by Sarah Meyer, member of the BRussells Tribunal Advisory Committee (28 Feb 2008) Index Research Sarah Meyer articles and researches published by the BRussells Tribunal

 

1. Prologue: Robicheaux's Nightmare

What would James Lee Burke’s alterego, Dave Robicheaux, have to say about the cast of characters in this evil story of kidnapping, prison and torture? Does the alleged mastermind, Dick Cheney, go to jail for war crimes? Does his mouthpiece, the President, tag along or go back to Texas oil territory and revision his place in history? What happens to the judges, the PNACers, the lawyers, the corporate elite, and all other 'gumballs' in this disgusting sham of “democracy and freedom?” Who will deep-six them?

Following is a recent conversation that already illustrates a Hollywood remake:

Frei: Can you honestly say, Mr President, that today America still occupies the moral high ground?

Mr Bush: “Absolutely - absolutely. We believe in human rights and human dignity. We believe in the human condition. We believe in freedom. And we're willing to take the lead. We're willing to ask nations to do hard things. We're willing to accept responsibilities. And - yeah, no question in my mind. It's a nation that's a force for good. And history will judge - the decisions made during this period of time as necessary decisions. And I [firmly] believe that we are laying the foundation for peace. George W Bush's BBC interview (14.02.08. BBC. Video)

CHAPTER HEADINGS
1. Prologue: Robicheaux's Nightmare
2. Rendition in February 2008: Report, Articles, Resources
3. Guantanamo in February 2008: Articles, Resources
4. Torture in February 2008: Articles, Resources
5. War Crimes (Gideon Polya, Winter Soldiers)
6. Geneva Conventions on Genocide: Epilogue
7. References

+

2. Rendition in February 2008

 

In some cases, we determine that individuals we have captured pose a significant threat, or may have intelligence that we and our allies need to have to prevent new attacks. Many are al Qaeda operatives or Taliban fighters trying to conceal their identities, and they withhold information that could save American lives. In these cases, it has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly [sic], questioned by experts, and -- when appropriate -- prosecuted for terrorist acts. Some of these individuals are taken to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ... In addition to the terrorists held at Guantanamo, a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States, in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. ... Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged. Doing so would provide our enemies with information they could use to take retribution against our allies and harm our country. . George Bush , September 2006

REPORTS

Rendition to Torture: The Case of Maher Arar
18.10.07. joint hearing before subcommittees of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees (pdf)

"The United Nations Human Rights Council: Issues for Congress,"
updated 08.01.08. CRS.

Transfering detainee operations to Afghanistan
08.02.08. Wikileaks Notable Document Release.


ARTICLES

Secret CIA Flights to Greenland Reported
31.01.08. AP / truthout. Denmark will investigate claims that the CIA secretly used an airport on the Nordic country's remote Arctic territory of Greenland to transport prisoners in the U.S. war on terror, the prime minister said Thursday.

US flouts human rights with secret prisons, torture: HRW
31.01.08. RAW STORY.uruknet. The United States continues to violate basic human rights by keeping secret detention facilities abroad, holding people illegally as "disappeared" and justifying torture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.

Is a Small Island in the Indian Ocean Holding Prisoners in the War on Terror?
02.02.08. Robert Verkaik, Independent/alternet. The expulsion of the people of Diego Garcia was covered up for years. Now officials block an investigation of its role in extraordinary rendition.

Federal Court Throws Out Torture Lawsuit
14.02.08. Jurist/alternet. In a victory for the Bush administration, a federal judge labels extraordinary rendition a "state secret" -- despite all evidence to the contrary.

 

Steve Bell, Guardian (22.02.08)

EU: Poland, Romania coy on rendition
22.02.08. wiredispatch. EU Commission: Poland, Romania Must Clarify Role in CIA Extraordinary Rendition Program

EU assembly must reopen "rendition" inquiry
22.02.08. Reuters. "Yesterday's revelations confirm that the European Parliament has a moral duty to continue its inquiry," Fava told Reuters in Rome. "... We still don't know everything that we have the right to know about this issue." Amnesty International called on European countries to fully investigate possible involvement in renditions.

Romania Base Suspected CIA Prisoner Site
23.02.08. AP. Mihail Kogalniceanu Base.

Renditions Clothed in State Secrets Mantle
26.02.08. W. Fisher, anti-war. As the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged it had erroneously denied using British territory to transport victims of "extraordinary rendition," a federal court bowed to pressure from the George W. Bush administration to dismiss a case against a Boeing subsidiary being sued for providing the aircraft that carried the suspected terrorists.

SAS 'held suspects for extraordinary rendition'
26.02.08. P. Johnston, Telegraph. Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier who quit the Army in protest at the ''illegal" tactics and policies of coalition forces, said the Government knew what was happening.
Ben Griffin says he believes that British ministers should be charged with breaching the Geneva Convention. He maintained that Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and other senior Government figures were in breach of international law forbidding torture and should face charges. Mr Griffin said the SAS was part of a joint US/UK unit which captured suspected terrorist who were then spirited away for interrogation. See VIDEO: BEN GRIFFIN: Ex -SAS man’s rendition claims.

also see Richard Norton-Taylor's article in The Guardian: Former SAS man condemns British rolein torture tactics. (26.02.08).

