He Made Life Hell for the Detainees....

At least he is gone now. Good riddens commander Bogdan. May the rest of your life be as miserable as you made the lives of the men at Guantanamo these past few years.

Happy 4th of July....But we really need to reclaim our country......

From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under At Justinian.....

End of term

Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Justinian in Guantanamo, Law of war, Military Commissions, Roger Fitch Esq, Same-sex marriage, US Supreme Court

Supreme Court lets God into the Affordable Care Act ... And strikes down certain compulsory union dues ... At last - a Guantánamo detainee charged with a genuine war crime ... Obama's Taliban prisoner swap ... Whatever you do, don't shoot at an American in a war ... From Our Man in Washington, Roger Fitch 

THE Supreme Court ended its term with a bomb.  

In Burrell v Hobby Lobby, a new class of God-fearing corporations has been allowed to evade – on religious grounds – the contraception coverage that the Affordable Care Act requires in employee health insurance. 

This new-found piety in closely-held corporations is based on the First Amendment's personal religious freedom, but the all-Catholic-male majority put its faith in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. 

It's the same RFRA whose protections were denied to Muslims in Guantánamo by the DC Circuit in Rasul v Myers on the basis that Gitmo detainees were not persons in the meaning of the Act (see Fitch of January 22, 2008). 

Thus, some corporations now have personal religious freedoms, while other, flesh-and-blood persons don't. 

READ THE REST HERE.....

Today's WTF moment....

So last week Tom Durkin- an attorney that also represents Gitmo men- had an argument in the 7^th circuit regarding classified materials(not a Gitmo case). I reported on what happened at that argument here. The hearing was public—and without prior warning to Tom the Panel decided to go into secret session and they kicked Tom and everyone else out---except government attorneys. The Panel had a nice little private conversation with the government that none of us will ever know about.....Now it turns out that the public session was inadvertently not recorded and so the Panel has decided to reargue the public part again tomorrow --- really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Use this link ...

or

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/06/07/fear-in-terrorism-case-in-chicago-leads-to-court-not-recording-oral-argument-court-orders-do-over/

Musical Interlude...

From Gitmo attorney Frank Goldsmith---Fixed

Well I certainly screwed that up! So I am fixing this by just leaving the link...

Find Franks op-ed in Time magazine....

Thank you Frank!

Find the original here:....and below

http://time.com/2838946/i-helped-free-the-taliban-from-guantanamo-bay/

Oh Man....it's like the plague

Its spreading fast.... now the 7th circuit has held a secret argument and the defense counsel- Tom Durkin- was not allowed to stay for that session. Even when the DC Circuit insisted on a secret argument in my client's case I was allowed to stay and argue....it was just the "audience" that was forced out....well not the entire audience---government attorneys with security clearances were allowed to stay for my clients argument!
I happen to know that Tom has a security clearance and the concept that the court is hearing an argument without the attorney for the defendant is beyond the pale....even in this so-called day and age.

read the story here.

Andy Worthington puts the hysteria in the proper perspective

Thanks Andy.

The Hysteria Over the Five Men Released....

As the world falls apart around us because five members of the Taliban were traded for an American Soldier I would just like to point out two things- The narrative regarding the 5 men comes from the military's initial assessment of those men when they were taken into custody. As anyone who has been paying any attention (inotherwords not the majority of the American people or the majority of the media.....) those initial assessments were categorically wrong for just about every man being held at Guantanamo---the men were taken in exchange for bounties and the military did no independent background checks. It was only after lawyers got involved and started doing the background checks that the falsity of the accusations (for almost every man at Guantanamo) started to become known.

As to the American soldier-- really? I mean WTF--because a couple of the guys in his platoon are claiming the guy said some things that makes them think he deserted we should have just left him there forever? My my.

Marcy over at emptywheel has an interesting look at the situation.

Some other looks at this issue are here, here, here and here.
I am not including links to the hysterical and inaccurate.....

Yes---Five men released today

As usual the talking dog says it best.
As for me... I am pissed that this soldier spent so many years being held...and these Afghani men spent more than double the time being held...for no reason. Yes, you can look at the CNN or other reports that suggest that these men being released are dangerous but remember- the narrative coming out of the news media is just that-- the military narrative. It only reflects the version put forth by the military and not the facts that were later determined. Why? Because the lawyers representing these men have been muzzled by the Court and because so many of our "journalists" just copy and paste the military's press release rather than do anything like "investigative journalism."
Just sayin....

More on the deaths of the three men at Guantanamo in 2006....

Thisreport details the failure of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to address the dramatic deficiencies in the findings issued by the Navy Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) in the wake of the deaths on June 9, 2006 of three detainees held at the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The NCIS report, issued two years after the deaths of the detainees, essentially rubber-stamped statements made by camp officials about the manner and cause of the deaths of the three detainees before any investigation was conducted, and before any such conclusions could be known. It concealed repeated evidence of tampering with the crime scene, the fact that two of the men had been dead for hours before they were “discovered,” and the fact that the third lived for several hours afterwards, dying while ostensibly under medical care.

Yet, despite new discoveries and two Congressional requests – one made in October, 2009 by Representative William Delahunt (D-Mass.) and a second, in January, 2010 by Representative Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) – the DOJ failed to re-investigate the circumstances of the deaths.

