New on Huffington Post:

Candace has a new entry on Huffington Post in which she asks, just how many detainees have actually "returned to the battlefied?"

A Note on Mishal al-Harbi:

Sunday's Washington Post featured an article on Mishal al-Harbi, a former Guantánamo inmate who suffered brain damage under mysterious while at the base. Al-Harbi's family suspects that he was beaten by the guards, the U.S. maintains that the his brain was deprived of oxygen during an attempted suicide by hanging. Either way, al-Harbi is a victim of the Guantánamo's brutality and dehumanization.

Today, the internet news service Islam Online, features its own angry response (via Turkish Weekly) to al-Harbi's story ... another example of how Guantánamo undermines the U.S.' stated aim of improving its image in the Muslim world.

- Adrian Bleifuss Prados

The Boston Globe Speaks Up for the Uighurs

Yesterday, in a strong editorial (featuring quotes from our friend Sabin Willett), the Boston Globe denounced the treatment and continued "detention" of the Guantánamo Uighurs, members of a Muslim ethnic group from western China.

So Guantanamo will continue as an international symbol of this country's retreat from its rule-of-law traditions. Gates has wisely decided not to go ahead with a planned $100 million court complex for the base. He could make it even clearer that he is changing the self-destructive course the country is on there by releasing the Uighurs.

Releasing the Uighurs would be a good start - but let's not forget the hundreds of other prisoners languishing in that Cuban dungeon, victims of the Bush Administration's kangaroo justice.

- Adrian Bleifuss Prados

The Gagging of Michael Mori

Apparently, Colonel Moe Davis' six-point strategy for media manipulation has been axed in favor of simpler methods.

According to The Age, Major Michael Mori, David Hick's military attorney, has been gagged by the authorities for campaigning a bit too effectively in the Land Down Under.

- Adrian Bleifuss Prados

Reporters Without Borders on Sami Al-Haj

The Paris-based group is speaking out on behalf of Sudanese cameraman Sami Al-Haj, who is now on hunger strike:

Al-Haj has been held by the Americans for five years without being charged, in disgraceful conditions and in violation of all international conventions on the treatment of prisoners ... Legitimately but in vain, he tried to assert his rights to the military authorities. While we could not encourage him to pursue a hunger strike, we strongly condemn the fact that he was fed by force.

The Washington Post on Colonel Moe:

Are the editors of the Washington Post reading Huffington Post?

Reporter Envy II:

The DoD has announced press briefings on the 14 "high value detainees" being held at GTMO. While these men have been given no access to lawyers, reporters are now being allowed to review their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

The DoD is also briefing the media (but not habeas counsel) on the Administrative Review Board process. Candace recently sent submissions on behalf of her clients for the latest round of ARBs.

Maybe some friendly reporter will fill us in?

Moe and his six-point plan...

In a new Huff-Po piece, Candace goes after Colonel Moe Davis, the chief prosecutor for the GTMO military commissions. Moe is in the awkward position of having to defend Guantánamo's Kangaroo justice. Apparently his strategy involves attacking Major Dan Mori, the military defense lawyer of Australian prisoner David Hicks. Fortunately, the Colonel has prepared a six-point manual on how to manipulate the press.

The Colonel put his thoughts into writing in a really interesting article that set up his "six point plan" for effectively engaging the military in public opinion. Moe's plan calls for the military to be a bit more aggressive in how it handles the media. It's a plan that calls for the military to go on the offensive and "define" a controversy before it "erupts." You have to give the Colonel credit for foresight, he knew that this was definitely one of those controversies that was ripe for eruption: not only because all of the serious charges against Hicks were dropped; but also because the only charge left against Hicks was something that wasn't even against the law when Hicks was arrested...ouch. Couple that with the increased awareness by the Australian people about the real story behind Hicks and Guantánamo, and you have a bonafide controversy waiting to erupt.

Moazzam Begg talks to the Dog

The Talking Dog has posted another excellent interview; this time with former Guantánamo inmate, Moazzam Begg. Here are a few highlights:

Begg recalls his relationships with the guards:

The interrogators and guards varied from person to person and from place to place. Bagram was a much harsher regime than even Guantanamo... I came across a number of decent soldiers and interrogators that I would be happy to call friends. At Guantanamo I had a number of conversations, and indeed, interpersonal relationships, with guards that I considered just amazing. I learned an awful lot from these people, and about them.

And his time in the prisons at the Bagram airbase:

I will never forget what transpired in Bagram... this is the base that was bombed just the day before yesterday [during Dick Cheney's visit to Afghanistan].. I was held there for a year. I was hog-tied– left in painful positions or hours, interrogated, kicked, beaten,... but I remember the screaming of a woman in the next cell, and I was led to believe that she was my wife.

I witnessed the deaths (or the beatings that led to the deaths) of two detainees at Bagram... this will never go away.

I met a number of former Irish prisoners... they were interned for years without trial, held in hoods, subjected to white noise– the commonality of their experience with mine was remarkable... just replace Northern Ireland with Guantanamo and it was almost virtually the same.

New on HuffPo:

Candace has a new piece in Huffington Post, Camp 6: The Worst of the Worst. In it she describes her meeting with Al-Ghizzawi in Camp 6, Guantánamo's newest and cruelest prison facility:

The windowless six-by-six closet-size room had two chairs and a table. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi was stooping low to the floor and huddled against the wall when I entered. His arms were wrapped around his body as he tried to warm himself from the chill he has had for over two months, and his feet were shackled to the floor. He was shivering, his teeth were clenched and he wouldn't look at me.