Court gags ex-SAS man who made torture claims
29.02.08. R. Norton-Taylor. A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture. Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the "illegal" tactics of US troops. [Description of press conference with Stop the War.] He told a press conference hosted by the Stop the War Coalition this week that individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Guantánamo Bay. He had not witnessed torture himself but added: "I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured."

? SOS?
US Military Says Detained Afghan Journalist Has Been Designated an Enemy Combatant
27.02.08. AP / wiredispatch. A journalist for a Canadian TV network [Jawed Ahmad, an Afghan] who has been held for four months without being charged has been designated an unlawful enemy combatant, the U.S. military said Wednesday. ... Ahmad [also known as Jojo Yazemi] is being held at the military compound in Bagram, 30 miles north of Kabul. ... He [Belcher] declined to provide details about the "credible information" and would not say if Ahmad had more contact with militants than other journalists working in Afghanistan. It is common for journalists in the country to have contact information of Taliban fighters so they can seek militants' comments for news stories.

The ban stays absolute
28.02.08. Economist. A ruling that will frustrate governments and please libertarians. IN A landmark decision, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on February 28th that a government may not deport an individual to a state where he may be at risk of torture or other ill-treatment. The unanimous ruling by the court's Grand Chamber, whose decisions are final, marks a big setback for every country that is struggling to rid itself of suspected foreign terrorists.
REFERENCES

Extraordinary rendition definition (Sourcewatch)
&
Rendition (Wikipedia)

Rendition" and secret detention: A global system of human rights violations. Questions and Answers
01.01.06. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Extraordinary Rendition": Outsourcing Torture
Friends Committee on National Legislation. Using Code Words, Jettisoning the rule of law; more reasons to abandon this practice; Federal legislation outlawing this practice; Documented cases of extraordinary rendition by U.S. personnel.


Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights. Trevor Paglin, Melville House Publishing (September 24, 2006)

The Guantanamo Airlift: how Europe helped transport the prisoners
25.11.07. Stephen Grey.

Outsourcing Torture
14.02.08.Jane Mayer, The New Yorker. The secret history of America’s “extraordinary rendition” program.

Rendition to Torture
Human Rights Watch. Abu Ali; Khouza; Criminal Complaints.

RENDITION (JURIST archive)

“Outsourcing” Torture
Human Rights Watch News Renditions and Diplomatic Assurances; further resources.

Historical Document

SOUTHERN CONE RENDITION PROGRAM: PERU'S PARTICIPATION
22.02.08. gwu national security archive. OPERATION CONDOR CRIMES FOCUS OF ITALIAN INDICTMENTS. 10 pdf documents. The Archive's Peter Kornbluh noted "sinister similarities between Condor and the current U.S. rendition, enhanced interrogation, and black site detention operations."
 

3. Guantanamo in February 2008

“And, so, what people gotta understand is that we'll make decisions based upon law. We're a nation of law. Take Guantanamo. Look, I'd like it to be empty. On the other hand, there's some people there that need to be tried. And there will be a trial. And they'll have their day in court. Unlike what they did to other people. Now, there's great concern about, you know, and I can understand this. That these people be given rights. The - what - they're not willing' to grant the same rights to others. They'll murder. But, you gotta understand, they're getting rights. And I'm comfortable with the decisions we've made. And I'm comfortable with recognising this is still a dangerous world.” George W Bush BBC interview 14.02.08, Video & TRANSCRIPT.


The Bush administration’s treatment of “enemy combatants” undermines international law and disregards fundamental human rights. Ever since Washington launched its “war on terrorism,” lawyers and human rights groups have presented evidence of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees by US authorities in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, Iraq, and at secret locations. The Pentagon’s prisoner interrogation techniques, solitary confinement procedures, and its failure to provide “full and fair” trials at detention centers, violate the Geneva Conventions and basic human rights.

Washington argues that international law does not apply to “enemy combatants” and that detentions in the name of “war on terror” are vital to national security. By ignoring international law, the US not only loses credibility and moral ground on human rights, but such policies also open the door for other countries to follow suit with human rights violations.
Torture and Prison Abuse, Global Policy Forum. (Excellent Resource site)


ARTICLES



 

Pentagon Vetoes Guantanamo Visit by UN Official
23.01.08. S. Edwards, Canwest news service / global policy.

Al-Ghizzawi

Libyan Detainee Infected with AIDS
31.01.08. Andy Worthington, Counterpunch. It really doesn’t get any worse than this.
&
Emergency motion Abdul Hamid al Ghizzawi, Detainee, for Medical Treatment and Medical records v. George Bush . 5 February 2008
&
The Hippocratic Oath Dies in Gitmo
26.02.08. H. Candace Gorman, anti-war. The dungeon masters at Guantanamo moved Al-Ghizzawi to Camp 6, a supermax facility where prisoners are kept in isolation. (See H. Candace Gorman's bloghere.)

