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‘CIA killed prisoners, made it look like suicide’ – Guantanamo guard

RT | January 15, 2015

A former Guantanamo Bay prison guard and Marine has spoken to the press for the first time about what he claims were the CIA murders of three problematic detainees, covered up as a triple suicide.

Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman was on duty at the notorious prison camp when the three men died, and insists the official version of events is “impossible,” he told Vice News.

The three men were Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, 37, from Yemen, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, 30, from Saudi Arabia, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, 22, also from Saudi Arabia. None of them had been charged with any crime.

He explained in an incendiary interview with Vice News that the three men would have had to have committed suicide at exactly the same time in a cellblock where guards check on detainees every four minutes.

“They would have had to all three tie their hands and feet together, shove rags down their throats, put a mask over their face, made a noose, hung it from the ceiling on the side of the cellblock, jumped into the noose and hung themselves simultaneously,” he said.

Hickman added that an inspection of the detainees’ cells just a few hours before they supposedly killed themselves revealed nothing that they might have used to kill themselves – such as nooses, rags, or shoelaces.

The former Marine, who first joined up in 1985 and for a while was in a unit attached to the NSA, has been trying to put the nightmare of working at Camp Delta behind him. But when he saw on TV that another inmate had hung himself, he decided to face up to what he had witnessed. He has written a book, ‘Murder at Camp Delta,’ which he hopes will eventually lead to the truth.

Hickman was careful not to name any of the alleged murderers by name in the book, but he still hopes it may trigger a proper investigation into what really happened that night.

“I can’t name names. I keep it vague at the end for that reason. I say it was murder, this is the reason why,” he said.

On June 9, 2006, Hickman was on guard duty at Camp Delta when he saw a paddy wagon arrive at the high security Alpha Block three times – each time picking up a prisoner and taking them out of the camp.

He saw the police wagon turn left at checkpoint ACP Roosevelt onto a road which only leads to two places – the beach or a CIA holding center, which Hickman and his colleagues nicknamed ‘Camp No.’

After this, between 11:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., the paddy wagon came back to Camp Delta – but instead of going to Camp I, it went straight to the medical detainee clinic.

“About 10 minutes later, all the lights come on, like a stadium, and sirens are going off — it’s chaos,” he said.

All three detainees were dead.

Hickman believes he knows why the authorities at Guantanamo would have wanted to get rid of the three men.

The three men were regular hunger strikers who incited other detainees to do the same – and when prisoners were on hunger strike, camp policy said they couldn’t be interrogated.

“They had a policy that if a detainee is hunger-striking, he cannot be interrogated. In 2006, they were doing roughly 200 interrogations a week, so any massive hunger-strike would, what they consider, cripple the intelligence value. I believe the number-one mission in JTF-GTMO (Joint Task Force Guantanamo) at the time was, stop the hunger strikes at all costs,” said Hickman.

The ex-sergeant said that after the deaths, there were no hunger strikes for a long time.

Hickman first approached the US Department of Justice in 2009. His claims and those of others at the camp were reported in Harper’s magazine in 2010. The authorities issued a hasty denial, claiming that Hickman was stationed outside the perimeter and wouldn’t have been able to see the entrance to Alpha Block.

But Hickman says that half of his duties were inside the perimeter and half were outside, and that “both positions give me a pretty good view of what happened.”

Since then, the truth of what went on at Guantanamo has begun to trickle out. A recent Senate report – which the CIA tried to repress – found that the CIA regularly used torture, violence, and degrading treatment in its interrogation techniques. The report also claims those tactics rarely produced any decent intelligence.

But just after the supposed triple suicide, Rear Admiral Harry Harris attacked the three detainees for daring to take their own lives.

“They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us,” Democracy Now quoted him as saying.

Hickman’s interview comes just days after Republican senators proposed that a moratorium should be placed on the release of all medium- and high-risk detainees, citing danger to the US and its allies, adding that any transfers to Yemen should be barred for two years.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Police asked to investigate G4S over Guantanamo role

Reprieve | January 12, 2015

British security firm G4S could be criminally liable for its involvement in Guantanamo Bay, according to a new complaint filed with the Metropolitan Police.

Legal charity Reprieve, which represents several Guantanamo detainees, has reported the UK company to police after learning of a $113 million (£71 million) contract for G4S to supply ‘base services’ at the US prison through its US subsidiary, G4S Government Solutions (G4S GS). The exact nature of the services to be provided under the contract is unclear, prompting concerns that the company could be complicit in rights abuses under way at the prison, such as force-feeding.

G4S sold G4S GS to an undisclosed buyer for $135m (£89m) at the end of last year, and Reprieve’s complaint argues that both the contract itself and the sale could amount to an offence under the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act.

127 men remain imprisoned without charge or trial in Guantanamo Bay, including British resident Shaker Aamer. The UK government has repeatedly said that Mr Aamer, who has twice been cleared for release, must be urgently returned to his British wife and children in London. Mr Aamer’s lawyers are urging the Prime Minister to secure his release during an upcoming US visit.

Kevin Lo, an investigator at Reprieve, said: “It is a scandal that, while British resident Shaker Aamer still languishes at Guantanamo, G4S has been seeking to profit from the sale of a contract that supports the abuses he and others suffer daily. No British firm should be profiting from a prison that UK ministers have rightly called a ‘shocking affront to the principles of democracy’. The authorities in the UK must hold G4S to account for its actions.”

January 12, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , | 1 Comment

UN panel slams US for police brutality, torture, botched executions

RT | November 29, 2014

A UN report has condemned the United States for violating the terms of an international anti-torture treaty. The panel took Washington to task for police brutality, military interrogations, and capital punishment protocols.

“The Committee is concerned about numerous reports of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officials,” the paper released by the UN Committee Against Torture says, adding that in particular this brutality is seen against persons belonging “to certain racial and ethnic groups, immigrants and LGBTI individuals.”

The document was released on Friday, just days after the contentious decision of a Missouri grand jury not to indict a white officer accused of shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen. The decision triggered a wave of protests nationwide.

Although the report didn’t specifically mention the events in Ferguson, Mike Brown’s parents met with the committee to discuss their son’s case in Geneva earlier this month.

The UN watchdog expressed “deep concern at the frequent and recurrent police shootings or fatal pursuits of unarmed black individuals.”

The 10-person panel, which periodically reviews the records of the 156 countries which ratified the Convention Against Torture – a non-binding international human rights treaty – cited mounting concerns over “racial profiling by police and immigration offices, and growing militarization of policing activities.”

The committee called on US authorities to “prosecute persons suspected of torture or ill-treatment and, if found guilty, ensure that they are punished in accordance with the gravity of their acts.”

“We recommend that all instances of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officers are investigated promptly, effectively and impartially by an independent mechanism,” said panel member, Alessio Bruni, at a news conference in Geneva.

Urging for tougher laws to define and ban torture, the committee called on Washington to reevaluate the treatment of detainees at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which currently houses 148 prisoners.

“The Committee is particularly disturbed at reports describing a draconian system of secrecy surrounding high-value detainees that keeps their torture claims out of the public domain.”

In addition, the committee criticized the recent spate of botched executions, especially in Arizona, Oklahoma, and Ohio, citing reported cases “of excruciating pain and prolonged suffering that procedural irregularities have caused to condemned prisoners in the course of their execution.”

The UN body further highlighted “continued delays in recourse procedures which keep prisoners sentenced to death in a situation of anguish and incertitude for many years.”

“The Committee notes that in certain cases such a situation amounts to torture in so far as it corresponds to one of the forms of torture (i.e. the threat of imminent death) contained in the interpretative understanding made by the State party at the time of ratification of the Convention.”

The report urges US authorities to establish “a moratorium on executions with a view to abolish the death penalty” and “to commute the sentences of individuals currently on death row.”

US activists welcomed the findings as a call to action for the federal government.

“This report – along with the voices of Americans protesting around the country this week – is a wake-up call for police who think they can act with impunity,” said Jamil Dakwar of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as quoted by Reuters.

READ MORE: ‘We crossed the line’: US mea culpa at UN panel on use of torture

November 29, 2014 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 1 Comment

Guantanamo force-feeding is illegal, says UN body

Reprieve | November 28, 2014

A United Nations panel has said that the force-feeding of hunger-striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay is a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

The report, released today by the UN Committee Against Torture, said that the practice “constitutes ill-treatment”, and called on the US to halt it. The Committee also noted that “detainees’ lawyers have argued in court that force feedings are allegedly administered in an unnecessarily brutal and painful manner” – an apparent reference to US litigation brought by international human rights NGO Reprieve on behalf of cleared Syrian detainee Abu Wa’el Dhiab.

As part of those legal proceedings, the Obama Administration has until Tuesday, December 2nd to appeal a recent court order to release over ten hours of classified footage showing the force-feeding of Mr Dhiab.

Commenting, Cori Crider, Strategic Director at Reprieve and Mr Dhiab’s attorney,  said: “The UN is entirely right – abuse at Guantánamo is still happening on Obama’s watch, and I’ve seen the force-feeding footage to prove it. This assessment could not be more timely – the Obama administration has until next week to either face up to a court order to release these force-feeding videos, or to file an appeal, in hopes of covering up the evidence. The right course is clear – the American public has a right to see what’s being done in their name. Obama should release the tapes without delay, and end these abuses once and for all.”

Further detail on Reprieve’s force-feeding litigation can be found at the Reprieve US website.

November 28, 2014 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Nobel Peace Prize laureates call on Obama to release CIA torture report

RT | October 27, 2014

Twelve winners of the Nobel Peace Prize have urged fellow laureate, US President Barack Obama, to release a Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s post-9/11 Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program, also known as the torture report.

The laureates revealed late Sunday an open letter that called for “full disclosure to the American people of the extent and use of torture and rendition by American soldiers, operatives, and contractors, as well as the authorization of torture and rendition by American officials.”

The letter, posted on TheCommunity.com, also asked for a concrete plan to close secret international “black site” prisons – used by the US to hide, hold, and interrogate post-9/11 detainees – as well as the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, where many War on Terror captives languish with few or inconsistent legal maneuvers, if any at all, at their disposal.

The letter was signed by past Nobel winners José Ramos-Horta, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, F.W. De Klerk, Leymah Gbowee, Muhammad Yunus, John Hume, Bishop Carlos X. Belo, Betty Williams, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Jody Williams, Oscar Arias Sanchez, and Mohammad ElBaradei.

“In recent decades, by accepting the flagrant use of torture and other violations of international law in the name of combating terrorism, American leaders have eroded the very freedoms and rights that generations of their young gave their lives to defend,” the laureates wrote.

“They have again set an example that will be followed by others; only now, it is one that will be used to justify the use of torture by regimes around the world, including against American soldiers in foreign lands. In losing their way, they have made us all vulnerable.”

The letter called on Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize after less than a year in the White House, to follow principles of international law outlined in the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions.

The US Senate Intelligence Committee’s $40 million investigation into the CIA’s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program – which was active from September 11, 2001 to 2006 – has found that the spy agency purposely deceived the US Justice Department to attain legal justification for the use of torture techniques, among other findings. The investigation and subsequent crafting of the report ran from March 2009 to December 2012.

Of that 6,000-page investigative report, the public will only see a 500-page, partially-redacted executive summary that is in the process of declassification.

According to sources familiar with the unreleased report, the CIA, and not top officials of the George W. Bush administration, are blamed for interrogation tactics that amount to torture based on international legal standards.

The report outlines 20 main conclusions about the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program which, according to the investigation, intentionally evaded White House, congressional, and intra-agency oversight.

~

You can join the laureates’ call by signing a petition to President Obama here.

October 27, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama considers [officially] allowing torture overseas

chair-banana

RT | October 20, 2014

The White House is reportedly wrestling over how to interpret a ban on “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” ahead of a meeting in Geneva next month concerning the United Nations charter on torture.

According to the New York Times, the Obama administration remains divided over what stance a Washington delegation will officially take at the UN-sponsored Committee Against Torture panel early next month in the Swiss city.

Although Barack Obama said before and after being elected to the White House that United States officials should never engage in torturous activity, Times national security journalist Charlie Savage reported on Sunday this week that administration officials might formally adopt another stance — one on par with the policies of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush — when the panel convenes in a couple of weeks.

The Times reported that the attorneys who answer to the president are conflicted over whether or not the White House should revisit the Bush administration’s interpretation of a UN treaty, the likes of which authorized the use of enhanced interrogation tactics, like waterboarding and sleep deprivation, on individuals detained by military and intelligence agencies in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks at facilities such as the Guantanamo Bay detention center and CIA so-called “black sites.”

The upcoming meeting will be the first one of Obama’s presidency, Savage acknowledged, presenting the commander-in-chief with a rare opportunity to speak of the UN Convention Against Torture, a treaty that since the 1980s has aimed to ensure prisoners the world over aren’t subjected to inhumane conditions.

In Sunday’s report, Savage wrote that Obama, then a US senator, spoke out adamantly against Pres. Bush when it was revealed in 2005 that his administration had been interpreting the UN treaty in a manner that they argued made it acceptable for CIA and Pentagon officials to disregard the prohibitions against torture if they weren’t on American soil.

Obama the president later condemned that reasoning with an executive order “ensuring lawful interrogations,” Savage added, although next month’s meeting may change that.

“But the Obama administration has never officially declared its position on the treaty, and now, President Obama’s legal team is debating whether to back away from his earlier view,” Savage wrote. “It is considering reaffirming the Bush administration’s position that the treaty imposes no legal obligation on the United States to bar cruelty outside its borders, according to officials who discussed the deliberations on the condition of anonymity.”

“State Department lawyers are said to be pushing to officially abandon the Bush-era interpretation,” Savage added, which would simply continue to let the 2009 Obama-signed executive order stand as Washington’s official word and further ensure that American officials are obligated to adhere to the torture treaty regardless of where in the world they are located.

Other attorneys, he added, have a different idea of what to do at next month’s meeting, however. “But military and intelligence lawyers are said to oppose accepting that the treaty imposes legal obligations on the United States’ actions abroad,” Savage wrote. “They say they need more time to study whether it would have operational impacts. They have also raised concerns that current or future wartime detainees abroad might invoke the treaty to sue American officials with claims of torture, although courts have repeatedly thrown out lawsuits brought by detainees held as terrorism suspects.”

Should those arguing on the latter side provoke, then the current administration could soon find itself agreeing with past policies that continue to be controversial nearly a decade after the Bush White House’s use of torture started to surface.

“Many foreign political leaders and non-governmental organizations have called for members of the Bush administration, including Bush himself, to face prosecution for allowing the abuse of detainees in US custody during the course of the US campaign against Islamic militant groups spurred by the 9/11 attacks,” Mark Hanrahan wrote for the International Business Times on Sunday. “The Bush administration, which launched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had to contend with a number of allegations it allowed US officials to use torture against detainees during the course of its campaigns,” including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.

If the Pentagon and CIA attorneys prevail, then Washington could once again interpret the UN treaty in a manner that allows those same torturous practices to be performed on detainees once against, as long as any such instances occur abroad.

Last week, McClatchy news service reported that a classified $40 million probe launched by the Senate to investigate the CIA’s Bush-era detention and interrogation program concludes without holding any administration officials responsible for the scandals at Abu Ghraib and other facilities that to this day remain a major scar on the presidency.

“This report is not about the White House. It’s not about the president. It’s not about criminal liability. It’s about the CIA’s actions or inactions,” a person familiar with the report told McClatchy. “It does not look at the Bush administration’s lawyers to see if they were trying to literally do an end run around justice and the law.”

October 20, 2014 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

US wants Guantanamo force-feeding hearing to stay secret

RT | September 29, 2014

Attorneys for the United States government say that an upcoming court hearing concerning the force-feeding practices used on a Guantanamo Bay detainee should be held almost entirely behind closed doors.

The motion, filed by US attorneys on Friday in District Court for the District of Columbia, asks that the preliminary injunction hearing for Gitmo detainee Abu Wa’el Dhiab scheduled for early next month be conducted largely in secret over supposed national security concerns.

“As an initial matter, the hearing should be closed in order to prevent any unauthorized disclosure of classified or protected information,” the motion reads in part. “Furthermore, the hearing should be closed because, although portions of the materials in the record in this case are unclassified, conducting an open hearing in this case would impose significant burdens on the parties and the Court.”

Dhiab, a Syrian national, was cleared for release by the US in 2009 but remains in Pentagon custody at the Guantanamo Bay facility where he and dozens others engaged in a hunger strike last year to protest their continued confinement. To avoid having detainees die from malnourishment, the US has routinely subjected those individuals to force-feeding practices that their attorneys and human rights workers alike have raised concerns about.

Earlier this year in May, US District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the Obama administration to temporarily stop force-feeding Dhiab and release his medical records and 34 of 136 videotapes of force-feeding sessions taken between April 9, 2013 and February 19, 2014.

“It’s 12 years late, but it’s fantastic, it’s the first time a federal court has started paying attention to the conditions of confinement in Guantanamo, that’s a huge step,” Clive Stafford Smith, the director of human rights group Reprieve said at the time.

Now as a District Court judge prepares to consider arguments from attorneys representing both the US government and Dhiab, federal attorneys are asking that the public be excluded from key elements of the hearing.

“It’s obvious what is really going on here,” Cori Crider, an attorney for Dhiab with Reprieve, said to The Guardian this week. “The government wants to seal the force-feeding trial for the same reason it is desperate to suppress the tapes of my client being hauled from his cell by the riot squad and force-fed. The truth is just too embarrassing.”

“There is no reason to close the upcoming hearing, other than the government’s intense desire to hide from public scrutiny the evidence we have managed to uncover over the past few months,” co-counsel Jon Eisenberg told POLITICO over the weekend. “This evidence, which consists of videotapes of Mr. Dhiab’s force feedings, his medical records and some key new admissions by military officials, vividly establishes that the force feeding at Guantanamo Bay is the opposite of humane. Its overarching purpose is to cause the hunger strikers a great deal of pain and suffering, in hopes that they are convinced to give up this peaceful protest of their indefinite detention without trial.”

“If, during any part of this hearing, the judge feels there is a need to protect national security information from public disclosure, she can simply close the courtroom for that part of the hearing. That’s how these sorts of cases are commonly handled, and that’s how this one should be handled,” he said.

According to the government, however, opening and closing the hearing because of classified information being presented would “interrupt the natural flow of the hearing, preventing full, frank and uninhibited discussion of the record necessary to conduct the hearing.” As a compromise, acting assistant attorney general Joyce Branda wrote for the government on Friday that “Respondents will create a public version of the transcript of hearing on an expedited basis and, consistent with the practice in many other Guantanamo Bay merits hearings, Respondents agree the parties should begin the hearing by delivering unclassified opening statements in public.”

According to the Guardian, several news organizations, including the British paper, plan to file a motion challenging the government’s request to keep the hearing largely secret.

September 29, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Obama administration ‘blocking’ information from the press – AP

RT | September 20, 2014

Uncovering information that should be available to the public has become increasingly difficult under the presidency of Barack Obama, an Associated Press bureau chief says. In some cases, it surpasses the secrecy of the George W. Bush administration.

The White House’s penchant for secrecy does not just apply to the federal government, according to AP’s Washington bureau chief, Sally Buzbee. During a joint meeting of news editors, she stated that the same kind of behavior is starting to appear in state and local governments.

Buzbee pointed out eight ways that the Obama administration is stifling public access to information – including keeping reporters away from witnessing any military action the United States takes as it battles Islamic State extremists in the Middle East.

“The public can’t see any of it,” Buzbee said, referring to the military campaign. “News organizations can’t shoot photos or video of bombers as they take off – there are no embeds. In fact, the administration won’t even say what country the [US] bombers fly from.”

