Guantánamo Bay
Furthermore, Germany has failed to
provide him with adequate rehabilitation and medical support. Since his return
to Germany, El Masri has been arrested and jailed several times for violent
behaviour, which has been linked to his untreated torture trauma.
On 20 April, a federal judge
prevented attempts by the Trump administration to transfer a US citizen accused
of fighting with ISIS in Syria to Saudi Arabia. The unidentified man has been
held without charge since he surrendered to the US over 7 months ago. He will
remain at a US military detention facility in Iraq for now. The man is
represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued “that
any transfer would violate the detainee's constitutional and legal rights
because the government has not charged him or proved that it legally detained
him in the first place”.
Ahead of pre-trial hearings resuming, on 30 April, in the case of
five men accused of involvement in terrorist attacks in New York in September
2001, a lawyer for one defendant, Ammar Al-Baluchi, asked “a military judge to
order the prison to permit the public release of art he makes in his cell” at
Guantánamo. Lawyer Alka Pradhan and her team filed a pleading “accusing the
Department of Defense of violating the captive’s rights by making it more
difficult for him to draw and paint and by blocking him from giving his artwork
to his attorneys”. Producing the artwork is therapeutic for Al-Baluchi who was
severely tortured by the US in secret jails over a number of years before he
was brought to Guantánamo. The ban on the release of his work was imposed in
November 2017 when a watercolour he made was included as part of a New York
City art exhibition of prisoners’ artworks.
Another defendant, Ramzi bin Al
Shibh, spent at least two weeks this month being held in an isolation cell with
no bed or running water, with only a prayer mat and a Qur’an and access for one
hour a day to legal material “as punishment for protesting conditions in his
Guantánamo confinement”. His lawyer reported that “He's in really, really bad
shape” and that being placed in isolation was re-traumatising him. Since being
placed in isolation on 12 April, he has been on hunger strike, accepting only
water. He is since reported to have been returned to his normal cell, with the
punishment having ended, but is still on hunger strike. Al Shibh told his legal
team that he was “punished for shouting at his guards, at one point scratching
the lens of his cell’s monitoring camera and for putting stones in his toilet
to cause another captive's toilet to overflow”.
Also ahead
of the hearing, on 27 April, the military judge ruled that the US was at war
with Al Qaeda at the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York,
although he did not specify in his ruling when that war began. The ruling is
crucial for the trial of the five men to proceed before a military commission;
without war, they can only be tried by a civilian court only. The question was
raised by the lawyers of Saudi defendant Mustafa Al Hawsawi, in an attempt to
have the charge against him dismissed. The judge based on ruling on “Congress
and two presidents hav[ing] said so”
Two
Libyan prisoners released to Senegal in April 2016 have been sent back to Libya
on 4 April by the Senegalese authorities. Prior to their return, one of the
men, Omar Khalifa Mohammed Abu Bakr, had told
his lawyer that he fears for his life if returned there. The two men were
granted humanitarian asylum by the West African country in 2016 but since early
2018 it has been threatening to deport them. Since their reported return to
Libya, a country overrun by militias since the US-led war in 2011, both men
have “disappeared”. The other man, Salem Abdul Salem Ghereby, who has a wife and children in Libya, had expressed his
wish to return there.
According to the NGO Cage, Ghereby was being held at Mitiga airbase
in Tripoli whereas Omar Khalifa was detained in Senegal following a failed
attempt to deport him. There have been no official reports of their whereabouts
or of who is holding either of the men.
It should be recalled that both men
were released by the Obama administration which also started the bombing of
Libya which has led to the current deterioration of the security situation in
the country.
On 13 April, Saudi prisoner Ahmed al Darbi had his
sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty to war crimes in a plea bargain deal
in February 2014. Al Darbi was tortured into confessing involvement in the
bombing of ships in the Arabian Sea after 9/11. He was sentenced to 13 years in
prison, which began to run as of the time of his trial and not since he was
seized in 2002; he could thus be released in 2027. He has been due to be
returned to his native Saudi Arabia since February to serve the rest of his sentence
there. This was the first sentencing hearing at Guantánamo since 2011.
Lawyers for Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, who says his real name is Nashwan
al Tamir, have protested a potential trial timetable for mid-2019, saying they
have not had enough time to prepare and that the defence team is subject to
change. He was one of the last prisoners to be brought to Guantánamo and is
facing non-capital charges but faces the prospect of a life sentence.
Extraordinary Rendition
Macedonia has issued a formal apology to Khaled El Masri, the German
citizen of Lebanese origin in whose rendition it assisted in 2003. He was detained
in the country while on holiday and was interrogated for more than 3 weeks. He
was accused of being a member of Al Qaeda before being handed over the CIA who
then took him to Afghanistan and tortured him before releasing him in rural
Albania months later.
In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Macedonia to pay him
compensation of €60,000 after the country was found to have breached his human
rights. However, the country has never investigated the crimes and no one has
been held to account.
On the other hand, both the US and
Germany have remained silent. Current German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier
refused to apologised when asked to during his election campaign last year; in
2005, he came under fire for suppressing information the German government had
at the time on his case and acting too slowly on it. The US itself quickly
realised it had the wrong man.
Furthermore, Germany has failed to
provide him with adequate rehabilitation and medical support. Since his return
to Germany, El Masri has been arrested and jailed several times for violent
behaviour, which has been linked to his untreated torture trauma.
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-silent-after-cia-victim-al-masri-receives-macedonian-apology/a-43281786
In a letter, the Scottish Lord Advocate James Wolffe has suggested
that a police investigation into torture flights through Scotland may continue
until the US hands over a full unredacted copy of the US Senate committee Torture
Report, which has been requested by the Scottish authorities but has not been
acquiesced.
On 20 April, a federal judge
prevented attempts by the Trump administration to transfer a US citizen accused
of fighting with ISIS in Syria to Saudi Arabia. The unidentified man has been
held without charge since he surrendered to the US over 7 months ago. He will
remain at a US military detention facility in Iraq for now. The man is
represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued “that
any transfer would violate the detainee's constitutional and legal rights
because the government has not charged him or proved that it legally detained
him in the first place”.
LGC Activities:
The LGC held its second monthly Shut Guantánamo! demos outside the US
Embassy in Nine Elms in April. This demo was in solidarity with the Iraqi
people 15 years after the war there started. Please join us on Thursday 3 May
at 12-2pm for our next monthly demonstration. The address is 33 Nine Elms Ln,
London SW11 7US, nearest underground: Vauxhall. More details available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/192571218047863/ All are welcome to join us.
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