Archive for April, 2012

As published on the “Close Guantánamo” website. Please join us — just an email address required.

On March 30, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a key part of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued what was described as “a landmark admissibility report” in the case of Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian held at Guantánamo, who, like the majority of the 171 men still held, has been detained for over ten years without charge or trial. The IACHR is one of the principal autonomous bodies of the OAS, whose mission is “to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere.” Its resolutions are binding on the US, which is a member state. As Djamel’s lawyers at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) explained in a press release:

This ruling marks the first time the IACHR has accepted jurisdiction over the case of a man detained at Guantánamo, and underscores the fact that there has been no effective domestic remedy available to victims of unjust detentions and other abuses at the base. The IACHR will now move to gather more information on the substantive human rights law violations suffered by Djamel Ameziane — including the harsh conditions of confinement he has endured, the abuses inflicted on him, and the illegality of his detention.

The IACHR will specifically review the US government’s failure to transfer Djamel Ameziane or any man detained at Guantánamo for more than a year — the longest period of time without a transfer since the prison opened in January 2002. This failure has moved the United States further out of compliance with international human rights law and the precautionary measures issued by the IACHR to Djamel Ameziane (2008) and other detained men (2002). Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey released a new report, “National Security Deserves Better: ‘Odd’ Recidivism Numbers Undermine the Guantánamo Policy Debate” (PDF), which analyzes the fundamental problems with the claims made by the Pentagon and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) regarding the numbers of alleged “recidivists” freed from Guantánamo — in other words, those who, in the words of the DNI, have been involved in “planning terrorist operations, conducting a terrorist or insurgent attack against Coalition or host-nation forces or civilians, conducting a suicide bombing, financing terrorist operations, recruiting others for terrorist operations, and arranging for movement of individuals involved in terrorist operations.”

As I have been explaining since May 2009, when the New York Times published a misleading front-page story claiming that 1 in 7 released prisoners had engaged in recidivism, there have been two main problems with the recidivism claims: firstly, that, over the last three years, little effort has been made to distinguish between “confirmed” and “suspected” cases of recidivism; and secondly that, as the claims became more outrageous in 2010 and 2011, with completely unsubstantiated allegations that 1 in 5 of the released prisoners were recidivists, and then 1 in 4, the mainstream media unquestioningly repeated these claims, even though they were not backed up with even a shred of evidence.

Last month, in my article, “Guantánamo and Recidivism: The Media’s Ongoing Failure to Question Official Statistics,” I challenged the latest claims made by the DNI — that 27.9 percent of the prisoners released from Guantánamo were recidivists — by noting that although the DNI claimed that 95 (15.9%) were described as “Confirmed of Reengaging,” and 72 others (12%) were described as “Suspected of Reengaging,” the lack of evidence for these claims was deeply troubling. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last few years, my friends and colleagues Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye have been doing some excellent work for Truthout exposing the Bush administration’s torture program, and human experimentation at Guantánamo, and last week they produced another excellent article for Truthout, examining the significance of a recently released US military training manual for the development of George W. Bush’s torture program.

The development of Bush’s torture program was triggered by the capture of the alleged “high-value detainee” Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002, and formalized when John Yoo, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote two memos — the “torture memos” — signed by his boss, Jay Bybee, on August 1, 2002, which purported to redefine torture so that it could be used by the CIA, and approved the use of ten torture techniques on Abu Zubaydah, including waterboarding, an ancient torture technique and a form of controlled drowning.

As Jason and Jeff explain, the manual “was prepared by the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) and used by instructors in the JPRA’s Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) courses to teach US military personnel how to withstand brutal interrogation techniques if captured by the enemy during wartime.” It has long been known that the Bush administration actively sought the advice of JPRA operatives — including James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen — who proposed reverse engineering the torture techniques taught in US military schools to enable captured personnel to resist torture if captured, and using them in real-life situations with captured “terror suspects.” Read the rest of this entry »

With the Tory-led coalition government attacking vulnerable people on so many fronts, and with the last month in particular dominated by the last-ditch resistance to the wretched NHS reform bill, it’s been a while since I had the time to examine the ramifications of another appalling piece of legislation — the welfare bill that became law six weeks ago.

Since this government came to power through a Frankenstein-like coalition agreement, I have been disgusted by the Tories’ mission to savagely cut expenditure on welfare, for a variety of reasons.

The first is because the government is fundamentally dishonest, and is falsely insinuating that cutting the country’s deficit through cuts to state expenditure is the only way forward. This involves the Tories (and the Liberal Democrats propping them up) blaming all our economic woes on Labour’s welfare expenditure, when it was criminal activity by investment banks that caused the economic crash of 2008, dealing a savage blow to our economic health as jobs were lost and government revenues fell, leading in turn to an increase in government spending, including bailing out the banks that failed.

Along with this fundamental dishonesty, the government is fixated on reducing the deficit, even though it is clear to anyone not blinded by ideology that savage austerity will only further depress the economy, leading to a kind of economic death spiral from which there will be no recovery. Also dishonest is the government’s refusal to tackle the widespread tax evasion by corporations and rich individuals, estimated to cost £95bn a year, and the “implicit subsidy” to UK banks in the wake of the 2008 crisis, in which high-risk behaviour is essentially underwritten by the government — to the tune of £100bn a year, according to a Bank of England official speaking in 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Last July, when prisoners held in long-term solitary confinement in Security Housing Units (SHUs) in Pelican Bay State Prison in California embarked on a hunger strike to protest about the conditions in which they are held, I was pleased to find the time to wrote about it (which I did here, here and here — and again in October, here and here), as it had long been apparent to me that the abusive conditions to which foreign prisoners were subjected at Guantánamo — though shockingly innovative in terms of arbitrary detention — was otherwise a reflection of how America treats tens of thousands of domestic prisoners held in isolation, in some cases for decades.

This is barbaric, and clearly constitutes torture, and I was reassured to note that, three weeks ago, prisoners in California asked the United Nations to help them. As San Francisco Bay View explained in an article on March 21:

Comparing their conditions to a “living coffin,” 400 California prisoners held in long-term or indefinite solitary confinement petitioned the United Nations Tuesday to intervene on behalf of all of the more than 4,000 prisoners similarly situated [see here for the petition, and here for quotes from 22 of the petitioners].

“California holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other state in the United States or any other nation on earth. The treatment of these prisoners is barbaric and, numerous experts agree, amounts to torture,” [said] Peter Schey, who heads the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, [and] is lead counsel for the prisoners who have “joined together to petition the United Nations to intervene by conducting on-site investigations, permitting Red Cross visits, and ultimately ruling that California’s policy on isolated segregation amounts to torture and violates well-established international human rights norms.” Read the rest of this entry »

Less than three weeks since the Tory-led coalition government’s dreadful NHS reform bill was passed — aimed primarily at allowing private companies greater access to the NHS than ever before — a damning document has been published, which should have derailed the entire process.

The document in question follows the judgment of the Information Commissioner, who, last November, ordered the government to release its risk register regarding the dangers of its planned NHS reforms. The government appealed the decision, but was ordered to release the risk register for a second time just a week and a half before the bill was passed, and it is this ruling, issued by a tribunal led by Professor John Angel, that is so damaging.

Ever arrogant, the government refused to accept the Information Commissioner’s judgment, and the tribunals’ reponse to the government’s appeal, as did peers and MPs, who should have delayed their votes to approve the bill — if not until the risk register itself was published, then at least until the Commissioner’s judgment was made available.

The judgment, which was published on Thursday (PDF), is damning for the government, as Dr. Éoin Clarke explained on his blog The Green Benches. He wrote: Read the rest of this entry »

This article is the second of two articles providing new commentary by Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo — and reproducing a statement he made about conditions in the prison, with additional notes by Ramzi Kassem, one of his lawyers. The two articles were published simultaneously — here and on the website of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and this is a cross-post of the article published on “Close Guantánamo.” Also, if you’re interested in seeing Shaker Aamer freed from Guantánamo, please sign the e-petition to the British government calling for his release (if you’re a UK citizen or resident — whatever your age), and the international petition on the Care 2 Petition Site, which will be delivered to both the US and UK governments.

