In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's execution, Thomas P. Sullivan of Jenner & Block reflects on the fact that the Iraqi dictator was offered at least some modicum of procedural justice. The same can not be said for the prisoners in Guantánamo.
Consider The Irony Of Guantanamo Bay
From the Chicago Tribune, January 5, 2007
By Thomas P. Sullivan
What an irony, what a contradiction! Although the trial may have been flawed and the execution precipitous, the Iraqi government afforded a mass murderer, Saddam Hussein, basic rights before judgment was pronounced. Hussein was presented with written charges, provided the assistance of lawyers, the government was required to introduce proof to support its charges through competent witnesses, whom his lawyers were permitted to cross-examine, and he was allowed to produce evidence in his own defense.
Compare this to the way our government has handled the cases of more than 400 men, most of whom have been held almost five years in a prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Not a single one has been given a hearing at which the government has been required to produce evidence explaining why he is being held, or had the assistance of a lawyer, or an opportunity to produce evidence in his own defense. No so-called classified evidence has been revealed. No independent judges have presided.
It now appears clear that virtually none of these men will ever receive these kinds of trials. United States officials have announced that only a handful of the prisoners will be tried before the newly created military commissions, while the others will continue to languish indefinitely in their tiny cages.
Army and Navy brass have become accessories to this scandalous state of affairs by continuing to claim that the prisoners are dangerous, the "worst of the worst," as though this provides justification for continuing to jail them without hearings. Even more shameful, a congressional majority mindlessly succumbed to White House pressure by voting to deprive the prisoners of the right to seek relief in federal courts.
It has been argued that "military necessity" precludes providing legal protections to the prisoners and that to do so will interfere with conduct of the "war on terror." But these men are not held on or near a battlefield. They are isolated on a remote island; almost none has been questioned within the past two years; they no longer have unplumbed "intelligence" value.
The cost to maintain this prison, and the need to provide round-the-clock supervision, is clearly inconsistent with our national interests. Far better to charge and try those where there is solid evidence they committed punishable offenses and release the others without further delay, expense and diversion of military and civilian personnel. Those found guilty should be sentenced appropriately, and those not charged or found not guilty after trial should be returned to their native countries. The least we should do for them is what was done for Saddam Hussein.
Refusal to afford due process of law to these men is a national disgrace. If compliance with fundamental principles is insufficient to motivate our leaders--if they require selfish reasons to move them to action--they should bear in mind the precedent they are setting for how other nations may treat our citizens taken into custody abroad.
Thomas P. Sullivan, who represents a number of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, is a partner in the law firm Jenner and Block and was co-chair of the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment. He was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois from 1977 to 1981.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Sheehan to Visit Guantánamo
This week, activist Cindy Sheehan travels to Cuba to protest the Bush Administration’s detention policies in the “war on terror.” On Wednesday ‘Peace Mom’ Sheehan and other human rights activists will speak at a conference in the Cuban city of Guantánamo and participate in a demonstration at the gates of the U.S. base.Sheehan makes her case in a letter from Havana:
We travel to Guantanamo tomorrow to begin our march for peace and humanity and to demand that the U.S. give each and every inmate his due process, treat them humanely, whether it is to release them or have them properly incarcerated if found guilty (by a criminal court, not a kangaroo court) and then close down the gulag of Guantanamo.
Our country should be above such inhumanity. Most people would be sick at heart if we discovered that dogs were being treated so horribly - these are human beings, not animals.
Every American who realizes that violence only spreads violence and torture only spawns hatred should stand up on January 11th in solidarity with our contingent in Cuba to call for an immediate closure of Guantanamo and for the restoration of habeas corpus that was stolen from us by the 109th Congress...
CCR: Close Guantánamo
As the 5th anniversary of the Guantánamo Bay prison camps approaches, the Center for Constitutional Rights has a new statement on the U.S. detention facility:
CCR distinguishes itself from other NGOs in that it believes Guantánamo is beyond reform. Improvements in prisoner conditions and reforms in “interrogation techniques” are impossible to enforce and do not address the fundamental injustice of imprisoning human beings for years without charge. As CCR reasons,
Nearly four hundred men continue to languish at Guantánamo. After five years of imprisonment outside the law, humiliation, physical & mental abuse and torture, and separation from their families, the notion that Guantánamo can ever be a normal prison for them must be abandoned.
