LGC Newsletter – February 2024

 Guantánamo Bay

A month-long pre-trial hearing is currently underway in February /early March in the case of four men accused of involvement in the September 2001 attacks in New York City. With some of the witnesses heard in closed session, and the defendants not attending all sessions, the judge continued to consider pre-trial issues such as what evidence to include and exclude and evidence obtained through the use of torture. Witnesses on the stand included one of the architects of the CIA extraordinary rendition torture programme, psychologist Dr James Mitchell, who gave testimony about the torture techniques he and other CIA operatives used on the defendants to extract confessions, including waterboarding. He last gave testimony in January 2020 in the case. FBI special agents involved in interrogations with the four men were also called as witnesses to give testimony, as their defence is seeking to have some evidence from these interrogations suppressed due to the CIA and FBI working together on them and using information taken from torture-based confessions. The hearing will end in early March and resume with more witnesses in mid-April, after Ramadan.

https://www.lawdragon.com/news-features/2024-02-23-after-four-year-gap-former-cia-psychologist-retakes-the-stand-in-9-11-case

https://www.lawdragon.com/news-features/2024-02-17-tensions-escalate-in-911-suppression-hearings-over-security-interruptions

 

Two Afghan prisoners, Mullah Abdul Zahir Saber and Haji Abdul Karim, members of the Taliban in 2002, were released from Guantánamo to Oman in 2017, where they were held under house arrest and forbidden to travel. In mid-February, they returned to Afghanistan to a hero’s welcome following efforts to repatriate them by the Afghan government. One Afghan national remains at Guantánamo.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-afghans-oman-abdul-karim-guantanamo-bay-b2494387.html

 

LGC Newsletter – January 2024

Guantánamo Bay

Dennis Edney KC, Scottish-Canadian lawyer of former Guantánamo child prisoner Omar Khadr has died aged 77. He was Khadr’s lawyer for over a decade and played a huge role in getting his client released from Guantánamo Bay when the Canadian government dragged its feet over his repatriation after a military commission plea bargain was reached, and then in helping to secure his release from prison in Canada and improving prison conditions when Khadr was held in solitary confinement and was subject to abuse from other prisoners. After his release from Canadian jail in 2015 on bail, Edney and his wife Patricia welcomed Omar Khadr into their home where he stayed for several years as he rehabilitated back into society. Lawyer Nate Whitling, who worked with Edney on Khadr’s case said, “Dennis was a great lawyer and friend. In all my years in the legal profession, I've never met a lawyer more dedicated to his clients”. A criminal lawyer, he also worked on numerous pro bono cases. In 2014, the LGC hosted a speaking tour by Dennis Edney in the UK to raise awareness about Omar Khadr’s case.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/lawyer-dennis-edney-dead-at-77-1.7072899

 

In a 2-week hearing in January, two Malaysian prisoners held at Guantánamo since 2006, after being transferred there following several years of illegal detention and torture in secret CIA facilities around the world, entered a plea bargain and pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed over 200 people. The two men, Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, 47, and Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, 48, who will now not have to reveal “evidence” through torture-tainted confessions obtained from them, will instead give evidence against the alleged mastermind of the bombings, fellow torture victim, the Indonesian prisoner known as Hambali. They pleaded guilty to five of the nine charges brought against them; the other charges were dropped as part of the deal. Lawyers for Hambali are seeking to have torture-tainted evidence dropped in his separate case.

