Mr. Khadr you are free to leave....

And so, with those words Omar Khadr finally became a free man....well so to speak... he is out on bail.
congrats to Khadr and his legal team.
Read more here.

And Harper.... I hope you lose this coming election.....big time.

While we wait....

Today we will find out if Mr. Khadr will be allowed out of prison on bail. A psychological assessment of the young man discusses his attitudes and fears.

 "The statements from Mr. Khadr, now 28, are contained in an assessment by a prison psychologist that paints an unprecedented portrait of his inner life, often in his own words. A judge is to rule Thursday on whether the Canadian citizen can be set free after 13 years of incarceration in Afghanistan, the United States and Canada."

Read more about that assessment here.

I of course do not know what will happen today but I will say that the Canadian courts have generally been fair to Mr. Khadr-- it is the Harper administration that continues to cause the problems.

Thursday

That is the new date for the Canadian judge to decide whether to release Khadr on bail.
Read more here.

AND ACROSS THE POND IN ENGLAND

Seems that British lawmakers have finally figured out why British resident Shaker Aamer has been held so long- despite being cleared for release for approximately 7 years. Many of us have long suspected it was because of torture that he witnessed. Maybe even the death of the three men whom the military claimed committed suicide at the same time. A story that has never rung true.
Anyway, maybe now British lawmakers will demand the return of Aamer.
Read the rest here.

EWWW CANADA

So today Harper's Canada plans to make good on their mean spirited quest to block bail for Khadr (the Canadian teenager who was held at Guantanamo since he was 15 years old).
"The Canadian government announced Monday that it would seek an emergency stay on bail granted by a Canadian judge to former Guantanamo detainee and Canadian national Omar Khadr, who has spent almost half his life behind bars." 
Harper is justifying his actions by saying that he is doing it because the U.S. wants Khadr to stay in jail. But U.S. officials are not backing up that claim... appaarently Harper just made it up and thought the U.S. would agree- but we didn't (for once!)
Read the rest here.

Really Harper?

I guess Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is going to try one last time to keep the teenager- who was held at Guantanamo for more than 10 years - in a Canadian prison.
Harper is so pathetic.
We will know tomorrow whether or not Khadr will be released on bail.
Best of luck to Khadr's attorneys who have fought this battle all these years.
Read more here.

From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under at Justinian

Being droned to death

ROGER FITCH ESQ • THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2015

Show us the kill-list criteria ... New US attorney general needs to fix the FBI ... $4 million investment in judicial election paid off handsomely for litigant ... CIA whistleblower convicted ... Carrying a concealed gun is a "lifestyle" ... Fitch fails to snag a seat at crowded US Supremes same sex marriage hearing 

"It turns out I'm pretty good at killing people."– Barack Obama, in a light-hearted aside

A NY Times headline, "First Evidence of a Blunder in Drone Strike", is old news.

The announcement was unsurprising, as thePentagon admits it doesn't always know who it's killing. 

More here.  

President Obama's death-by-drone policy continues to attract critics, e.g. Germans unhappy to hear it's coordinated through Ramstein AFB, one of many American enclaves still embedded in Germany 70 years after the war ended. 

Drone assassinations can still be averted by capture, as a lucky Texan discovered.  

Muhanad al Farekh was fortunate to be kidnapped in Pakistan and (irregularly) extradited to the US - he's been nominated for drone-death since 2013.

 More here and here. 

Meanwhile, there's a new ACLU lawsuit seeking "kill-list" criteria.

READ THE REST HERE.

THE CIA's Man in the Senate....

I guess I should have really called this "one of the CIA's men in the Senate."
I don't even know where to start with Senator Richard Burr.... so maybe I will just start in a random place-- calling him a lapdog for the CIA is grossly underestimating his role but I will roll with that title for now-- seems Burr has been in a snit since Senate staffers unearthed a copy of a CIA report called the Panetta Review- which confirmed such things as the fact that the CIA exaggerated the "effectiveness" of torture. When the Senate staffers realized what they had (admissions from the CIA itself questioning the effectiveness of torture) they decided to take a physical copy- or at least a portion of the physical copy- and bring it to the senate offices. Its a long story but it seems this explains why the CIA broke into Senate computers back in 2013-- they wanted to see how much of the report the Senate had--- and what else the senate had. That brings me back to Burr....Seems Burr has been particularly irked about the leaking of information from the CIA's report and being the lapdog that he is he is now holding up the nomination of a lawyer for the department of defense who first discovered the report. Anyway, read this article as its a fascinating look at one of the enablers of the CIA's torture program.

"All the Presidents Psychologists...."

There was a lot of discussion about the role that the APA (American Psychological Association) played in the torture of detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other "black sites" a few years back. It is back in the news again with a new report by a watchdog group tied to Physicians for Human Rights. This new report ties in newly unclassified information. You can read the report here.

And you can read more about the report here, here, here, and here.

And following the release of that report'
"The head of a body that advises U.S. terrorism interrogators on ethics on Thursday called for a special prosecutor to probe how the abuse of captured militants during the Bush administration's "war on terror" was allowed to happen." Read the rest here.

How Guantanamo was chosen to house the detainees....

My friend Professor Peter Jan Honigsberg of the University of San Francisco Law School (and the founder and director of the Witness to Guantanamo Project) has written an interesting piece at Huffington Post on how Guantanamo was selected as the cite for the prisoners being held at Guantanamo. You can read it here.
Perhaps most interesting to me is that the powers to be (the ones that made the decision) specifically ruled out Western Europe and its protectorates' "because they are subject to the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights."
In the legal world I think this could arguabley show the premeditated intent in engaging in torture.
Thanks Peter for an eye opening article.

Andy Worthington, Clifford Sloan and the rumor about the release of prisoners

Andy Worthington has a good piece about the rumors regarding upcoming releases and specifically in regards to Shaker Aamer and within that context he also cites from an interview with former Gitmo "ambassador" Cliff Sloan.
Read it here.

Yes, it makes me wanna holler....

Romania

The former Romanian president Ion lliescu admitted on Monday that he allowed the CIA to have a "quiet place to work" in his country but claims he didn't know what the CIA was doing at that "quiet place".... It is not clear whether he ever bothered to ask what they were doing. And my guess is that is was not all that quiet where the prisoners were actually held...
Anyway you can read the rest here.

Good news.... bad news....

Well let's look at the good news first:

A Canadian judge ordered Khadr (the kid who landed in Guantanamo at age 15) to be released while his case is pending.... unfortunately little Bush (prime minister Stephen Harper) will not stand for this and is determined to appeal the order.  OHHHH CANADA.....  
read more here.

The rumor is still out there that the Pentagon is going to try to get as many men out of Guantanamo as possible in the next few months. (Read here)...unfortunately Carol Rosenberg has discovered that the rumor is probably false. (Read here)

At the same time that the rumor is being squelched the British press is reporting that the last remaining Brit being held (Shaker Aamer) is soon to be released... We can only hope.
.Read more here.

And finally, Carol Rosenberg takes a nice look at Slahi's diary---and the looking glass quality of the whole Guantanamo experience. Here.

Gallipoli 100 years later... musical interlude