize how readily our once commanding judicial system would acquiesce its role as the independent arbiter.
Like Jason, those of us who are paying attention cannot help but become obsessed with the injustice of the Guantanamo gulag and the complacency and ignorance of the american people.
I just wish more people were paying attention.
Click here to read Jason's interview with David Hicks.

Guantanamo prisoners protest their indefinite detention

First Tunisia, then Egypt and now Guantanamo. Sorry I am a little late reporting on this.

Last month the military closed camp 4, the least restricted of the Guantanamo camps and moved all of the men to either camps 5 or 6. Both supermax facilities of the worst order. The men know that this is just the latest sign that the Obama administration has no intention of closing Guantanamo. After seeing reports of the uprisings in Tunisia the men started their own protest by putting up signs everywhere they had access.

Examples of some of the signs:

"where are the courts?" "what about our rights?" "where is democracy?"

All very good questions.

click on the title for more.