Guantánamo Bay
Under plans devised by the Trump administration, the US military has closed the secretive Camp 7 at Guantánamo Bay that once housed alleged high-value prisoners who were not allowed to have contact with the outside world. The camp was dilapidated and suffered frequent power cuts; rather than renovate it, it was decided that it should close inside. All of the remaining 40 prisoners are now housed in camps 5 and 6.
Iraqi prisoner Nashwan Al-Tamir lost a case before a federal appeals court to have the charges against him dismissed and the judge presiding over his case disqualified due to a conflict of interest. One of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo following capture in 2006 and torture at CIA black sites, he was charged in 2014 with terrorist offences and faces a life sentence. The judge in his case presided over it while seeking employment elsewhere, a conflict of interest, for which he did not recuse himself. Instead the US government has offered to have the court decisions made reheard by another judge which the appeal court agreed with and thus his claims were denied.
President Biden has announced that he plans to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, although not US involvement, by 11 September this year. Whether or not his government is able to achieve this remains to be seen and will have an impact on the prisoners at Guantánamo, given that the ongoing war there is the rationale for keeping Guantánamo open.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/13/biden-withdraw-troops-afghanistan-september-11
Lawyers for some prisoners have used this as a basis for new legal action to challenge their detention https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/us/politics/afghanistan-war-guantanamo-prison.html
However, in ongoing similar legal proceedings started under previous presidents, lawyers for the Biden administration, in the case of Ali v Biden, decided to broadly uphold the position of the Trump administration that Guantánamo prisoners should not have full due process rights, and thus the ability to challenge their detention in court meaningfully.
It should also be recalled that in 2014, former President Obama also called for US troops to be removed from Afghanistan, yet seven years on, they remain there and Guantánamo is still open.
At least 32 of the remaining 40 Guantánamo prisoners are reported to have been vaccinated against Covid-19.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ap-source-guantanamo-prisoners-now-covid-19-vaccine-77170045
The US Supreme Court has decided to hear a petition by Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah to discover the identities of agents who tortured him while in secret CIA detention in Poland as part of an ongoing investigation there. His lawyers also want to question the architects of the CIA’s torture programme, former contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The US government refuses to disclose this information claiming it falls under state secrets. The case will not be heard until October at least.
His lawyers have also said that they have filed a complaint with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention against the US and 6 other states concerning his ongoing detention without charge or trial. His lawyers hope that the complaint will find that the US is obliged to release him, even though the CIA has previously said that he will never be released.
Abu Zubaydah currently also has a claim against the UK government for disclosure of what it knew about his torture and abuse by the CIA in the UK courts.
Extraordinary Rendition
In early April, the Biden administration removed sanctions on staff of the International Criminal Court (ICC) imposed by his predecessor Trump, imposing visa restrictions and freezing their assets in the US. However, the Biden administration disagrees with the court’s against the US and Israel. In a statement upon lifting the sanction, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We continue to disagree strongly with the ICC's actions relating to the Afghanistan and Palestinian situations. We maintain our longstanding objection to the Court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-States Parties such as the United States and Israel. We believe, however, that our concerns about these cases would be better addressed through engagement with all stakeholders in the ICC process rather than through the imposition of sanctions.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/02/icc-sanctions-reversed-biden-478731
The UK government’s controversial Overseas Operations Bill 2021 has received royal assent and will soon become law. However, this only happened after the government dropped clauses that would shield UK military personnel from prosecution against involvement in war crimes involving torture, genocide or crimes against humanity. More recently it has had to back down on a blanket ban on prosecutions for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government argued but failed to prove that it needed to protect military personnel against “vexatious claims”. While many claims have been made, very few come to trial and even fewer result in prosecutions. The law will prevent civil claims being brought after 6 years in the context of foreign wars.
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