Afghan Nobody Faces Trial by Military Commission

7.1.10

Camp Justice at Guantanamo, home of the Military CommissionsYesterday evening, the Associated Press reported that, in court filings, Justice Department lawyers stated that Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that a sixth Guantánamo prisoner — an Afghan named Obaidullah — will be put forward for trial by Military Commission. On November 13, when Holder announced that five prisoners — including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — would face federal court trials for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks, he also announced that five other men, previously charged in the Bush administration’s Military Commissions, would be tried in a revamped version of the Commissions that the administration and Congress concocted over the summer.

Notwithstanding the weaknesses of the Military Commission trial system (some of which emerged in its first faltering outing last month), and the very real fear that it is being used by the Obama administration as a second-tier system of justice, the decision to charge Obaidullah is particularly dispiriting, as he is so clearly a peripheral character of such insignificance that putting him up for a war crimes trial risks ridicule.

As I explained in September 2008, when he became the 18th prisoner to be put forward for a trial by Military Commission, he was

charged with “conspiracy” and “providing material support to terrorism,” based on the thinnest set of allegations to date: essentially, a single claim that, “[o]n or about 22 July 2002,” he “stored and concealed anti-tank mines, other explosive devices, and related equipment”; that he “concealed on his person a notebook describing how to wire and detonate explosive devices”; and that he “knew or intended” that his “material support and resources were to be used in preparation for and in carrying out a terrorist attack.”

As I also explained:

It doesn’t take much reflection on these charges to realize that it is a depressingly clear example of the US administration’s disturbing, post-9/11 redefinition of “war crimes,” which apparently allows the US authorities to claim that they can equate minor acts of insurgency committed by a citizen of an occupied nation with terrorism.

This was not all. In his Combatant Status Review Tribunal and Administrative Review Boards at Guantánamo (the military review boards established to ascertain whether he had been correctly designated as an “enemy combatant,” and whether he still posed a threat to the US), he made it clear that he had made false allegations against himself and another Afghan prisoner still held — a shopkeeper named Bostan Karim — because of the abuse he had suffered, at the hands of US forces, in a forward operating base in Khost and in the main US prison in Afghanistan, at Bagram airbase.

The following exchange, from his ARB in 2005, when he explained that he had been “forced” to make false confessions about Karim while held in Bagram is particularly enlightening:

Board Member: Who forced you to say things?
Detainee: Americans.
Board Member: How did they force you?
Detainee: The first time when they captured me and brought me to Khost they put a knife to my throat and said if you don’t tell us the truth and you lie to us we are going to slaughter you.
Board Member: Were they wearing uniforms?
Detainee: Yes … They tied my hands and put a heavy bag of sand on my hands and made me walk all night in the Khost airport … In Bagram they gave me more trouble and would not let me sleep. They were standing me on the wall and my hands were hanging above my head. There were a lot of things they made me say.

Back in September 2008, I concluded my article by asking, “So tell me, after reading this: does charging Obaidullah for ‘war crimes’ look like justice?”

With the news that Obaidullah is to be charged again, when he is not actually accused of harming a single American, and when he may, in fact, have been tortured, through sleep deprivation and “Palestinian hanging,” to produce false confessions against himself and at least one other prisoner, leads me not only to repeat the question, but to actively call for the open mockery of Attorney General Eric Holder and the lawyers and bureaucrats in the Justice Department and the Pentagon who thought that reviving the charges against him was a good idea.

POSTSCRIPT: No one seems to be entirely sure if Obaidullah is the sixth or the seventh prisoner to be put forward for trial by Military Commission under Obama. On December 11, as Carol Rosenberg reported for the Miami Herald, the Pentagon withdrew charges “without prejudice” against Mohammed Kamin, an Afghan accused of “joining al-Qaeda and then conducting surveillance on US and allied troops.” As Rosenberg also explained, “The move by the prosecutor’s office averted a hearing next week” in Kamin’s case, “and derailed at least temporarily Kamin’s lawyers federal appeals court challenge in Washington, D.C., to the constitutionality of military commissions.” She added, however, “Pentagon officials have said they would refile charges against Kamin, who has been described as an ‘al Qaeda scout’ in his homeland, using new regulations approved by Congress in the Military Commissions Act of 2009.”

