LGC Newsletter – April 2024

Guantánamo Bay 

Pre-trial hearings took place in two cases over the past month: in early April, in the USS Cole case in which Yemeni prisoner Abd Al-Nashiri is accused of involvement in an attack that led to the death of 17 sailors off Yemen in 2000, the first hearing took place in the case since June last year with a new judge, who is understood to want to start the trial in the case in 2025. A five-week hearing is also currently underway in the case of four men accused of involvement in the September 2001 attacks in New York City. The hearing was paused for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Hearings continued where they left off previously, hearing prosecution witnesses from the FBI and other bodies, with some sessions held behind closed doors. On 26 April, “In an apparent historic first, the military judge presiding over the Sept. 11 military commission on Friday left his highly secure courtroom here to travel five miles to the former black site on Guantanamo Bay where the CIA secretly interrogated detainees between 2003-2004 and the FBI later attempted to get "clean" statements for use in a criminal case.

“The location – Camp Echo 2 – was commandeered following the black site detentions in an effort to sanitize coerced statements extracted on this same ground, or at black sites that defense attorneys say were eerily similar. The government claims the subsequent statements, given in January 2007 to the FBI, constitute clean recountings made without coercion and should be admissible at trial. Roughly four months before the statements the Bush administration had announced the transfer of the accused and other high-value detainees to Guantanamo Bay from CIA custody.

“The groundbreaking visit was led by the fourth judge to preside over pretrial hearings, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall. Earlier this week, he explained in an order that a “a site visit” to Echo 2 “would be beneficial for determining” whether he should suppress the contested statements to the FBI. The defense teams claim any disclosures to the FBI resulted from the CIA's prior torture and relentless conditioning of their clients. The prosecution claims the defendants gave their 2007 statements voluntarily.

“The site visit was “historic” as “the first time a judicial officer has visited a former CIA black site,” said James Connell, the lead lawyer for defendant Ammar al Baluchi. Echo 2 is a fulcrum on which the judge will decide if the 2007 statements given to the FBI were sufficiently attenuated from the preceding years of incommunicado detention by the CIA.””

https://www.lawdragon.com/news-features/2024-04-26-judge-on-9-11-case-visits-former-cia-black-site-on-guantanamo-bay

A new $US4 million second courtroom has also opened to allow two consecutive hearings to take place, although attendants of one were not allowed to switch over to the other in different sessions.

 

Extraordinary rendition

 

Lithuania has decided not to appeal a European Court of Human Rights ruling finding it complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme with respect to current Guantánamo prisoner, Saudi Mustafa al-Hawsawi. The ruling thus became final on 16 April. “In late January, the ECtHR awarded 100,000 euros to Mustafa al-Hawsawi for his unlawful detention in the alleged secret facility, and another 30,000 euros to REDRESS, the non-governmental organisation that represented the Saudi national. The Strasbourg court found that al-Hawsawi’s detention in Lithuania had violated various articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, such as the prohibition of torture, the right to a fair trial, the right to life, liberty, and security.”

https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2256614/lithuania-opts-not-to-contest-ecthr-ruling-on-cia-prison

 

Twenty years after US prisoner torture and abuse at the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison was revealed, three former prisoners have had their day in a US court, in a long-running case against US military contractor CACI, Al-Shimari v. CACI. The victims were able to make statements and share their experiences, including post-release trauma and illness, with CACI claiming that the victims were not in the infamous torture pictures and cannot prove they were tortured by its staff, and that ultimately the US military is responsible, to wash its hands of liability. Two weeks after the hearing, the jury has still not delivered its verdict in the case.

https://apnews.com/article/abu-ghraib-trial-iraq-virginia-9e6eae5c7ea05fac90d8541efdd15562

LGC Newsletter – June 2021

Guantánamo Bay

A military judge in the case of Abd al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, facing the death penalty at Guantánamo in relation to his alleged connection to the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000, has allowed an application by the prosecution to admit information obtained through torture to be used as evidence in his case. Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr. ruled in May to allow prosecutors to use torture evidence “in a limited capacity at pre-trial hearings”. Evidence obtained through the use of torture is generally illegal and inadmissible in almost all countries around the world. Lawyers for Al-Nashiri are now appealing to the United States Court of Military Commission Review board to reverse this ruling, stating “'No court has ever sanctioned the use of torture in this way”. Such a decision and request by the prosecution and its attempts to withhold evidence from Al-Nashiri’s defence team show desperation in its efforts to prosecute him. Al-Nashiri has successfully prosecuted European states for their role in his torture and rendition. The next pre-trial hearings in his case are scheduled for September.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9650835/Military-judge-allows-information-obtained-TORTURE-used-case-terror-suspect.html

https://www.justsecurity.org/76985/how-the-biden-administration-should-take-torture-derived-evidence-off-the-table/