New court can silence captives who tell secrets
04.02.08. miamiherald / legitgov. A new court at Guantánamo would allow the U.S. military to keep its secrets by cutting off terror suspects' testimony from the ears of observers at the flick of a switch.

Abdul Razzaq Hekmati

The Story of Mr. Hekmati and His Death
05.02.08. C. Gall/A. Worthington, NY Times. Time Runs Out for an Afghan Held by the U.S. In 2003, Mr. [Abdul Razzaq] Hekmati was arrested by American forces in southern Afghanistan when, senior Afghan officials here contend, he was falsely accused by his enemies of being a Taliban commander himself. For the next five years he was held at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he died of cancer on Dec. 30.

Strange Fruit: America's Gulag and the "Good War"
05.02.08. * Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque/uruknet. The long-running "progressive" stance on America's 21st century imperial adventures can be reduced to this simple dichotomy: Afghan war good, Iraq war bad. And for all progressives who want to be regarded as "serious," the Iraq war is bad because it has distracted us from the real war, the good war, in Afghanistan. This theme has been sounded over and over by the "progressive" candidates throughout the presidential campaign. It is the opinion of a sizable majority of the U.S. population, which has clearly repudiated the Iraq war but still supports the Afghan war. But a story by Carlotta Gall and Andy Worthington in the New York Times reminds us most forcefully that the Afghan war is not and has never been some separate entity from the brutal, voracious "War on Terror" machine that has killed a million people in Iraq, spawned a global gulag of torture sites and secret prisons for uncharged captives and kidnap victims, and destroyed the last vestiges of the American republic, replacing it with an authoritarian "Commander-in-Chief State" ruled quite literally by the führerprinzip, where the order of the Leader transcends any law. A poison tree can only bring forth poison fruit -- and the Afghan war is a fruit of the Terror War tree.

Adel Hassan Hamad and Salim Muhood Adem, after their release

Former Guantánamo prisoner asks U.S. to review its founding ideals
06.02.08. CSM. Adel Hassan Hamad, who is suing the US government, claims that American values of freedom and democracy have been shaken.

Arrested and Jailed for Protesting Gitmo 'Black Hole'
05.02.08. Bryan Farrell, Foreign Policy in Focus.

AP Confirms Secret Camp Inside Gitmo
06.02.08. AP / Guardian. For the first time, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo has confirmed the existence of the mysterious Camp 7. In an interview with The Associated Press, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby also provided a few details about the maximum-security lockup.… Detainees have been held in Camp Echo and Camps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Journalists cleared by the military have been allowed to tour some of these lockups, where 260 men are held, but aren't allowed to speak to detainees. Some lawmakers and other VIPs have passed through, and the International Red Cross has access, but doesn't divulge details of visits with prisoners. … Camp 7, where 15 ``high-value detainees'' are held, is so secret that its very existence was not publicly known until it was mentioned in December by attorneys for Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident who allegedly plotted to bomb gas stations in the United States.

AP. Photos of the six Guantanamo detainees who could face the death penalty for
their role in Sept. 11 attacks. FNC.

6 at Guantánamo Said to Face Trial in 9/11 Case
09.02.08. W. Glaberson, NY Times/truthout. .. The charges, to be filed in the military commission system at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would involve as many as six detainees held at the detention camp, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former senior aide to Osama bin Laden, who has said he was the principal planner of the plot.

9/11 terror suspects in Guantanamo to face trial soon
09.02.08. AFP. Meanwhile, the US government announced on Friday that charges were filed against two more suspects alleged to have worked for bin Laden. The two men, Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al-Bahlul of Yemen and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmud al-Qosi of Sudan are accused of having worked as drivers and bodyguards for Al-Qaeda agents.

US accused of using 'kangaroo court' to try men accused of role in September 11 attacks
12.02.08. Independent. The United States military announced yesterday that it was bringing death penalty charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other men suspected of orchestrating the September 11 attacks, and intended to try them under the Bush administration's much-criticised military tribunal system, which is subject only to partial oversight by the civilian appeals system. The decision to use Mohammed and the others as guinea-pigs in a constitutionally dubious legal proceeding is likely to trigger a firestorm of anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and spark a fractious domestic debate in an already highly charged presidential election year.

Scalia in uncompromising form
12.02.08. BBC / ICH. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rejected the notion that US courts have any control over the actions of American troops at Guantanamo Bay, argued that torture of terror detainees is not banned under the US Constitution and insisted that the high court has no obligation to act as a moral beacon for other nations.

Guantánamo six will have fair trials, insists Chertoff
12.02.08. M. Weaver, E. Pilkington, Guardian.

Bush Administration Tries to "Cleanse" Evidence Obtained Through Torture
12.02.08. Liliana Segura, Alternet. Giving Starbucks coffee to prisoners is no substitute for a clean trial. [See Torture, below]

Smoke, Mirrors and American Justice
12.02.08. V. Brittain, Guardian. The issue is straightforward: the men cannot receive fair trials.

