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No Thanks, Obama and McCain. Continuing Indefinite Detention Isn’t Closing Guantánamo.

By Chris Anders | ACLU | August 12, 2015

A bad idea doesn’t somehow become a good idea just because five years have gone by.  But the Obama White House and Sen. John McCain seem ready to recycle a proposal that was overwhelmingly rejected in 2010.

President Obama has renewed his commitment to closing Guantánamo before he leaves office, and McCain (R-Ariz.) said he might be able to support closure. However, there has always been a right way and a wrong way to close Guantánamo. The restrictions the Senate has passed, along with the latest proposal floated by the White House to move some detainees to the United States for indefinite detention without charge or trial, is the wrong way.

Guantánamo has never been just about the prison. Instead, Guantánamo has been about our government violating the rule of law and ducking American values. From torture and abuse during the Bush administration to indefinite detention and defective military commissions extending through the Bush and Obama administrations, Guantánamo has been a place where our government behaves like a human rights pariah instead of a human rights beacon.

The solution can never be to simply pack up both the detainees and bad policies at Guantánamo and ship them to some new prison here in the United States. No. The only meaningful solution is to close Guantánamo by ending indefinite detention without charge or trial, transferring the detainees who have been cleared for transfer,  and trying detainees for whom there is evidence of wrongdoing in our federal criminal courts in the U.S., which regularly try terrorism suspects, including high-profile ones.

But instead of doing the hard work of closing Guantánamo the right way, the Obama White House is reportedly dusting off the same plan that Congress overwhelmingly rejected in 2010. The “plan” would involve transferring overseas all cleared detainees (an excellent idea, but one that actually needs to be completed now, not when this “plan” goes into effect), but then setting up prisons in the U.S. to continue the indefinite detention of men who have been imprisoned for more than a decade without ever being charged with any crime. Other detainees would be put on trial — but some of them would be tried before the same unfair military commissions used at Guantánamo. The result would be moving Guantanamo, not closing it.

McCain has a hand in it too. As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he sponsored the Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act, which would allow indefinite detention and military commissions to be brought to the U.S. as part of closing Guantánamo — but only if both houses of Congress approve the president’s plan. Of course, anything requiring both houses of Congress to approve almost anything from the president is a political non-starter. But this provision is still being sold as a step towards closing Guantánamo.

A particularly bizarre bit of news about the White House plan this week came in a Washington Post report that said that the White House was considering setting up a nearly empty prison in Thomson, Illinois, as a site for indefinite detention of Guantánamo detainees. This exact same plan, with the exact same prison in Illinois, was rejected by a House vote of 353-69 in 2010. Then Attorney General Eric Holder later swore that the Thomson prison would never be used for that purpose.

The ACLU said back in 2009 that shipping indefinite detention north was the wrong way to close Guantánamo, and it still is the wrong way to close Guantánamo. Bad ideas don’t get better by just sitting on the shelf. It’s time to close Guantánamo the right way, by charging in federal court any detainee who can be charged and ending indefinite detention for everyone else. If a prosecutor can’t put together a case against someone who has been sitting in prison for as long as 13 years, there is no reason that person should continue to sit in prison, whether in Guantánamo or someplace else.

Let’s close it the right way.

August 14, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Rubber stamp for endless detention’: Judge rejects Gitmo detainee’s legal challenge

RT | July 31, 2015

A federal judge has rejected a legal challenge from a Guantanamo Bay inmate who said his continued imprisonment was unlawful since President Barack Obama had declared an end to the war in Afghanistan. The detainee has been held for 13 years.

The challenge brought by lawyers for detainee Muktar Yahya Najee al-Warafi said the Obama administration’s statement that the war in Afghanistan had come to an end made their client’s detention unlawful under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force of 2001. The authorization provides legal justification for imprisoning foreign fighters captured overseas.

The plaintiff’s argument also pointed to President Obama’s January 2015 speech declaring that “our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.”

The Washington, DC federal judge, Royce Lambert, wrote in his 14-page opinion that the president’s statement notwithstanding, the government had offered “convincing evidence the US involvement in the fighting in Afghanistan, against Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces alike, has not stopped,” and that al-Warafi’s detention remains legal.

“A court cannot look to political speeches alone to determine factual and legal realities merely because doing so would be easier than looking at all the relevant evidence,” Lambeth wrote, according to a report by the Associated Press. “The government may not always mean what it says or say what it means.”