CCR distinguishes itself from other NGOs in that it believes Guantánamo is beyond reform. Improvements in prisoner conditions and reforms in “interrogation techniques” are impossible to enforce and do not address the fundamental injustice of imprisoning human beings for years without charge. As CCR reasons,
If there are people in Guantánamo who have committed a crime, our government can subject them a court martial or civilian criminal trial. Any convicted defendants can serve out their time in existing military or civilian prisons. We don't need Guantánamo, and it has jeopardized our national security far more than it has furthered our security or intelligence...
Monday, January 8, 2007
British Parliament to Debate Guantánamo
Today the House of Commons will debate Guantánamo and the fates of nine British residents being held there. According to the Guardian, Liberal Democrat MPs have condemned Tony Blair's government's refusal to offer consular assistance UK residents detained in the camp.Said MP Ed Davey, "these men have been held for over four years without trial. It's ironic that during their detention the House of Commons threw out Tony Blair's own attempt to introduce 90-day detention without trial."
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Update
The Law Bulletin has allowed us to post two articles by Jerry Crimmins. Candace's Guantánamo work features prominently in both pieces; they are posted below. Also, we have put Project Hamad in our 'Friendly Links' on the right and encourage everybody to see the video put together by Mr. Hamad's attorneys
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Some 'combatants' faced multiple tribunals
By Jerry Crimmins
Law Bulletin staff writer
(Posted with permission from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin)
A lawyer says that federal officials applied an old adage after at least three Guantanamo Bay detainees were found not to be illegal enemy combatants: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Military hearing officers found in 2004 that three inmates at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba were not properly designated ''enemy combatants,'' but the government has continued to hold them, according to various lawyers.
Government records show that after the three detainees were initially cleared in hearings known as Combat Status Review Tribunals in 2004, higher authorities ordered the hearings reopened.
After what officials characterize as new evidence was presented to military hearing officers, the three were found to be valid enemy combatants.
In one of those cases, according to a study by Seton Hall University School of Law, the detainee was cleared twice by CSRT hearing officers, but higher authorities persisted and he was declared a combatant on the third attempt.
Chicago attorney H. Candace Gorman represents one of the three detainees, Abdullah H.A. Al-Ghizzawi, an Arab who was seized in Afghanistan in late 2001 or early 2002.
Gorman said she was stunned to discover that her client, whom she volunteered to represent pro bono, initially had been cleared in 2004.
According to government records, ''On 24 November 2004, a Tribunal unanimously determined that the detainee was not properly designated as an enemy combatant.''
In an online posting, Gorman wrote, ''Why the hell has Mr. Al-Ghizzawi been held at Guantanamo for almost five years, dying of some kind of liver disease, when there is no evidence that he is an enemy combatant?'' Based on pronouncements by U.S. officials, there was no reason for Gorman to anticipate that there would be two hearings for her client.
In 2005, then-Secretary of the Navy Gordon England stated: ''The CSRT is a one-time review to determine if a person, a detainee, is or is not an enemy combatant.''
Rear Admiral James M. McGarrah , director of the Office of the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2005: ''The CSRT is a one-time process.''
But in its own regulations, it turns out the government does have the ability to hold apparently any number of tribunal hearings for any Guantanamo detainee until the highest authorities are satisfied.
Paragraph 8 on page 9 of a document entitled ''Combat Status Review Tribunal Process'' states that the director of the Office of the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, currently McGarrah, ''may approve the [Tribunal] decision … or return the record to the Tribunal for further proceedings.''
Gorman says that her outrage at this process extended beyond the holding of two different hearings with two different outcomes for her client. She says that the government claimed to have secret new evidence against Al-Ghizzawi to substantiate the finding by the second tribunal that he was an enemy combatant.
But that evidence, she contends, is nonexistent.