For information about Mohammed Kamin’s experiences of the Military Commission trial system under George W. Bush, see here (when, after he was first charged in March 2008, I described him as “an unworthy candidate for any kind of war crimes trial at all”), here and here, where he boycotted his hearings, see here for a report on his pre-trial hearing in September last year, and see this report by David Danzig of Human Rights First of his last pre-trial hearing on November 19, six days after Eric Holder announced that five men would face trials by Military Commission — but did not include Kamin. As Danzig explained:

Mohammed Kamin is, in the words of his defense attorney, “someone who almost no one in the western world has ever heard of.”

When Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Friday that the five men charged with conspiring to plan the 9/11 attacks would be moved to federal court, there was no mention of what would be done with Kamin.

It was unclear how — if at all — a Department of Justice-led review of detainees held at Guantanamo might impact the case against Kamin. No one had bothered to tell his lawyer.

“The fact that we are standing here in this courtroom today suggests that we are going to proceed to military commissions,” Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard Federico, the military attorney charged with defending the Afghan detainee, said uncertainly at the beginning of the proceedings today. “That would be my assumption too,” chipped in Judge Thomas Cumbie.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published on the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, Antiwar.com and ZNet. Cross-posted on The Public Record.

See the following for a sequence of articles dealing with the stumbling progress of the Military Commissions: The reviled Military Commissions collapse (June 2007), A bad week at Guantánamo (Commissions revived, September 2007), The curse of the Military Commissions strikes the prosecutors (September 2007), A good week at Guantánamo (chief prosecutor resigns, October 2007), The story of Mohamed Jawad (October 2007), The story of Omar Khadr (November 2007), Guantánamo trials: where are the terrorists? (February 2008), Six in Guantánamo charged with 9/11 attacks: why now, and what about the torture? (February 2008), Guantánamo’s shambolic trials (ex-prosecutor turns, February 2008), Torture allegations dog Guantánamo trials (March 2008), African embassy bombing suspect charged (March 2008), The US military’s shameless propaganda over 9/11 trials (April 2008), Betrayals, backsliding and boycotts (May 2008), Fact Sheet: The 16 prisoners charged (May 2008), Afghan fantasist to face trial (June 2008), 9/11 trial defendants cry torture (June 2008), USS Cole bombing suspect charged (July 2008), Folly and injustice (Salim Hamdan’s trial approved, July 2008), A critical overview of Salim Hamdan’s Guantánamo trial and the dubious verdict (August 2008), Salim Hamdan’s sentence signals the end of Guantánamo (August 2008), Controversy still plagues Guantánamo’s Military Commissions (September 2008), Another Insignificant Afghan Charged (September 2008), Seized at 15, Omar Khadr Turns 22 in Guantánamo (September 2008), Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials? (September 2008), two articles exploring the Commissions’ corrupt command structure (The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials, and New Evidence of Systemic Bias in Guantánamo Trials, October 2008), The collapse of Omar Khadr’s Guantánamo trial (October 2008), Corruption at Guantánamo (legal adviser faces military investigations, October 2008), An empty trial at Guantánamo (Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, October 2008), Life sentence for al-Qaeda propagandist fails to justify Guantánamo trials (al-Bahlul, November 2008), 20 Reasons To Shut Down The Guantánamo Trials (profiles of all the prisoners charged, November 2008), How Guantánamo Can Be Closed: Advice for Barack Obama (November 2008), More Dubious Charges in the Guantánamo Trials (two Kuwaitis, November 2008), The End of Guantánamo (Salim Hamdan repatriated, November 2008), Torture, Preventive Detention and the Terror Trials at Guantánamo (December 2008), Is the 9/11 trial confession an al-Qaeda coup? (December 2008), The Dying Days of the Guantánamo Trials (January 2009), Former Guantánamo Prosecutor Condemns Chaotic Trials (Lt. Col. Vandeveld on Mohamed Jawad, January 2009), Torture taints the case of Mohamed Jawad (January 2009), Bush Era Ends with Guantánamo Trial Chief’s Torture Confession (Susan Crawford on Mohammed al-Qahtani, January 2009), Chaos and Lies: Why Obama Was Right to Halt The Guantánamo Trials (January 2009), Binyam Mohamed’s Plea Bargain: Trading Torture For Freedom (March 2009).

