Part 2 of the Interview

Again from Chicago's own North and Clark.

Click on the title for the link directly to the interview.

Order for Rule to Show Cause Against Government, entered

Last month I filed a Motion in the District Court for a Rule to Show Cause against the Government for its blatant and intentional violation of an Order entered by the Court that applied in every pending habeas case. Today one of the judges ruled and agreed with me. You can find the order here. (Tip of the hat to the talking dog....for finding the order on the public docket..a docket I didn't even know existed.) Although the Government violated the Order in every case it seems that at least for now we are going to have to deal with this case by case...but we will.

And my apologies to the punctuationists of the world...I couldn't help myself.

SEPTEMBER 24

In honor of national punctuation day I will refrain from posting....

Another Interview

This time from Chicago's own North and Clark.

Click on the title for the link directly to the interview.

Torture doesn't work.... (Upated with better link....)

Just in case you were wondering...

click on the title to read a paper by Prof. Shane O'Mara at Trinity College.

Tip of the hat to EmptyWheel

and to the anonymous Lee.

Eid at Guantanamo

Moazamm Begg discusses what it was like to be in US custody both at Guantanamo and other sites during Ramadan and Eid.

Click on the title to read his account.

Ambassador Fried Speaks out about the resettlement problems

Special ambassador Fried has the task of finding homes for the men at Guantanamo who cannot go back to their home countries...a task made all the more difficult by our Congress which has refused to allow any of these wrongly held men to settle in our country. Click on the title to read more.

Another Habeas Win

The score is now 30 wins, 7 losses. Yesterday Judge Kollar Kotelly entered the habeas petition for Kuwaiti, Fouad Al Rabiah. I will provide a link to the opinion as soon as it is available. Here is the breakdown:

Writ granted – 30 (20 are still at Guantanamo)

17 Uighurs - Urbina (4 released to Bermuda)
5 Bosnian-Algerians - Leon - (4 released - 3 to Bosnia and 1 (Lakhdar Boumediene) to France)
Mohammed el Gharani (Chadian) - Leon (released to Chad)
Yasim Muhammed Basardah - Huvelle (Yemeni)
Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed - Kessler (Yemeni)

Abd al Rahim Abdul Rassak Janko – Leon (Syrian)

Khalid Abdullah Mishal Thamer Al Mutairi - Kollar-Kotelly (Kuwaiti)

Mohammed Jawad - Huvelle (Afghan; released to Afghanistan)

Mohammed Al-Adahi-- Kessler (Yemeni)

Fouad Al Rabiah – Kollar-Kotelly (Kuwaiti).

Writ Denied - 7
Belkacem Bensayah (Bosnian) - Leon
Hisham Sliti (Tunisian) - Leon
Muaz Al Alawi (Yemeni) - Leon
Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani (Yemeni) - Leon
Hammamy (Tunisian) – Leon

Waqas Mohammed Ali Awad (Yemeni) - Robertson

Fawzi Al Odah (Kuwaiti) - Kollar-Kotelly

Closing Gitmo

Click on the title to read more about what the Government is saying about closing Gitmo...funny thing this Government of transparency....some of us have asked the Government to tell us some of the very numbers that they reported to the press in this article but they refused...seems they are more willing to tell the press what is going on than the attorneys representing the men at Guantanamo.

Andy Worthington interviews Col.Lawrence Wilkerson, Part 2

Part one is posted here.
Click on the title to read part 2.... and yes, Cheney is seriously crazy.

32 Years Ago Today

More on the Spanish Investigation of US Torturers...

Well it is a dirty job but someone has to do it and so far it doesn't look like it is going to be us (in the US) so go for it Spain!

click on the title....

Remember 9-11, Remember Guantanamo

Click on the title to read Andy Worthington's thoughtful op-ed in The Guardian which ends with this sentence:

On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, however, justice is being delivered neither to those regarded as genuinely dangerous, nor to those whose significance has been exaggerated.

medical malfeasance

As many of you know one of my two clients at Guantanamo has serious health issues. He suffers from Hepatitis B and TB, he now also suffers from high blood pressure and constant headaches. He has received little help for his conditions and has been accused of causing his own health problems because he will not allow the medical staff that has abused and ignored him all these years to do a biopsy on his liver (as an aside the medical staff told him that the biopsy could result in severe and permanent injury). Daphne Eviatar has reported on medical/ethical issues in a couple of good articles at the Washington Independent. This first one discusses the possibility that the Gitmo detainees were used for psychological experiments. It is a disturbing account but one that my own investigation has shown to have existed in relation not only to my client with health problems but other men at the base as well. My client is greatly concerned about his medical problems and in discussions with the medical staff he has been repeatedly alarmed by the doctors and nurses of possible illnesses he could be suffering from. At one point he was told he probably has AIDS and another time he was told that his headaches are probably a sign that he has a brain tumor. This cruelty is of course beyond the pale but it also points to the techniques used by the medical staff to manipulate the prisoners and add to their sense of total helplessness. This other article discusses the concealment by the defense department of detainee deaths. This is another subject that I will be further exploring when my two clients are eventually released from the hell hole called Guantanamo. As I discussed in my article published in the ABA Litigation magazine a month or so ago...my Libyan client had the name of another detainee tacked on to his name in his early days at Gitmo. He said the man whose name he received had been in the cage next to him for awhile and then the man disappeared and the missing mans name was added to his name....one day I will find out what ever happened to that man. If you want to be even more appalled read some of the related stories of medical malfeasance at Gitmo as reported by the Washington Independent that are listed on the side of the two articles linked to above.

A short move from the Gitmo agenda...

I guess everything is related anyway....