amazing how word gets around...

 

21 years later my remaining client goes home...

 

Pentagon’s Repatriation of Algerian Leaves 30 Prisoners at Guantánamo

The transfer was the sixth of a cleared prisoner in six months in a Biden administration

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A prisoner at Guantánamo Bay’s detention center in 2019.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

 

By Carol Rosenberg

April 20, 2023, 7:55 a.m. ET

3 MIN READ

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — The U.S. military repatriated a prisoner to Algeria on Thursday who had been held at Guantánamo without charge for more than two decades, as the Biden administration continues its efforts to reduce the detainee population at the Navy base.

The prisoner, Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush, 52, was among about 20 suspected low-level fighters who were swept up by Pakistani security services in a 2002 raid in Faisalabad on dwellings believed to be Al Qaeda safe houses. The suspected fighters were ultimately taken to Guantánamo Bay.

His release leaves only one prisoner captured in the raid still at the Pentagon prison in Cuba. The others have been transferred or repatriated.

Lawyers who have tried to speak with Mr. Bakush described him as reclusive. He boycotted hearings where his suitability for release was reviewed and mostly stayed in his cell at Camp 6, the prison building where cooperative captives are held and allowed to eat, pray and watch television together.

H. Candace Gorman, a defense lawyer based in Chicago who has represented Mr. Bakush for the past 17 years, said he stopped meeting with her in 2017 or 2018.

He has never been married and has no children but may have distant family in Algeria, she said in an email. This year was his 22nd Ramadan in U.S. custody.

At first, U.S. forces identified the prisoner as a Libyan named Ali Abdul Razzaq, and that name appeared on his federal court filings. But in time, he identified himself as Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush and said he was Algerian.

By the time of his 2021 hearing, U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded he “probably attended basic and advanced training in Afghanistan and later served as an instructor at an extremist camp prior to his capture.”

A U.S. military officer representing Mr. Bakush’s interests said “he prefers to be alone and spends a lot of time in his cell,” adding that he has little education and aspired to

In 2018, lawyers tried to use his case to get federal courts to set a higher standard for evaluating the intelligence gathered against the men in the earliest days of Guantánamo Bay. But the effort failed.

They also argued that, as the detainees approached two decades in custody, the U.S. government should be required to prove the future dangerousness of a detainee in a manner more similar to a civil commitment for psychiatric reasons. The Supreme Court declined to take the case in 2021.

Mr. Bakush’s repatriation was the sixth transfer in six months by the Biden administration, which in statements has described each release as consistent with its goal of “responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantánamo Bay facility.”

Now, 16 of the 30 men held there are eligible for transfers, but require more complex diplomatic negotiations than the recent repatriations. They include 11 Yemenis, a Libyan and a Somali who, by law, cannot be returned to their homelands. Negotiations to find nations to take some of those men stretch back to the Obama administration.

In addition, lawyers for an admitted war criminal, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, are searching for a nation to take him as part of a plea deal that would provide him with medical care. Mr. Hadi, who is in his 60s, is disabled from a deteriorating spine disease and has undergone six back and neck surgeries at Guantánamo Bay since 2017. Over the years, 780 men and boys have been held at Guantánamo Bay, with a maximum population of about 660 in 2003. All were brought there under the George W. Bush administration.

god speed Saeed

 

U. N. REPORT ON DETAINEES

 Fitch just reminded me that I never posted a link to the U.N. Report on Guantanamo published on the 22nd anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo but only released in late March. You can read it here.

Also you can read Carol Rosenberg's report on the report here. (If you have a subscription to the NYT.)

FROM ROGER FITCH AND OUR FRIENDS DOWN UNDER AT JUSTINIAN

...

 In the wake of the supreme court's dreadful Dobbs and Bruen decisions, there's a new demand for historians schooled in 18th century sexual practices, and weaponry, respectively. 

The results of Clarence Thomas's gun originalism are everywhere.

In US v Rahimi, a Fifth Circuit panel comprising Trumpistes James C Ho and Cory T Wilson and Reagan appointee Edith Jones put a horrifying gloss on Bruen.

In the initial opinion, written by Wilson, the court ruled threats of imminent domestic violence cannot deprive an offender of his weapon; in a revised opinion, Judge Ho dug the hole even deeper. 

Ho is a case-study in Republican judicial manipulation. He was appointed in 2017 to a seat on the 5th circuit vacant since 2013, when a Carter-appointee took senior status. Republicans blocked filling the seat until Trump could appoint a "movement" lawyer.

When Ho was appointed, the former Texas SG already had a reputation as an extreme right-wing lawyer with the Dallas-based First Liberty Institute, the "Christian conservative" legal group that employed Trump-appointed Texas federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk.

Ho was vigorously opposed in the US Senate, not least for his part in the Torture Memos: he wrote a pro-torture memo for Assistant AG Jay Bybee (now a 9th circuit judge) in 2002 when both were employed by the Justice Department.

Ho's memo Possible Interpretations of Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, falsely claimed the Convention Against Torture (CAT) "distinguishes between torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment".

This was cited by Bybee in his infamous memo, Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under [the US Torture Act].

