LGC Newsletter – May 2024

 Guantánamo Bay

Former Algerian prisoner Saeed Bakhouch was sentenced to three years in prison on terrorism charges in Algeria on 13 May. He is the last prisoner to be released by the Biden administration in April 2023, having never been charged with any crime in his 21 years at Guantánamo. In spite of assurances from the US that he would not face further persecution following repatriation to Algeria, he was detained immediately and held in conditions that his lawyers described as “brutal” and has not been afforded a fair trial.

https://theintercept.com/2024/05/21/guantanamo-algeria-terrorism-prison-saeed-bakhouch/

 

The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Canadian former child prisoner Omar Khadr against his military tribunal conviction, obtained through a plea bargain in order to be released back to Canada. “He had waived his right to appeal when he pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges that included murder. But his lawyers argued that a subsequent ruling by the federal appeals court in Washington DC called into question whether Khadr could have been charged with the crimes in the first place”. Khadr was released from prison in Canada in May 2015, where he was repatriated to serve the rest of his sentence, pending his appeal; “A Canadian judge ruled in 2019 that his war crimes sentence had expired.” Khadr is the only person in the world in over 80 years to be tried as an adult for offences allegedly committed as a minor. His trial was tainted by evidence obtained through the use of torture when he was a minor.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/20/supreme-court-guantanamo-appeal-rejected

 

A 20 May report by NBC states that the Biden administration was close to transferring 11 prisoners from Guantánamo to Oman in October 2023, but changed its mind after the 7 October incidents in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: “The move was imminent and Congress had already been notified it would take place when it was called off.” This is according to 4 US officials who were aware of the planned schedule for this. No new date has been set for the transfer. The 11 men are reportedly either Yemeni or with ties to the country. It is also reported that the transfer deal is still being discussed and could happen in the future.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/biden-ready-move-11-detainees-guantanamo-october-paused-seven-months-rcna152985

This corroborates a story earlier this year on planned transfers that were stalled: “To be clear, these aren’t JTF’s decisions. It doesn’t take these steps until after the State Department has reached an agreement with a country to repatriate or resettle the men; the Defense Department has provided Congress with details of the transfer (which, by law, the administration must do 30 days in advance of most transfers); and the transfer is imminent.

In other words, it appears these men are continuing to languish at Guantanamo not for lack of a country willing to receive them, but for some other reason. As with most things Guantanamo, Occam’s razor suggests that reason is politics. If so, and absent some other compelling justification (the need to focus on the situation in the Middle East would not be a compelling one, given it is unrelated to Guantanamo transfers and there will always be a crisis to manage) the administration’s decision is as misguided as it is disheartening.”

https://www.justsecurity.org/91153/another-lost-year-on-guantanamo/

The Biden administration has transferred 10 prisoners in the past 3 years, bringing the prisoner population down to 30, the majority of whom are cleared for release. The further persecution in Algeria of Saeed Bakhouch since his transfer to Algeria last year, however, suggests that, decades on, the US government remains sloppy and careless in its handling of transfers, even though by its own admission, upon release, the prisoners are innocent and any claims of risks and threats posed to the US are non-specified and thus objectively non-existent.

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 – May 2023

Guantánamo Bay

“The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Tuesday [9 May] that former Guantánamo Bay detainee Omar Ahmed Khadr waived his right to appeal his war crime convictions under the Military Commissions Act. Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson authored the opinion of the court.

“The court ruled that Khadr waived his right to appeal his convictions in his pretrial agreement with the federal prosecutor on his case. In the agreement, Khadr agreed to plead guilty to all his charges and waive his appeal rights for a sentence not to exceed eight years. The court ruled Khadr “knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily” waived his right to appeal his conviction. Additionally, the court decided that Khadr “expressly waived the right to appeal his conviction, sentence and detention.” The court also noted the importance of allowing criminal defendants to waive their rights to appeal as a “bargaining chip to use in negotiating a plea agreement with the Government.””