Brain Foster, a lawyer for al-Warafi, said the judge’s opinion amounted to “a rubber stamp for endless detention” and would review the opinion to decide whether to appeal.

Foster also took to Twitter to say al-Warafi had worked in medical clinics in Afghanistan, a position that would provide him with protection under The Geneva Conventions.

Al-Warafi, a Yemeni, was captured in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance in 2001 before being detained by the US at Guantanamo in 2002.

More than 700 inmates have been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, at a cost of more than $5 billion, since it opened in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The facility has been mired in scandal throughout its history, with allegations of torture, force feeding and sexual abuse.

There are still 116 detainees at the prison. Speaking at national security conference in Aspen, Colorado on July 24, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said it “doesn’t make fiscal sense” to keep Guantanamo open.

Johnson said that it costs nearly $900,000 per year to house each prisoner at Guantanamo, amounting to a total cost of more than $100 million per year. In comparison, he said the cost of housing an inmate in a high-security federal prison was $80,000.

July 31, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Psychologists colluded with CIA to keep ethics code in line with post 9/11 torture needs – damning report

RT | July 11, 2015

The US’s leading professional psychologists’ organization helped justify CIA and Pentagon torture programs, a new 542-page report shows. The psychologists involved later profited from torture-related contracts.

The report, concluded this month, examined the involvement of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the validation of the so-called program of enhanced interrogation, under which terror suspects were subjected to torture at CIA black cites and at the Pentagon’s Guantanamo Bay prison facility.

The document prepared by a former assistant US attorney, David Hoffman, says some of the APA’s senior figures, including its ethics director, pushed to keep the association’s ethics code in line with DoD’s interrogation policies. Other prominent external psychologists took actions that aided the CIA’s torture practices, defending it from growing dissent among its own psychologists.

“The evidence supports the conclusion that APA officials colluded with DoD officials to, at the least, adopt and maintain APA ethics policies that were not more restrictive than the guidelines that key DOD officials wanted,” the report published on Friday by the New York Times said. “APA chose its ethics policy based on its goals of helping DoD, managing its PR, and maximizing the growth of the profession.”

The Hoffman report focuses on the APA’s close ties with the Pentagon and can be viewed as complimentary to last December’s Senate report that exposed the brutality of post 9/11 CIA tactics towards terror detainees, the NYT said. It also gives additional details about how the intelligence agency adopted the enhanced interrogation program and solicited outside advice to stem concerns among its own medical professionals.

The report also describes several instances in which senior figures involved in the program moved into the private sector to get lucrative contracts from the CIA and the Pentagon. For instance, Joseph Matarazzo, a former president of the psychological association and a member of the CIA advisory committee, was asked by Mr Kirk Hubbard (CIA psychologist who was chairman of the agency advisory committee), to provide an opinion about whether sleep deprivation constituted torture. The conclusion was that it did not.

Later, Matarazzo became a partner in Mitchell Jessen and Associates, a contracting company created by James Mitchel and Bruce Jessen to consult with the CIA on their interrogation program. They were instructors for the Air Force’s SERE (survival, evasion, rescue and escape) program, in which US troops are subjected to simulated torture to prepare them for possible capture. They adapted the program’s techniques for use against terror detainees, the report said.

After the Hoffman report was made public, the American Psychological Association issued an apology.

“The actions, policies and lack of independence from government influence described in the Hoffman report represented a failure to live up to our core values,” Nadine Kaslow, a former president of the organization, said in a statement. “We profoundly regret and apologize for the behavior and the consequences that ensued.”

One of the more immediate consequences of the report was the resignation of the APA’s ethics chief, Stephen Behnke, according to the Guardian. The psychologists coordinated the group’s public policy statements on interrogations with a top military psychologist, the report said. He later received a Pentagon contract for training interrogators, without notifying the American Psychological Association’s board.

Kaslow told the newspaper that Behnke’s last day at the APA was July 8, after the association received Hoffman’s report, and that further resignations were likely to follow.

A similarly damning report on the APA’s involvement in US government torture programs was published in April.

July 11, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Judge orders US government to prepare Guantánamo force-feeding tapes for public release

Reprieve | July 10, 2015

A federal judge today ordered the Obama Administration to prepare secret videotapes of a Guantanamo detainee’s treatment for release to the public.

