Category Archives: Guantanamo

They have no shame at all, and no concept of due process or humanity.

I have to run to a meeting, but here's JURIST – Paper Chase with the info:

US military panels reviewing the detention of 550 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay may use evidence obtained by torture in deciding whether the detainees are enemy combatants, the US government has said. Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle said the practice was allowed during a Thursday hearing at a district court reviewing the detention of some foreigners at the US naval base in Cuba. Statements obtained by torture have been barred from admission in US courts for about 70 years. Attorneys for the detainees argued that the use of such evidence violated due process and fundamental fairness, but Boyle argued that the detainees were not protected under the constitution. The review panels are allowed to use evidence that is determined to be reliable, Boyle said. Earlier this week the International Committee of the Red Cross issued a report finding that the US had used tactics “tantamount to torture” on detainees at Guantanamo. The challenges to the detentions are being heard by District Judge Richard J. Leon of the US District Court for the District of Columbia. JURIST's Paper Chase has ongoing coverage of developments at Guantanamo Bay. AP has more.

Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo

The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion “tantamount to torture” on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay …

The report of the June visit said investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantánamo, who now number about 550, and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through “humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions.” Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly “more refined and repressive” than learned about on previous visits.

“The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture,” the report said. It said that in addition to the exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to “some beatings.” The report did not say how many of the detainees were subjected to such treatment.

“Some beatings” and psychological torture. Proud of your government?

For the record, the Pentagon denies everything—despite having been told by the White House in the torture memos that anything which wasn't intended to leave permanent damage was probably OK. And despite testimony by guards admitting that they engaged in at least mild torture (“harsh and coercive treatment”) for 14-hour sessions.

When some administration memorandums about coercive treatment or torture were disclosed, the White House said they were only advisory.

Last month, military guards, intelligence agents and others described in interviews with The Times a range of procedures that they said were highly abusive occurring over a long period, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators. The people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility, said that one regular procedure was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels.

Oh, and by the way, all those implausible accusations of weird sexual abuse…they might be true too:

Some accounts of techniques at Guantánamo have been easy to dismiss because they seemed so implausible. The most striking of the accusations, which have come mainly from a group of detainees released to their native Britain, has been that the military used prostitutes who made coarse comments and come-ons to taunt some prisoners who are Muslims.

But the Red Cross report hints strongly at an explanation of some of those accusations by stating that there were frequent complaints by prisoners in 2003 that some of the female interrogators baited their subjects with sexual overtures.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan has smart lawyers.

Guantanamo Detainee Asks Supreme Court to Intervene: Attorneys for a detainee at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have asked the Supreme Court for emergency intervention to settle the legality of the military commissions set up by the Pentagon to prosecute hundreds of the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Lawyers representing a Yemeni detainee accused of serving as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard, joined by former military justice lawyers, argued that they be allowed to skip the appellate stage of their case and have the Supreme Court make a decision now. They say waiting while the case wends its way through the judicial process will leave the government's commission process in limbo and prolong the imprisonment of detainees, some of whom have been held at the U.S. military prison for nearly three years.

A federal judge ruled on Nov. 8 that the special military trials, revived by the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, are illegal and cannot continue. He agreed with Hamdan's lawyers that the detainees — considered “enemy combatants,” not prisoners of war, by the Bush administration — were not receiving fair legal treatment under the commissions process and had no effective ability to challenge the accusations against them.

Not to mention that Chief Justice Rehnquist may not be able to sit on the case now due to ill health, but may be well (or replaced) later. And a tie vote upholds the lower court decision. And the District Court ruled for Hamdan. And who knows if maybe the Court of Appeals might go the other way, shifting the effect of a hung court…

Federal District Judge James Robertson ruled today that the Guantanamo military tribunals are illegal as constituted. News coverage.

Update: NYT story.

Tomorrow's New York Times has an extensive report on torture at Guantánamo:

Broad Use Cited of Harsh Tactics at Base in Cuba: Many detainees at Guantánamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases.

The people, military guards, intelligence agents and others, described in interviews with The New York Times a range of procedures that included treatment they said was highly abusive occurring over a long period of time, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators.

One regular procedure that was described by people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility at the naval base in Cuba, was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air- conditioning was turned up to maximum levels, said one military official who witnessed the procedure. The official said that was designed to make the detainees uncomfortable as they were accustomed to high temperatures both in their native countries and their cells.

Such sessions could last up to 14 hours with breaks, said the official, who described the treatment after being contacted by The Times.

Remember: A vote for Bush legitimates his first term. Thus, a vote for Bush is a vote for torture.

The NYT story makes two other important points: Sunlight really is the best disinfectant—the torture regime continued essentially unabated until it got publicity in April of this year. And, Guantánamo's torture “migrated to Abu Ghraib''; the 'few bad apples' theory is now utterly in tatters.

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