Guantanamo lawyers

My analysis of the shameful news that, just two days after plea deals were announced in the cases of three of the men charged in connection with the 9/11 attacks — whereby the death penalty would be dropped in exchange for guilty pleas and the promise of life sentences instead — defense secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked those plea deals. The three men include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, and the plea deals provided what appears to be the only viable conclusion to the legal impossibility of successful prosecuting them after their torture for three and a half years in various CIA “black sites.” Efforts to prosecute them have been ongoing since 2008, but are primarily stuck in a kind of “Groundhog Day,” because the men’s lawyers correctly seek to expose the torture to which they were subjected, while prosecutors seek to hide it, although over the last two years prosecutors have been working towards the plea deals, having apparently accepted that successful prosecutions are impossible. Austin’s capitulation — to Republican criticism, and to what appears to be the Democrats’ own commitment to a type of endless vengeance when it comes to the “black site” prisoners — is therefore a deplorable failure to accept the compromises needed to bring this sordid chapter in US history to an end, as well as to provide the remaining prisoners with adequate physical and mental health treatment, as required under international humanitarian law, and it is to be hoped that his “undue command influence” will be successfully challenged in court.

Examining yet another facet of the ongoing chronic injustice at Guantánamo — the recent sentencing, for war crimes, of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, Guantánamo’s most profoundly disabled prisoner, who suffers from a chronic degenerative spinal disease, which, despite seven operations at the prison, has not been adequately resolved, and will in all probability eventually leave him paralyzed. A 62- or 63-year old Iraqi Kurd, whose real name is Nashwan al-Tamir, al-Iraqi has been held at Guantánamo for over 17 years, after being held in a CIA “black site” for six months. Although the US authorities initially tried to tie him to Al-Qaeda and terrorism, the main charges against him ended up relating to his time as a military commander in Afghanistan at the time of the US-led occupation. At his sentencing, al-Iraqi was profoundly apologetic to the family members of those who were killed as a result of his orders in Afghanistan; however, the military jury delivered the maximum sentence, of 30 years, although this was reduced to ten years via a plea deal he agreed to two years ago. Nevertheless, this means that he will not be released until 2032, which still seems hugely punitive, given his contrition, his medical condition, and the fact that, when his sentence ends, he will have been held for 26 years in total.

My unapologetic condemnation of the Biden administration for stopping the release from Guantánamo, in October, of eleven men who have long been approved for release. The men were supposed to be resettled in Oman, but the deal was pulled at the last minute, as a result of what NBC News, which broke the story, based on the accounts of four administration officials, called the “political optics after Hamas’ attack on Israel.” These men, all Yemenis, who were unanimously approved for release by high-level US government review processes between 607 and 1,301 days ago — and, in one case, 5,234 days ago — cannot even challenge the outrageous politicized decision to cancel their release, because the decisions taken to free them in the first place were purely administrative, meaning that they are completely outside the US legal system. With no ability to ask a judge to order their release, these men, held for the most part for over 20 years without charge or trial, have no idea if they will ever be freed, as that decision is dependant on the whims of two men in particular — President Biden and Antony Blinken — who wield absolutely power over their lives, just as George W. Bush did when he first opened Guantánamo over 22 years ago.

The seventh article in my ongoing series of ten articles about the 16 men approved for release from Guantánamo, noting how long they have been held since those decisions were taken, telling their stories, and tying publication of these articles into significant dates in their long ordeal. The articles are published alternately here and on the Close Guantánamo website, and this particular article highlights the case of Khaled Qassim, a Yemeni, and a talented artist, whose ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial was upheld for many years because of his “non-compliance” — his resistance to the injustice and brutality of Guantánamo, including through persistent hunger strikes — far more than anything he was alleged to have done before he was seized and taken to Guantánamo in the first place.

The fifth article in my ongoing series about the 16 men approved for release from Guantánamo, noting how long they have been held since those decisions were taken, telling their stories, and tying publication of these articles into significant dates in their long ordeal. The articles are published alternately here and on the Close Guantánamo website, and this particular article highlights three men approved for release in December 2021 — the talented artist Moath al-Alwi, and two victims of extraordinary rendition and torture: Zakaria al-Baidany and Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu.

The third article in my ongoing series about the 16 men approved for release from Guantánamo, noting how long they have been held since those decisions were taken, telling their stories, and tying publication of these articles into significant dates in their long ordeal. This particular article highlights the three especially unfortunate men who were approved for release over 14 years ago.

The first of a series of articles focusing on the 16 men still held at Guantánamo who have long been approved for release by high-level US government review processes. Published to coincide with significant dates in these men’s long wait for freedom, this first article focuses on Uthman Abd Al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman, a Yemeni who was approved for release 1,000 days ago.

The video of my speech at the inspiring “Close Guantánamo!” event at the European Parliament on September 28, 2023, hosted by the Irish MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, at which I stressed how the men still held at Guantánamo are as fundamentally without rights as they were when the prison first opened nearly 22 years ago, and called on EU countries to help resettle the men approved for release but who cannot be repatriated.

My detailed report about, and the video of ‘Close Guantánamo!’, an extraordinary and hugely powerful three-hour event held at the EU Parliament on September 28, 2023, featuring nine speakers, including Mansoor Adayfi (on what was only his second trip to freedom since he finally got a passport earlier this year) and two other former prisoners, two lawyers, a UN Rapporteur, myself and others, hosted by the inspiring independent Irish MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. As the event highlighted, the priorities for anyone concerned with justice, and with bringing to an end Guantánamo’s vile existence, are to resettle 16 men still held who have been approved for release (for which the countries of EU can help), providing adequate medical care for everyone still held at the prison, reminding the US government that it continues to have an obligation to ensure the welfare of former prisoners, even after their release, and, eventually, seeking accountability for the crimes that the US government has committed, and still continues to commit at Guantánamo.

My analysis of the significance of a DoD Sanity Board’s assessment that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of five men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, who are caught up in seemingly endless pre-trial hearings in Guantánamo’s broken military commissions, is unfit to stand trial because he suffers from PTSD and psychosis. That assessment has been accepted by the military judge in the 9/11 case, but meanwhile President Biden has refused to accept conditions requested by the 9/11 co-accused in plea deals that have been ongoing for the last 18 months, since prosecutors finally recognized that the use of torture had made a successful trial untenable. The conditions include the lifelong provision of adequate physical and mental health care, which has not been provided at Guantánamo, and which, ironically, has contributed significantly to bin al-Shibh’s inability to stand trial.