Court Declares Corporations Are People, Some Human Beings Are Not
12.02.08. Jeffrey Kaplan, Reclaim Democracy / ICH. In evaluating allegations that U.S. military forces deprived four British men of human rights during two years they were held captive in Guantanamo Bay prison, a U.S. appeals court found an innovative way to let the Bush administration off the hook. Two of three judges ruled the men -- because they are not U.S. citizens and, technically, were not imprisoned in the U.S. -- were not legally "persons" and, therefore, had no rights to violate.

Diplomats told to defend seeking death penalty for 9/11 detainees
12.02.08. AP| / ICH. U.S. justifies tribunal as similar to trials of Nazis. A four-page cable sent to U.S. embassies and obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press says that execution as punishment for extreme violations of the laws of war is internationally accepted and points to the 1945-46 International Military Tribunals as an example. Twelve of Adolf Hitler's senior aides were sentenced to death at the trials in Nuremberg, Germany, although not all were executed in the end.

Rules for Lawyers of Detainees Are Called Onerous
13.02.08. J. White, W.Pincus and J, Tate, Washington Post/truthout. Fair, adequate defense questioned. The cadre of civilian lawyers representing terrorism suspects held by the military at Guantanamo Bay are not allowed to meet their clients in private, without video surveillance. All their mail and notes must be turned over to the military. Classified information cannot be shared with their clients. They are not entitled to everything the government knows about their clients.

Executions May Be Carried Out at Guantanamo
13.02.08. M. Melia and A. O. Selsky, AP / truthout. If six suspected terrorists are sentenced to death at Guantanamo Bay for the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. Army regulations that were quietly amended two years ago open the possibility of execution by lethal injection at the military base in Cuba, experts said Tuesday.

Bush wants limits on access to evidence
14.02.08. AP. Bush Administration Asks Supreme Court to Limit Judges' Access to Detainee Evidence. The case is linked to another dispute already at the high court in which detainees are asking the justices to rule that they can use the U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.

George W Bush's BBC interview
14.02.08. BBC. Video & TRANSCRIPT.

Bush Wants Limits on Access to Evidence
14.02.08. AP / ICH. The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to limit judges' authority to scrutinize evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Bush Appeals to Justices on Detainees Case
15.02.08. L. Greenhouse, New York Times/truthout. The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to review an appeals court decision that it said had created a "serious threat to national security" by requiring the government to supply extensive evidence supporting the classification of more than 180 Guantánamo detainees as enemy combatants. The administration asked the court to choose one of two options: either accept its appeal for expedited review, with arguments taking place in May and a decision to come in the current term, or defer action until the justices decide the case on the rights of the Guantánamo prisoners that is currently before them. Under either option, the administration is seeking a stay of the lower court's ruling, which it characterized as "serious legal error."


Bush fear mongering

Bush Appeals to Justices on Detainees Case
15.02.08. NYTimes /antiwar. The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to review an appeals court decision that it said had created a “serious threat to national security” by requiring the government to supply extensive evidence supporting the classification of more than 180 Guantánamo detainees as enemy combatants.

Injustice at Guantanamo: Torture Evidence and the Military Commissions Act
15.02.08. Marjorie Cohn, JURIST/uruknet. JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn says that the rules of evidence governing the recently announced military commission trials of six alleged al Qaeda members, combined with the Bush administration's efforts to sanitize the legal mess made by the use of illegal interrogation methods, ensure that the trials will fall short of due process...

Court rejects ACLU challenge to wiretaps
19.02.08. wiredispatch. Supreme Court Rejects ACLU's Challenge to Bush Administration's Domestic Spying Program. The action underscored the difficulty of mounting a challenge to the eavesdropping, which remains classified and was confirmed by President Bush only after a newspaper article revealed its existence.

Castro retires(19.02.08)

STEVE BELL, Guardian (20.02.08)

Experts Doubt Fair Trials for Gitmo Suspects
20.02.08. William Fisher, anti-war.com. As the U.S. moves toward holding death-sentence trials for six Guantánamo Bay detainees alleged to have plotted the Sept. 11 attacks, legal scholars and human rights advocates are questioning not only the six-year-long process and timing of the charges, but also whether the accused could ever receive fair trials.

Rigged Trials at Gitmo
20.02.08. Russ Tuttle, The Nation. Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes--and seeking the death penalty for all of them.

Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

At Gitmo, even acquittal may not set you free
20.02.08. Muriel Kane, Raw Story.

Lost years in Guantanamo
25.02.08. Kamal Kushkush, Turkish weekly. Adam's agonizing torture ordeal began early on in Bagram. .. After two months, it was the time to move to another pit of hell thousands of miles away. Adam painfully describes Guantanamo as a place "in contrast with humanity." He recalls the harsh interrogations, beatings, the cries and screams of fellow detainees and loud music played at the time of prayer. "Some (interrogators) would tell me we know you are innocent but this is a political game."