Gorman said she obtained unclassified information about her client in the fall of 2006 after U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in July or August ordered the government to turn over the record of Al-Ghizzawi's CSRT hearing to her. Gorman has a habeas corpus petition on Al-Ghizzawi's behalf pending before Bates.
To see the classified or secret portions of the CSRT, including the new exhibits, she had to make an appointment to visit a building in November at a secret location ''in the D.C. general area.''
Gorman said she was stunned again.
On Nov. 20, she wrote on the blog The Huffington Post, ''There was nothing new. Absolutely nothing new. There were no secrets. No new evidence.''
The government record asserts that valid evidence does exist against Al-Ghizzawi, but it's classified. Thus, from the vantage point of public knowledge, the matter is a standoff.
Gorman said she will ask Bates in January for summary judgment on her habeas corpus petition.
In response to Gorman's allegations, Navy Lt. Commander Chito Peppler, a spokesman for the Defense Department Office of Public Affairs, said:
''It is critical to understand that the CSRT is a multiple-step process, which is not complete until the convening authority [McGarrah] completes final review and approval of the decisions of the tribunals,'' Peppler said. ''The American people whom we are protecting expect us to be thorough and complete.''
According to McGarrah's testimony to the Senate, 558 detainees went through the CSRT process.
The panels found that 520 were properly listed as enemy combatants, and that 38 detainees never were, or no longer were, enemy combatants.
In McGarrah's Senate testimony, he said the 38 ''no longer met the criteria for designation as enemy combatants'' and ''were processed for release.''
It could not be learned in how many cases McGarrah ordered that CSRT hearings be repeated.
But Peppler of the Navy said, ''The vast majority of CSRT decisions were concurred in by the convening authority [McGarrah].''
Peppler added that in most of the cases that were returned for further deliberations, ''the original CSRT decision remained the same. ''Where original decisions changed, they changed in both directions. For example, we had an 'enemy combatant' decision changed to an NLEC, 'no longer enemy combatant.' ''
In addition to Gorman's client, the cases in which the original finding that the detainee was not an enemy combatant was reversed involve Hassan Anvar and the detainee identified in a study by Seton Hall University School of Law as detainee No. 556, named in other documents as Abdullah Khan. Attorney George M. Clarke of the Washington office of Baker & McKenzie represents Anvar and provided the Law Bulletin with the unclassified record of his tribunal hearing.
Anvar contended that he had traveled to Afghanistan from China to learn to use weapons to fight the Chinese.
The initial three-member tribunal said, ''The majority of the evidence is consistent with the detainee's explanation as to his presence and activities in Afghanistan, and very little evidence, if any, was presented to refute or discredit his explanations.''
That tribunal found unanimously that Anvar was not an enemy combatant, at least as far as the U.S. was concerned.
After a new hearing was ordered held and the government presented 12 new evidentiary exhibits, the new panel concluded that Anvar is an enemy combatant.
Currently, about 395 detainees remain at Guantanamo.
About a month after al-Qaida carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the U.S. and NATO allies invaded Afghanistan to remove the Taliban and to pursue al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
The U.S. and troops from other countries took approximately 10,000 captives. The vast majority were screened and released fairly quickly.
But 759 of these captives were detained as enemy combatants and taken to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
U.S. officials said these detainees included terrorist trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, bodyguards for bin Laden and potential suicide bombers.
Under pressure from two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court — in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, both rendered in 2004, the Defense Department instituted the CSRT tribunals.
These tribunals are administrative proceedings held by panels of three military officers to formally assess whether each Guantanamo inmate was properly detained.
The government's position is that it set up the CSRT tribunals voluntarily.
Law Bulletin staff writer
(Posted with permission from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin)
A lawyer says that federal officials applied an old adage after at least three Guantanamo Bay detainees were found not to be illegal enemy combatants: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Military hearing officers found in 2004 that three inmates at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba were not properly designated ''enemy combatants,'' but the government has continued to hold them, according to various lawyers.
Government records show that after the three detainees were initially cleared in hearings known as Combat Status Review Tribunals in 2004, higher authorities ordered the hearings reopened.
