Tag: Guantanamo (page 11)

Best read of the day so far is The Guantanamo Labrynth in the Chicago Tribune, in which lawyers for Guantanamo detainees describe the restrictions placed on them in defending their clients. Some snippets:

[U]nder the guise of national security, the Bush administration unilaterally revoked all semblance of attorney-client privilege and imposed a byzantine thicket of rules and procedural dead ends that would have impressed Franz Kafka.

The typical drill goes like this: After meeting with clients in Guantanamo, lawyers are obliged to immediately turn over all of their notes to the government for inspection. The inspection can take weeks, and when copies of the notes are finally returned to the lawyer, large sections often are blacked out. The unredacted originals are kept at a secret "secure facility" outside Washington where they can be viewed by defense counsel but not removed. Government lawyers' briefs are deposited at the secure facility, and defense attorneys have to travel to Washington to see them (lawyers are not allowed to reveal the precise location of the facility).

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Via George Stephanopoulos on today's LA Times article reporting up to seven of the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo may be released into the U.S.

Hill sources tell me that Congressional leaders were told today that Guantanamo detainees from China - the Uighurs - are likely to soon be released into the United States, most likely to the Virginia suburbs. These notifications follow this front page story today in the Los Angeles Times.

Stephanopoulos quotes Penatagon sources as saying it's not a done deal, just a "toe in the water." Our prior coverage of the Uighurs is assembled here.

As for the remaining detainees, a jail in Montana is considering making an offer to house them. The effort has received approval from the City Council.

A new report from the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research:

Today Seton Hall Law delivered a report establishing that military officials at the highest levels were aware of the abusive interrogation techniques employed at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay (GTMO), and misled Congress during testimony. In addition, FBI personnel reported that the information obtained from inhumane interrogations was unreliable.

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After seven years, the U.S. has agreed to release Yemeni Doctor Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi from Guantanamo Bay. A petition that circulated by his supporters on the internet described Dr. Batarfi this way:

Dr Batarfi is a 37 year old Yemeni orthopaedic surgeon currently held in Guantanamo Bay whose only crime would appear to be trying to treat civilian casualties in a war zone.

After his post-graduate studies in Pakistan, and inspired by the Afghan trauma victims he had dealt with, he decided to work for a non-governmental organisation to renovate a hospital in Kabul in spring 2001. With the chaos after the onset of the Afghan conflict in late 2001, he was "sold" to the US military by the Northern Alliance.

Why now? [More...]

Two Spanish papers this morning are reporting that the criminal complaint (in spanish, here, pdf) against top Bush Administration lawyers involved in Guantanamo policy has been reopened for investigation. The lawyers are:

• Jay S. Bybee, United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit
• Douglas Feith, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
• William J Haynes, Chief Corporate Counsel, Chevron Headquarters
• John Yoo, UC Berkeley School of Law
• Alberto R. Gonzales
• David Addington

The action parallels a criminal probe into allegations of torture involving the American CIA that was opened this week in the United Kingdom.

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The Obama Administration has blown its first chance to signal change from the Bush Administration in the treatment of detainees.

In a case brought by four detainees at Guantanamo alleging torture (details of Rasul v. Rumsfeld here,) the Obama Justice Department has filed a brief arguing that detainees have no constitutional rights and that, even if they did, the Administration officials are immune from liability

In another Guantanamo case, the Justice Department argues in a brief (pdf)that the U.S. has the right to indefinitely hold detainees. The Attorney General's press release is here.

As a smokescreen, the DOJ doesn't use the word "enemy combatent." No one's buying that by not using the term, Obama's taking a different position from Bush.

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President Obama issued an order halting the military commissions trials at Guantanamo. Yet, the judge accepted the latest filing by the five detainees whose trials were halted. The ACLU reports:

In defiance of President Obama’s order halting the Guantánamo military commissions, a military judge accepted a legal pleading filed by the five 9/11 suspects. Judge Col. Stephen R. Henley ordered the immediate public release of the filed document despite the fact that all other legal filings have been kept sealed for months by the military commissions. Remarkably, the judge accepted the pleading from all five 9/11 defendants despite the fact that the competency of two of them has not been determined and their attorneys were not informed.

The New York Times reported on the pleading today. [More...]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the Foreign Minister of Spain and asked him to help the U.S. by accepting some released Guantanamo detainees:

Mr Moratinos said Mrs Clinton had asked him for "help in solving this drama, this unacceptable tragedy of the prisoners at Guantanamo".

His response:

"We are prepared to cooperate. Our teams will make contact to legally study each case on a case by case basis," he told Spanish media.

In addition:

Mr Moratinos said the meeting with Mrs Clinton heralded "a new stage in relations between the United States and Spain is opening that is more intense, more productive".

Well done. It's been too long since we had an effective Secretary of State.

In the fox guarding the hen house department: A report on Guantanamo President Obama requested on his second day in office has been completed.

A Pentagon report requested by President Obama on the conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention center concluded that the prison complies with the humane-treatment requirements of the Geneva Conventions.

The report is by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations.

In related news, Attorney General Eric Holder is setting up a task force to review the cases of the 245 detainees still held at Gitmo. Here's who's on it: [More...]

Scott Horton in Harper's writes about former Guantanamo prison guard Brandon Neely's "tell-all" about his experience. Neely was a guard during the first year of Gitmo. Bottom line: Neely says "“The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong.”

You can read Neely's 15,000 word version (put together by law students at the University of California) here.

Horton says three things stood out to him: [More...]

Lieutenant-Colonel Yvonne Bradley, an American military lawyer for 20 years, is in Great Britain where tomorrow she will demand the release of Binyam Mohamed who as we wrote the other day, is dying in his Guantanamo cell.

Bradley...will reveal that Mohamed, 31, is dying in his Guantánamo cell and that conditions inside the Cuban prison camp have deteriorated badly since Barack Obama took office. Fifty of its 260 detainees are on hunger strike and, say witnesses, are being strapped to chairs and force-fed, with those who resist being beaten. At least 20 are described as being so unhealthy they are on a "critical list", according to Bradley.

In addition to her own observations, she shares what Binyam told her: [More...]

Mohammed Khan Tumani of Syria was 17 when captured and brought to Guantanamo 7 years ago. No charges have been filed against him. His lawyers today filed a motion for emergency relief in the case of Khan Tumani v. Obama.

The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the motion on his behalf. They are seeking an independent psychiatric and medical evaluation of Khan Tumani, access to his medical records, an end to his placement in solitary confinement and abusive interrogations, and access to his father who is also held at the camp.

Tumani recently tried to commit suicide. Read the details below: