Guantánamo Bay
On 12 October, the US Court of Military Commissions Review backed
the former judge in the USS Cole trial, where Abd Al-Nashiri is being tried
for the 2000 bombing of a US naval vessel in the Gulf of Aden, by ruling that his
defence lawyers did not have the authority “to quit the case over ethics
questions raised by their discovery of a secret microphone in their meeting room” after they quit the case last year.
The pre-trial hearings in the case have been suspended since February and can
resume, although no date has been set for that and what the three lawyers
concerned plan to do is unknown. The ruling also held that the “chief defense
counsel, Marine Brig. Gen. John Baker, did not have the authority to let the
civilian lawyers quit the case a year ago”; he was fined $1000 by the judge and “confined
to his quarters for 21 days in a conviction that was subsequently overturned”.
US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has appointed Col. Douglas K. Watkins, 56, as the new chief judge at the Guantánamo war court after Army Col. James J. Pohl, the chief judge for over the past 9 years, retired in September. A military judge with experience of terrorism cases going back to the 1980s, Watkins is already handling hearings in the case of Majid Khan, who was convicted in a secret plea deal in 2012, and is due to be sentenced in 2019. He will oversee the case of five defendants accused of involvement in the September 2001 attacks in New York.
Extraordinary Rendition
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has dismissed
appeals by Lithuania and Romania who were found guilty earlier this year of running
secret torture facilities for the CIA – claims the two states still deny – and
ordered to pay the plaintiffs, current Guantánamo prisoners Abu Zubaydah and
Abd Al-Nashiri, respectively, €100,000 in damages.
The North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture, a citizen-led
initiative looking at the state’s involvement in the CIA’s rendition programme
over the past few years has produced an 82-page report on torture flights and
North Carolina’s role in the CIA rendition and torture program http://www.nctorturereport.org/ and
particularly the liability of Aero Contractors Ltd., a local private company
whose aircraft were used to transport rendition victims in breach of
international laws the US is party to. The report calls for the accountability
and prosecution of key players.
An American-Saudi prisoner, who was detained in Syria and later
transferred to Iraq after being captured by Kurdish forces in Syria and handed
over to the US military in 2017, has been released to a third country. The
American Civil Liberties Union won an important court case to have his
constitutional rights upheld in court after the US government “kept his
detention secret, denied his requests for a lawyer, and attempted to forcibly
transfer him to a dangerous war zone.” In doing so, the Trump administration made it unnecessary for the court to rule on the legality of the detention of prisoners by the US in Iraq and Syria without charge, trial or due process rights.
LGC Activities:
The LGC held its monthly Shut Guantánamo! demos outside the US Embassy
in Nine Elms on 4 October at 12-2pm. Our next monthly demo for November is on
Thursday 1 November at 12-2pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/235710460476481/ and is just days before the US mid-term election.
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