 

Two Yemeni prisoners held at Guantánamo since 2004 have been cleared for release by the Periodic Review Board, bringing the number of prisoners held at Guantánamo who can be transferred to 11 out of 40 prisoners. The two men are Abd al-Salam al-Hilah and Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/two-yemeni-men-held-guantanamo-approved-transfer-2021-06-18/

Three Guantánamo prisoners – Indonesian Hambali and Malaysians Mohammed Nazir bin Lep and Mohammed Farik bin Amin – who all arrived at Guantánamo in 2006 following years of detention in secret CIA torture facilities around the world will be arraigned on 30 August on charges of involvement in the Bali bombing of 2002 and a bombing in Jakarta in 2003, formally starting proceedings in the case which was reportedly postponed due to coronavirus. All are charged with “conspiracy, murder, attempted murder, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, terrorism, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, and destruction of property” and the two Malaysians face an additional charge of “accessory after the fact”. The case does not carry the death penalty. In spite of US detention for 18 years and at Guantánamo for 15 years, this will be the first time they are formally charged. The evidence obtained in their cases was obtained through torture in secret CIA torture facilities.

https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/indonesian/arraignment-scheduled-06282021161907.html

 

Extraordinary Rendition

The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by US military contractor CACI International Inc. against a 2019 judgment that ruled that the company was not immune from prosecution as a government contractor. This means that a 2008 case brought by three Iraqi men against the company for directing their torture at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq is closer to going ahead: “The three plaintiffs - Suhail Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili and As'ad Al-Zuba'e - are Iraqi civilians who said they were detained at Abu Ghraib and eventually released without charge. CACI has called the lawsuit baseless”. The case is brought under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-rebuffs-defense-contractors-abu-ghraib-torture-appeal-2021-06-28/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/28/us-supreme-court-rejects-contractors-abu-ghraib-torture-appeal

 

LGC Activities

The LGC joined the G7 protest outside Downing Street on 12 June and the People’s Assembly protest on 26 June where we handed out leaflets and raised awareness about the continuing situation at Guantánamo Bay, where 40 prisoners remain almost 20 years on.

The LGC is also resuming its physical presence outside the US Embassy London with our regular Shut Guantánamo! protests (which we have held since 2007) on Thursday 1^st July at 12-2pm outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms (Nine Elms Lane, SW11 7US, nearest underground: Vauxhall). We are usually found away from the main road in the pedestrianised area outside the embassy and near the housing development opposite it; please walk around the embassy to find us. We can provide orange jumpsuits and banners but you are welcome to bring your own. For more details: https://www.facebook.com/events/379910286772908

 

LGC Newsletter – September 2017

NEWS:

Guantánamo Bay

On 7 September, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), at its 164^th session in Mexico City, heard the merits in a case brought by former Algerian Guantánamo prisoner Djamel Ameziane against the United States (Ameziane v United States) for the abuse and arbitrary detention he suffered during his 12 years at Guantánamo Bay, where he was never charged or tried. He was then returned to Algeria by the Obama administration against his will where he faced incommunicado detention and trial. At the time, he had been seeking asylum elsewhere should he be released from Guantánamo, and had reasonable grounds to fear persecution on his return to a country he had fled in the 1990s on the basis of his Berber ethnic minority status. The case was brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL); this was a landmark hearing as it is the first time a court with international jurisdiction in the Americas has heard such a merits case. A ruling in favour of Ameziane by the court would put considerable pressure on the US government and would add to the international law pressure to close Guantánamo.