She also expressed frustration with the government’s handling of the upcoming 9/11 trial, during which journalists are prohibited from looking at even non-classified court filings in real time.

“We don’t know what prosecutors are asking for, or what defense attorneys are arguing,” she said.

Meanwhile, basic information about the prison complex in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is being withheld from the public, despite the fact that the Bush administration freely shared this data. The media is unable to learn how many inmates are on hunger strike in the infamous prison, or how frequently assaults on guards take place.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests have become harder than ever to process, Buzbee added. Government officials often fail to do so unless media outlets bring a lawsuit to bear.

At the same time, federal officials have begun pressuring state and local agencies to keep quiet.

“The FBI has directed local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology the police departments use to sweep up cellphone data,” Buzbee said. “In some cases, federal officials have formally intervened in state open records cases, arguing for secrecy.”

September 20, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Guantanámo Judge to Prosecution: Turn Over the Torture Evidence

By Marcellene Hearn | ACLU | July 14, 2014

Last month, a military judge dealt a significant blow to U.S. prosecutors’ efforts to suppress torture evidence in the Guantanámo military commissions.

In a ruling in the U.S.S. Cole case, unsealed last week, Judge James Pohl told prosecutors they must hand over CIA black site information to the defense attorneys of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn al-Nashiri. Back in April, Judge Pohl similarly ordered the prosecution to give extensive information to Mr. al-Nashiri’s lawyers about his “4-year odyssey” through the CIA’s rendition and torture program. In the new ruling, Judge Pohl confirmed the core of the earlier order and issued important findings that will reverberate not only in Mr. al-Nashiri’s case but also in the 9/11 case, where one of the five defendants has already asked for similar information.

Judge Pohl found that Mr. al-Nashiri was subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” – the government’s euphemism for torture and cruel treatment, such as waterboarding and stress positions. More importantly, he ruled that information about that abuse is relevant and helpful to the defense. In particular, it will be relevant at sentencing because Mr. al-Nashiri faces the death penalty. His lawyers have said they will argue that he cannot be executed because he was tortured by the CIA – an argument that 9/11 defense lawyers will also likely make for their own clients.

Judge Pohl also said that the use of torture techniques will impact whether any statements Mr. al-Nashiri made afterwards are too tainted to be used at trial. Under the military commissions rules, the prosecution must convince the judge that the statements were “voluntarily given” in order to use them. The prosecution has already indicated that it will seek to use statements Mr. al-Nashiri made to the FBI after he arrived at Guantánamo. But with the new ruling, the prosecution will be required to turn over the information the defense says it needs to argue that these statements were tainted by the CIA’s earlier torture and abuse.

Judge Pohl’s order requires the prosecution to give the defense lawyers 10 categories of information, including where Mr. al-Nashiri was held, the conditions in each site, whom he interacted with, and how he was rendered from site to site. What’s not clear is the extent to which the prosecution will seek to provide summaries or other substitutes for some documents or to redact the names of personnel. According to Mr. al-Nashiri’s lawyers, this will be litigated in the coming months. Still, the ruling has definitively established that the information is relevant and helpful to the defense, and any new requests by the prosecution to narrow what it has to turn over will be limited by the ruling.

That’s a sea change, although a long-delayed one on a fundamental fair trial right: access to evidence. Judge Pohl has decided to step down from this case to concentrate on the commission trial of the 9/11 defendants. It’s now up to his successor to ensure this important decision is properly implemented.

July 14, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Drone memo should reverse Gitmo convictions, attorneys claim

RT | July 3, 2014

Attorneys for a Canadian man who spent a decade detained by the United States military at Guantanamo Bay say details in the Obama administration’s recently released “drone memo” exonerates their client of war crimes.

Omar Khadr was only 15 years old when he was captured by American forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and taken to the Bagram Air Base, then Guantanamo, where he later pleaded guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war — according to military prosecutors, Khadr tossed a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer.

After being transferred to Canadian custody in 2012, Khadr said he pleaded guilty to war crimes because he was “left with a hopeless choice” of either accepting the charges or risk facing “continued abuse and torture” at the hands of his Gitmo jailers.

