Guantánamo Bay:
With pre-trial hearings cancelled and travel restrictions in place due to the Covid-19 pandemic, family members of people who died in the attacks in New York City in 2001 are concerned that this will set the trial of the five defendants, held at Guantánamo, back even further. The previous judge had set a trial date of January 2021 in the case but that appears increasingly unlikely with weeks of pre-trial hearings cancelled. In addition to cancelled hearings, family members of victims of the 2001 attacks have been told they cannot travel to the proceedings until the pandemic ends. No new judge has been appointed to replace former judge Colonel Shane Cohen, who announced his retirement on 17 March. The pandemic has also “disrupted the assignments and training of American military judges across the globe”. The case is in its eighth year of pre-trial hearings and the pandemic is the latest in a string of delays. In addition, there is an information blackout at Guantánamo “on how many people have contracted the virus since the military disclosed the first two cases in the spring”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/politics/coronavirus-guantanamo-911-victims.html
Earlier plans for hearings to resume were considered unworkable and
cumbersome and would have involved over a hundred people, including lawyers,
witnesses, journalists and family members coming to the base and having to
quarantine for two weeks before proceedings start, taking into consideration that
there are limited accommodation and medical facilities at the base.
A new plan being
considered by military prosecutors would “airlift about 100 people from across
the United States to Guantánamo on Sept. 5 — everyone bound for the courtroom,
except the defendants — and then isolate them for two weeks at the makeshift
site called Camp Justice. Then the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks would be brought from the prison to the courtroom to begin six weeks of
hearings in the case, from Sept. 21 to Nov. 3, the height of hurricane season.”
The plan would then consolidate the cancelled hearings. However, it is unclear
“how, during their two weeks of quarantine, the legal teams would prepare for
pretrial hearings in the death-penalty case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and
four other men on charges they conspired in the attacks that killed nearly
3,000 people. Even in the best of times it is not easy to hold war court
hearings at Guantánamo Bay. The coronavirus crisis has magnified the challenge”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/politics/guantanamo-bay-coronavirus.html
The last hearing to take place at
Guantánamo was a sentencing hearing for Majid Khan, convicted of war crimes
through a secret plea bargain in 2012. On 13 July, the military commission
judge granted him one year of credit toward his sentence, which is yet to be
given. Khan was granted the credit “as a sanction against the government for
its discovery abuses in Khan’s suit seeking recusal of retired Adm. Christian
Reismeier, who is serving as the convening authority. In response to Khan’s
attorneys’s request for documentation concerning Reismeier’s application to
serve as convening authority, Judge Watkins found that the government omitted
information about Reismeier’s service in three government offices”.
Extraordinary rendition:
In a historic
decision released on July 8, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
determined that four survivors of the U.S. secret detention and torture program
have the right to present their case before the regional tribunal. Binyam
Mohamed, Abou Elkassim Britel, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, and Bisher
al-Rawi are victims of the U.S. extraordinary rendition program — the post-9/11
coordinated global enterprise of kidnapping, bounty payments, incommunicado
detention, and torture. Their landmark
complaint was lodged with the Inter-American Commission in 2011 after a
federal case they filed was thrown out on the basis that allowing the case to
proceed would have revealed “state secrets.”
In ordering the case to move
forward, the Inter-American Commission found that “insurmountable obstacles
within the U.S. legal system” prevent victims of U.S. counterterrorism
operations from obtaining remedies before U.S. courts. The four individuals are
jointly represented by the NYU Global Justice Clinic and the American Civil
Liberties Union.
“Unlike U.S. courts, the Commission
found that victims of U.S. extraordinary rendition and torture can have their
claims heard,” said Steven Watt, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s
Human Rights Program. “Our clients’ decades-long pursuit of
justice has finally paid off.”
Mohamed, Britel, Bashmilah, and
al-Rawi filed their joint petition before the Inter-American Commission after
U.S. federal courts dismissed their lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., a
Boeing subsidiary that provided flight support services to the CIA as part of
the extraordinary rendition program. During rendition flights, victims were
often stripped naked, sexually assaulted, diapered, chained, and strapped down
to the floor of an airplane as part of a brutal procedure known as “capture
shock” treatment. The U.S. government intervened in the lawsuit to invoke the
state secrets privilege, leading to the lawsuit’s dismissal.
LGC Activities:
With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the London Guantánamo
Campaign’s monthly Shut Guantánamo! demonstration will be held virtually at
12-2pm on Thursday 6 August. To take part, please email a photo/video of your
banner to us at london.gtmo@gmail.com before 12pm on
6 August or share your picture/video to our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/London-Guantánamo-Campaign-114010671973111/ or via Twitter (or just a message – some possible messages
available through the link below) @shutguantanamo between 12 and 2pm on
Thursday 6 August. More details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/316968509344933/
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