President Bush has done it again. Yesterday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear oral argument Qassim v. Bush, the Guantanamo case involving the Uighur detainees from Western China who have been held without charges for four years. (Background here.)

On Friday, the Administration filed a motion seeking to declare the case moot, because it had just agreed to release the men to Albania where they will be resettled as refugees.

Brennen Center Associate Counsel Jonathan Hafetz writes:

The government claimed its extensive efforts to find a safe home for the Uighurs, who could not be returned to China for fear of torture, had finally "come to fruition."

Nat Hentoff's new Liberty Beat column in the Village Voice addresses the CIA's secret prisons. Why isn't Congress demanding an explanation from the President?

The cover has long ago been blown on these dungeons by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the ceaseless researchers at NYU law school's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. And in the Voice, I've been writing on what I can find out about them since the end of 2002.

But the CIA, the president, Alberto Gonzales, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld have nothing to say about these gulags, which are wholly removed from American law and the international treaties we have signed.

The recently released Amnesty International report "Below the Radar: Secret Flights to Torture and 'Disappearance' " contains testimony from three men who were released from CIA secret prisons.

The ACLU has released its report on prisoner torture by the U.S., compiled from the documents it acquired through its Freedom of Information Act requests. It finds the U.S. has not complied with the Convention against Torture which the U.S. ratified in 1994:

The report, Enduring Abuse: Torture and Cruel Treatment by the United States at Home and Abroad, is based on a range of sources, including more than 100,000 government documents turned over to the ACLU as a result of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. The documents reveal a systemic and pervasive pattern of torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, including evidence that detainees have been beaten; forced into painful stress positions; threatened with death; sexually and religiously humiliated; stripped naked; hooded and blindfolded; exposed to extreme heat and cold; denied food and water; isolated for prolonged periods; subjected to mock drownings; and intimidated by dogs.

The EU Parliamentary inquiry into Ghost Air has concluded. Today they released their preliminary report finding there have been over 1000 secret CIA flights since 2001, that prisoners have been transported to countries that practice torture, and that European countries may have turned a blind eye.

Flight data showed a pattern of hidden operations by American agents, and they accused some European governments of knowing about it but remaining silent.

[Hat tip to commenter Scribe.]

Reuters reports :

A new report by Human Rights Watch finds that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may be criminially liable for torture of a Guantanamo detainee in late 2002 and early 2003. HRW says Rumsfeld could be prosecuted for his actions.

The report involves the alleged torture of Mohammed al-Quantani, which we reported on in depth here. Time Magazine published the full 83 page log (pdf) of his interrogation. Here are some of the things that reportedly were don to al-Quantani.

Time Magazine has an interview with Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. Those in secret prisons abroad will remain there indefinitely.

Negroponte also told TIME that three dozen or so of the worst al-Qaeda terrorists held in secret CIA prisons are likely to remain in captivity as long as the "war on terror continues." He added, "These people are being held. And they're bad actors. And as long as this situation continues, this war on terror continues, I'm not sure I can tell you what the ultimate disposition of those detainees will be." Negroponte's comments appear to be the first open acknowledgement of the secret U.S. detention system and the fact that captives such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammad -- involved in Sept. 11 or other major attacks on U.S. interests around the world -- may be held indefinitely.

[Hat tip Patriot Daily.]

President Bush says the United States does not torture. He denies that we outsource detainees to countries known for torture. Today, at a military tribunal proceeding at Guantanamo, a detainee, backed by his lawyer, said differently:

Mohammad, as he said he prefers to be called, has proclaimed his innocence and has stated in court documents that he made false confessions after being extrajudicially transferred to a Moroccan prison where he was beaten, strung up by his arms and cut on the chest and penis with scalpels.

"This is four years of interrogation, highly intensive ... torture, and you still don't have the right name," he told the tribunal's presiding officer, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann. "The man you are looking for is not here."

The defendant compared Kohlmann to Adolf Hitler and prosecutors to vampire slayers. He calmly criticized the tribunals as "crap" that set a bad example for the world and poked fun at their formal name, commissions. "This is not a commission. It's a con mission. It's a mission to con the world," he said.

I just got off the phone with Seton Hall Law School Professor Mark Denbeaux (who spearheaded these two (pdf) Guantanamo reports.) He is very excited to announce that on October 5 there will be a national Guantanamo Teach-in. About 40 law schools have already signed up but they'd like to get 300 to 600. If you are a law student, or a law prof, please help spread the word.

On October 5th, academic institutions across the United States will join together in the first national effort to study the unprecedented action of our Government in indefinitely detaining at least 517 individuals claimed to be "enemy combatants" but not "prisoners of war." The Constitution, the Rule of Law and the Role of Lawyers will explore, in Teach-In format, the legal, political, and moral implications of the Detention Center at the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Details are here. Here's what's needed to participate. Some of the topics to be covered are here. You can e-mail for more information.

Also, a Guantanamo Bar Association of lawyers has been formed. More than 300 lawyers to date have joined.

Amnesty International today released a new, in depth report on the U.S. practice of extraordinary renditions -- where the CIA secretly flys detainees to overseas prisons for interrogation and confinement, including countries that practice torture. It's called "USA - Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and 'disappearance". I call it Ghost Air.

The human rights organisation has analysed the movements of airplanes directly linked to the CIA between 2001 and 2005, specifically, the aircraft that transported well known rendition victims such as Khaled el-Masri, Maher Arar and Abu Omar. The analysis shows that these airplanes often used European airspace, although it does not prove that they were always transporting prisoners.

Amnesty International has interviewed several victims of rendition. Their testimonies were coherent and plausible when checked against factual data such as flight information. Also consistent was the description, by every single one, of incidents of torture and other ill-treatment.

The Pentagon today released 2,600 pages of documents pertaining to the Guantanamo detainees to the Associated Press. Amnesty International responds:

"Though we have not reviewed the 2,600 pages, it would be prudent to say that the Pentagon would not have released these documents if they were not innocuous or previously released in some form. Nevertheless, Amnesty International welcomes today's actions, as even the seemingly minor details in these documents may help shed light on the secrecy surrounding the detainees' cases. We do not believe the release of these documents indicates a fundamental shift by the Bush Administration towards transparency. Amnesty International continues to be very concerned about the detainees' lack of due process which violates fundamental human rights law, to say nothing of our highest values as a nation."

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Guantanamo detainee who was a chauffer for Osama bin Laden.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, the newest member of the court, pressed [defense lawyer] Katyal to explain why a defendant before a military commission should be given something that defendants in civilian criminal trials normally don't get -- the chance to challenge the case before a verdict is reached.

"If this were like a (civilian) criminal proceeding, we wouldn't be here," Katyal said.

by TChris

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear Salim Ahmed Hamdan's plea for federal court review of his indefinite detention as an enemy combatant. TalkLeft background regarding Hamdan's case is collected in this post. Linda Greenhouse previews the arguments here.

Before the Court considers whether Hamdan is entitled to habeas corpus relief, it must decide whether it has jurisdiction to hear Hamdan's case. As TalkLeft predicted here, the Bush administration is arguing that the Detainee Treatment Act stripped the Court's ability to hear requests for relief from Guantanamo detainees -- including those, like Hamdan, who filed a petition before the DTA took effect.

Having participated in the Fourth D.C. Circuit's resolution of Hamdan's appeal, Chief Justice Roberts recused himself, raising the possibility of a 4-4 tie. Greenhouse asks an intriguing question: does a tie favor the exercise or the loss of jurisdiction?