After what officials characterize as new evidence was presented to military hearing officers, the three were found to be valid enemy combatants.
In one of those cases, according to a study by Seton Hall University School of Law, the detainee was cleared twice by CSRT hearing officers, but higher authorities persisted and he was declared a combatant on the third attempt.
Chicago attorney H. Candace Gorman represents one of the three detainees, Abdullah H.A. Al-Ghizzawi, an Arab who was seized in Afghanistan in late 2001 or early 2002.
Gorman said she was stunned to discover that her client, whom she volunteered to represent pro bono, initially had been cleared in 2004.
According to government records, ''On 24 November 2004, a Tribunal unanimously determined that the detainee was not properly designated as an enemy combatant.''
In an online posting, Gorman wrote, ''Why the hell has Mr. Al-Ghizzawi been held at Guantanamo for almost five years, dying of some kind of liver disease, when there is no evidence that he is an enemy combatant?'' Based on pronouncements by U.S. officials, there was no reason for Gorman to anticipate that there would be two hearings for her client.
In 2005, then-Secretary of the Navy Gordon England stated: ''The CSRT is a one-time review to determine if a person, a detainee, is or is not an enemy combatant.''
Rear Admiral James M. McGarrah , director of the Office of the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2005: ''The CSRT is a one-time process.''
But in its own regulations, it turns out the government does have the ability to hold apparently any number of tribunal hearings for any Guantanamo detainee until the highest authorities are satisfied.
Paragraph 8 on page 9 of a document entitled ''Combat Status Review Tribunal Process'' states that the director of the Office of the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, currently McGarrah, ''may approve the [Tribunal] decision … or return the record to the Tribunal for further proceedings.''
Gorman says that her outrage at this process extended beyond the holding of two different hearings with two different outcomes for her client. She says that the government claimed to have secret new evidence against Al-Ghizzawi to substantiate the finding by the second tribunal that he was an enemy combatant.
But that evidence, she contends, is nonexistent.
Gorman said she obtained unclassified information about her client in the fall of 2006 after U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in July or August ordered the government to turn over the record of Al-Ghizzawi's CSRT hearing to her. Gorman has a habeas corpus petition on Al-Ghizzawi's behalf pending before Bates.
To see the classified or secret portions of the CSRT, including the new exhibits, she had to make an appointment to visit a building in November at a secret location ''in the D.C. general area.''
Gorman said she was stunned again.
On Nov. 20, she wrote on the blog The Huffington Post, ''There was nothing new. Absolutely nothing new. There were no secrets. No new evidence.''
The government record asserts that valid evidence does exist against Al-Ghizzawi, but it's classified. Thus, from the vantage point of public knowledge, the matter is a standoff.
Gorman said she will ask Bates in January for summary judgment on her habeas corpus petition.
In response to Gorman's allegations, Navy Lt. Commander Chito Peppler, a spokesman for the Defense Department Office of Public Affairs, said:
''It is critical to understand that the CSRT is a multiple-step process, which is not complete until the convening authority [McGarrah] completes final review and approval of the decisions of the tribunals,'' Peppler said. ''The American people whom we are protecting expect us to be thorough and complete.''
According to McGarrah's testimony to the Senate, 558 detainees went through the CSRT process.
The panels found that 520 were properly listed as enemy combatants, and that 38 detainees never were, or no longer were, enemy combatants.
In McGarrah's Senate testimony, he said the 38 ''no longer met the criteria for designation as enemy combatants'' and ''were processed for release.''
It could not be learned in how many cases McGarrah ordered that CSRT hearings be repeated.
But Peppler of the Navy said, ''The vast majority of CSRT decisions were concurred in by the convening authority [McGarrah].''
Peppler added that in most of the cases that were returned for further deliberations, ''the original CSRT decision remained the same. ''Where original decisions changed, they changed in both directions. For example, we had an 'enemy combatant' decision changed to an NLEC, 'no longer enemy combatant.' ''
In addition to Gorman's client, the cases in which the original finding that the detainee was not an enemy combatant was reversed involve Hassan Anvar and the detainee identified in a study by Seton Hall University School of Law as detainee No. 556, named in other documents as Abdullah Khan. Attorney George M. Clarke of the Washington office of Baker & McKenzie represents Anvar and provided the Law Bulletin with the unclassified record of his tribunal hearing.