A dissenting opinion was given by Judge Robert Wilkins who said that the court did not have the jurisdiction to review the plea agreement between the military commission and the Canadian former prisoner.

https://www.jurist.org/news/2023/05/us-appeals-court-rules-that-al-qaida-member-waived-right-to-appeal-war-crime-convictions/

 

In a new case before the secretive investigatory powers tribunal in the UK, lawyers for Abd Al Nashiri have argued that the UK secret services – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – were involved in his rendition and torture by the CIA. “In papers submitted to the tribunal, al-Nashiri’s barrister, Hugh Southey KC, said: “The complainant’s case is that the UK agencies aided, abetted, encouraged, facilitated and/or conspired with the US authorities in his mistreatment.” […]The lawyers allege the UK’s involvement in al-Nashiri’s mistreatment probably included allowing Luton airport to be used to refuel a private jet used in his rendition from Thailand to Poland in December 2002.” The UK government argued that the court did not have the jurisdiction to hear the case.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/28/guantanamo-detainee-accuses-uk-agencies-of-complicity-in-his-torture

 

The 10-year sentence for association with a terrorist organisation, involved in recruiting for ISIS, given to former Algerian prisoner Saber Lahmar in France, who was never charged or tried at Guantánamo, was upheld on appeal on 25 May. The sentence includes a 2/3 custodial sentence and a permanent ban from French territory. His lawyers have stated that the charges were based on hearsay and intend to appeal to the French Supreme Court.

https://www.7sur7.be/monde/peine-de-10-ans-de-prison-confirmee-en-appel-pour-un-ex-detenu-de-guantanamo~adf87186/

A new report by Prof Mark Denbeaux and his students at the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University law school, “American Torturers: FBI and CIA Abuses at Dark Sites and Guantánamo,” includes new drawings by his client “forever” prisoner Abu Zubaydah of the torture he received. These images provide “the most comprehensive and detailed account yet seen of the brutal techniques to which he was subjected. Abu Zubaydah has created a series of 40 drawings that chronicle the torture he endured in a number of CIA dark sites between 2002 and 2006 and at Guantánamo Bay. In the absence of a full official accounting of the torture program, which the CIA and the FBI have labored for years to keep secret, the images give a unique and searing insight into a grisly period in US history. The drawings, which Zubaydah has annotated with his own words, depict gruesome acts of violence, sexual and religious humiliation, and prolonged psychological terror committed against him and other detainees. They were sketched from memory in his Guantánamo cell and sent to one of his lawyers, Prof Mark Denbeaux.”

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/may/11/abu-zubaydah-drawings-guantanamo-bay-us-torture-policy

LGC Newsletter – February 2020

Guantánamo Bay

A two-week pre-trial hearing was heard in the case of the five men accused of involvement in attacks in New York City in September 2001. During the ongoing hearings, ahead of the scheduled start of the trial in January 2021, long-term lawyer of Saudi Ramzi bin Al Shibh, who has represented him since before the defendants were arraigned in May 2012, entered a motion to withdraw from the case on health grounds. Worried that this could delay the start of the trial in 2021, the prosecution asked for him to stay on until a replacement is ready to take on his role. Harrington’s motion, which was granted provided that he remains under a replacement is found, was made one week before the hearing started and delated testimony from former “FBI Special Agent James Fitzsimmons, who was involved in early overseas interrogations of some of the defendants”.

http://www.lawdragon.com/2020/02/18/lead-lawyers-potential-exit-from-9-11-case-sparks-emotional-arguments/

The hearing also looked at interference by the CIA and other agencies in hearings through a tablet computer used by prosecutors through which they are told when to ask the judge to halt the proceedings. This was noticed by defence lawyers “last month when questioning key witnesses who led the CIA’s abusive black-site interrogation program.” Lawyers argued that this CIA interference “could violate the due process rights of the five men accused of planning the 9/11 attacks”. The judge stated that he had allowed prosecutors to use such a device to “prevent spills of classified information that he is required to protect as a matter of law” and that “No outside agency is providing litigation advice or strategy to the prosecution”. However, defence lawyers stated that this must be done in a transparent manner that does not give the CIA leverage in the court proceedings.

http://www.lawdragon.com/2020/02/20/due-process-violation-claimed-over-cia-electronic-presence-in-9-11-pretrial/

The judge cancelled a three-week hearing set for March but said that he would seek not to push back the trial start date of January 2021 yet. The next hearing is scheduled to start on 1^st June, after Ramadan.

In the other Guantánamo capital case of Abd Al-Nashiri, accused of involvement of attacks on US navy vessels in the Gulf of Aden in 2000, the judge has suggested a trial start date of February 2022. Defence and prosecution lawyers have been given until 31 March to comment on a schedule for pre-trial hearings put forward by the judge.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/us/politics/uss-cole-bombing-trial.html

In the same case, Sudan has agreed to pay compensation to the families of the 17 men killed aboard the vessel as a key condition for the state to be removed from the US’ terrorism list; the US claims that the two suicide bombers who carried out the attack were trained in the state. The deal is reported to be worth around $30 million. Although Romania and Poland have compensated Al-Nashiri for CIA torture carried out on him there, the US is using torture evidence in the case against him and has offered no admission of guilt or compensation.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-51487712

