Tag: detainees (page 3)

The Government of Switzerland made a generous offer today -- it is willing to consider taking Guantanamo detainees who cannot return to their home countries:

"For Switzerland, the detention of people in Guantanamo is in conflict with international law. Switzerland is ready to consider how it can contribute to the solution of the Guantanamo problem," the government said in a statement.

Switzerland said it welcomed the expressed intention of U.S. President Barack Obama to close the prison and would investigate security and legal implications of possibly taking in detainees.

Portugal and France have also expressed a willingness to consider taking detainees. [More...]

The Pentagon announced today it released six detainees from Guantanamo. All had been determined, after multiple reviews, of not being enemy combatants.

Four were sent to Iraq, one to Afghanistan and one to Algeria. The detainee returned to Afghanistan was Bizmullah. From the DOD press release:

he Department of Defense has determined – through its comprehensive review processes - that approximately 60 detainees at Guantanamo are eligible for transfer or release. Departure of these detainees is subject to ongoing discussions between the United States and other nations.

245 detainees remain at Guantanamo.

You've probably read the claims by the Defense Department that 61 of the released Guantanamo detainees have returned to terrorism.

Not so, says a new report from the Seton Hall Law School's Center for Policy and Research (and Law Prof Mark Denbeaux and attorney Joshua Denbeaux). The Denbaux' have previously authored compelling reports on the detainees and represented a few of them.

The Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research has issued a report which rebuts and debunks the most recent claim by the Department of Defense (DOD) that “61 in all former Guantanamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight.”

Professor Denbeaux of the Center for Policy & Research has said that the Center has determined that “DOD has issued “recidivism” numbers 43 times, and each time they have been wrong—this last time the most egregiously so.”

[More...]

In the last week, the number of Guantanamo detainees on hunger strikes has risen to from 34 to 42. There are about 250 detainees in all. Possible reasons for the increase, according to the Pentagon: Obama's inauguration and the Jan. 11 anniversary of the opening of Gitmo.

As of last Friday, 25 of the detainees were being force-fed.

US military authorities said forced feedings begin after a detainee either has gone three weeks without a meal, has fallen below 85 percent of his ideal body weight, or if a doctor has recommended it as a medical necessity to preserve an inmate's life.

The Administration defends the force-feeding. The ACLU vociferously disagrees and condemns the force-feeding as inhumane: [More...]

Today unnamed Obama advisors say Obama will order Guantanamo closed during his first week in office.

Ordering Guantanamo's prison closed is not the same thing as closing it. There's no mention of a timetable. As noted yesterday, he said on ABC's This Week not to expect it during his first 100 days.

When is a cigar not a cigar? Apparently, when it comes to closing Guantanamo. As the ACLU says in its latest press release on the anonymously-sourced promise:

“While the news from unnamed sources in the Obama transition team about the closing of Guantánamo is certainly welcome, what we need are specifics about the timeline for the shuttering of the military commissions and the release or charging of detainees who have been indefinitely held for years. Executive orders are an important first step. But we trust that President-elect Obama will provide a detailed plan for ending the Guantánamo military commissions, shutting down the Guantánamo military prison and ending President Bush’s legacy of indefinite detention. An executive order lacking such detail, especially after the transition team has had months to develop a comprehensive plan on an issue this important, would be insufficient.

More...

The Center for Constitutional Rights has issued a new report on closing Guantanamo. It's as easy as 1-2-3.

• Send home those who can go home
• Secure safe haven for those who cannot, and
• Charge those who can be charged and try them in ordinary federal criminal court.

The full report is available here (pdf). [More...]

As BTD noted below, a bipartisan Senate Committee has released a new report on the Administration's abuse of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo. Senator Carl Levin's press release is here. From WaPo:

The Senate Armed Services Committee report accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the principal architects of the plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on captured fighters and terrorism suspects, rejecting the Bush administration's contention that the policies originated lower down the command chain.

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the panel concludes. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

How it began: [More...]

The Washington Post has a four-page article today on the detainees at American prisons in Iraq. While conditions may have improved from the days of Abu Ghraib abuses, the likelihood of receiving due process apparently has not.

Here's one example: Talib Mohammed Farkhan, who was held for 15 months before being told the reasons for his detention. He learned them at his first hearing. Here's what happened:

[He]shuffled into Hearing Room 3 to hear his U.S. captors explain the allegations against him for the first time.

Farkhan, a Shiite Muslim, appeared to follow along as the American officers said he had been detained for membership in the Mahdi Army, the anti-American Shiite militia. But he looked totally baffled when they also accused him of working with al-Qaeda in Iraq, the extremist Sunni Muslim group that kills Americans and Shiites.

"I don't understand how that could be possible," said a visibly flustered Farkhan, a welder from the southern city of Iskandariyah, who denied all the accusations. "They are Sunni. I am Shia."

[More...]

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of Ali Saleh Kahlan al Marri, a U.S. legal resident originally from Qatar who has been held since 2001 in the Navy Brig in South Carolina. He was seized in Peoria, Ill.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond ruled in July that the president had the power to detain Marri under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force enacted by Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. But the court also said he could challenge his designation as an enemy combatant before a district court in South Carolina.

The question: Can the military indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen or legal resident seized on American soil? Background on 4th Circuit decision here. The ACLU has more on today's Court action.

Writing in the Washington Post, Former FBI agent Jack Cloonan and Sarah Mendelson, author of a report "Closing Guantanamo: From Bumper Sticker to Blue Print" have a plan to close Guantanamo.

Shorter version: Appoint a "blue ribbon panel" of experts to divide those who are left into two categories, those who can be released and those who should be tried in the U.S. criminal justice system. For those who are tried, no use of information gained through torture.

On a related note, a former leader of a team of interrogators in Iraq in 2006 writes, using a pseudomym, I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq.

The long ordeal of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, one time driver for Osama bin Laden, is almost over. The Washington Post reports within 48 hours he will be returned to his home country of Yemen to finish the last month of his sentence imposed by the military commission jury.

The U.S. military has decided to transfer Osama bin Laden's former driver from custody at Guantanamo Bay to his home in Yemen, ending the seven-year saga of a man the Bush administration considered a dangerous terrorist but whom a military jury found to be a low-level aide.

The Pentagon is trying to spare itself another loss in the Supreme Court. Had it refused to release Hamdan after his sentence was up, he surely would have litigated the question of whether the U.S. has the right to indefinitely detain those it deems enemy combatants after they've served their sentences.

"Legally, we absolutely have a right to hold enemy combatants, but politically is he the guy we want to fight all the way to the Supreme Court about?" said a defense official familiar with the release negotiations. "I think we came to the conclusion that, no, he wasn't. This is a win for everyone."

Canadian Omar Khadr, facing a military commissions trial, got no relief today in federal court when the judge refused to block his trial. Now 22, he's been held at Guantanamo since age 15 when captured during a gunfight in Afghanistan.

Khadr argued in pleadings in U.S. District Court that the Military Commissions Act doesn't give the military the ability to try juveniles. He also challenged his status as an "enemy combatant" saying U.S. law doesn't recognize juveniles as members of groups like al-Qaida; and he said that he should have been detained in "a rehabilitation and reintegration program appropriate for former child soldiers" instead of being mixed in with adults at Guantanamo Bay.

He has also alleged previously he was tortured. [More...]