But in a recent court filing [PDF], lawyers for Khadr, now 27, say a just-published US Department of Justice memorandum contains information that directly challenges the American government’s case against their client.

Khadr’s attorneys wrote this week that the secret “drone memo” released by the White House last month — the DOJ document that the government relied on to justify the 2010 drone strike in Yemen that killed American citizen and suspected AL-Qaeda member Anwar Al-Awlaki — suggests prosecutors had no place to charge the Canadian teenager with murder in violation of the laws of war after he allegedly killed an American soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan.

The DOJ memo itself was a penned by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel in response to the question of whether Central Intelligence Agency officers — who are not members of the US military — can be blamed for war crimes by launching drone strikes. The memo was written in July 2010, and justified the strike that later that year killed Al-Awlaki.

According to a footnote within the memo, released June 24 of this year due to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, “lethal activities conducted in accordance with the laws of war, and undertaken in the course of lawfully authorized hostilities, do not violate the laws of war by virtue of the fact that they are carried out in part by government actors who are not entitled to the combatant’s privilege.”

“That completely blows away one of the major prongs of the government’s theory in all these Guantanamo cases,” Sam Morison, Khadr’s Pentagon-based lawyer, told The Canadian Press during an interview on Wednesday this week.

Although Khadr was charged with violating the “US common law of war” that dates back centuries, his attorneys say the memo concerning CIA drone strikes suggest such legislation simply doesn’t exist.

“The whole purpose…was to evaluate whether the CIA agents were violating the law,” Morison said. “The only reasonable interpretation of that analysis is that there is no such thing (as the common law of war).”

On Monday this week, Morrison and the rest of Khadr’s legal counsel, filed a motion in Guantanamo’s appeals court asking that the conviction against their client be vacated.

“The Americans made up serious charges that they knew were false,” Dennis Edney, a Canadian based lawyer for Khadr, told the Toronto Star this week. “It’s a complete violation of everything we understand about justice.”

Should Khadr’s attorneys succeed, then a number of cases pertaining to current or former Guantanamo detainees accused of war crimes could be called into question. According to Human Rights Watch, however, only six of the 149 detainees at Gitmo face any formal charges — fewer than the number of prisoners who have died while held there in military custody.

July 3, 2014 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Congress reaffirms indefinite detention of Americans under NDAA

RT | May 22, 2014

The US House of Representatives approved an annual defense spending bill early Thursday after rejecting a proposed amendment that would have prevented the United States government from indefinitely detaining American citizens.

An amendment introduced in the House on Wednesday this week asked that Congress repeal a controversial provision placed in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 that has ever since provided the executive branch with the power to arrest and detain indefinitely any US citizen thought to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda or associated organizations.

“This amendment would eliminate indefinite detention in the United States and its territories,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington), a co-author of the failed amendment, said during floor debate on Wednesday, “So basically anybody that we captured, who we suspected of terrorist activity, would no longer be subject to indefinite detention, as is now, currently, the law.”

“That is an enormous amount of power to give the executive, to take someone and lock them up without due process,” Smith added. “It is an enormous amount of power to grant the executive, and I believe places liberty and freedom at risk in this country.”

Pres. Barack Obama vowed when he signed the 2012 NDAA into law on December 31, 2011 that he would not use the indefinite detention powers provided to him by Congress. When that provision was challenged in federal court, however, the White House fought back adamantly and appealed a District Court ruling that initially reversed the indefinite detention clause, eventually sending the challenge to the Supreme Court where it stalled until earlier this month when the justices there said they would not consider the case.

The bill sponsored by Smith and co-author Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia) would have given the legislative branch a chance to repeal the same provisions that SCOTUS declined to hear, but the bipartisan amendment failed on a vote of 191 to 230.

A separate proposal from Rep. Smith meant to expedite the shut-down of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was also rejected early Thursday; an amendment from Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Florida) intended to cut federal funding for recreational facilities at Gitmo, however, was approved in the NDAA draft that left the House on Thursday.