Guantánamo guards suffer psychological trauma
25.02.08. J. Randerson, Guardian. The guards at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp are the "overlooked victims" of America's controversial detention facility in Cuba, according to a psychiatrist who has treated some of them. In some cases, a tour of duty at the camp has made guards suicidal and prompted a variety of psychiatric symptoms, from depression and insomnia to flashbacks. The guards' testimony also provides a harrowing insight into the treatment of prisoners.
Professor John Smith, a retired US Air Force captain, treated a patient who was a guard at the camp. "I think the guards of Guantánamo are an overlooked group of victims,"

Sami Al Haj

Sudan journalist detained at Guantanamo Bay may be released
25.02.08. The Jurist. An Al Jazeera [media website] cameraman detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 may soon be released, his lawyer said Monday. Qatari officials visiting Sudanese detainee Sami al-Haj [advocacy website] apparently told him that he "should be out soon," although US officials would not confirm any plans to release al-Haj. Al-Haj was arrested [CPJ report] by Pakistani authorities while crossing the border into Afghanistan in 2001 and was turned over to US forces.

Controversial Pentagon lawyer quits
25.02.08. E. Schor, Guardian. Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man takes his leave. The Pentagon quietly announced today that its top lawyer, William Haynes, will be "returning to private life" next month. What went unmentioned is Haynes' central role in promulgating the legal strategy for the brutal interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Back in March 2003, before the US invaded Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld tapped Haynes to come up with a legal framework that would allow the military to ignore a law prohibiting American soldiers from engaging in torture. Haynes complied, producing a report that stated the law "does not apply" to Guantanamo. See also Pentagon General Counsel Resigns, R. Tuttle, The Nation/truthout 26.02.08.

Shocking Stories About the Forgotten War in Afghanistan
26.02.08. Interview by Joshua Holland with Andy Worthington, AlterNet.

Confessions of a Gitmo Guard
26.02.08. D. Nathan, Counterpunch / ICH. A Nightmare World of Torture and Prison Guard Suicides. A psychiatrist who has treated former military personnel at Guantánamo prison camp is telling a story of prisoner torture and guard suicide there, recounted to him by a National Guardsman who worked at Guantánamo just after it opened.

Held 6 years, Al Qaeda suspect sees lawyers
26.02.08. miamiherald. Alleged arch-terrorist Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA waterboarded in secret overseas interrogations, has agreed to let two American attorneys challenge his detention. Chicago law professor
Joseph Margulies and Washington, D.C. lawyer Brent Mickum said Tuesday that they secured the authority in 12 hours of meetings Friday and Monday at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. (See President Bush comments on the "questioning" of |Abu Zubaydah here.)

Pentagon OKs charges against Guantanamo prisoner
26.02.08. Reuters. The Pentagon on Tuesday approved war crimes charges against a Yemeni Guantanamo prisoner it says was a "media director" for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The charges against Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul, 39, were filed by military prosecutors this month and Tuesday's decision set the stage for his trial at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

US Quietly Breaks UN Treaty
26.02.08. L. Griffith, t r u t h o u t. On Friday, at a United Nations meeting in Geneva, the United States broke a series of legal promises. Keeping those promises would have proved extremely embarrassing to the United States government by pointing out that human rights abuses are being committed here at home and at US military installations abroad. … The basic racism practiced by the US military in both Abu Ghraib and in the detention centers of Guantanamo includes torture, degradation and illegal detention of hundreds of prisoners in these two facilities, based on race, nationality, ethnicity and religions of those arrested.

World lawyers urge Guantanamo closure
26.02.08. AFP. Lawyers' organizations from around the world have sent a letter to US and Canadian leaders urging the closure of the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the repatriation of a Canadian suspect. .. The lawyers issued a particular appeal for Omar Khadr.

Twist of Fate: Gitmo Prosecutor Could Be Defense Witness
27.02.08. ABC. Col. Morris Davis Resigned in the Fall Citing Political Interfere. He's been vilified as a war criminal for his strong support of detaining and prosecuting alleged terrorists at the controversial Guantanamo Bay military prison. He's been condemned for calling the detainees murderers, mocking their defense claims as "nauseating" and sarcastically poking holes in their alibis for being caught in Afghanistan: "When these guys went to camp, they weren't making s'mores and learning how to tie knots." … In a stunning turnaround, Davis says that he has met with Salid Ahmed Hamdan's defense team and that he plans to testify at a hearing in the case. Davis would tell the court about what he says is political interference in the U.S. military tribunals, according to Hamdan's military lawyer, Navy Lt. Brian Mizer.

Lack of staff hampers defense in Sept. 11 trial at Guantanamo
27.02.08. AP / IHT. The military is speeding ahead with plans to try six men at Guantanamo Bay for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but none of the defendants, who face possible execution if found guilty, has seen a defense lawyer yet. … "I have grave concerns about the commissions process and grave concerns about the ability to provide them with a fair trial" David [the chief defense counsel for the war-crimes trials] said in a recent phone interview from Washington.

Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials
28.02.08. Andy Worthington, anti-war.com. Pentagon boss resigns, ex-chief prosecutor joins defense. "This has been another terrible week for Guantánamo's Military Commissions, established by Dick Cheney and his close advisors in November 2001 to try, convict and execute those responsible for 9/11 through a novel process so far removed from the US court system and the military's own judicial procedures that the tainted fruit of torture would be allowed, and secret evidence could be withheld from the accused." Brilliant analysis of ongoing horrors.

