Guantánamo Bay
The new US ambassador to Australia is US
Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris, who has served 39 years in the US military.
However, there have been controversies during this time, including at
Guantánamo, where in March 2006, “he assumed command of the joint task
force at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. During his command, three prisoners – Mani
Shaman Turki al-Habardi al-Utaybi, Salah Ali Abdullah Ahmed al-Salami and
Yasser Talal al Zahrani – died in the custody of US forces. US Defence reported
the deaths as suicides. Harris ordered a full investigation by the Naval
Criminal Investigative Service, which published its report in a heavily
redacted version in August 2008.”
Days after Donald Trump’s executive order to keep Guantánamo open, which
would involve Defence Secretary James Mattis looking into a new policy on the
detention of combatants and possible transfers to Guantánamo within 90 days,
Mattis fired two top officials at Guantánamo Bay, citing a “loss of confidence”:
Harvey Rishikof, Director of the Office of the Convening Authority for Military
Commissions and Convening Authority for Military Commissions, and Gary Brown, his legal advisor. Temporary replacements have been assigned.
A Pentagon spokesperson reported that the firings had no impact on ongoing
pre-trial hearings.
Pentagon statement:
Today, Secretary of Defense James
N. Mattis rescinded the designations of Harvey Rishikof as the Director of the
Office of the Convening Authority for Military Commissions and as the Convening
Authority for Military Commissions. Additionally, William S. Castle, acting
General Counsel, rescinded the designation of Gary Brown as the Legal Advisor
to the Convening Authority.
Secretary Mattis appointed Jim
Coyne as Acting Convening Authority. Coyne currently serves as the General
Counsel at the Defense Logistics Agency. Mr. Castle appointed Mark Toole as
Acting Legal Advisor to the Convening Authority for all military commissions
except for the case of U.S. v. al-Nashiri, and appointed U.S. Air Force Colonel
Matthew van Dalen as Acting Legal Advisor to the Convening Authority for the
al-Nashiri commission. Toole previously served as the Deputy Legal Advisor to
the Convening Authority and van Dalen was previously an assistant legal advisor
to the Convening Authority.
These personnel actions do not
impact ongoing OMC hearings and proceedings.
Tom Crosson, Pentagon spokesman
It shortly thereafter transpired that before he was
unexpectedly fired, Rishikof had been exploring plea deals “to end the
long-delayed prosecution of five suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks, a move that
would foreclose the possibility of execution, according to several people
familiar with the matter. No deal was imminent, the people said, but the
talks were active and contemplated the defendants — including Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed, the self-described architect of the attacks — pleading guilty and
probably receiving life sentences. Most of the people spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations.”
According to the New York Times, “Guilty
pleas would offer a way out of a complex case that has been mired in years of
pretrial hearings and is certain to face many more years of appeals if it ever
gets to trial and results in convictions. Taxpayers have already spent hundreds
of millions of dollars pursuing the case, and plea deals would bring earlier
closure to victims’ families.
But striking
such a deal would mean giving up on winning death sentences against defendants
accused of aiding the murder of nearly 3,000 people, and could amount to
surrender over the idea of using military commissions to prosecute terrorism
cases.”
In addition, in 2017, Rishikof’s office had rejected
possible charges against three prisoners in relation to a 2002 bombing in Bali,
Indonesia.
No official reason has been given for the dismissal of
these two senior officials.
As pre-trial hearings in the case of the five men
alleged to be linked to the 2001 9/11 attacks resumed at the end of February, the
judge in the case said he would order James Mattis to explain why he fired
Rishikof and set a 19 March deadline for a response.
The government of Uruguay has agreed to extend the economic
assistance given to six former Guantánamo prisoners who arrived in
the country to be resettled as refugees in 2014. According to the government’s mediator
with the former prisoners, Christian Mirza, they will receive a minimum
wage payment of around $450 per month for another year, to January 2019, as well as rent
and money for training, therapy and language learning.
The men have struggled to find work and adjust to life in Uruguay. However,
this has not been assisted by the constant media scrutiny of their private
lives and the stigma attached to being ex-prisoners, which is then not helped
by the negative publicity surrounding them, all of which is speculative,
particularly as none of the men were ever charged or tried by the US.
In addition, two prisoners sent to Ghana for two years in 2016 have
now been recognised as refugees by the country and have been granted permission
to remain there by the Ghanaian parliament. The two Yemeni nationals cannot
return home due to the war and cannot be sent to the US.
The Pentagon has asked for $69 million to replace the top-secret
camp 7 where the 9/11 case defendants and 10 other so-called high-value (i.e.
tortured for several years in CIA secret prisons) prisoners are held. The
request warned that the currently facility is “at risk of mechanical, electrical and
secure-communications failure, which would be risky to the U.S. Army guards who
work there.” and that the proposed new maximum-security facility should last
for around 40 years. According to the Miami Herald: “With its current
15-captive population, building costs work out to $4.6 million per prisoner. As
a presidential candidate, Donald Trump made two Guantánamo-related pledges: To
“load it up with bad dudes,” and to reduce operational costs to “peanuts.” So
far, neither has happened.” As the current camp is top secret and classified,
very little is known about it, including the cost and condition, and even
military access to the site is restricted.
