The 18 th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo is less than two weeks away (January 11). For the 41 remaining men, one of whom is my client Razak Ali, there is no hope in sight. Even if Razak were to win his pending appeal the win will ring hollow- it will just mean that he would get another trial with a judge that will never rule in his favor and more years will pass. In the early years Razak would always have a smile on his face. We would discuss with great intensity the Harry Potter books, both of us laughing at his version of Azkaban. There is no smile now. There is no laughing. There is only indefinite detention -without any charges ever having been filed against him.
I lost track of these proceedings and h/o to Robert for the reminder and link.
The chief prosecutor at the international criminal court at The Hague is working hard to get the court to look into the war crimes in Afghanistan. What I learned when I worked at the court is that it is ultimately a bureaucratic/political institution but kudos to the chief prosecutor for pushing this.
Hope dies last and all.
We have a very dangerous president here in the US of A. Today some of our congressional representatives are doing the right thing. Unfortunately too many are turning their heads and looking the other way -- because they are more interested in their personal political fates. So, while we wait for the final vote let me leave you with this:
Attorneys Urge Court to Change
Ground Rules for Guantánamo Cases
Contact: press@ccrjustuce.org
Without Due Process,
Detainees Face Detention for Life, Lawyers Warn
December 11, 2019, Washington, D.C. – Today, attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights
urged a federal appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling against Abdul
Razak Ali (aka Saeed Bakhouch), who has been detained at
Guantánamo without charge since June 2002, and to rule more broadly that the
fundamental protections of the Due Process Clause apply to detainees and limit
otherwise limitless detentions there. Mr. Ali had filed a petition for release
together with ten other Guantánamo detainees, arguing that their ongoing
detention is arbitrary and unlawful, particularly in light of Donald Trump’s
stated policy that no one should be released from the prison regardless of the
facts of their case. A lower court held that “the [Constitution’s] due process
clause does not apply in Guantánamo,” which attorneys say
defies Supreme Court precedent.
“During the Bush administration, the Supreme
Court twice struck down attempts to gut Constitutional protections against
arbitrary detention at Guantánamo, but since then the lower courts have made it
effectively impossible to win a case in court no matter how weak the
government’s evidence is,” said Shayana Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney of the
Guantanamo project at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who argued today.
“Today’s hearing asks the court to finally provide detainees the fair process
the Supreme Court envisioned ten years ago.”
In its landmark 2008 decision in Boumediene
v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that Guantánamo “is, in every practical
sense, not abroad,” and because of that the right to challenge one’s detention
in federal court could not be denied. Today, Kadidal argued that the same
principle requires that “due process”—the fundamental substantive and
procedural protections guaranteed by the constitution—should also apply at
Guantánamo.
Attorneys further argued that Mr. Ali’s
continued detention does, indeed, violate the Due Process Clause. He remains
detained—for what will soon be eighteen years—based primarily on
an eighteen day stay in a guesthouse in Pakistan associated
with a suspected jihadi leader. Today, Kadidal told the court that after this
length of detention, the government must demonstrate that there is a continued
purpose for detaining Ali, using more reliable evidence than it has produced to
date, and meeting a higher burden of proof.
“My client lost his first appeal six years ago
even though, in the words of one of the judges, he ‘never planned, authorized,
committed or aided any terrorist attacks,’ because the burden of proof on the
government is lower than what’s required in traffic court,” said H. Candace
Gorman, a Chicago-based attorney who has represented Ali for 13 years. “If the
legal status quo doesn’t change, Ali will die in prison without ever having
been charged with a crime.”
Forty men remain detained at Guantánamo.
Twenty-eight of them have never been charged. Twenty-seven were held by the CIA
at some point during their detention. Five have been unanimously cleared for
release by all relevant agencies (including the State Department, FBI, and the
military).
For those of you in the DC area I invite you to come and watch the oral argument in the DC Circuit Court for my client Razak Ali. The issue is simple but also so very important -- does the due process clause apply at Guantanamo?
The argument is set for 930 tomorrow morning and my co-counsel Shane Kadidal from the Center for Constitutional Law will argue for Mr. Ali.
For the rest of this article and more drawings by Abu Z (click here) (sorry I am having problems copying this so just go to the article...)
What the C.I.A.’s Torture Program Looked Like to the Tortured
Drawings done in captivity by the first prisoner known to undergo “enhanced interrogation” portray his account of what happened to him in vivid and disturbing ways.
An image drawn by Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, shows how the C.I.A. applied an approved torture technique called “cramped confinement.”Credit...Abu Zubaydah, Courtesy Mark P. Denbeaux
Impunity is meanwhile everywhere. In an action viewed as damaging the US military, Trump handed out pardons to convicted and accused US war criminals, though it's hard to see what votes he will get out of it, especially among service members, some of whom dobbed in their lawless officers and NCOs.
Defence opposed the pardons, particularly that of Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher, one of the most vicious convicted SEALs. Trump, responding to a Fox News beat-up, sought to completely exonerate Gallagher, while the Navy tried to expel him from the SEALs. In an extraordinary action, the president personally ordered Gallagher's retention in the unit, and sacked the Navy Secretary.
Trump's sanctioning of war crimes begs the question, will he attempt to reintroduce torture, a practice he has condoned in the past. It's a timely subject, as a new film about the Senate Torture Report has put the notorious CIA torture program - implemented by George Bush - back in the news.