The NCIS report relies on evidence disputed by documents that the Center for Policy & Research Fellows easily obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. They include official statements by guards who were on duty the night of the deaths, camp transportation records and findings from the autopsies of the three detainees. Among the Center report’s findings:

1. The NCIS secretly ratified the GTMO Commander’s conclusion that the cause of the detainees’ deaths was suicide on June 20, 2006, 11 days after the bodies were discovered. Yet, for inexplicable reasons, the NCIS did not publicly issue its report until 26 months after the deaths, on August 22, 2008.

2. The senior medical officer who declared two of the three detainees dead was never interviewed by the NCIS. In a narrative he prepared on his own, he asserted that the detainees died by means other than suicide by hanging.

3. A guard on the cell block in which the detainees reportedly hung themselves gave a statement to NCIS noting that there were no materials available in the detainees’ cells with which to hang themselves in the manner as rumored prior to the NCIS report’s adoption of that “fact.” That statement is not addressed in the report.

4. Contrary to the NCIS report, a medical escort described how one of the three detainees was actually found alive and, on the ride to the Naval Hospital, was discovered to have a cord still tied tightly around his neck – it had not been removed or loosened when he was ostensibly cut down. In addition, the detainee still showed vital signs though he had allegedly been hanging for two hours before he was discovered. No steps were taken to revive the detainee. The escort also observed a Corpsman tie onto the detainee’s wrists the fabric that the detainees had allegedly tied onto their own wrists as they prepared to hang themselves.

5. With regard to the DOJ’s response to a request for an investigation, the letter to Representative Eshoo was signed by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, sent four months after her request was submitted. He has since claimed he simply signed the letter with no knowledge of the investigation although he was one of those in the copied in a lengthy e-mail thread regarding Representative Delahunt’s earlier inquiry, the subject line for which was, “Heads-up from Rep Delahunt re: GTMO suicide allegations.”

Day of action to close guantanamo

So find a protest near you and get our there.
More here http://org.salsalabs.com/o/383/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1299572

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS--UPDATED

Yes, what a great idea---close Guantanamo by bringing Guantanamo to the mainland.... the concern that brought me to represent men at Guantanamo and stand up for our Constitution is coming closer to reality:

President Barack Obama reiterated in January his desire to close the notorious Guantanamo prison by the end of this year. Even among those who agree it should close, a surprising number of lawmakers and policy analysts seem to believe that may require creating a new indefinite detention scheme for suspected terrorists here in the United States.

Supporters of these proposals highlight the allegedly intractable problem of some 45 detainees at Guantanamo, and potentially more, whom the Obama administration has insisted since 2009 cannot be convicted on criminal charges, yet are nonetheless too dangerous to release.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/05/15/gitmo-too-dangerous-to-release-not-so-fast/

It is only a hop skip and a jump before anyone of us could be detained without charge -because we are suspected to be a "terrorist".... more here.

Lyle Denniston has more here.....

Catching up.....

Hot on the heels of Justice Breyer's suggestion that the supreme court might be willing to take a peek at a cert petition if the right questions were asked....I filed a cert petition yesterday for my remaining client and sought to ask the right questions....

Of course my clients case is perhaps too silly for the court's to take seriously---I mean he is accused of being in the wrong guesthouse in Pakistan and studying English...really you can't make this stuff up. So yes, we will detain him forever because he is too dangerous to release but they have no evidence to try him. unless of course someone could just make studying English a capitol offience....geez.

Anyway, getting the supreme court's attention on these cases is pretty near impossible. They refused two additional cert petitions this past month. So I am not holding my breath.

And of course the forever military commission "trials" are doing just fine.... as long as the defense doesn't take too seriously the FBI spying on them.....

So yes, it has been a long time since I updated this blog but as you can see not much has changed.

From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under At Justinian

SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 2014

Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

THE UNEXPECTED

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014

More delicious NSA revelations ... Getting off the no-fly list ... Guantánamo update ... Remaking the law of war ... Botched executions ... Wall Street's lack of conviction ... Roger Fitch files from Washington 

*   *   *

Pirates on trialThe Guantánamo military commissions continue.

Ahmed Al-Darbi was charged with a peculiar offence - one also charged against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, whose hearings resumed in February - and one of the strangest "war crimes" implausibly alleged to affect the US.  

The Saudi is charged with the 2002 Gulf of Aden bombing of a French-flagged Malaysian-chartered oil tanker that killed a Bulgarian crewman (see post of February 2013).

There wasn't a war at the time, and the defendant was actually in US custody.  

There's no connection to the US at all, and it doesn't seem likely that either France or Malaysia was at "war" with al Qaida in 2002.

Of course, Al-Darbi could have been lawfully prosecuted for piracy - by someone - in a civilian court, but the Pentagon needs his testimony to grass-up the heavily-tortured al-Nashiri in a military commission. 

In the end, Al-Darbi, like David Hicks and Omar Khadr before him, decided to plead guilty to imaginary law of war violations just to get out of Guantánamo - one day. The Miami Heraldhas more.  

The Obama administration may be planning to try more pirates at Guantánamo, where the government always wins.  

Al-Darbi's isn't the only new commission. There's also one planned against Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, and, distaining the recent decision of the DC Circuit confirming that conspiracy is not a war crime, the Pentagon has provocatively added that very non-crime to a list of fake war crimes being charged against the Iraqi held at Guantánamo, even as the government appeals its conspiracy loss - the Al Bahlul case - in the courts.  

Steve Vladeck at Just Security has more.  

Read the whole article here.