Guantánamo Bay: How did it happen? What next for detainees?
28.02.08. europarl. Joint hearing on human rights and Guantánamo BayProcedural rights trampled, say experts; Resettlement of endangered detainees in Europe?; Council criticised for failure to attend hearing.

REFERENCES

Wikileaks busts Gitmo propaganda team
12.12.07. J. Assange. The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed by government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainees' ID numbers from Wikipedia, the systematic posting of unattributed "self praise" comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro's encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as "an admitted transexual" .

Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power, Margulies, Joseph, Simon & Schuster (July 3, 2007)

Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar, Begg., Moazzam, New Press, September 2007

The Guantanamo Files, The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, Andy Worthington, Pluto Press, 2007
Review by Stephen Grey.


4. Torture in February 2008

 

This administration's bold flirtation with torture, medieval-style, has led us into sorry company, whether in the past or the present. Its top officials told the world they would do "what it takes" in their war on terror and in the Middle East, with or without allies. They then chose to leave the family of nations and take up kinship in the family of torturers. Karen Greenberg

REPORTS

MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT (pdf)

"U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT): Overview and Application to Interrogation Techniques,"
updated January 25, 2008; CRS. (pdf)


ARTICLES

It's torture; it's illegal
02.02.08. LA Times. The attorney general's evasions on waterboarding are repugnant, and set a dangerous global precedent.

Torture Does Not Work, as History Shows
04.02.08. Robert Fisk, Independent / ICH. “Torture works,” an American special forces major - now, needless to say, a colonel - boasted to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago. It seems that the CIA and its hired thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq still believe this. There is no evidence that rendition and beatings and waterboarding and the insertion of metal pipes into men’s anuses - and, of course, the occasional torturing to death of detainees - has ended. Why else would the CIA admit in January that it had destroyed videotapes of prisoners being almost drowned - the “waterboarding” technique - before they could be seen by US investigators?

CIA Says Used Waterboarding Three Times
05.02.08. Reuters / truthout. The CIA on three occasions shortly after the September 11 attacks used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday. "Waterboarding has been used on only three [sic] detainees," Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S. official publicly specified the number of people subjected to waterboarding and named them. Named: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

UN Blasts White House on Waterboarding
06.02.08. AP / truthout.

US: CIA Likely Let Contractors Perform Waterboarding
08.02.08. S. Gorman, Wall Street Journal/corpwatch. The broader involvement of contractors, and the likelihood they partook in waterboarding, raises new legal questions about the Central Intelligence Agency's use of the practice, which is designed to simulate drowning. It also will fuel the contentious debate over the administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques. The role of contractors in sensitive security programs has become a hot issue on Capitol Hill. It isn't clear what laws govern their work and who is accountable when activities go awry, as they did when employees of the security firm Blackwater allegedly killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded 24 others in September. An investigation of that is under way; Blackwater continues to provide security services to State Department employees in Iraq.

Waterboarders for God
08.02.08. Ray McGovern, consortium. As George W. Bush reminded the National Prayer Breakfast to treat all God's creatures as "precious," his subordinates around Washington defended the use of waterboarding on terror suspects. The juxtaposition stunned former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

CIA veteran calls for Bush's impeachment
09.02.08. chrisgelken / ICH. Former CIA analyst rips into Bush over torture, Iraq and Iran

Bill Curbing Terror Interrogators Is Sent to Bush, Who Has Vowed to Veto It
14.02.08. NY Times.

Senate Passes Ban on Waterboarding, Other Techniques
14.02.08. D. Eggen, Washington Post, truthout. The Senate voted yesterday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics used by the CIA, matching a previous House vote and putting Congress on a collision course with the White House over a pivotal national security issue.

US official admits waterboarding presently illegal
14.02.08. Guardian. The waterboarding remarks by Stephen Bradbury, head of the justice department office of legal counsel, caused a stir in America because they go further than more uncertain opinions on the legality of the tactic voiced by the CIA director and attorney general.

White House Claims Congress Is Caving to "Left Wing Bloggers" by Opposing Torture
15.02.08. S. Khanna, Think Progress/alternet Peek. Congress's priorities are reflected by the will of the public. A recent CNN poll showed tha 68 percent of Americans said waterboarding was torture.

Bush fearmongering
London bombs justify 'torture', says Bush
15.02.08. Ewen MacAskill, Guardian.

Bush Ignores the Law Against Using Evidence Obtained from Torture in Gitmo Trials
18.02.08. Marjorie Cohn, Jurist/alternet. The federal government is working overtime to try and clean up the legal mess made by the use of illegal interrogation methods.