Anvar contended that he had traveled to Afghanistan from China to learn to use weapons to fight the Chinese.
The initial three-member tribunal said, ''The majority of the evidence is consistent with the detainee's explanation as to his presence and activities in Afghanistan, and very little evidence, if any, was presented to refute or discredit his explanations.''
That tribunal found unanimously that Anvar was not an enemy combatant, at least as far as the U.S. was concerned.
After a new hearing was ordered held and the government presented 12 new evidentiary exhibits, the new panel concluded that Anvar is an enemy combatant.
Currently, about 395 detainees remain at Guantanamo.
About a month after al-Qaida carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the U.S. and NATO allies invaded Afghanistan to remove the Taliban and to pursue al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
The U.S. and troops from other countries took approximately 10,000 captives. The vast majority were screened and released fairly quickly.
But 759 of these captives were detained as enemy combatants and taken to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
U.S. officials said these detainees included terrorist trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, bodyguards for bin Laden and potential suicide bombers.
Under pressure from two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court — in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, both rendered in 2004, the Defense Department instituted the CSRT tribunals.
These tribunals are administrative proceedings held by panels of three military officers to formally assess whether each Guantanamo inmate was properly detained.
The government's position is that it set up the CSRT tribunals voluntarily.
Secret Evidence at New Hearing Tips Scale
By Jerry Crimmins
Law Bulletin staff writer
(Posted with permission from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin)
The descriptions of Guantanamo detainee Abdullah H.A. Al-Ghizzawi as provided by the U.S. government and by his volunteer lawyer, H. Candace Gorman of Chicago, are contradictory.
Gorman said in an interview that Al-Ghizzawi, 45, is a Libyan national who studied meteorology and learned English in the Philippines as an exchange student.He was drafted into the Libyan Army and fought in a war against Chad for eight months. He left Libya in the 1980s when that country extended his military obligation for another year.He then worked odd jobs and lived in Pakistan and Yemen for four years.
In about 1992, he moved to Afghanistan to seek better opportunities after the Russians left there, Gorman said.Al-Ghizzawi married an Afghan woman and opened a store that sells spices and bakery goods. The couple has a five-year-old daughter, according to Gorman.When the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001, villagers north of Jalalabad, who were members of the U.S.-allied Northern Alliance, seized Al-Ghizzawi in order to collect a bounty on captured Arabs, according to Gorman. Al-Ghizzawi was turned over to the U.S. and sent to Guantanamo.
A starkly different view is presented in the unclassified summary of evidence prepared for the tribunals that considered whether Al-Ghizzawi was an illegal ''enemy combatant'' against the U.S.:''… the detainee is a Libyan citizen who has traveled extensively throughout North Africa and the Middle East and is a member of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which is a designated foreign terrorist organization. He also possesses substantial historical knowledge, up to the time of his arrest, of LIFG membership and operations. The detainee visited Khaldan and Sada training camps. Afghan intelligence forces arrested the detainee in Konar, Afghanistan, in January 2002.''Khaldan and Sada, according to the U.S., are terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
The first tribunal of three U.S. military officers to hear Al-Ghizzawi's case on Nov. 23, 2004, said the summary of the evidence against him ''provides only conclusory statements without supporting evidence.''The first tribunal added that ''the classified exhibits did not support the assertions on the unclassified summary.''In a unanimous decision, the tribunal concluded that Al-Ghizzawi ''is not properly classified as an enemy combatant and is not associated with al-Qaida or Taliban.''But higher-ups ordered that a second tribunal be held after a new search was made for information in the government's possession.Four new exhibits, all classified, were placed in evidence.On Jan. 21, 2005, the second tribunal ''determined that this detainee is properly classified as an enemy combatant and is a member of al-Qaida.''