Lawyers at the hearing urged the IACHR to declare that the US government violated his human rights and order reparations, including access to adequate medical care, financial assistance for basic needs, return of his personal property, and a public apology for what was done to him. Although Djamel Ameziane was unable to attend the hearing, he submitted a statement to the hearing setting out his case and his feelings towards his ordeal at Guantánamo Bay and the difficulties he has faced in re-establishing his life since his release: https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/09/Ameziane_Statement_IACHR_MeritsHearing_0.pdf

https://ccrjustice.org/home/blog/2017/09/07/landmark-hearing-today-djamel-ameziane-formerly-detained-guant-namo-calls

 In early September, the CCR also made an emergency request to the courts for an independent medical evaluation of one of its remaining clients at Guantánamo, 43-year old Yemeni Sharqawi Al-Hajj, who is currently on hunger strike in protest at his ongoing detention. Al-Hajj suffers from a number of illnesses that doctors “believe are symptoms of severe liver disease or another potentially life-threatening underlying illness, or associated with his torture in secret prisons for two years before Guantánamo” and which his lawyers believe are being worsened by his hunger strike.

https://ccrjustice.org/home/blog/2017/09/08/making-sure-our-guant-namo-client-can-survive-and-fight-his-unlawful-detention

Nashwan al Tamir, known to the US military as Abdul Hadi Al Iraqi, had surgery on his spine twice this month. Needing surgery since January this year, neurosurgeons arrived at Guantánamo ahead of Hurricane Irma to operate on his back. Awaiting trial on non-capital charges, he uses a wheelchair and has had back problems for more than a decade, which his lawyers attribute to his treatment in US military detention. However, the US military claims he has been refusing treatment. Surgeons had to be rushed in urgently after he complained that he lost feeling in his lower body. His lawyer claims he has long been at risk of paralysis and that the military is withholding information about his condition from them. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article171882522.html

On 21 September, they filed a petition to the courts to ask a federal judge to intervene in his medical care, claiming that he only received the two operations after they consulted external doctors on his condition. The doctors concluded that “he was at risk of paralysis from a condition damaging his spine and nervous system.”

They are asking the judge to appoint and fund an independent medical expert to supervise his care and to “order the prison to release his full medical records to outside experts as well as to his medical team.” The request is extraordinary and much secrecy surrounds medical practices at Guantánamo. In their petition, his lawyers wrote, “The deliberate indifference and disregard of the United States toward petitioner’s health and safety have put him at immediate risk of permanent paralysis or worse, and constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.”

His lawyers have been forbidden from visiting him while he recovers and his October pre-trial hearing has been cancelled. His next hearing is scheduled for mid-December.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article175479396.html

At a key national security conference this month, Brigadier General John G. Baker, the Chief Defense Counsel of the Military Commissions Defense Organization gave a speech at George Washington University Law School in which he spoke critically of the military commission system at Guantánamo stating that defence lawyers defend “the rule of law from a military commission apparatus that is flawed in both design and execution” and described the commissions as “a failed experiment”.

https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Baker-Speech.pdf

Omar Khadr was back in court in Edmonton, Canada, on 15 September to ask to have his remaining bail conditions loosened further, to include unfettered access to his sister Zaynab Khadr, who lives abroad. The judge, however, said that his sister is still an Al Qaeda supporter and maintained the restrictions that Khadr and his sister communicate only in English and in the presence of a court-appointed supervisor. The judge also refused to relax his travel restrictions, meaning he still has to ask permission to travel outside the province of Alberta within Canada. He has, however, had restrictions on his internet usage lifted.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/detainee-omar-khadr-bail-conditions-1.4291347

 

Extraordinary rendition

On 22 September, a federal court ruled that three Iraqi citizens tortured and held prisoner at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by US contractor CACI could prosecute the company and hold it responsible for their treatment. The case was originally brought in 2008 and the ruling will allow the men to hold the company directly responsible.

According to the CCR, which is bringing the case on behalf of the men, “U.S. military investigators long ago concluded that CACI interrogators conspired with U.S. soldiers, who were later court martialed, to “soften up” detainees for interrogations; according to statements by co-conspirators. A U.S. Army general referred to the treatment as “sadistic, blatant, and wanton” criminal abuses. Al Ejaili, Al-Suba’e, and Al Shimari [the complainants] were subjected to electric shocks, sexual assaults, sensory deprivation, mock executions, stress positions, broken bones, deprived of oxygen, food and water, stripped and kept naked, forced to witness the rape of a female prisoner, as well as experienced other dehumanizing acts of torture and threats to themselves and their families.”