Rigged Trials at Guantanamo
20.02.08. Ross Tuttle, The Nation/truthout. Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the legal treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes - and seeking the death penalty for all of them. Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials are rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees in an attempt to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

Bisher al-Rawi

Ex-Guantanamo captive 'who was tortured'
21.02.08. Richard Edwards, Telegraph / legitgov. Iraqi born businessman Bisher al-Rawi claims he was beaten and interrogated for four years after being arrested and flown to Afghanistan, then Guantanamo Bay. … Mr al-Rawi was rendered into detention in "the dark prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan. He claims he was denied food, water and light. He was then taken to Bagram airbase, where he said he was beaten up and then on to Guantanamo Bay in early 2003, where he was interrogated for four years before finally being released in March 2006. .. Lawyer Rabinder Singh has said the arrests were "far from any theatre of war". .. the British government apparently now accepts that he was helping MI5 to keep watch on Abu Qatada.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, photo Neal Katyal/Associated Press

Guantanamo Bay ex-prosecutor to testify for Hamdan defense
21.02.08. Jurist. Former Guantanamo Bay chief military prosecutor Col. Morris Davis [official profile, PDF] told AP Thursday that he has agreed to appear as a defense witness in the military commission trial of Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan [DOD materials; JURIST news archive]. In October 2007, Davis resigned [JURIST report; JURIST op-ed] from his position at Guantanamo Bay, saying that politics were interfering with the prosecutions process. In a Wednesday interview [text] with The Nation, Morris alleged that Pentagon general counsel William Haynes [official profile] told him that none of the detainees could be acquitted, implying that the tribunal process may be rigged. Hamdan's lawyers plan to argue at a preliminary hearing in April that this alleged political interference violates the rules governing war crimes trials established by the 2006 Military Commissions Act [PDF text].

Justice Reviews Role in Waterboarding
22.02.08. AP/ truthout. "The Justice Department has opened an internal investigation into whether its top officials improperly authorized or reviewed the CIA's use of waterboarding when interrogating terror suspects, according to documents released Friday." .. Questions about waterboarding are part of a larger Justice probe of the so-called Bybee memo [see references below], wrote Marshall Jarrett, head of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, in a Feb. 18 letter to the two senators. … The CIA banned its personnel from using waterboarding in 2006. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has refused to publicly discuss whether waterboarding is currently legal since it is no longer used by CIA interrogators.

Waterboarding Focus of Inquiry by Justice Department
23.02.08. Scott Shane, New York Times/truthout. The Justice Department revealed Friday that its internal ethics office was investigating the department's legal approval for waterboarding of Qaeda suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency and was likely to make public an unclassified version of its report. Mr. Jarrett's report could become the first public accounting for legal advice that endorsed methods widely denounced as torture by human rights groups and legal authorities. His office can refer matters for criminal prosecution; legal experts said the most likely outcome was a public critique of the legal opinions on interrogation, noting that Mr. Jarrett had the power to reprimand or to seek the disbarment of current or former Justice Department lawyers.

The cloak of secrecy that long concealed the C.I.A.'s secret interrogation program and its legal underpinnings has gradually broken down.
Also see The Jurist. (23.02.08. The case is Gates v. Bismullah, 07-1054)

Former officer implicates top UK officials in torture
27.02.08. Australian.news. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair, should stand trial for breaking international law over the torture of detainees from conflicts in Iraq an Afghanistan, a former UK special services officer said yesterday. The former SAS soldier, 29-year-old Ben Griffin, told a press conference in London that the British secret service had been involved in a secret joint squad with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and that UK operatives knew detainees were being tortured by the US. He said political leaders would have known what was happening in the unit. (See Rendition above, 26.02)

Faith leaders implore Bush to end torture
28.02.08. wfn. Four faith group leaders are urging President Bush to change his mind and sign the Intelligence Authorization Act, which would prohibit the use of torture as an interrogation tool. The signers represent an unusual consensus of ecumenical, evangelical, Jewish and Islamic communities.

European Court reaffirms ban on torture
28.02.08. Amnesty Int. The European Court of Human Rights has re-affirmed the absolute prohibition of torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In the court's ruling in the case of Saadi v Italy on Thursday, it found "substantial grounds had been shown for believing that there is a real risk" that Nassim Saadi would be subjected to torture or other ill-treatment if he were deported, relying heavily on reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Senate clears bill on torture of animals
28.02.08. Salt Lake Tribune.


History Lessons

Visiting the Torture Museum: Barbarism Then and Now
22.02.08. tomdispatch: KAREN GREENBERG. … Sometimes a little stroll through history can have its uses. Take, as an example, the continuing debate over torture in post-9/11 America. [Bradbury] claimed that the CIA's waterboarding of at least three of its prisoners bore "no resemblance" to what torturers in the Spanish Inquisition had done when they used what was then called "the Water Torture." … “The similarity in methods across a torture gulf of at least four centuries would have been but the first of many striking lessons for our modern moment from a tour of [The Torture] museum in Prague]…. Perhaps the eeriest lesson would be just how many of the torture techniques illustrated in these rooms are still painfully recognizable, are, in fact but minor variations on those practiced today in America's name. … If this isn't a moving example of the brotherhood of torturers across the centuries, what is? After all, just as in the distant past, there has, in recent years, been purpose behind the seeming madness with which the Bush administration embraced torture and then repeatedly insisted on calling it not-torture. The purpose centuries ago was to have any confessions admissible in court – and this, certainly, was what Yoo and his colleagues must have been hoping for all along. In the specific cases of the three detainees whom top administration officials have recently admitted were waterboarded -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ibn al Shayk al-Libbi, and Abu Zubaydah -- their confessions, obtained by a range of "enhanced interrogation techniques," have repeatedly been called trustworthy, valuable, and conclusive as to guilt by administration spokespeople.