Law Bulletin staff writer
(Posted with permission from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin)
The descriptions of Guantanamo detainee Abdullah H.A. Al-Ghizzawi as provided by the U.S. government and by his volunteer lawyer, H. Candace Gorman of Chicago, are contradictory.
Gorman said in an interview that Al-Ghizzawi, 45, is a Libyan national who studied meteorology and learned English in the Philippines as an exchange student.He was drafted into the Libyan Army and fought in a war against Chad for eight months. He left Libya in the 1980s when that country extended his military obligation for another year.He then worked odd jobs and lived in Pakistan and Yemen for four years.
In about 1992, he moved to Afghanistan to seek better opportunities after the Russians left there, Gorman said.Al-Ghizzawi married an Afghan woman and opened a store that sells spices and bakery goods. The couple has a five-year-old daughter, according to Gorman.When the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001, villagers north of Jalalabad, who were members of the U.S.-allied Northern Alliance, seized Al-Ghizzawi in order to collect a bounty on captured Arabs, according to Gorman. Al-Ghizzawi was turned over to the U.S. and sent to Guantanamo.
A starkly different view is presented in the unclassified summary of evidence prepared for the tribunals that considered whether Al-Ghizzawi was an illegal ''enemy combatant'' against the U.S.:''… the detainee is a Libyan citizen who has traveled extensively throughout North Africa and the Middle East and is a member of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which is a designated foreign terrorist organization. He also possesses substantial historical knowledge, up to the time of his arrest, of LIFG membership and operations. The detainee visited Khaldan and Sada training camps. Afghan intelligence forces arrested the detainee in Konar, Afghanistan, in January 2002.''Khaldan and Sada, according to the U.S., are terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
The first tribunal of three U.S. military officers to hear Al-Ghizzawi's case on Nov. 23, 2004, said the summary of the evidence against him ''provides only conclusory statements without supporting evidence.''The first tribunal added that ''the classified exhibits did not support the assertions on the unclassified summary.''In a unanimous decision, the tribunal concluded that Al-Ghizzawi ''is not properly classified as an enemy combatant and is not associated with al-Qaida or Taliban.''But higher-ups ordered that a second tribunal be held after a new search was made for information in the government's possession.Four new exhibits, all classified, were placed in evidence.On Jan. 21, 2005, the second tribunal ''determined that this detainee is properly classified as an enemy combatant and is a member of al-Qaida.''
Sunday, January 7, 2007
The Unconscionable Detention of Adel Hamad
Adel Hamad has been held in Guantánamo since 2003. His attorneys have traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to verify that Mr. Hamad was, as he claimed, a teacher and hospital worker who worked with orphans and refugees. An excellent video has been made featuring the testimony of those who knew and worked with this warm, generous man.
Nevertheless the United States has classified Mr. Hamad as an "enemy combatant." A dissenting member of Mr. Hamad's kangaroo tribunal, apparently disgusted with the proceedings, described the detention of Mr. Hamad as "unconscionable."
Learn more about Adel Hamad here.
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Nevertheless the United States has classified Mr. Hamad as an "enemy combatant." A dissenting member of Mr. Hamad's kangaroo tribunal, apparently disgusted with the proceedings, described the detention of Mr. Hamad as "unconscionable."
Learn more about Adel Hamad here.
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Club Med Guantánamo?
Yesterday, the FBI released documents describing more than a dozen instances of abuse at Guantánamo including an incident in which a detainee's head was wrapped in duct tape as punishment for chanting the Quran, the use of menstrual blood to offend and humiliate prisoners and the story of a man who was kept in sweltering cell until he pulled his own hair out. The report also describes an interrogator dressing as a Catholic priest and performing mock baptisms on prisoners.
Today the Associated Press reports that the "Pentagon plans no action as a result of a newly released FBI report on detainee abuse." A Pentagon spokesman insists that these reports are old news at the DoD and all allegations have been thoroughly investigated...sure.
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Today the Associated Press reports that the "Pentagon plans no action as a result of a newly released FBI report on detainee abuse." A Pentagon spokesman insists that these reports are old news at the DoD and all allegations have been thoroughly investigated...sure.