In a ruling this afternoon in Washington DC, Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the US Government to complete all national security-related redactions to the first eight tapes – which show Abu Wa’el Dhiab being forcibly removed from his cell and tube-fed — by August 31, and to complete other key redactions by September 30.

The tapes were first filed to court as classified evidence in a legal challenge to prison conditions at Guantanamo Bay, Dhiab v Obama. 16 press organizations, including Associated Press, the Washington Post and the New York Times, intervened seeking the videos’ release to the public on First Amendment grounds. Judge Kessler ordered them to be released; the Obama Administration then appealed in what Judge Kessler called “as frivolous an appeal as I’ve seen.’

Reprieve attorney for Abu Wa-el Dhiab Cori Crider said:

“This is a great win for the US press, and for the First Amendment. The Obama Administration has been kicking and screaming to avoid processing even one minute of this footage, and never wanted to have to give a specific reason for keeping it secret. That is because the real reason for trying to hide Mr Dhiab’s face is that what he suffered is a scandal and an embarrassment to the Administration that allowed it.

“The Government has been rightly chided by the judge and now will be made to give real reasons for every frame of this footage that they want to keep hidden from the public.

“Images of a suffering detainee are matters of public importance and should no more be suppressed than those of Abu Ghraib, Eric Garner or Rodney King. An Administration truly committed to transparency would release the tapes forthwith.

“That’s why the US press is intervening in this case, and the courts are standing firm to preserve our right to see what is being done in our name.”

July 10, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

US government ordered to prepare Guantánamo force-feeding videos for release

Reprieve | May 29, 2015

An appeal court has today ordered the Obama Administration to redact 12 hours of secret Guantánamo force-feeding footage in preparation for its public release, rejecting the Administration’s argument that not one single frame should be seen by the public.

The classified videos, which show Guantánamo prisoner Abu Wa-‘el Dhiab being forcibly removed from his cell and force-fed by the US military, were ordered to be released to the public by federal Judge Gladys Kessler in October 2014, following a First Amendment intervention from 16 US press organizations in the abuse case Dhiab v Obama.

The Obama Administration defied Judge Kessler’s order to prepare the videos for release, complaining that the process was too much work and insisting that revealing even one frame from the videos posed a national security risk. Leaving the videos unredacted, the Administration took the case straight to D.C.’s federal Court of Appeals in an attempt to get the order overturned.

In a judgment handed down today, the Court of Appeals ruled that the Administration’s refusal to comply with the lower court’s order was wrong, and rejected its attempt to use the ‘burdensome’ task of redacting videos as a reason to circumvent the First Amendment.

The Obama Administration must now comply with Judge Kessler’s original order to redact the videotapes to address national security concerns, and submit the redacted tapes to her court for reconsideration ahead of their release.

Alka Pradhan, Reprieve US attorney for Mr Dhiab, said: “The Obama Administration’s defiance of Judge Kessler’s order suggests a basic contempt for both the court’s authority and our First Amendment rights, which the Circuit judges recognized.

“The Administration is fighting hard because once those videotapes are redacted, they are one step closer to public release – and the government is one step closer to being held accountable for their treatment of Guantanamo detainees. Yet the harder the Administration resists, the more they confirm that they have much wrongdoing to hide.

“It is time to stop running absurd arguments, and simply to do the right thing: expose and end the ongoing abuse of hunger-strikers at Guantanamo Bay.”

May 29, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

US military drops action against Guantanamo nurse who refused to force-feed

Reprieve | May 13, 2015

Human rights NGO Reprieve has welcomed the US Department of Defense’s decision, announced today, to drop proceedings against a military nurse who refused to carry out force-feedings at Guantanamo Bay.

In July last year, information received by Reprieve lawyers from one of their clients held at Guantanamo revealed that one military medical professional had refused to carry out force-feedings on prisoners engaged in a peaceful hunger strike. The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg subsequently obtained confirmation from the DoD that a medical provider had been unwilling to carry out the procedure, and as a result had been reassigned.

Since then, it emerged that the DoD was considering action against the nurse – which today has been dropped.

Involuntary force-feeding has been criticized as unethical and inhuman by medical organizations including the American Medical Association (AMA), and other bodies including the UN.

Lawyers at Reprieve are continuing to fight for the release of video tapes of force-feedings which are held by the US Government. Last Friday (May 8) saw a hearing in a US appeal court at which the Obama administration argued that the public had no right to see the tapes, and the court no ability to challenge that decision. A judgement in the case is pending.

