Tag: detainees (page 5)

After years of negotiating with human rights groups and the Red Cross, the U.S. this week allowed five detainees at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan to receive a family visit. There are 600 detainees in Bagram, some of whom have been held for years.

The decision to allow the visits followed years of discussions between American officers and the Red Cross, which says face-to-face visits between prisoners and relatives are a guaranteed right under international humanitarian law.

...The U.S. military in Iraq already allows visits to detainees by family members. Two detention centers, one in Baghdad and one on the Kuwait border, receive an average of 13,000 visitors a month, said Maj. Neal V. Fisher II, a U.S. spokesman in Iraq. Video conference visits are also available, he said.

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The ACLU scored a victory today in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

A federal court today ordered the Department of Defense to release photographs depicting the abuse of detainees by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the government's appeal of a 2006 order directing the Defense Department to release the photos. Today's decision comes as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking information on the abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody overseas.

The ACLU says these photos demonstrate that the abuse was not limited to Abu Ghraib and not an occasional aberration. [More...]

The military jury in the trial of Guantanamo Detainee and Osama bin Laden driver Salim Hamdan reached a split verdit: Guilty of terrorism, not guilty of conspiracy.

Sentencing is expected to take place this afternoon. Life in prison is on the table. Hamdan cried as the verdict was read. His lawyers point out the inherent unfairness of the military tribunal trial process:

Hamdan's attorneys said the judge allowed evidence that would not have been admitted by any civilian or military U.S. court, and that interrogations at the center of the government's case were tainted by coercive tactics, including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement.

Unfair trials rob the public of the ability to trust in the integrity of the verdict. Guantanamo has been a failure and a black mark on America since day one. After the War in Iraq, this will be the biggest stain on the legacy of George W. Bush. Worst President Ever.[More...]

In a speech today (text here), Attorney General Michael Mukasey called on Congress, rather than federal judges, to make the rules for detainees filing habeas challenges.

The Center for Constitutional Rights responds:

“What Mukasey is doing is a shocking attempt to drag us into years of further legal challenges and delays. The Supreme Court has definitively spoken, and there is no need for congressional intervention. The Supreme Court explicitly said in Boumediene that the two prior attempts by Congress to intervene to prevent detainees from having access to the courts were unconstitutional.

“For six and a half years, Congress and the Bush Administration have done their level best to prevent the courts from reviewing the legality of the detention of the men in Guantanamo. Congress should be a part of the solution this time by letting the courts do their job.

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Jury selection in the military commission trial of Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan is set to begin Monday morning.

In a nutshell: The Government has charged Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden, mostly with acts that predated 9/11 by years.

The defense says his conduct did not occur "in the context of" an armed conflict, or was not "associated with" an armed conflict.

Hamdan is facing life in prison. Even if acquitted, Bush may decide to hold him indefinitely as an "enemy combatant." As to his jury:

[A]t least five military officers will make up the jury, and a two-thirds vote is required for a guilty verdict. A three-fourths votes is required for sentences that are longer than 10 years.

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Bump and Update: The ACLU weighs in:

"Hamdan's trial, like those of other Guantánamo detainees accused of war crimes, should take place in an ordinary federal court or in a traditional military court. The Guantánamo military commissions allow the government to rely on evidence that the defendant never sees, on hearsay, and on evidence obtained through torture. The commissions are completely inconsistent with the Constitution and should be shut down."

A U.S. District Court judge today denied a continuance request for Salim Hamdan, former driver to Osama bin Laden.

His trial, the first military tribunal trial of a Guantanamo detainee, will begin as scheduled Monday. The judge in that proceeding also has rejected continuance requests.[More...]

Jane Mayer, who has done such great writing on CIA secret prisons for the New Yorker, has written a book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. It goes on sale this week.

Mayer writes of a Red Cross report warning that the interrogation methods used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and others are war crimes. [More...]

Original Post: 7/2/08

Bush to Consider Closing Guantanamo

ABC News reports that President Bush is holding talks about the future of Guantanamo and may decide to close it.

Update: ACLU response is here.

The U.S. announced today it will seek to file charges that carry the death penalty against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent captured in 2002 and tranferred to Guantanamo in 2006, who has claimed he confessed because he was tortured during interrogation.

The charges are related to the 2000 USS Cole bombing.

The allegations include conspiracy to violate laws of war, murder, treachery, terrorism, destruction of property and intentionally causing serious bodily injury.

Al-Nashiri was held in an overseas secret prison before being shipped to Gitmo. [More...]

On May 20, 2008, Sabin Willit, a corporate lawyer from Boston who represents Huzaifa Parhat, the Uighur detainee whose designation as an "enemy combatant" was reversed Friday by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight. From his testimony:

One of my clients is Huzaifa Parhat. He’s never been charged with anything. He never will be. In fact, he’s been cleared for release for years. Two weeks ago he began his seventh year at Guantanamo.

....Huzaifa lives in a place called Camp Six. My information, which dates from March, is that all the Uighurs but one are kept there. The men call it the dungeon above the ground. Each lives alone in an isolation cell. There is no natural light or air. There is no way to tell whether it is day or night. Outside the cell is a noisy bedlam of banging doors and the indistinct shouts of desperate men crouching at door cracks. A mad-house. Inside the cell, nothing.

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Huzaifa Parhat is a Chinese Muslim, one of many Uighurs held at Guantanamo. (Background here.)

Parhat and the other Uighurs from Western China have been at Gitmo since 2002. In 2004, the Bush Administration acknowledged most were innocent of wrongdoing but insisted that because they could not go back to China without fear of persecution, and since no other country would take them, it had the right to continue to detain them.

Parhat was one of the Uighurs that the Pentagon refused to release. Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled he is not an enemy combatant and may seek his freedom.

Parhat is the first detainee to have his "enemy combatant" designation overturned. [More...]

Meet Deuce Martinez. Career narcotics agent turned Five-Star CIA interrogator. Credited with getting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh to talk.

Waterboarding, belly slaps, sleep deprivation and more. Martinez didn't like getting his hands dirty with the physical abuse, he waited in the wings while others did it and then conducted the interrogations. If the detainee stopped cooperating, it was back to the torture, then back to Martinez. Ultimately, they talked. The value of their information? The CIA says huge, even accounting for the misinformation they were fed. Of course, there's no way to test that theory.

Where did this all occur? Inside the CIA's black hole of choice -- in Poland. [More...]