He told me that I was his guest so he did not want to insult me by not visiting with me, but that he was feeling very ill and he was ashamed to have me see him in orange. You see, the orange jumpsuits are worn by prisoners who are being punished. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi explained to me that when he went to take a shower two days earlier he had toilet paper in his pocket. It is forbidden for the prisoners to have anything in their pocket when they go for showers. That landed Mr. Al-Ghizzawi two days in the orange jumpsuit. It made him feel like a criminal.

Close Guantanamo Now!

Amnesty's Make Some Noise campaign has received many homemade videos calling for the closing of the Guantánamo Bay camps. The above video is a "mash up" of various submissions.

Candace on Recent Emails from the DoJ:

Although there was no reporting of this particular event, the Justice Department emailed some of the habeas counsel this past week to tell them whether or not their client(s) had been "cleared" for release or transfer pursuant to the Administrative Review Board (ARB) process. This is the first time the government has done this.

The most disgusting part of the email (well, actually there were two parts that were pretty disgusting but I guess one of those falls in the "petty" department)was that the government admitted in its email that some of the individuals have been cleared for more than two years (prior to the ARB process being set up)… Obviously if those lawyers had known that there clients had been given the "all clear" sign, they could have used that information to try to get their clients sent home or to some third country.

That brings us to the petty part: the government claimed that they were sending out the emails so that the attorneys whose clients were cleared would not have to submit materials for this years ARB procedure. Submissions for this years ARB were due no later that February 23 rd, 2007. The emails started going out long after business hours on February 22nd.

-H. Candace Gorman

A Digest:

• Today's NY Times has a strong editorial praising the Canadian Supreme Court's decision striking down a law that allowed the Canadian government to indefinately detain terrorism suspects without charge.



• Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released a report that listed dozens of individuals who have been detained by the United States but whose whereabouts are currently unknown. HRW calls on the Bush administration to "provide a full accounting" for the fate of these persons. (UPI)



• The Guardian reports that a collection of poetry written by Guantánamo inmates will be published in August by the University of Iowa Press.



• David Hick's Australian attorney's sue Prime Minister Howard's government.



• From earlier this month, a former Guantánamo guard rekindles a friendship with Moazzam Begg, ex-inmate, author and spokesman for Caged Prisoners.

CCR on the Al-Odah Decision

Last week, the D.C. Circuit disappointed us with it's terrible 2-1 decision in the combined Al-Odah v. USA and Boumediene v. Bush. Our Friends at CCR issued an excellent press release on the ruling.

NEW YORK - February 20 - The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents many of the Guantanamo detainees and coordinates the efforts of hundreds of pro bono attorneys across the country, condemned today's two-to-one decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the combined cases of Al Odah v. USA and Boumediene v. Bush, the first lawsuits challenging the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) to be addressed by the courts. Todays ruling states that the Guantanamo detainees have no constitutional right to habeas corpus, therefore the passage of the MCA by Congress eliminated the statutory right to challenge their detention in the courts.

The MCA, which was signed into law by President Bush on October 17, 2006, is the second attempt by the Bush administration to strip detainees of their statutory right to challenge their detention in the courts, a right that the Supreme Court has already affirmed twice, in CCR's landmark case Rasul v. Bush in 2004 and in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in 2006. The act also allows for evidence obtained through torture, - a violation of the Geneva Conventions - and greatly widens the scope of who the president can label an "enemy combatant."

"This decision empowers the President to do whatever he wishes to prisoners without any legal limitation as long as he does it off shore, and encourages such notorious practices as extraordinary rendition and a contempt for international human rights law," said Shayana Kadidal, managing attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. "The matter will ultimately have to be resolved by the Supreme Court for a third time."

Al Odah v. USA consists of the first eleven habeas petitions filed after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Rasul v. Bush. The Boumediene appeal, filed jointly by CCR and cooperating counsel Wilmer, Pickering, Cutler, Hale, & Dorr and Clifford Chance, is on behalf of six Bosnian humanitarian workers seized by the U.S. military in Bosnia after the Bosnian courts ordered local authorities to release them. In Al Odah, D.C. District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green stated that detainees possess "the fundamental right to due process of law under the Fifth Amendment." Reaching an entirely different conclusion,
Judge Richard Leon dismissed the Boumediene appeals, ruling that the detainees possess no constitutional rights to habeas corpus. Both cases were appealed, and the two cases were consolidated for oral arguments before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which were heard in November 2006.

"We call on the legal profession and all Americans concerned about the loss of liberty undertaken by the Bush Administration and now rubber stamped by the Court of Appeals to join with us in taking this fight to the United States Supreme Court. We call on Congress to take up the fight that the American people sent you to Washington to wage, to quickly enact legislation that will begin the process of restoring our most fundamental rights," said CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman.

"Habeas corpus is a right that was enshrined in the Magna Carta to prevent kings from indefinitely and arbitrarily detaining anyone they chose-the combined actions of the Bush Administration, the previous Congress and two of the three judges today have taken us back 900 years and granted the right of kings to the president," said CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren.

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Candace Returns to the Airwaves

This coming Saturday at 5:00 pm ET, 4:00 pm CT, Candace will be interviewed by Mike Feder on Sirius Satellite Radio. Tune in!