Tag: Guantanamo (page 19)

CNN is reporting a Saudi detainee has committed suicide. Some information is available here.

In other Gitmo news, 15 American lawyers are in Yemen.

Fifteen American lawyers have come to Yemen in order to reveal the truth about the situation of Yemeni detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they said this week at a press conference in Sana’a. They claim that the U.S. government was lying when it said that Yemen has refused to accept its detainees back into the country. “The main purpose of our visit is to expose the lie that the Yemeni government does not want its citizens back,” said Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network.

A few more details. The New York Times also reports, with some reactions from Guantanamo lawyers.

Sen. Tom Harkin has introduced The Guantanamo Closure Act of 2007. From the ACLU:

The ACLU today welcomed Senator Tom Harkin's (D-IA) introduction of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility Closure Act of 2007, a bill that would close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The bill cuts off funds for everything except sending charged or sentenced detainees to Fort Leavenworth and transferring the remaining detainees to their home countries or other countries that will not torture or abuse them. The bill would effectively end the practice of indefinite detention without charge or due process for detainees who have been held for as long as five years without charge and without knowing the reason for their detention. It will also provide an incentive for the government to finally charge those detainees the government believes are guilty of crimes against the United States.

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Australian detainee David Hicks was flown back to Australia yesterday on a chartered jet.

He will serve 7 months in an Australian prison and then be freed.

The Australian Government says it will not enforce the ban on Hicks telling his story when his sentence ends in December -- he just won't be allowed to profit from it.

Australia was being mum on the details of the flight, no John Mark Karr moments disclosed of champagne and gourmet food -- but it did leak that the movie he watched was "The Departed."

The New York Times reports that many Guantanamo detainees are refusing to meet with or even accept mail from their own lawyers. They no longer trust them.

The detainees’ resistance appears to have been fueled by frustration over their long detention and suspicion about whether their lawyers are working for the government, as well as anti-American sentiment, some of the documents and interviews show. “Your role is to polish Bush’s shoes and make the picture look good,” a Yemeni detainee, Adnan Farhan Abdullatif, 31, wrote his lawyer in February.

Is the Government behind this? Many of the lawyers think so.

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The Supreme Court today refused to hear the cases of Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr, challenging the legality of the military tribunals under which they are to be tried.

Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer would have granted the request to hear the case, the court said in turning it down. It takes four votes, though, to hear a case.

The court's action follows its April 2 decision not to step into related aspects of the legal battle regarding other Guantanamo Bay detainees. The issue there is whether the prisoners may go to federal court to challenge their confinement.

Not content to seek to deprive the Guantanamo detainees of habeas corpus and access to the federal courts to challenge the conditions of their confinement, the Bush Administration is taking it one step further. Now, it wants to limit the detainees' access to their lawyers.

Saying that visits by civilian lawyers and attorney-client mail have caused “intractable problems and threats to security at Guantánamo,” a Justice Department filing proposes new limits on the lawyers’ contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases that would replace more expansive rules that have governed them since they began visiting Guantánamo detainees in large numbers in 2004.

What limits does the Administration want to impose? Read on...

Omar Khadr was a 15 year old Canadian, captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. You can read the details here.

The Pentagon today officially charged him with murder.

Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. Delta soldier Sgt. Christopher Speer during a firefight in Afghanistan July 27, 2002.

He was 15 at the time and was held for three months in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where he remains today. In addition to the charge of murder, Khadr will also stand trial on attempted murder, providing material support for terrorism, conspiracy and spying.

Omar should not be tried by military tribunal. As Human Rights Watch said,

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Rocker Patti Smith has a new song about Guantanamo, "Without Chains." She says it will be available soon for download on her website.

"I feel responsible as an American citizen," Smith told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from New York. "It’s a terrible injustice and I think it will be a stain upon us when history examines this period."

Smith’s "Without Chains" focuses on Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen who said he was kept under fluorescent lights for 24 hours at a time and complained of being beaten at the U.S. military detention center in southeast Cuba. Detainees are held there on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban, many without the opportunity to face trial.

More like Patti, please.

Image from BBC news.

The hunger strike at Guantanamo has resumed.

Force-feeding is painful.

The military's rationale for force-feeding?

"Because our policy is to preserve life."

Then why won't it take the death penalty off the table?

Another blast from the past: A special report by the Guardian on the mistreatment of detainees.

The New York Times in an editorial today calls on Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to take action against the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, both of which limit appeal rights of detainees.

Both violate the Constitution, and the court should strike down the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which limits avenues for appeal. But Congress approved the military commissions, left in place the combatant status review tribunals and suspended habeas corpus. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi have a moral obligation to lead the way to righting these wrongs.

Amnesty International released a new report today, "USA: Cruel and Inhuman -- Conditions of Isolation for Detainees in Guantanamo Bay."

More than 80% of the 385 detainees are held in isolation, "a reversal of earlier moves to ease conditions and allow more socializing among detainee." While some detainees are held in solitary confinement at Camp Echo and Camp 5, conditions are worst at Camp 6, which opened in December.

Detainees are reportedly confined for 22 hours a day to individual, enclosed, steel cells where they are almost completely cut off from human contact. The cells have no windows to the outside or access to natural light or fresh air. No activities are provided, and detainees are subjected to 24- hour lighting and constant observation by guards through the narrow windows in the cell doors. They exercise alone in a high-walled yard where little sunlight filters through; detainees are often only offered exercise at night and may not see daylight for days at a time.

Many of these detainees have been held for more than five years without charges.

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The ACLU is one of four organizations that have been granted status as human rights observers at the military commission proceedings. Ben Wizner, an ACLU staff attorney will be blogging from Guantanamo here.