oh man, shades of Cully!

Most of you probably don't remember Cully Simpson. I wrote aobut him many years ago here. The short version is that he thought that the attorneys who were representing men at Guantanamo should be attacked and the clients of the big law firms (phew, I escaped that one....) should be put on notice that their attorneys are representing "those people." Poor Cully went down in flames and was forced to resign. He has even reinvented himself of late as some sort of voice of reason regarding the detainees.

Now comes his predecessor..... Douglas Fahl. A county judge from Indiana and a reservist who has been called up for duty. So where is he being sent? To Guantanamo of course--- because the military needs a big strong man to set the record straight and keep these dangerous people at Guantanamo forever--- to keep us American's safe. SIGH.

According to Fahl " “I’ve seen what these guys are capable of doing on the battlefield. It’s always difficult to leave my family for a deployment, but I am honored to be chosen to use my legal skills to make sure these dangerous men don’t return to the battlefield to kill American soldiers or innocent civilians.”

I for one feel alot safer now. LOL. I wonder what poor Fahl will do when he discovers that more than 90% of the men were never near a battlefield. Well the good news is he has already figured out his game plan. According to Fahl,  “GITMO has been described to me as the tip of the spear for legal warfare.” 

Oh man, "legal warfare." 

As I said at the top of this piece--- shades of Cully Simpson--- may Fahl go down in flames as quickly as Cully so that we can all get back to the business of shutting the place down.

READ THE REST HERE

Military hearing deadlines postponed again....

It seems there is a new problem down at Gitmo for the military hearings. The presiding judge continued pretrial hearings that were set to begin next week. The rumor is that it has to do with a justice department investigation into the security breach of one of the defense teams which defense lawyers have called "a gross violation of the attorney client privilege."
There is no word when things will start up again. You can read more here.

GITMO BY THE NUMBERS...

The prison population now stands at 89: 35 are cleared, 44 are awaiting clearance, and 10 are in the military commission system (of those, 7 are in “active” “trial” proceedings while 3 have been “convicted”).

Of the 35 cleared, 30 (85.7%) are Yemenis and 5 are non-Yemenis. 

Of the 44 awaiting clearance, 19 are Yemenis and 25 are non-Yemenis.

PRB Data

The PRB has approved for transfer 20 of the 25 detainees for whom it has issued decisions (80.0%).

Of the 44 detainees who are PRB-eligible and still awaiting clearance:

·        Five were denied clearance in their initial appearance before the PRB and are in various stages of file review (ISNs 28, 29, 242, 522) or getting a subsequent full review (ISN 131);

·        Four have had their initial hearings and are awaiting decision (ISNs 508, 569, 1094, 1457);

·        12 are officially in the PRB process with scheduled hearing dates (ISNs 27, 63, 753, 760, 762, 837, 838, 840, 841, 975, 1453, 1463);

·        23 are not yet officially in the PRB process.

For these purposes, a detainee is “officially in the PRB process” when he has received formal notification of the process and has been assigned a PRB hearing date, based on either (a) the detainee appearing (even if only temporarily) on the PRB web page tracking individual detainees’ proceedings, (b) my personal knowledge regarding our PRB-eligible clients, or (c) information provided to me by counsel for other PRB-eligible detainees.

Cleared Detainee Data

23 of the 35 cleared detainees currently at the base were cleared by the Obama Task Force.  The other 12 were cleared by the PRB, which means 8 PRB-cleared detainees have been release.

Specifically, of the 35 cleared:

17 are Yemenis approved for “conditional detention” by the Obama Task Force

3 are Yemenis approved for transfer by the Obama Task Force (ISNs 153, 249, 566)

3 are non-Yemenis approved for transfer by the Obama Task Force (ISNs 38 (Tunisia), 257 (Tajikistan), 309 (unknown/UAE))

2 are Yemenis approved for “conditional detention” by the PRB (ISNs 31, 37)

8 are Yemenis approved for transfer by the PRB (ISNs 41, 128, 235, 324, 434, 441, 576, 836)

2 are non-Yemenis approved for transfer by the PRB (ISNs 1045 (Afghanistan), 1119 (Afghanistan).

H/O to fellow Gitmo attorney Brian Foster for keeping track of all of this.

THE OTHER SIDE OF TORTURE

Torture does not just impact the victim- for those torturers who have any sense of humanity their actions will eventually come back to haunt them.  Here is the story of one such man.

Two Libyan men released to Senegal- UPDATED

Today the Miami Herald is reporting that two Libyan men have been released to Senegal. Both men had been held at Guantanamo since 2002- without charge.
This leave the total number of men being held at Gitmo at 89.
You can read more here.
MORE ABOUT THE TWO MEN HERE.

CLOSE IT DOWN....

The Miami Herald (the only newspaper in my country to consistently report on what is going on at Guantanamo) has an important editorial in its paper today looking at the failure of anything resembling JUSTICE- at Guantanamo. The upshot is that the problem belongs to both congress and the president.
Read the editorial here.

Long Term Hunger Striker Set for Release....

"Tariq Ba Odah, a 37-year-old Yemeni, whom the military has been force-feeding daily. That involves guards strapping him down, putting a rubber tube down his nose and pumping a liquid dietary supplement into his stomach. Last year, Ba Odah’s weight dipped to 74 pounds."

I can't remember exactly when Tariq started his hunger strike but it has been several years and he is reportedly in very ill health. I hope the country that has agreed to take him can provide the long term health care that he will need.

Supposedly the administration is preparing to release about a dozen men in the coming months. Read the rest here.

Catching up....

 A few articles exploring what is going on at Gitmo these days.... or more appropriately what is not going on....

The Miami Herald released a review chart to track the slow progress of the "periodic review board" and also discusses the snails pace at which these reviews have continued.

Rolling Stone looks at "America's shame...."

Aljazeera looks at the dark prisoners "inside the CIA's torture program."

And finally the Guardian looks at the CIA's role in photographing detainees naked prior to sending them off for more torture.

And still the torture report remains hidden from view while an appellate panel reviews a Freedom of Information request from the ACLU.

What a surprise!

Pentagon envoy says that closing Guantanamo is a national security issue.
Read more here.

We are all Belgians....

Castro demands return of Guantanamo....

And we should give it back to him....

Read more here.

Back to Guantanamo

Informed Comment just linked to an article from late December that I think is important to note. It addresses the way the pentagon has ignored Obama in his attempts to close Guantanamo. You can read that report here.
Of course that is only a piece of the puzzle, much of the blame for failing to close Guantanamo rests with President Obama himself. He was too inexperienced to know how to deal with the military and unfortunately our military has been emboldened by his lackluster performance as commander in chief. The article where I found the link to this story discusses some of the other troubling issues in regards to the U.S. military's continued disregard for its civilian authority. The bottom line is that the military does what it pleases and we give them most of our tax dollars without any real oversight.

End of musical interlude....

and again....

Musical Interlude.... Con't