Ahead of
the resumption of pre-trial hearings in the case of Abd Al-Nashiri, accused of
involvement in the bombing of a US naval vessel off the coast of Yemen in 2000,
Judge Air Force Col. Vance Spath ordered warrants for the effective arrest of two
civilian defence lawyers who resigned from the case and ignored his previous
orders to attend the court. Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears resigned from the case
in October over an ethical issue. The resignation of
his legal team has left Al-Nashiri facing a death penalty case without a lawyer
with expertise in such cases, and only one defence lawyer.
In the end, however, at the end of a week of proceedings, on 16 February,
the judge cancelled the proceedings going forward indefinitely due to his
inability to get the defence lawyers to return to the case, stating: “I am abating these proceedings
indefinitely,” he said twice, at one point adding: “We’re done until a superior
court tells me to keep going.”
On the
other hand, Al-Nashiri's remaining defence lawyer, Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, said “the
best move for the country and for justice is for the government to withdraw the
charges.”
On 21 February, prosecutor Mark Miller filed notice of an appeal against
this decision with the judge to be presented to the Court of Military
Commissions Review, although no basis for the appeal was provided.
In Morocco, former prisoner Younes Chekkouri, who was released from
Guantánamo in September 2015 to immediate arrest and detention in Morocco, was
released after the Court of Appeal in Rabat acquitted him of a 5-year sentence
he was given in May 2017 by the Criminal Court for “setting up a criminal
gang and undermining the internal security of the State.”
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/02/240799/rabats-court-appeal-acquits-former-moroccan-guantanamo-detainee-younes-chekkouri/
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/02/240799/rabats-court-appeal-acquits-former-moroccan-guantanamo-detainee-younes-chekkouri/
As part
of the plea bargain made with Saudi prisoner, Ahmed Al-Darbi, who pleaded
guilty to various charges relating to an attack on a French tanker off the coast
of Yemen in 2002, after having been tortured physically, mentally and sexually,
and agreed to provide testimony against two other prisoners facing trial, he
was due to be repatriated to Saudi Arabia on 20 February 2018, the deadline set
in his 2014 plea deal. Although the US Defence Department has stated that it
hopes he will be repatriated soon, this comes soon after the indefinite adjournment
of the Al-Nashiri case, further undermining the military commissions system,
when it cannot even bind the US government to act in accordance with its orders.
Here is the full response of Navy
Cmdr. Sarah Higgins, spokeswoman for Detainee Affairs and the Office of Military
Commissions, to a Feb. 20, 2018, query from the Miami Herald:
“Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al
Darbi’s transfer from Guantanamo detention to Saudi Arabia will not take place
today.
“Al Darbi’s plea agreement
stipulated his transfer would occur after serving four years in U.S. custody.
Today marks four years since he signed the agreement. We await assurances from
the Saudi Arabian government to move forward on his departure.
“Al Darbi will remain at Guantanamo
until all transfer details are concluded. Thus far, al Darbi has complied with
all terms of his plea agreement. DOD [Department of Defense] hopes the transfer
will take place soon.”
Extraordinary Rendition
In a case brought by the Center for
Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of three Iraqi former Abu Ghraib
prisoners against the private contractor CACI, a Virginia federal judge ruled
that the treatment of the three men constitutes torture, war crimes, and cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment, based on a thorough review of U.S. domestic
and international law; “The ruling also held that the men have sufficiently
alleged that employees of private military contractor CACI Premier Technology
conspired to commit and aided and abetted these crimes.” The case was brought
almost 10 years ago by the CCR. It stated: “The decision is a historic
judicial rebuke to the Bush administration’s torture paradigm, which had sought
to evade the well-established prohibitions against torture, and is one of the
clearest statements in the post-9/11 era that victims of torture and grave
human rights abuses can access the courts for a remedy. The court confirmed
what was plain to the eye: that the horrific treatment our clients endured at
Abu Ghraib was unlawful and that, in a country operating under the rule of law,
those responsible can be held accountable.”
According to its press release: “Today’s
opinion includes a detailed account of what happened to CCR’s clients, Suhail
A1 Shimari, Asa’ad Al-Zuba’e, and Salah Al-Ejaili, including:
[being] subjected to repeated stress
positions, including at least one that made [Plaintiff Al-Ejaili] vomit black
liquid; sexually-related humiliation; disruptive sleeping patterns and long
periods of being kept naked or without food or water; and multiple instances of
being threatened with dogs…being doused with hot and cold liquids…sexual
assault and threats of rape; being left in a cold shower until [Plaintiff
Zuba’e] was unable to stand; dog bites and repeated beatings, including with
sticks and to the genitals…at least one [stress position] that lasted an entire
day and resulted in [Zuba’e] urinating and defecating on himself; and threats
that his family would be brought to Abu Ghraib…systematic beatings…with a baton
and rifle, [being] he was hit against the wall; [being] forced to kneel on
sharp stones, causing lasting damage to [Plaintiff Al Shimari’s] legs; …being
kept in a dark cell and with loud music nearby; threats of being shot… electric
shocks; being dragged around the prison by a rope tied around [Al Shimari’s]
neck; and having fingers inserted into [Al Shimari’s] rectum.
The Court concluded: “it is clear
that the abuse suffered by plaintiffs was intended to inflict severe pain or
suffering and rises to the level of torture.””
LGC Activities:
The LGC has produced a new video showcasing the last twelve years
of its protests against Guantánamo outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square,
which closed in January:
The LGC will start its monthly Shut Guantánamo! demos outside the
new Nine Elms Embassy on Thursday 1st March at 12-2pm. The address
is 33 Nine Elms Ln, London SW11 7US, nearest underground: Vauxhall. More
details available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/975903689224552/
All are welcome to join us.