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Candace in the Law Bulletin
Candace was featured prominently in two articles by Jerry Crimmins in the December 27 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (subscribers only).
Both articles discuss the fact that Al-Ghizzawi, one of Candace's clients, was designated a non-enemy combatant by his first Combatant Status Review Tribunal. This determination was overturned by the higher-ups in Washington D.C. and a second tribunal discovered "new evidence" that favored his reclassification as an enemy combatant. Candace addresses the substance of this new evidence (or lack thereof) here.
Both articles discuss the fact that Al-Ghizzawi, one of Candace's clients, was designated a non-enemy combatant by his first Combatant Status Review Tribunal. This determination was overturned by the higher-ups in Washington D.C. and a second tribunal discovered "new evidence" that favored his reclassification as an enemy combatant. Candace addresses the substance of this new evidence (or lack thereof) here.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Candace on Michaelmoore.com
Candace has a new piece on the Michael Moore website (michaelmoore.com). The front page of the site features a picture of Candace in an orange jumpsuit. No, Candace hasn't been designated an "unlawful enemy combatant" (yet). As she explains in Ask me about Guantánamo, she is trying to raise awareness about the plight of detainees.The reason I wore the jumpsuit was that I hoped people would stop and ask me about it. However it didn't happen quite that way. As you might imagine people that know me were forced to listen to my explanation, but the “masses” were keeping their distance. Most people turned their heads or averted their eyes when they saw me coming. Some crossed to the other side of the street. It might have had something to do with the headache orange color… or maybe the fact that there is a federal metropolitan correctional center a few
short blocks from my office. Anyway, I am thinking next time I will sport a giant button that says “ ask me about Guantánamo. ”
Monday, December 18, 2006
More Detainees Released
Over the weekend, the Department of Defense announced that 18 Guantánamo detainees of various nationalities had been released. One of the detainees was apparently a Libyan - unfortunately not our friend, Mr. Al-Ghizzawi.
Of course, just last week the New York Times quoted a Navy official saying “They’re all terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants.” This is the routine at GTMO; the government insists that Guantánamo holds the “worst of the worst” and yet it continues to release a fitful trickle of detainees. While it’s good news that innocent men are being freed, their long-delayed release raises questions as to why they were held without trial or charge for so many years in the first place.
The U.S. attempts to save face by insisting that “freedom doesn’t equate to innocence” and that all detainees were part of “Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.” But as attorney Joshua Colangelo-Bryan told the AP “it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such 'vicious killers' or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantánamo."
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Of course, just last week the New York Times quoted a Navy official saying “They’re all terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants.” This is the routine at GTMO; the government insists that Guantánamo holds the “worst of the worst” and yet it continues to release a fitful trickle of detainees. While it’s good news that innocent men are being freed, their long-delayed release raises questions as to why they were held without trial or charge for so many years in the first place.
The U.S. attempts to save face by insisting that “freedom doesn’t equate to innocence” and that all detainees were part of “Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.” But as attorney Joshua Colangelo-Bryan told the AP “it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such 'vicious killers' or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantánamo."
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Grim news from the front....
Today, U.S. District Judge, James Robertson dismissed the Hamdan habeas petition (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, made famous by the Supreme Court decision which struck down Bush's original military commissions scheme earlier this year).Robertson accepted the government's position that the jurisdiction-stripping provisions of the Military Commissions Act removed the court's jurisdiction over Hamdan's petition and that the nefarious MCA applies retroactively to pending petitions. This is a blow to our guys.
Judge Robertson's memo includes a review of the origins and historical development of habeas corpus, "the most usual remedy by which a man is restored again to his liberty, if he have been against law deprived of it." Unfortunately, his decision adds a sad page to that venerable history
- Adrian Bleifuss Prados
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
New Links
We are building a Documents and Resources section for the blog. It is located on the column of links at the right of the webpage. So far, we've posted links to the Mark and Joshua Denbeaux's Seton Hall School of Law Report on Guantánamo Detainees, the Center For Constitutional Rights' Faces of Guantánamo and CCR's report on hunger strikes.
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