LGC Activities:

The September Shut Guantánamo! monthly demonstration was on 7 September. Our next monthly demonstration is on Thursday 5 October. It is a special demonstration to mark 16 years of the war in Afghanistan, which gave rise to detention at Guantánamo and hosted a number of secret prisons run by the CIA. We will stand in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan and particularly the large number of refugees being repatriated from across Europe and elsewhere to Afghanistan even though the conflict is escalating as President Trump sends more troops there. This demonstration will be outside the US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, W1A, ONLY from 12-2pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/1470694673046702/

LGC Newsletter – October 2016

NEWS:

Guantánamo Bay:

There are currently 60 prisoners held at Guantánamo. The last Mauritanian prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 46, was released to his country on 17 October where he has been reunited with his family and is a free man. Upon his return, he issued a list of people he would like to thank for their support to free him. A first video in English has been released by the American Civil Liberties Union https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_KkkwlLBWY

Ould Slahi is the best-selling author of Guantánamo Diary which recounts the torture and abuse he faced in US hands up to 2005. He was kidnapped from his home in Mauritania and rendered to Jordan and then to Afghanistan before arriving at Guantánamo in August 2002. Raped and beaten, he was one of a handful of CIA prisoners subject to a “special project” whose torture was approved personally by Donald Rumsfeld. Nonetheless, Ould Slahi said that he will not be taking action against the US at a press conference held on 22 October.

https://www.aclu.org/news/mohamedou-slahi-released-guantanamo-after-14-years-without-charge-or-trial

 

Having completed the initial round of prisoner reviews, the administrative military board has decided to continue classifying a number of prisoners as “forever” prisoners this month, to be held indefinitely without charge or trial, although their status can be reviewed again in six months’ time. These decisions are hardly surprising as they include Indonesian “Encep Nurjaman Hambali” and stateless Palestinian Abu Zubaydah. Although the US continues to deem them a threat to its security, no charges have been placed against any of them, yet they are among those who were subject to some of the most severe forms of torture meted out by the CIA. It is more than likely that the US does not wish to release them due to the information they could reveal about its torture programme. The real threat they pose to the US is the one the US created for itself by acting outside of the law. A number of these prisoners were victims of extraordinary rendition and were not kidnapped or arrested in Pakistan or Afghanistan. There are currently 28 “forever prisoners” at Guantánamo.

https://news.vice.com/story/guantanamo-abu-zubaydah-never-go-free

Late on 14 October, Mustafa Al Hawsawi, one of the 5 defendants awaiting military trial for alleged involvement in the September 2001 attacks in New York underwent rectal surgery to repair damage done by repeatedly being raped while he was in CIA custody. The wounds inflicted on Al Hawsawi through sexual torture resulted in a rectal prolapse which caused him to bleed for over a decade and made it difficult for him to relieve himself or sit with ease, as noted by observers during pre-trial hearings. According to his lawyer Walter Ruiz, “When he has a bowel movement, he has to reinsert parts of his anus back into his anal cavity,” which “causes him to bleed, causes him excruciating pain.” As a result Al Hawsawi has often chosen to fast instead. According to his lawyers, he has also suffered other forms of serious and long-lasting pain and illness due to his time in secret CIA torture facilities.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article107451907.html#storylink=cpy

A pre-trial hearing was held on 12-14 October in the case of five men accused of involvement in the September 2001 attacks in New York. Prior to the hearing, the trial judge ruled that the government can retroactively seal (i.e. after it has been given and made public) public war court testimony as “state secrets sometimes slip through Camp Justice’s special national security screening system.” The judge rejected a challenge brought by media organisations against a Pentagon transcript from 2015 that blacked-out open court testimony.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article107845622.html

During the pre-trial proceedings, lawyers for the defendants asked to be given their clients’ full medical records from the time they spent in secret CIA custody, “arguing they need the details to avert their military execution” and to prepare for trial. However, according to the prosecution, the defence has been provided with all the CIA medical records they could find. Part of the pre-trial hearing was to consider whether or not the disclosure of evidence made by the parties is adequate. The next pre-trial hearing in this case is set for early December.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article107872842.html