Barack Obama effectively pardoned participants in the Bush administration program, with dilatory and cosmetic inquiries conducted while the statutes of limitations - except for murder - ran. We now know that, even had Obama's Justice Department prosecuted and jailed those involved, Mr Trump would have pardoned them, given them medals, and, as he actually has done in the appointment of CIA Director Gina Haspel, rewarded them.
Trump has also successfully stonewalled the proposed ICC investigation into torture in Afghanistan and other Rome Statute countries where CIA torture occurred; the matter is now under appeal at the Hague. More here on the international efforts to hold accountable those countries implicated in CIA black site torture.
Today is thanksgiving here in the good old U S of A. A holiday that celebrates the early European settlers making it through a rough period with the help of the native peoples.... then of course we went on to slaughter most of them...
So with that in mind I leave you with this musical interlude.
Impeachment ... Washington's cast of villains ... William Barr joined to Trump at the hip ... The politication of the Department of Justice ... The president's taxes ... His claims of immunity ... The odious consigliere Rudolph Giuliani ... 150 judicial appointments to do Republican Party bidding ... SCOTUS rallies to partisan causes ... Roger Fitch reports from a strife-torn nation
Appalling lower court judges are settling in, a cohort of 150 judicial appointments that Donald Trump's rubber-stamp senate has imposed on the creaky American republic. Many of them appear to be unabashed agents of Republican party policy; among other things, they are doing irreparable harm through election law subversions that keep their party in power.
Of particular concern are three cases involving employment discrimination related to sexual preference and gender identification in which the Trump administration is defending the employers.
Other cases consider whether, consistent with the US constitution, a state can repeal the insanity defence in a criminal case, or allow non-unanimous juries, while the Espinosa case presents a grave threat to the constitution's first amendment separation of church and state
Already, the rogue Republican federal judge from Texas, Reed O'Connor, is teeing up a new case, likely to reach the supreme court, that brings together several strands of the Republican culture wars: a ruling that protections for transgender individuals in the ACA(Obamacare) violate "religious freedom".
Our very own Talking Dog now brings us the ultimate book: Donald J. Putin on American Exceptionalism is THE book the government does not want you to read! If the government actually cared what you read, of course.
Twitter phenomenon (and Brooklyn’s own) Donald J. Putin brings you a satiric (or is it?) composite of the collective knowledge of the current American and Russian presidents (who may, or may not, actually be two people) in a sprawling manifesto that dives right into the issues facing Americans, and answers many of the questions that you have been staring at the ceiling pondering at 3:00 a.m.
● Why are Americans so depressed all the time? (And if you aren’t depressed, there is probably something wrong with you, because you should be.)
● Should we be looking for a new place to live? (Does anyone on the planet still like us enough to let us in? And can we get health care there?)
● If our food sucks so badly, why is it making us so damned fat?
● How come I haven’t had a vacation in so long? Get the book here.
Remember Omar Khadr? The 15 year old canadian kid that was tortured and held at Guantanamo until finally released in 2015? Well he is still trying to have his appeal heard by the military. His attorney finally filed in federal court and the DC Circuit has ordered the military to respond. As usually happens with the military they take baby steps when pushed. The military has now appointed a panel to hear his appeal. Read the rest here.
The (IMHO) notorious Col. Bogdan has landed a cushy job at UNC Charlotte as Vice Chancellor for Safety and Security. That must make the students and faculty feel safe! Read more here.
The periodic review boards have been doing their thing.... which is nothing. More here.
And of course secrecy is still the name of the game with all things Guantanamo, even after more than seventeen years. Read more here.
As everyone knows, the Guantánamo internment camp is a colossal waste of public money, at a cost of $13 million a year per prisoner. Sadly, the people who facilitated it remain unpunished. Seventeen years after the shocking Yoo-Bybee "torture memo", its authors are still enjoying comfortable positions as a tenured Berkeley law professor, and 9th circuit justice, respectively, while their partner in crime, Gina Haspel, has been made CIA director and sanitised by the Wall Street Journal, which often prints John Yoo op-eds.
The 9th circuit called Zubaydah's treatment "torture", but the Pentagon prefers other words for the "tendency to deviate from ethical standards under the pressure of circumstances and in the absence of external oversight".
In a new directive it's called "behavioural drift", unethical or abusive behaviour "commonly observed in detention and other settings in which individuals have control or power over others' activities of daily living or general functioning".
* * *
Waterboard display at the International Spy Museum
Washington has a tasteless new Spy Museum, and two CIA ruffians, the contract "psychologist" James Mitchell and interrogation-tape destroyer José Rodriguez, have contributed audiovisuals for the museum's popular Guantánamo exhibit, to provide a "balanced" view of the CIA's at times controversial aggressive debriefings.
The museum's exhibits include demonstration water-boards and a mock-up of the house where Osama bin Laden met his extrajudicial end.
Probably the most important book of 2014 as it gives a comprehensive look at the extent this country of mine has creeped into the bedrooms of all of us across the world-and the importance of hero EDWARD SNOWDEN- in risking his freedom to let all of us know. What we do with that knowledge will say alot about all of us...
If you have not read Ron's book then you do not have the whole story about what I have been doing to try to get my clients out ofGuantanamo. Ron kept up with my activities and even followed me around on occasion to get the full story... then he weaved my story in with the stories of other individuals who are concerned with the direction of the United States. I recommend the book to all of you out there who also care about the direction that the US has gone these past eight years and want to work to change things.
![Donald J. Putin on American Exceptionalism : It's Not You, It's Just America Being America by [Putin , Donald J.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41sgaLfw%2B%2BL.jpg)
Waterboard display at the International Spy Museum
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