Tag: guantanamo

On Sunday I wrote a long post on the plight of the Uighur Chinese Muslim detainees at Guantanamo and the court hearing that would be held today.

The Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU reports (link will be available here) the Judge did in fact order their release into the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina in Washington, D.C. rejected the Bush administration’s position of indefinitely holding the detainees, known as Uighurs, since they are not considered enemy combatants. The Uighurs have been held in Guantánamo for seven years.

More...

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees at Guantanamo have the right to challenge their detention as enemy combatants and to have their challenges heard quickly.

Also in June, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Huzaifa Parhat, one of the Uighur Chinese Muslims held at Gitmo, was not an enemy combatant and therefore entitled to seek his freedom.

Four months later, The New York Times reports, no hearings have been held. The Bush Administration now argues that the judiciary cannot order the release of detainees because only military officials have the authority to end wartime detentions.

On Tuesday, the detained Uighurs, whom the Government is no longer claiming are enemy combatants, will get another hearing in Court. [more...]

On March 5th, dailykos denizen norahc (Ben Plunkett) obtained permits in the name of "Swift Students for Truthiness" from the St. Paul Parks Department for use of Hamm's Plaza for non-partisan issue oriented expressive activity on Sept. 3d and 4th, 8AM to 8PM. Planned, a "Shutdown Guantanamo Stop Torture" event the 3d, "Stop Government Spying" on the 4th, both starting at 4:00. I'm co-ordinating the "spying" event.

Hamm's is tiny, not much more than a traffic island, so the limit of 91 in attendance at any time was acceptable.

Yesterday, Ben received a Certified Mail from the Parks Department, dated August 5th, indicating that the permits had been revoked, offering alternative space at Ecolab Plasa or Mears Park, both much less visible. Hamm's is 2 blocks from the Convention site at the Excel Center, and faces the St. Paul Hotel, a major delegate hub. I've just lined up an attorney, we'll be seeking a Temporary Restraining Order directing that the Parks Dept. honor the original permit.

The military commissions trial of Salim Hamdan, driver for Osama bin Laden, went to the jury today.

Hamdan never testified in his defense across two weeks of trial testimony. But unlike suspects on U.S. soil... Hamdan had no right to an attorney or right against self-incrimination during 18 months of military and civilian interrogations from Afghanistan to Guantánamo.

In closing arguments:

[T]he Pentagon cast bin Laden's driver as an al Qaeda insider and the defense called him a Sept. 11 scapegoat. "He's an al Qaeda warrior. He has wounded, and the people he has worked with have wounded the world," prosecutor John Murphy told the jury. "You are the conscience of the community."

Countered Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, on behalf of the $200-a-month driver: "We will capture or kill Osama bin Laden some day. You should not punish the general's driver today with the crimes of the general."

By the numbers: There were only 10 media members in attendance on the last day of testimony. It took a Pentagon airlift to get most of them there at all.

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...]

Bump and Update: President Bush said today there is no imminent decision on closing Guantanamo.

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.

[More...]

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...]

Via the Center for Constitutional Rights:

Late yesterday, a federal court judge ruled that the government did not have to disclose whether it was illegally spying on Guantanamo attorneys’ conversations. The judge ruled that the National Security Agency (NSA) could not be forced to reveal information about its domestic spying program because, “confirming or denying whether plaintiffs' communication with their clients has been intercepted would reveal information about the NSA's capabilities and activities.”

Plaintiffs had argued that the government cannot use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to shield illegal surveillance of attorneys. In response, the court said that because of the breadth of a statute protecting the NSA’s secrecy, “the Court need not address plaintiffs’ substantive arguments concerning the TSP’s illegality.”

What it means: [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.

More....

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...]

Omar Khadr, arrested in Afghanistan at age 15 and who has now spent 1/4 of his life at Guantanamo Bay, was given a trial date today of October 8. He faces life in prison.

Omar is a Canadian citizen and a "child of jihad." The Canadian press has been providing excellent coverage of his case. All of our coverage is accessible here.

Omar should be turned over to an international tribunal. He was a child at the time of his capture making him protected by the Geneva Convention on the Rights of the Child. Amnesty International has a full report here.

Sen. Barack Obama today named his National Security team and delivered a prepared speech on the war on terror and Guantanamo. I'm disappointed with it.

Three examples:

There are terrorists who are determined to kill as many Americans as they can. The world’s most dangerous weapons risk falling into the wrong hands. And that is why the single greatest priority of my presidency will be doing anything and everything that I can to keep the American people safe. (my emphasis.)

If you were hoping universal health care or creating more jobs or reducing our country's reliance on incarceration would be his greatest priority, this is a letdown.

On Afghanistan: [More...]

McClatchey newspapers has a new series of investigative reports based on its 8 month investigation into treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

The report is in 8 parts. Today's segment is U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases. As to the investigation, [More...]

More reaction to the Gitmo detainee decision (pdf):

• National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
• ACLU
• Center for Constitutional Rights
• Human Rights First

[More...]