A pre-trial hearing was held in mid-October in the military commission case of Abd Al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding the bombing of a US naval ship in the Gulf of Aden, off the Yemen coast, in 2000. During the hearing, Al-Nashiri requested to be allowed to stay at the war court compound during hearings as being transported from the war court to secret Camp 7 each day makes him feel ill and anti-nausea medicine he is given to deal with the transport makes him unable to engage effectively with the proceedings. At this hearing too, issues were raised about the evidence provided and the chief prosecutor reported that all the evidence that can be given to the defence has been given to it.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/10/17/alleged-uss-cole-bombing-mastermind-wants-gitmo-war-court.html

As part of their claim against Guantánamo chiefs involved in their torture and abuse, former French prisoners Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali (held at Guantánamo 2002-2005) have asked for William J Haynes II, who served as general counsel to the US Defence Department at the time, to be brought before the French courts. In their application, they said that Haynes was "one of the main architects of the interrogation and detention policies of the Bush administration.” In March, former Guantánamo commander retired General Geoffrey D. Miller failed to attend a hearing he was summoned to in France in the same case.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ex-guantanamo-inmates-seek-evidence-former-us-official-1959316764

On 20 October, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of Ali Hamza Al-Bahlul, who was convicted by a military commission in 2008, even though he had previously won his whole appeal, and once been acquitted on two of three charges. The US government had asked for a retrial and although the judges sided with the government’s argument they could not agree why. The case is likely to now be appealed to the Supreme Court. A possible verdict there that sees Al-Bahlul’s convictions upheld could have a negative impact on Omar Khadr’s appeal against his conviction for conspiracy. The judgment as such will have little impact elsewhere. In the meantime, Al-Bahlul has been held in isolation from other prisoners over the past 8 years as his case is volleyed around the US courts.

https://www.justsecurity.org/33726/todays-en-banc-d-c-circuit-ruling-al-bahlul/

On 25 October, a court case filed by a former Afghan prisoner who was released and returned home in December 2014 was thrown out by a federal court; he was seeking a judicial ruling – the case was brought when he was still held at Guantánamo – clearing him of any claims of links to terrorism. Shawali Khan continued to pursue his habeas case after his release as he claims that the allegations of connections to a terrorist organisation have caused further problems for him. While held at Guantánamo, evidence against him was used in the case that was kept secret from his lawyers at the time; his detention was upheld on the basis of that evidence. The government itself later dismissed the credibility of this secret evidence.
The judge dismissed the case claiming it was moot as he had been released and that harm to his reputation was not a serious enough ground for the case. Since his release, his land has been seized by the Afghan government and he has been denied medical treatment, issues the court said it could not deal with.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/us/guantanamo-shawali-khan-detainee.html?_r=0

Jihad Dhiab, a Syrian refugee who was released from Guantánamo to Uruguay has ended his hunger strike after more than 2 months after it emerged that an undisclosed third country has agreed to resettle him and his family together. When released in 2014 he was promised that he would be reunited with his family who live as refugees in Turkey or are displaced inside Syria. He tried to leave Uruguay when this did not happen and when he was forced to return to Uruguay he went on hunger strike.

http://www.dw.com/en/former-guantanamo-inmate-ends-hunger-strike/a-36125550

Thank you to everyone who took part in our urgent action and signed our petition.

Extraordinary rendition:

On 21 October, an appeal court reinstated a long-running lawsuit against private military contractor CACI for its role in torture at Abu Ghraib prison. A lower court had dismissed the case, claiming that the issue was political and had to be decided by the government. CACI had argued that its liability was not a legal or prosecutable matter. This is the fourth time the case has come before the appeal court.

https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/appellate-court-reinstates-abu-ghraib-torture-lawsuit-against

LGC Activities:

The October Shut Guantánamo demonstration was on Thursday 6 October. The November demonstration is replaced by our special evening demo on Tuesday 8 November outside the US Embassy at 6-8pm to coincide with the US presidential election: http://londonguantanamocampaign.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/8-november-unfinished-business.html   

The LGC (@shutguantanamo) is continuing to hold weekly #GitmObama Twitter storms to raise awareness about Guantánamo prisoners every Monday at 9pm BST. The pastebin is available http://pastebin.com/zpx5F7ab which is updated weekly with the latest information and tweets to raise awareness about Guantánamo. Please join us online if you can!