In a lawsuit brought in Canada against Omar Khadr by the family of US military man Michael Speer, allegedly killed by Khadr in Afghanistan in 2002, for whose death he was convicted, among other charges, in his 2010 secret guilty plea bargain at Guantánamo, in order to claim the $134 million compensation awarded to them by a US judge in a case they brought against him that he did not contend, the Ontario Supreme Court has ordered Khadr to answer questions put to him by the family concerning confessions he made to the US, under duress of torture and that he signed in admission of

as part of his guilty plea. Khadr’s lawyers have not commented on the ruling.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/canada/omar-khadr-told-to-answer-utah-plaintiffs-questions-about-his-confession/wcm/877b4c94-4d42-4e46-92cf-91011154ecad

Khadr also recently gave his first public speech alongside fellow former child prisoner Ishmael Beah as part of an event to mark International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers (12 February) at Dalhousie University https://nationalpost.com/news/world/former-guantanamo-bay-detainee-omar-khadr-speaks-in-at-child-soldiers-panel 

LGC Activities:

The next monthly Shut Guantánamo! demonstration will be held outside the US Embassy in London on Nine Elms Lane, SW11 7US (nearest underground: Vauxhall) at 12-2pm on Thursday 5 March. Details: https://www.facebook.com/events/197927804903085/  

LGC Newsletter – January 2020

Guantánamo Bay

James Mitchell and Bruce Jensen, the CIA’s two independent contractor psychologists who designed its torture programme, spent two weeks giving testimony and defending the use of torture on prisoners at the Guantánamo military commissions. Lawyers for five defendants accused of involvement in attacks on New York City in September 2001, who face the death penalty, had the opportunity to question the two men about the torture programme. It was the first time that the two men spoke under oath in open court about the programme and their role in it. They were paid $81 million for the programme that tortured over 100 men. While giving testimony, they objected to lawyers calling their methods “torture”. As can only happen at Guantánamo, the torturers gave evidence in support of their methods against their victims on whether evidence obtained through physical, psychological and sexual torture can constitute admissible evidence, something that would not be a consideration anywhere else and would have seen the case dismissed long ago as there does not appear to be any credible evidence that was not obtained through the use of torture in their case.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/approved-by-the-cia-gitmo-testimony-sheds-light-on-81-million-contract-for-black-site-interrogations

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/guantanamo-9-11-forever-trials/ https://www.newsweek.com/tortured-jessen-mitchell-rabbani-sorry-guantanamo-1483100

 

 The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a request by Omar Khadr to order the military appeals court to hear his appeal against his 2010 conviction, which has been suspended since 2013. The court said that Khadr “has not demonstrated a 'clear and indisputable right' to the extraordinary remedy” of having the hearing of his appeal forced and expedited. His appeal was suspended pending the hearing of another appeal. The court also stated that some of the legal issues in that case were outstanding and that Khadr’s appeal would be heard once they were resolved.

https://www.cp24.com/news/u-s-court-won-t-force-military-to-hear-omar-khadr-war-crimes-appeal-1.4772714

Omar Khadr will give a public speech in February at Dalhousie University along with another renowned former child soldier Ishmael Beah as keynote speakers at an event about child soldiers, along with retired Canadian general and former senator Roméo Dallaire and others.

https://lfpress.com/news/canada/omar-khadr-to-make-first-public-appearance-as-keynote-speaker-at-dalhousie-university-event/wcm/eeddb2c8-850e-4512-b139-09f9f6c5a32c

 

LGC Activities:

The London Guantánamo Campaign joined the Guantanamo Justice Campaign at a rally in Trafalgar Square on Saturday 11 January to mark 18 years since the opening of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. 40 prisoners remain.

Our first monthly Shut Guantánamo! demonstration for 2020, now entering our fourteenth year of regular protests, will be held outside the US Embassy in London on Nine Elms Lane, SW11 7US (nearest underground: Vauxhall) at 12-2pm. Details: https://www.facebook.com/events/118841106056029/