Commenting on the DoD’s decision to drop proceedings against the nurse, Reprieve attorney Cori Crider said: “Better late than never, DoD has rightly dropped its case against the nurse who decided he could not ethically force-feed Guantanamo detainees. It took enormous courage for him to swim against the tide. And as someone who has watched the force-feeding videos, I am certain he did the right thing. If the tapes are ever made public, the American people will watch in horror at what we have asked this man, and many other young servicemen and women, to do.”

May 13, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Family of ‘emaciated’ Guantanamo prisoner plead in court for help

Reprieve | April 15, 2015

The family of a hunger-striking Pakistani man detained in Guantanamo Bay has today filed an emergency application with the Islamabad High Court, demanding that the Pakistani government intervene immediately in his case.

Ahmad Rabbani has been on hunger strike for more than two years in protest at his detention without charge or trial in Guantanamo, where he has been held since 2004. An affidavit submitted to the court by human rights organization Reprieve, whose staff recently visited Mr Rabbani, describes the damaging effect on his health of his brutal treatment at the prison – including daily force-feedings and ‘forced cell extractions’ (FCEs).

Mr Rabbani has told his lawyers at Reprieve that his weight has dropped to approximately 40kg, and that he regularly vomits and experiences numbness in his limbs, dizziness and fainting. Mr Rabbani described how his thigh has wasted away to the width of his calf. His lawyers describe him as looking “emaciated” during their latest visit.

The urgent court application demands that the Pakistani government intervene immediately with the U.S. authorities to arrange for the release and repatriation of Mr Rabbani before he either dies or suffers permanent damage to his health. Filed today, the petition is likely to be heard tomorrow (Thurs) in the Court.

The court has previously heard how Mr Rabbani’s constitutional rights to legal defence, fair trial, and humane treatment have all been gravely abused by his detention without charge or trial by the United States – violations which, Mr Rabbani’s lawyers argue, oblige the Pakistani government to take up his case.

Mr Rabbani’s lawyers have also submitted to the court a copy of the US Senate’s recent report into CIA torture, which reveals that his 2002 arrest was a case of mistaken identity. The 2014 report also confirms that Mr Rabbani was initially detained for 540 days in secret CIA jails before his transfer to Guantanamo, and was subjected to a number of violent interrogation methods that have been condemned as torture.

Commenting, Mr Rabbani’s lawyer Alka Pradhan, US Counsel at Reprieve, said: “The US Senate report confirmed that Ahmed Rabbani was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time 13 years ago – and that he was horribly tortured in US secret prisons. But he remains in Guantanamo – and after years of abuse, he is now dangerously ill. Ahmad’s hunger strike is a last desperate cry for help from the Pakistani government. They must now intervene in his case and bring him home.”

April 15, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Supreme Court spurns two Guantanamo appeals

RT | March 9, 2015

The US Supreme Court declined to hear two Guantanamo Bay appeals cases on Monday, upholding the decision of lower courts to reject a damages claim by a wrongfully detained Syrian, and block the release of alleged torture photographs of a Saudi national.

In the case of Janko v. Gates (14-650), the Supreme Court let stand a January 2014 ruling by the DC Circuit Court that rejected a claim by a Syrian national for damages after being wrongfully held in Guantanamo Bay for seven years.

US forces in Afghanistan captured Abd al-Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko, a Syrian Kurd, at a Taliban prison in 2002, and held him as an “enemy combatant” at Guantanamo for years. He was released in 2009 after a federal court judge ruled his continued detention “defied common sense.”

Even though al-Janko had a formal federal adjudication that his detention had been unlawful, the DC Circuit Court rejected his claim for damages in January 2014, relying on a precedent in the 2012 Al-Zahrani v. Rodriguez case that “enemy combatants” could not sue the US government.

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the American University Washington College of Law, wrote at the time that such a ruling might mean that Congress could “foreclose federal jurisdiction” even on meritorious claims, and that this would have “obvious salience far beyond Guantanamo and the specific context of counterterrorism litigation.”

In the second case, Center for Constitutional Rights v. CIA (14-658), a human rights group was suing the government for release of documents pertaining to the “enhanced interrogation” of Saudi national Mohammed al-Qahtani.