Someday, our children may travel to Washington and somewhere near the Smithsonian and the Holocaust Museum, perhaps they, like the Czechs and other Europeans, will be able to visit their own official torture museum. There, a step from the Potomac River, they will be able to view strange instruments for inflicting pain and perhaps even watch horrifying videos of torture happening. And they may wonder how we ever faltered so miserably when it came to a war that was supposed to be on terror, but ended up adopting the worst traditions of terror in the Age of Barbarism Lite.”

The Water Cure
25.02.08. P. Kramer, The New Yorker. Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom. This was the language that, when coupled with expanding military and commercial ambitions, had helped launch two very different wars. … “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.”


REFERENCES

Military Commissions Act of 2006. Wikipedia

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TORTURE MEMO SCANDAL
Texscience.org. 8 pdf memos & Reports from the Bush administration; 5 articles about these memos and reports; 2 articles on legal opinions; 1 Memorandum; 5 Further memos; Word for Word

Secrets and Lies: Uncovering the Truth About Torture
Amrit Singh. (pdf) Introduction; Legal Prescriptions against Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and Rendition; Documents that are more of an embarrassment than a secret; Disclosures thus far; Conclusion and Endnotes.

Karen J. Greenberg
Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law; editor of the Torture Debate in America and, with Joshua Dratel, author of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib as well as the forthcoming The Enemy Combatant Papers: American Justice, the Courts and the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, April 2008).

U.S. Dept. of Justice Memo from Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo To Alberto R. Gonzales, White House Counsel
01.08.02. FindLaw. ‘on interrogation methods that do not violate prohibitions against torture.’
And The Torture Memo By Judge Jay S. Bybee That Haunted Alberto Gonzales's Confirmation Hearings 14.01.05. J. Dean, FindLaw.

John Yoo, Wikipedia

Tout Torture, Get Promoted
16.06.04, R. Sheer, The Nation.

WHAT IS TORTURE
26.05.05. SLATE. An interactive primer on American interrogation. Introduction by Emily Bazelon, Phillip Carter, and Dahlia Lithwick; *** The Chain of Command: Who the players are, by Phillip Carter; Legal Memos: How the rules were rewritten by Dahlia Lithwick; Taxonomy of Torture:The facts and the law by Phillip Carter; The Military Reports: What Army and Pentagon Investigators Found by Emily Bazelon; Conclusion: Beyond the Bounds; What's lost when exceptions become the norm by Emily Bazelon, Phillip Carter, and Dahlia Lithwick

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program
Stephen Grey, St. Martin's Press (October 17, 2006)

VIDEOS

Taxi to the Dark Side : videos, interviews, articles

Video: To the Dark Side. Who is accountable? Clips from Academy Award Doc "Taxi to the Dark Side," arranged by a independent filmmaker.

Taxi won documentary academy award.

Oscar winner Eva Orner: US are war criminals

Anything Goes: "Taxi to the Dark Side"
25.02.08. C. Fuchs, Pop Matters / ICH. How Did America Become a Country That Tortures? As detailed in Alex Gibney’s devastating documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, Dilawar’s demise was officially termed a homicide, like the first detainee to die at Bagram, Habibullah.

Video: Alex Gibney in Conversation With Robert Scheer. With Transcript.

interesting background info on Diliwar / Bagram

DoD News Briefing with Gen. McNeill from the Pentagon
06.02.08. defenselink. [McNeill] commanded NATO's operations in Afghanistan since February of last year. And General McNeill, of course, as many of you know, previously served in Afghanistan as commander of Operation Enduring Freedom, Combined Task Force-180. McNeill also presided over Bagram Prison, an infamous torture centre in Afghanistan.

KEITH OLBERMANN SPECIAL COMMENT ON WATERBOARDING (05.11.07)

Water Boarding Demonstration

*WATERBOARDING 101* ~OLBERMANN (09.11.07)

The Who's Who of Gratuitous Torture

"Soldier" Brags of Torture, Rape & Murder

TED 2008: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib
28.02.08. three-minute video, obtained by Wired.com, that features many previously unseen photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (disturbing content).


PHOTOS
THE WE

28.02.08. Wired
As an expert witness in the defense of an Abu Ghraib guard, Philip Zimbardo had access to many images (NSFW) of abuse taken by the guards. His TED presentation puts together a short video of some of the unpublished photos, with sound effects added by Zimbardo. Many of the images are explicit and gruesome, depicting nudity, degradation, simulated sex acts and guards posing with corpses. Viewer discretion is advised.
Courtesy Philip Zimbardo



 

5. War Crimes (Gideon Polya, Winter Soldiers)

Dr. Gideon Polya on Genocide & the Geneva Conventions

GENEVA CONVENTIONS & GROSS UK-US WAR CRIMES
26.07.