LGC Newsletter – November 2019

LGC Newsletter – November 2019

Guantánamo Bay

Pre-trial hearings continued in the case of five men accused of involvement in attacks on New York City in September 2001. In the final hearing for 2019, FBI agents continued to give oral evidence of how the agency sent questions to the CIA “while it held the five defendants at overseas black sites in the years before they arrived at Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Former FBI Special Agent Adam Drucker recalled procedural details of sending questions to the CIA and later receiving intelligence generated at the black sites about the 9/11 attacks and other possible threats. In two days of public testimony, Drucker portrayed the system as obvious and necessary because the CIA did not give him and other Sept. 11 case agents direct access to the detainees at the black sites.” Drucker’s testimony provided information on the bureaucratic machinery behind the process and the vast paper trail involved. This witness was not personally involved in interrogations but witnessed them. “First Camp 7 Commander” who was the first commander at the Guantánamo camp “reserved for the “high-value detainees” previously held by the CIA” also gave evidence at the hearing. He claimed that the prisoners volunteered to attend sessions with the FBI, which is what the prosecution alleges. He told the hearing that he did not have full control over all decisions and some members of his internal guard force at Camp 7 were not military even though they wore uniforms. The final witness at this part of the hearing was FBI Supervisory Special Agent Michael Butsch, who gave testimony on “his coordination with the CIA on interrogations that took place prior to January 2007”; “He also testified to being present at overseas interrogations of Sept. 11 defendant Ramzi bin al Shibh in 2002, disclosing a new level of coordination between the agencies.” However, much of his testimony was classified and the defence team could only put specific questions to him; for example, he could not name the site he was at in 2002.

While the prosecution contends that the defendants opted to attend interrogations with the FBI at Guantánamo voluntarily, the defence is seeking to have any evidence they gave to them disqualified due to CIA interference as well as the use of intelligence obtained through torture at CIA black sites.

http://www.lawdragon.com/2019/11/02/fbi-involvement-in-cia-black-site-interrogations-confirmed-by-third-witness/

http://www.lawdragon.com/2019/11/09/fbi-witness-in-sept-11-case-was-present-at-overseas-interrogations-of-defendant-in-2002/

A US federal appeals court has suspended all military commission proceedings in the case of the defendant known as Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi while the court reviews a conflict of interest challenge made in his case.

Hearings will resume at the military commission on 3 December in the capital case of Abd Al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding an attack on the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden in 2000. Hearings in his case were suspended in February 2018 and will resume for the first time since then with a new judge. Ahead of the hearing, the new judge, Colonel Lanny J. Acosta Jr, has ruled that prosecutors in his case misrepresented evidence in his case, “complicating efforts to bring the suspect to trial at Guantánamo Bay and raising new questions about how the military commission system is dealing with the legacy of the C.I.A.’s secret prisons.” In his ruling, the judge said “that he reviewed a sample of evidence provided to defense lawyers and found “deletions that could fairly be characterized as self-serving and calculated to avoid embarrassment,” and “indicative of a minimalist view” of evidence defense lawyers were entitled to receive.” He also declined a request from prosecutors to reinstate 30,000 pages of court filings a federal court set aside in 2018 after it found the previous judge had a conflict on interest in his handling of the case as “he was secretly negotiating with the Justice Department for an immigration court judge job.”.

The judge has also ordered “prosecutors in the Cole case to provide defense lawyers with information “regarding intrusions into attorney-client communications,” a decision that could further delay the timetable to a trial.

“In the summer of 2018, Mr. Nashiri’s lawyers discovered an eavesdropping system in their client meeting room at the prison and were denied a request to investigate who, if anyone, was listening in on confidential conversations. The previous judge, Colonel Spath, refused to order release of that information or to let defense lawyers discuss it in public, prompting a walkout in October 2018 by Mr. Nashiri’s entire defense team.

“These allegations have already had a chilling effect, contributed to lengthy delays, and led to the withdrawal of three defense counsel,” Colonel Acosta wrote in that ruling. “The first step to ameliorating the issue is discovery.””

https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/judge-rules-prosecutors-misrepresented-evidence-cia-sites

 

The US government is claiming, in new legal filings, that it would be inappropriate for Omar Khadr’s appeal against his 2010 military commission conviction to be heard. Khadr has served his sentence in Canada and although he filed his appeal many years ago, it was delayed while other appeals were heard but was not resumed once they were decided. Other successful appeals have shown that the “offences to which he pleaded guilty were not war crimes when he allegedly committed them.” In April, his US lawyers asked the US federal court of appeal to order the “the military reviewing court to hear his appeal.” In August, the court order the US government to respond.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/don-t-force-military-court-to-hear-omar-khadr-appeal-u-s-government-argues-1.4674587

Later in November, the relevant court , theUnited States Court of Military Commission Review issued an order denying the “motion to lift a stay in proceedings in Khadr's appeal”, which could further delay his appeal by years. Nonetheless, the federal appeals court has yet to make its judgment.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/omar-khadr-appeal-delayed-in-american-military-court-1.5364062 