Also known as “Detainee 063,” al-Qahtani was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, and held at Guantanamo Bay ever since. Documents describing his interrogations as torture were leaked to the press in 2006. All charges against him have been dismissed, but he remains imprisoned.

A federal court in New York had ruled in September 2014 that releasing the photos and videos of al-Qahtani’s interrogations would “harm national security,” because the images were “uniquely susceptible to use by anti-American extremists as propaganda to incite violence against United States interests domestically and abroad.”

Following the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal, evidence of al-Qahtani’s treatment will remain secret from the public.

March 9, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Gitmo torturer allegedly had long history with Chicago Police Dept.

RT | February 19, 2015

A former Chicago homicide detective accused in a federal civil rights lawsuit over wrongful conviction is alleged to also have carried out interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, where his methods were described as “illegal,” “immoral” and “unconstitutional.”

The veteran police detective is reportedly the same Richard Zuley who became an interrogator of a high profile detainee at Guantanamo Bay as a US Navy reserve lieutenant from 2002-2004, according to a report by the Guardian. He is said to have exported his interrogation techniques.

Zuley is alleged to be the chief of a “Special Projects Team” at the naval base prison. His involvement was first reported by the Wall Street Journal reporter, Jess Bravin in his book “The Terror Counts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay.”

According to a memoir serialized last month in the Guardian, Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi said he was shackled for extensive periods of time, had his family threatened, was told to implicate others and was coerced into signing a false confession. Slahi was suspected of being a recruiter for Al-Qaeda. Zuley’s role in the torture of Slahi was also identified by blogger Jeffery Kaye from footnotes in a Nov. 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report looking into the treatment of detainees.

The case of Slahi was singled out as a primary example of detainee abuse. Mark Fallon, the former deputy commander of Guantanamo’s now-closed investigative task force, said Zuley’s interrogation of Slahi, “was illegal, it was immoral, it was ineffective and it was unconstitutional.”

In Chicago, three current inmates and a former convicted prisoner are accusing Zuley and other police officers of similar tactics, including handcuffing them for hours and forcing confessions for crimes they did not commit.

One of the inmates is Lathierial Boyd, who was exonerated by the Chicago’s state attorney’s office for lack of evidence in 2013 after he had served 23 years in prison. It is his federal civil rights lawsuit that charges Zuley with using illicit techniques to get him convicted.

The Guardian identified three other people interrogated by Zuley who are still in state prison. According to the publication, the same state attorney that dismissed all charges against Boyd two years ago has reportedly agreed to review civilian complaints against former detective Zuley.

Zuley, currently employed at the Chicago Department of Aviation, refused to answer the Guardian’s request to take part in the publication’s investigation.

Guantanamo has gained notoriety over the past decade for cruel and inhumane confinement conditions and well-documented use of torture in the camp.

President Barack Obama’s has pledged to shut down the prison camp but nearly 130 detainees are still being held there.

READ MORE:

‘No one went to jail but me’: CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou speaks out

9/11 trial on hold after Gitmo detainees accuse translator of being CIA torturer

February 19, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 1 Comment

US Court Overturns Conviction of Former Guantanamo Inmate

Al-Akhbar | February 19, 2015

Former Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks expressed relief on Thursday after a US court quashed his terrorism conviction, and demanded Canberra pay his medical bills as he struggles to overcome the effects of alleged torture.

Hicks was held in the notorious US-run prison from January 2002 until May 2007, when he pleaded guilty to providing material support to al-Qaeda.

The plea bargain suspended all but nine months of his seven-year sentence and allowed him to return home. He has since recanted his confession, claiming he only admitted guilt under duress.

Hicks said he was beaten, sexually abused and drugged while in jail.

Three appeals court judges unanimously overturned his conviction, ruling that material support for terrorism was not a war crime and could not be tried by a military court.

“We had been waiting for this decision for years. It is a relief because it is over,” Hicks said in Sydney.

“I am sure no one is surprised by today’s long-awaited acknowledgement by the government of the United States of America of my innocence. Even the Australian government has admitted that I committed no crime.

“It is just unfortunate that because of politics, I was subjected to five-and-a-half years of physical and psychological torture that I will now live with always.”

Hicks was arrested in 2001 in Afghanistan and accused of fighting alongside the Taliban against US-led forces which had invaded the country following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.

He admitted to taking part in paramilitary training in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as conflicts in Kosovo and Kashmir but maintained he never had extremist intentions.