As part of the hearing, the men addressed the court which was attended by family members of the victims, who read out some of their own messages, and some of their own family members. The advised sentence of 23 years was accepted by the military jury and was later reduced to 5 years in view of the time already spent at Guantánamo (illegal CIA detention not included) of 17 years and the secret deal. The men are expected to be released to Malaysia after that but are not expected to be freed from detention, something that has not happened to any victim of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition torture programme.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/17/two-malaysians-in-guantanamo-plead-guilty-to-conspiring-in-bali-bombings

 

Extraordinary Rendition

Lithuania has been found guilty a second time by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg of complicity in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme, this time in relation to Saudi prisoner Mustafa Al-Hawsawi, whose case has recently been severed from that of the other defendants in the 9/11 case due to the physical and mental impact his torture and detention have had on him. The court held that in his secret detention and torture in the CIA-run facility in Lithuania in 2005-2006 “that there had been violations of the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment or investigation because of Lithuania’s failure to effectively investigate Hawsawi’s allegations “and because of its complicity in the CIA secret detainee programme”.” The court also “held that there were violations to articles relating to the rights to a fair trial and life, as well as abolition of the death penalty, […] because Lithuania assisted Hawsawi’s “transfer from its territory in spite of a real risk that he could face a flagrant denial of justice and the death penalty.”” Lithuania was ordered to pay Al-Hawsawi €100,000 in compensation.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/jan/16/echr-rules-lithuania-allowed-inhuman-treatment-of-alleged-911-suspect-by-cia

LGC Newsletter – December 2023

Guantánamo Bay

The UK Supreme Court has ruled that Guantánamo “forever prisoner” Abu Zubaydah can sue the British government “over allegations that British intelligence services asked the CIA to put questions to him while he was being tortured in “black sites”. The supreme court said MI5 and MI6 were subject to the law of England and Wales and not – as the government had attempted to argue – the six different countries where Abu Zubaydah was held.” Prior to his detention at Guantánamo in 2006, the Palestinian prisoner who was kidnapped by the US in Pakistan in 2002, was “rendered” to torture at secret CIA torture facilities in Thailand, Lithuania, Poland, Morocco, Guantánamo Bay (at a secret facility there) and Afghanistan. He has never been tried or charged. He has successfully sued Poland and Lithuania for their collusion with the CIA in his torture at the European Court of Human Rights. Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers claim that “the UK intelligence services committed the civil wrongs of misfeasance in public office, conspiracy to injure, trespass to the person, false imprisonment and negligence […. Abu Zubaydah] alleges that the UK intelligence services sent numerous questions to the CIA to be used in interrogations, without seeking any assurances that he would not be tortured or mistreated or taking steps to discourage or prevent such treatment. He claims that at the black sites he was waterboarded on 83 occasions and also subjected to extreme sleep deprivation, confinement inside boxes, beatings, death threats, starvation, denial of medical care and no access to sanitation.”

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/dec/20/guantanamo-prisoner-can-sue-uk-government-supreme-court-rules

https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2022-0083.html

 

The Periodic Review Board has denied the last Afghan prisoner, Muhammad Rahim, the chance to be cleared for release, claiming that he still poses a threat to the security of the USA; he has never been charged or tried at Guantánamo in over 17 years of detention there. He is one of three of the remaining 30 prisoners who remain in indefinite detention.

https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/rights-freedom/a-dreams-deferred-again-the-last-remaining-afghan-in-guantanamo-loses-his-latest-bid-for-freedom/

 

The National Defense Authorization Act 2023 has allocated an initial $60 million for the construction of a new and modern healthcare facility but has maintained restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo prisoners to prison facilities in the US and bars funding for their transfer to the US or other countries. In signing the law into force, President Joe Biden criticised these provisions stating: “Section 1033 of the Act continues to bar the use of funds appropriated to the Department of Defense to transfer Guantánamo Bay detainees to the custody or effective control of certain foreign countries.  Section 1031 likewise would continue to prohibit the use of such funds to transfer Guantánamo Bay detainees into the United States.  It is the longstanding position of the executive branch that these provisions unduly impair the ability of the executive branch to determine when and where to prosecute Guantánamo Bay detainees and where to send them upon release.  In some circumstances, these provisions could make it difficult to comply with the final judgment of a court that has directed the release of a detainee on writ of habeas corpus, including by constraining the flexibility of the executive branch with respect to its engagement in delicate negotiations with foreign countries over the potential transfer of detainees. I urge the Congress to eliminate these restrictions as soon as possible.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/12/22/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-h-r-2670-national-defense-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2024/