On Twitter, Smith said he was “disappointed” but “won’t stop fighting to pass this critical legislation.”

And while the White House is unlikely to abandon its own fight with regards to keeping the indefinite detention provision intact, the Obama administration threatened to veto this year’s NDAA because it would continue to complicate the president’s promise to close the Guantanamo Bay facility — a vow older than his own administration.

“If this year’s Defense Authorization bill continues unwarranted restrictions regarding Guantanamo detainees, the president will veto the bill,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement Wednesday evening.

When the 2011 NDAA passed Congress with the controversial indefinite detention provision included, the White House said at the time that it would veto the legislation before Pres. Obama eventually balked.

May 22, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

In Guantánamo Death Penalty Case, Torture Matters

By Marcellene Hearn | ACLU | April 29, 2014

I spent much of last week at the Post Theater in Fort Meade, watching the closed-circuit feed of the pre-trial military commissions hearings in the case of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammed al-Nashiri, who faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

The CIA’s torture of Mr. Nashiri, and what impact it will have on the proceeding going forward, dominated this round of hearings, both on screen and off.

“I believe Mr. al Nashiri has suffered torture, physical, psychological and sexual torture,” Dr. Sondra Crosby, an expert in treating victims of torture, testified onscreen. Dr. Crosby was called by the defense to provide an opinion on whether Mr. Nashiri is receiving appropriate medical care at the Guantánamo prison for the post-traumatic stress disorder he still suffers today as a result of his time in the CIA’s torture program.

Dr. Crosby’s testimony provided a stark example of what it means for the government to censor testimony about CIA torture. She could say, for example, that she observed scars on Mr. Nashiri’s body that are consistent with allegations of torture, but not what those allegations are. The public needs to hear the details, as terrible and uncomfortable as they may be, in open court, in order to have an informed debate about what happened in the CIA black sites and how it affects these military trials.

Off-screen, the big question was how the government would respond to military commissions Judge James Pohl’s groundbreaking order, made public last Tuesday, requiring the government to turn over to Mr. Nashiri’s lawyers detailed records from his “four-year odyssey” through the CIA’s rendition and torture program. That would include a timeline of every black site at which he was detained; the identities of every person who had “substantial contact” with him; all of his interrogation records, as well as those of the co-conspirators listed on his charge sheet; and the government’s policies and procedures related to the interrogation, treatment, and transportation of detainees it categorized as “high-value,” including Mr. Nashiri.

What’s so important about this information? For starters, the fact that Mr. Nashiri faces the death penalty means that his lawyers have an ethical duty to collect any facts that might persuade the military commission to apply a sentence of less than death. Here, according to his lawyers, that includes information about his brutal torture by the CIA.

Also, the government has indicated that it may use statements made by Mr. Nashiri and others after they arrived at Guantánamo in 2006. The military commission rules bar statements obtained through torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, but they don’t bar subsequent statements made “voluntarily” by the defendant. There’s a real question whether someone subjected to as much abuse as Mr. Nashiri could make any subsequent statement that is truly voluntary.

These issues can’t be addressed until Mr. Nashiri’s lawyers have all the facts about their client. Also, if information obtained from Mr. Nashiri and others after 2006 is found to be the fruit of coercive interrogations, then its use at trial is barred under the Constitution and international law.

On Wednesday afternoon, the government asked Judge Pohl to reconsider parts of his order. The judge won’t make his decision until the next set of hearings, and the government has apparently indicated it will appeal if Judge Pohl refuses to rule its way.

The government has another choice, though. After all, more information about what happened to Mr. Nashiri may be released to the public soon, as the government itself acknowledged in its filing to Judge Pohl. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence recently sent the summary of its 6,000-plus page report on the CIA’s torture program to the executive for declassification review and release. That report apparently includes new facts about Mr. Nashiri, including that the CIA may have exaggerated its claims about his role in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

With prospects for transparency about the torture program growing, the government could change course here, stop fighting Judge Pohl’s order, and turn over all of the information it has about what happened to Mr. Nashiri to his lawyers. There can be no fair trial without it.

April 29, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

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