The Australian government was accused of not doing enough to help him while in Guantanamo, but Hicks said he was “too defeated” to pursue an official apology.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the government “did what was needed” and ruled out any apology.

“Look, I’m not in the business of apologizing for the actions that Australian governments take to protect our country. Not now, not ever,” he said.

His stance was echoed by John Howard, Australia’s prime minister while Hicks was in jail.

“Nothing alters the fact that by his own admission, Hicks trained with al-Qaeda, met Osama bin Laden on several occasions — describing him as a brother. He reveled in jihad,” Howard said.

“He is not owed an apology by any Australian government.”

Still suffering from the effects of torture

Hicks said he would not be chasing compensation but called on Canberra to pay his medical bills brought on by ongoing dental, back, knee and elbow issues stemming from his time in jail.

“I am in a lot of trouble physically at the moment. It is affecting my ability to do any day job which is my only income,” he said.

“I do think that someone should be responsible for my medical expenses,” Hicks added. “The Australian government, they were aware of the conditions I was being held in at the time. They should at least pay my medical expenses. That is not much to ask for, I don’t think.”

Hicks directly blamed his medical problems on his treatment in Guantanamo Bay.

“It is due to the torture. Being kept in freezing conditions, small rooms for years. Not being able to move or exercise,” he said.

“The body deteriorates over five-and-a-half years, even without the added torture, such as stress positions, being beaten.”

Lawyer Wells Dixon, who argued the appeal in the United States, said the decision demonstrated the failure of the military commissions, used at Guantanamo to try terror suspects outside the normal US court system.

“This decision is an illustration of what happens when you make up a secondary system of justice,” said Dixon, who works at the Center for Constitutional Rights which defends Guantanamo detainees.

Since their creation in 2006, six people have pleaded guilty and been sentenced by Guantanamo courts. The sentencing of three of them was reversed while three more are on appeal.

At least 122 detainees remain in Guantanamo. Fifty-four of those, including 47 Yemenis, have been approved for resettlement, while the rest are considered “too dangerous” to release.

The prison was set up to hold alleged “terror suspects” after the 9/11 attacks, but human rights groups have condemned the jail as a “legal black hole,” where inmates languish for years without being tried in court.

The pace of transfers from the US-run detention center at Guantanamo has picked up in recent months as US President Barack Obama attempts to fulfill a promise he made nearly six years ago when he took office to shut the prison, despite opposition from some lawmakers.

Obama’s envoy overseeing the release of Guantanamo inmates, Cliff Sloan, resigned in December after reportedly becoming frustrated at how long it took the Pentagon to approve transfers of detainees.

The US has been under scrutiny for years over the unethical treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, particularly for its interrogation methods.

Prisoners have reported a wide range of extreme human rights abuses from prison authorities, including brutal physical assault with torture tools, being kept in isolation for years at a time, and sleep and sensory deprivation.

More than 160 Guantanamo detainees are believed to have participated in a wave of hunger strikes in 2013 in protest of their ongoing imprisonment and the conditions they’re subjected to while being jailed indefinitely.

Pre-trial hearings of the alleged co-conspirators of the 9/11 attacks faced new delays last week after two of the five defendants identified a court interpreter as having worked in one of the United States’ notorious CIA prisons where they had been interrogated and tortured.

“I ask you to stop until we can go to the bottom of this,” lawyer David Nevin said on Wednesday.

Nevin, who represents alleged 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, said the government has acknowledged the interpreter was a CIA employee.

The defense claims to have documented numerous cases of the government meddling in the legal process, possibly violating the defendants’ rights to a fair trial.

Microphones have been concealed in smoke detectors, and an FBI agent has infiltrated defense teams, the lawyers claimed.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

February 19, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

US Admits Former Guantanamo Detainee Innocent, Says Lawyer

teleSUR | January 23, 2015

Over a decade after being thrown in the military prison Guantanamo Bay, the United States has admitted Australian citizen David Hicks is innocent, his lawyer said Friday.

“I have no doubt, that whether or not the military commission clears David, he will certainly be cleared in the higher courts of the United States if we need to go there,” Hicks’ lawyer Stephen Kenny said, according to Australian broadcaster ABC.

Kennedy explained that the U.S. military commission is expected to deliver a verdict on whether Hicks’ conviction will be quashed within a month. According to Kennedy, U.S. courts have already deemed Hicks’ conviction invalid, and his innocence is no longer being disputed.