And for a sequence of articles dealing with the Obama administration’s response to the Military Commissions, see: Don’t Forget Guantánamo (February 2009), Who’s Running Guantánamo? (February 2009), The Talking Dog interviews Darrel Vandeveld, former Guantánamo prosecutor (February 2009), Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Obama Returns To Bush Era On Guantánamo (May 2009), New Chief Prosecutor Appointed For Military Commissions At Guantánamo (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), My Message To Obama: Great Speech, But No Military Commissions and No “Preventive Detention” (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Many Failures Of US Politicians (May 2009), A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad (June 2009), A Broken Circus: Guantánamo Trials Convene For One Day Of Chaos (June 2009), Obama Proposes Swift Execution of Alleged 9/11 Conspirators (June 2009), Predictable Chaos As Guantánamo Trials Resume (July 2009), David Frakt: Military Commissions “A Catastrophic Failure” (August 2009), 9/11 Trial At Guantánamo Delayed Again: Can We Have Federal Court Trials Now, Please? (September 2009), Torture And Futility: Is This The End Of The Military Commissions At Guantánamo? (September 2009), Resisting Injustice In Guantánamo: The Story Of Fayiz Al-Kandari (October 2009), Military Commissions Revived: Don’t Do It, Mr. President! (November 2009), The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, The Madness of the Military Commissions (November 2009), Rep. Jerrold Nadler and David Frakt on Obama’s Three-Tier Justice System For Guantánamo (November 2009), Guantánamo: Idealists Leave Obama’s Sinking Ship (November 2009).

2 Responses

  1. Andy Worthington says...

    Over on the Huffington Post, Annoula wrote:

    You can be assured it is a sad day in this country when the same question you asked in back in September 2008 [“So tell me, after reading this: does charging Obaidullah for ‘war crimes’ look like justice?”] still remains valid after a new President [of the other party] has been in office for one year [a President whose campaign slogan was “CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN”]
    Why does Obama seem so fixated on playing “bipartisan”? Why on earth can’t he understand that unless he fulfills at least the most basic of his campaign promises, he can simple forget about getting re-elected? If my only options are Republican or “Republican light”, I might as well stay home in November 2012.

  2. Andy Worthington says...

    And Jane wrote:

    Our justice system is entirely corrupt, and the fact that this guy is being manhandled by Obama’s appointees indicates that all the Reps and Dems are in the realm of evil and corrupt fantasy together. There is no hope for this country now.

Leave a Reply

Back to the top

Back to home page

Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
Email Andy Worthington

CD: Love and War

The Four Fathers on Bandcamp

The Guantánamo Files book cover

The Guantánamo Files

The Battle of the Beanfield book cover

The Battle of the Beanfield

Stonehenge: Celebration & Subversion book cover

Stonehenge: Celebration & Subversion

Outside The Law DVD cover

Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo

RSS

Posts & Comments

World Wide Web Consortium

XHTML & CSS

WordPress

Powered by WordPress

Designed by Josh King-Farlow

Please support Andy Worthington, independent journalist:

Archives

In Touch

Follow me on Facebook

Become a fan on Facebook

Subscribe to me on YouTubeSubscribe to me on YouTube

The State of London

The State of London. 16 photos of London

Andy's Flickr photos

Campaigns

Categories

Tag Cloud

Abu Zubaydah Al-Qaeda Andy Worthington British prisoners Center for Constitutional Rights CIA torture prisons Close Guantanamo Donald Trump Four Fathers Guantanamo Housing crisis Hunger strikes London Military Commission NHS NHS privatisation Periodic Review Boards Photos President Obama Reprieve Shaker Aamer The Four Fathers Torture UK austerity UK protest US courts Video We Stand With Shaker WikiLeaks Yemenis in Guantanamo