Take 6 minutes aside and watch this....

                          A ship from Guantanamo.

( sorry -- I don't know how to avoid the commercial...)

FROM ROGER FITCH AND OUR FRIENDS DOWN UNDER AT JUSTINIAN

There is not enough disparaging comments that we can make in regards to the finally dead Donald Rumsfeld.... But Fitch does a good job of filling in the gap from my posts!

*   *   *

Rumsfeld: The Butcher of Baghdad

As Le Monde politely reported, "Donald Rumsfeld, ancien secrétaire à la défense américain et architecte des guerres d'Irak et d'Afghanistan, est mort". 

Or, as less respectful American opinion put it, "War Criminal Found Dead at 88"; "He Played a Leading Role in Mass Murder"; "Rumsfeld represented the very worst of American arrogance and violence toward the rest of the world"; "a tragedy that Rumsfeld died before he could be put on trial for crimes against humanity"; and "worst secretary of defence in American history". 

The Machiavellian Rumsfeld escaped the hangman's noose; under Nuremberg principles, he'd have gone to prison if not the gallows. Instead, the disgraced former secretary of defence outlasted the Abu Ghraib scandal, the ACLU's Ali v Rumsfeld, multiple European criminal proceedings, and dozens of cases involving Pentagon actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo.

He escaped thanks to the protection and stonewalling of successive US governments, including the repeated bad-faith invocation of the "state secrets" privilege. 

It's a sad chapter in American legal history.

READ THE REST OF FITCH HERE.

july 4 2021 musical interlude 4

 And that is it for today...

july 4 2021 musical interlude 3

 

july 4 2021 musical interlude 2

 

July 4 2021 -- musical interlude 1

 

War Criminal - the musical version

 

One war criminal dead.... too many still alive. (updated with yet another link.)

 Rumsfeld is finally dead. He is responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people and he never showed a tinch of remorse. 

I won't waste further words on that monster but I will share some:

start with this one.

and then go here.

and if pictures are more your thing try this.

Oh and this is really on point too.

NYT updates the Gitmo database.

 This database has been a go-to for everyone looking for information about Guantanamo and the men/boys that have been held there -- or in the case of my client and 39 other men -- are still being held there.

They have now updated that database. (Click here) I have not reviewed what they have to say about either of my clients - the one who was released (Mr. Al-Ghizzawi) or the one that remains (Razak Ali) (I will do that in the coming days). 

h/o to Don for sending the link.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under

 Aside from Iraq, George Bush's most transgressive, flagrant flouting of law was establishing a scheme of indefinite detention and military trials at Guantánamo (history here); there the well-documented contempt for international and US domestic law has persisted for years, with a scaffold of purported legality cobbled from extrajudicial acts, political inaction and appellate court acquiescence. 

It's been mostly unlawful from the outset: the secret confinement and torture of invented "illegal enemy combatants" (many of them lawful belligerents); the treatment of men as "war prisoners" who were apprehended (rarely by Americans) for suspected civilian terrorism.

Compounding all that, the arbitrary denial of prisoner of war status hearings, in an "international" conflict that should have attracted full Geneva Convention protections. 

Even the protections of Common Article Three, applicable to "non-international" conflicts, were denied, and Pentagon officials who attempted to provide Geneva protections were sacked (Rick Baccus), bullied (Stuart Couch) and even jailed (Matthew Diaz). 

Lt Comdr Diaz: jailed for sending Guantánamo names to the Centre for Constitutional Rights

Internationally non-compliant military trials were set up, trials that, as law profs David Glazier and David Frakt argued, could themselves be classified as war crimes, and it was all done to avoid legal civilian trials, now rendered impossible because they are tainted by torture and cruelty in violation of the Convention Against Torture. 

Most "convictions" for non-crimes have been overturned on appeal, and perhaps only one charge has been validly pursued, the current one against Abd al-Hadi al-Iraq for killing civilians in a war zone, during a war.

Throughout, the US has denied the men the most basic protection of the US constitution and Anglo-American common law: the unfettered habeas corpus that would have resulted in the release of many of them years ago.

The prisoners' entitlement to full habeas and due process is still being contested by the government, in the Al-Hela case pending before an en banc DC Court of Appeals, a case destined for the supreme court. 

Also pending is the Abu Zubaydah appeal for a civil subpoena, where the state secrets doctrine is being shamefully employed to protect CIA torturers whose identity is a matter of public record. More here. 

Court observers Karen Greenberg and Linda Greenhouse comment on the current state of litigation. 

The Biden administration is meanwhile resolving another Bush-Obama miscarriage of justice, that of Majid Khan, by cutting a deal that will avoid discussion, at his sentencing, of CIA torture. 

Three other prisoners are to be released, including the oldest, Saifullah Paracha, another injustice righted. Still held are people like Mohammed Al-Qahtani: the Pentagon's own Convening Authority declined to refer him for trial, conceding he'd been tortured.

READ THE REST OF FITCH HERE.

From the talking dog

SORRY HAVE BEEN RUNNING BEHIND ON SOME THINGS....

From my perspective, I just try to cling to my own corner of truth [as well as justice and, to the extent consistent with those, which isn't often enough IMHO, the American way] for whomever is still interested in reading about it. And along the way, we can look at some other milestones. Next January, the military prison for Muslim men and boys at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will have been open for twenty years, even as speculation remains that the Biden administration might be considering finally closing it. Interestingly, the "Periodic Review Board" added three names to the "cleared for release" group, bringing that number up to nine out of the forty remaining prisoners.

For the record, those prisoners are Saifullah Paracha, 73, of Pakistan; Abdul Rabbani, 54, of Pakistan; and Uthman Abdul al-Rahim Uthman, 40, of Yemen. Over the years, I interviewed one of Paracha's attorneys, Gaillard Hunt, and I interviewed one of Uthman's attorneys, Marc Falkoff. I'm pretty sure that Cori Crider, then of Reprieve when I interviewed her, also represented Rabbani, as did Jon Eisenberg, who I also interviewed. Hope springs eternal, though I suspect that come next January, my friend Candace's client Saeed Bakouche a/k/a Razak Ali of Algeria will probably still be held at GTMO (particularly in light of recent legal developements in his case), and I expect my friend Andy to resume his annual visits [as the pandemic dies down, please God] so we can all go down to D.C. to protest GTMO on what I fear will be its 20th anniversary.

READ THE REST HERE

MEMORIAL DAY 2021

 

Supreme Court denies Razak's cert petition

 It was a long shot but I had hoped they would grant my motion to not decide the case - because the DC Circuit Court had granted en banc in a case with similar issues. Unfortunately they did not put the case on hold and so Razak is once again out of luck.

You can read more here.

To Razak Ali's mother

 AND ALL OF THE MOTHER'S OF THE DISAPPEARED  WHO ARE HELD AT GUANTANAMO OR ANYWHERE ELSE ACROSS THE WORLD. WHETHER BY MY COUNTRY OR ANOTHER COUNTRY.

Can (will) Biden close Guantanamo

A must read from TomDispatch -- followed by Karen Greenberg's analysis -- on whether we will finally see the end of Guantanamo.

 The difficulty of closing Guantánamo has shown that once you move outside the laws and norms of this country in a significant way, the return to normalcy becomes ever more problematic — and the longer the exception, the harder such a restoration will be. Remember that, before his presidency was over, George W. Bush went on record acknowledging his preference for closing Guantánamo. Obama made it a goal of his presidency from the outset. Biden, with less fanfare and the lessons of their failures in mind, faces the challenge of finally closing America’s forever prison.

Read the rest here.

h/o to Walt