“(It’s) a fact we’ve known for some time, but it’s taken the court some time to come to that conclusion,” Kennedy said.

The lawyer also stated the Australian government should issue an apology, arguing the former government of John Howard was a staunch supporter of Guantanamo Bay while Hicks was held by the U.S. military.

“I’m sure David would appreciate an apology at the very least, and I’m sure he’d appreciate some compensation,” Kennedy said.

In 2001, Hicks was captured by the Northern Alliance militant coalition, which fought against the Taliban until late 2001. A Northern Alliance-aligned warlord sold Hicks to U.S. forces for US$5000, claiming the Australian had been fighting alongside Al Qaeda.

Hicks was held in Guantanamo Bay until 2007, when he pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism. The media dubbed Hicks the “Aussie Taliban.” However, his lawyer has argued Hicks made the plea under duress, after enduring years of torture and mistreatment at the hands of U.S. forces.

In a 2004 affidavit, Hicks alleged he was sexually abused, routinely deprived of sleep, beaten, kept in solitary confinement almost 24 hours a day and administered unidentified medication. He also stated he saw other detainees savaged by dogs.

Hicks later said he only pleaded guilty to escape the U.S. prison.

After pleading guilty, Hicks was transferred to Adelaide’s Yatala Prison to serve the rest of his seven year sentence.

After nine months, Australian authorities released Hicks under a control order, and he now lives in Sydney.

January 23, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

This Won’t End Well: Military Police From the Torturous Gitmo Prison, Being Recruited as Cops

By John Vibes | The Free Thought Project | January 16, 2015

This week, as millions of Americans demand that Guantanamo Bay guards be prosecuted for war crimes, it seems that some of them may be getting jobs as cops instead.

It was recently reported that large numbers of military police officers who were formerly stationed at the infamous torture prisons, are now getting jobs as local cops, and could be coming to a town near you. The Worcester Police department in Massachusetts is testing a pilot program, in which former Guantanamo prison guards will be given jobs as police.

Although it is common practice for police departments to hire from the military, Worcester police sergeant Richard Cipro said that this is the first program in the country to specifically recruit from military prisons. He called the effort a “life-changing opportunity” when speaking to new recruits during a recent training class.

New recruits from Guantanamo Bay receive a full-time, paid 35 week training course which is apparently designed to help them make the transition from military police to neighborhood cop. Each class is filled with dozens of potential recruits, many of whom have worked in Guantanamo Bay. There are many hundreds and even thousands more who worked at lesser known military prison camps that are run in very much the same way, being accepted to police departments nationwide.

Cipro has said that people transitioning from the military require less physical training, which saves the department money in the long-run. However, many have pointed out that this is another example of the blurring lines between the military and the police in America.

Critics of former military personnel working in law enforcement, have argued that departments are contributing to the war-time mentality among police by hiring soldiers that are accustomed to operating in combat conditions. Hiring guards from Guantanamo Bay would be taking this a step further, as the prison has become notorious for widespread torture and abuse.

Guantanamo Bay was in the news again this week, as it was revealed that detainees were regularly killed in the prisons, and their murders covered up and made to look like suicides. By all reports it was the CIA that was involved in carrying out these murders, but it has been well documented for years that guards were required to beat and torture detainees on a regular basis. Even being exposed to such a brutal culture day in and day out should be enough to disqualify a person from working in law enforcement.

Direct insubordination and refusal to carry out acts of assault and torture is extremely rare in the US military, especially at sites like Guantanamo Bay. At Guantanamo Bay specifically, there was just one major case reported where a member of the staff refused to participate in torture. As detainees were being force-fed during a hunger strike, one Navy Nurse stood alone and refused to feed the prisoners against their will. The nurse was swiftly sent home and placed under court martial status with the US military.

Sadly, when it comes time to pick new recruits to transition from the military to a police department, the type of people who get the jobs are not the type of people who refuse orders.

A decade ago, Democracy Now spoke with a former army sergeant, Erik Saar who served as an Arabic translator at Guantanamo Bay for six months. Among the abuses he says he witnessed was sexual abuse, mock interrogations, the use of dogs and a female interrogator smearing what looked like menstrual blood on a Muslim prisoner. He also says children were imprisoned at Guantanamo and that the military ordered them not to speak to the Red Cross.

January 17, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

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