In a letter dated July 15, 2011, which has recently been unclassified by the Pentagon, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, explained why he was embarking on a peaceful protest, which also involved a hunger strike. These reasons are posted below, because they provide a compelling snapshot of the current conditions in the prison, touching on the injustice of holding people for nine years — now ten — without charge or trial, so that they can be legitimately regarded as hostages; preventing them from having contact with their families; and not meeting their needs regarding healthcare and diet. He also criticized President Obama administration for not keeping his promise to close Guantanamo within a year of taking office.

These complaints are valid for all the prisoners still held at Guantánamo (171 in total), but from what we understand, Shaker Aamer is one of 89 prisoners who are still held despite being cleared for release over two years ago by an interagency Task Force established by President Obama. This, of course, is an absolute disgrace, and in Shaker’s case it is compounded by the fact that he was first told he was cleared under President Bush in 2007, and the British government has also been seeking his return for the last five years.

Following the points raised in the letter, below, Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, who is one of Aamer’s attorneys, explained that, on a visit in January, his client described what took place during the widespread peaceful protest and hunger strike on the tenth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo (on January 11 this year), and provided further background information regarding his complaints about the food and the lack of communication with his family, and also his frank and obviously very real fears about being killed. Read the rest of this entry »

This world exclusive is one of two articles providing new commentary by Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo — and also reproducing a statement he made about conditions in the prison, and additional notes by Ramzi Kassem, one of his lawyers. The two articles are being published simultaneously — here and on the website of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign. If you are interested in seeing Shaker Aamer freed from Guantánamo, please sign the e-petition to the British government calling for his release (if you’re a UK citizen or resident — whatever your age), and the international petition on the Care 2 Petition Site, which will be delivered to both the US and UK governments.

In newly unclassified commentary from Guantánamo, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who has been held for ten years without charge or trial, has described how, in the last eight months, he has been subjected to routine sleep deprivation, and has been regularly prevented from cleaning himself, and from receiving any medical care. He has also explained how he has been regularly subjected to “Forced Cell Extractions” by teams of armed guards, who have injured him, and has been on a hunger strike that has seen him lose 30 percent of his body weight.

Fearful of the authorities’ intentions, he has also explained: “I have no doubt they want me to be harmed.” However, he added: “I will never harm myself. I have a wife and kids I want to go back to.”

What is particularly depressing about this state of affairs is that Shaker Aamer is not, to the best of our knowledge, one of the 82 prisoners at Guantánamo (out of the 171 remaining prisoners) that the Obama administration has determined to be eligible for a trial or, more depressingly, as eligible to be held indefinitely without charge or trial because they are regarded as “too dangerous to release,” even though no evidence exists that could be used against them in a court. Read the rest of this entry »

171 men are still held in the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, even though an interagency task force established by President Obama concluded over two years ago that 89 of them should be released. However, it is now 15 months since the last prisoner left Guantánamo alive, and as the long struggle to resume the release of prisoners from the prison continues, attention has focused on a number of specific cases: on Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo (please sign the UK petition and/or the international petition); on five Taliban leaders and the negotiations to release them as part of the Afghan peace process (or part of a prisoner swap); on Omar Khadr, the Canadian former child prisoner who was supposed to be released last November according to a plea deal he agreed the year before; and on the last two Kuwaitis, Fayiz al-Kandari and Fawzi al-Odah.

I have written extensively about Fayiz and Fawzi at various times in the last five years, and in February was delighted to be invited to Kuwait to step up the campaign to secure their release, which I wrote about here and here. I also posted videos of the Kuwaiti TV show that I took part in with Tom Wilner, my colleague in the new “Close Guantánamo” campaign and the US civilian lawyer for Fayiz and Fawzi. I was also there with Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, the military defense attorney for Fayiz, and I met Adel AbdulHadi and Sanabil Jafar of the Al-Oula Law Firm, which represents Fayiz in Kuwait, and Khalid al-Odah, the father of Fawzi al-Odah, and the head of the long-established Kuwaiti Freedom Project.

I was also delighted to meet Jenifer Fenton, a journalist who has become fascinated by the Kuwaitis’ story in the last year or so, and has been undertaking the kind of research and investigations that, in general, have been sorely lacking in the mainstream media. Last week, I cross-posted the first of two articles that she wrote following our visit, based on interviews with former prisoners, and published on Al-Jazeera’s website, and I’m now cross-posting the second article, analyzing the weakness of the supposed evidence against Fayiz and Fawzi. Read the rest of this entry »