Guantanamo lawyers

An exclusive article about the latest court hearing in the case of Khalid Qassim, a Yemeni prisoner in Guantánamo whose lawyers are seeking to persuade a judge to order his release on the basis that, as someone seized after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan as a soldier, with no connection to terrorism, he must be released now that the war in Afghanistan is definitively over. The case was heard in December, in the District Court in Washington, D.C., before Senior Judge Thomas Hogan, and was argued by Tom Wilner, who was Counsel of Record to the Guantánamo prisoners in their Supreme Court cases establishing their right to habeas corpus in 2004 and 2008.

Announcing the good news that Ghassan Al-Sharbi, a Saudi national, has been repatriated from Guantánamo after nearly 21 years’ imprisonment, and tracing his long journey through the military commissions, the prison’s broken trial system, and its over-cautious administrative review processes, the Guantánamo Review Task Force and the Periodic Review Boards.

Video of the New America panel discussion, “Guantánamo at Twenty-One: What is the Future of the Prison Camp?”, an online panel discussion held by New America on Jan. 11, 2023, the 21st anniversary of the opening of the prison, featuring Tom Wilner, Karen Greenberg and myself.

An update on the story of Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who was given a life sentence after a one-sided military commission trial at Guantánamo in 2008, when he refused to mount a defence, and who, disgracefully, has been held ever since in solitary confinement. As his lawyers appeal to the court of appeals in Washington, D.C., I look at their submission, and review the history of his legal challenges against his conviction, which has, over the years, involved most of the charges on which he was convicted being overturned.

My report about the latest medical scandal at Guantánamo, as a medical team was flown in to conduct emergency surgery on Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who has a degenerative spinal condition. Al-Iraqi previously had five surgical operations at Guantánamo, in 2017-18, after his condition was ignored for ten years. It is clear that his needs cannot be met at the prison, but he cannot receive urgent and more appropriate medical care on the US mainland because of an ongoing ban, imposed by Congress in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which prevents prisoners from being transferred to the US mainland for any reason. I also look at the case of Ammar al-Baluchi, who suffered brain damage as a result of torture in a CIA “black site,” but whose calls for independent medical experts to assess him are being resisted by the Biden administration.

My report about Guled Hassan Duran, a Somali prisoner in Guantánamo who has worrying health problems, and whose lawyers have just asked a US court to revisit his long-stalled habeas corpus petition, and to order his release, a year since he was approved for release by a Periodic Review Board.

Celebrating the release of Saifullah Paracha, Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner, but also explaining in detail how unreliable information obtained through the coercive interrogation of his son, Uzair, was used to justify Saifullah’s imprisonment, even after Uzair had his sentence quashed by a federal court judge on the US mainland.

My report about Ismael Ali Bakush, a Libyan prisoner at Guantánamo who has finally been approved for release, over 20 years since he arrived at the prison, by a Periodic Review Board, the parole-type system established by President Obama.

An update on the latest positive news regarding Guantánamo: the appointment of a “special representative” in the State Department to deal with releases from the prison (of the 22 out of the 36 men still held who have been approved for release), and confirmation that the negotiation of plea deals is ongoing with those charged in the military commissions, to bring to an end a ten-year deadlock in which pre-trial hearings are caught in a kind of Groundhog Day, because of the use of torture on the accused, and the strict procedural safeguards required for capital cases.

A world exclusive: the story of Abu Faraj al-Libi, one of 14 “high-value detainees” brought to Guantánamo from CIA “black sites” in September 2006, who appeared publicly for the first time in June this year, for his latest Periodic Review Board, which, nevertheless, approved his ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial last month, as one of the prison’s four remaining “forever prisoners.”