Bybee's still-shocking memo (mostly by John Yoo) concluded that, notwithstanding US obligations under the CAT, the Torture Act reached only the most "extreme" and "heinous" acts, those causing pain "akin to that which accompanies physical injury such as death or organ failure".

This advice led directly to CIA torture overseas, while the US also failed to fulfil its CAT obligations at Guantánamo, according to a newly-published review of detainee treatment by the UN Rapporteur. 

READ THE WHOLE FITCH HERE.

musical interlude

 

false rumor....

 but hope dies last. 

HOMEWARD BOUND?

 

another detainee released--- again, not my client.

 
I have been a little distracted and did not report it when it happened but another detainee was released on March 7th or 8th. Like my client Mr. al Sharbi has been held for over 21 years without any charges ever being filed against him.

U.S. Military Repatriates Saudi Engineer From Guantánamo Bay

Ghassan al-Sharbi had been held by U.S. forces for more than two decades without trial. Prosecutors abandoned early efforts to charge him.

Carol Rosenberg at the NYT 

has more here.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian.

 

The morning after

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2023

The trickle down judiciary ... Novel legal theories the order of the day ... No precedents required ... Trump's debauchery of the courts is coming home to roost ... Forum shopping for "Trump judges" ... Gilead fermenting ... High noon for the Murdochs ... DeSantis' torture taint ... Roger Fitch's Letter from Washington 

Washington is pretty quiet. The supreme court has not announced any major mischief, and the Republican majority in the house have barely started their strategy of wild goose chases and investigating Democrats. 

Little seems to happen at America's longest-running injustice, Guantánamo. Lately, however, there have been developments: two prisoners, brothers, have been repatriated to Pakistan; 32 prisoners remain.  

....

The Rabbani brothers were held for 20 years, although Ahmed's initial detention was one of mistaken identity. They were never charged, and left Gitmo with nothing.

Another recently-released Pakistani, Majid Khan, was charged and pleaded guilty. Khan's horrific CIA torture was publicly aired at his sentencing and resulted in an earlier release. 

He's just been resettled in Belize, with a furnished house, car, laptop and phone, surely the first time the US ever provided reparations for torture. 

Meanwhile, there are credible Arab accusations of torture participation by a young JAG lawyer stationed at Gitmo in 2006. He's been identified by detainees as Lieutenant DeSantis. 

 READ THE WHOLE FITCH HERE.

Attorney for one of the brothers speaks out...

 Sorry, they will always be "the brothers" to me. Always nameless (just the brothers) but no longer faceless. The brothers are now free as I mentioned in a post a few days ago. Now the attorney for Ahmed Rabbani speaks out in an editorial in al Jazeera "sorry seems to be the hardest word."

A fitting end to black history month- banned black music

The most famous of course is Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit-- But for those of you old enough to remember the smothers brothers show here is a clip to a performance by Harry Belafonte that was banned from the show and led to the show ultimately being shut down. video footage to the 1968 democratic convention in Chicago is worked in starting about half way through. (h/o to daily kos)

THIS IS WHAT WE ARE

 I actually keep hoping that I can use the past tense but we are not there yet since our military still insists on trying these men despite the horrendous torture that we subjected them to. To the point- the "rectal feeding" also called anal rape. This past week a doctor testified at a Guantanamo hearing about the details of that torture:

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Over the years, the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of waterboarding and other forms of torture in its secret overseas prisons after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been revealed in government leaks, testimony and a damning Senate investigation.But an expert’s testimony this week in pretrial hearings at Guantánamo Bay offered some of the most graphic details made public about the C.I.A.’s shadowy use of rectal feeding on its prisoners, a discredited practice kept secret long after other torture methods had been exposed.

Dr. Sondra S. Crosby, a court-approved expert on torture and other trauma, testified in a long-running defense effort by lawyers for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. The lawyers are seeking to suppress from his eventual trial admissions he made to federal investigators as tainted by torture.

She held up a tube that is designed to be put in a patient’s windpipe and said that — according to the agency’s once-secret records —C.I.A. prison staff inserted one just like it into Mr. Nashiri’s anus in May 2004. Agency personnel then used a syringe to inject a protein enriched nutritional shake into his body.

Carol Rosenberg at the New York Times has more here. [remember there is a paywall.]

The brothers are finally free

 

Since I started working on Guantanamo cases in 2005 (yes, almost 18 years ago) I have heard about the brothers.  The younger brother  (Mohammed Ahmed Ghulam Rabbani, 53) has long engaged in hunger strikes over the years to protest their detention of more than 20 years without charges ever being filed. Those hunger strikes have taken a toll.on him.  He also became an artist. The military has just lifted its ban on the men taking their art work with them so hopefully Ahmed was allowed to take his work with him.  We will know soon I am sure.

Not much is known about the older brother  Abdul Rahim Ghulam Rabbani, 55 who is quiet and pretty much kept to himself.

Carol Rosenberg at the New York Times has more here. (sorry there is a paywall).

Math has never been my forte but I think the count is somewhere around 32- 18 are cleared for release including my client Algerian Saeed Bakhouch. 

One year on...