LGC Activities:

There is no monthly Shut Guantánamo demo in December as we will be joining the Guantanamo Justice Campaign at the “No to Trump, No to NATO” demo in Central London on 3 December. Please join us there: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/events/national-events/3277-dec-2019-london-no-to-trump-no-to-nato-london-demonstration

 

LGC Newsletter – September 2019

Guantánamo Bay

The 38^th pre-trial hearing of five men accused of involvement in attacks on New York in September 2001 dominated the month of September at Guantánamo as the first ever three-week hearing started on 9 September, ending on Friday 27^th, to discuss a defence motion to suppress testimonies from FBI witnesses as well as what can and cannot be asked of them. Prior to the start of this hearing, the prosecution issued a document revealing facts that had previously been classified. These revealed that the FBI had access to some of the defendants when they were held at secret CIA prisons prior to being brought to Guantánamo in 2006. According to one of the defence lawyers, James Connell, who filed the motion, the information shows that “the FBI sent well over 1,000 questions to the CIA for the agency to ask detainees, including [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed, who was subjected to waterboarding 183 times.”

Other information revealed by the new information “included confirmation that detainees Hawsawi, bin al-Shibh, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were held and questioned at a specific black site in Guantánamo called Echo 2 between late 2003 and early 2004. That is the same location where they were questioned after being returned to Guantánamo in September 2006 and where detainee meetings with defense attorneys are still held.”

Previously, the FBI had always maintained that it was separate to the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme. While the US “government claims that the defendants’ incriminating statements at Guantanamo were voluntary and thus should be admissible in court” as they were made using conventional interview techniques, Connell stated that the “new disclosures on CIA-FBI coordination significantly strengthened his position that the statements were, in fact, obtained by torture as part of one large interrogation program spanning the black sites and Guantanamo Bay.”

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/11/fbi-cia-black-site-guantanamo/

http://www.lawdragon.com/2019/09/10/sept-11-case-set-for-pivotal-suppression-hearing-as-government-declassifies-details-of-fbis-role-in-cia-black-sites/

As part of the hearing, the testimony of FBI agents who had interviewed the defendants was heard and the question of “whether the FBI’s involvement in the CIA’s black-site interrogations should disallow statements provided later, in 2007, in interrogations by the FBI”, their suppression, was raised. One of the witnesses, FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald, whose testimony took up most of the second week of the hearing, confirmed that “he and his colleagues sent hundreds of interrogation questions to the CIA while the defendants were at the black sites, and that the CIA had sent cables back with significant amounts of information that is now relevant to the case.”

Future pre-trial hearings are expected to deal with suppression motions to exclude statements made under duress of torture to the FBI by other defendants and hear the testimony of other witnesses.

http://www.lawdragon.com/2019/09/20/in-sept-11-case-one-set-of-fbi-interrogations-cast-in-two-different-lights/

In the third week, before the end of the suppression motion hearing, defence and prosecution lawyers argued over who was causing delays to the case and the feasibility of the schedule set by Judge Cohen in order to meet his date set for the trial to begin in January 2021.

http://www.lawdragon.com/2019/09/27/suppression-hearing-in-sept-11-case-ends-with-stormy-exchanges-over-trial-date/  

Following a petition by Omar Khadr in August to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for the military appeals court to hear his appeal of his 2012 conviction at Guantánamo, for which he has already served his entire sentence at Guantánamo and in Canada, the court has appointed three judges to hear the appeal, which was filed in 2013 but has not progressed for several years. According to his US lawyer, Sam Morison, the US Department of Defense has said it cannot hear his appeal as he is a “fugitive” having returned to Canada even though he was sent there by the US.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/u-s-military-court-appoints-panel-to-hear-omar-khadr-s-war-crimes-appeal-1.5297157

Extraordinary Rendition:

A report by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security in New Zealand has found that intelligence agencies in the country did not know that information they received from US agencies was obtained through torture even though they knew it came from individuals held at secret locations; thus the country’s intelligence agencies (SIS and GCSB) have been cleared of complicity and involvement in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme. New Zealand launched an inquiry into its role in the CIA programme in 2015 following the 2014 publication of the redacted US Senate report on the issue which revealed many details of the programme. Nonetheless, the report found that the agencies had “received many intelligence reports obtained from detainees who had been tortured.” The report looked at New Zealand’s role and possible connections to the rendition programme between 2001 and 2009 and whether there were adequate guidelines in place to deal with involvement and operations with foreign intelligence. In response the agencies have said they “will look at disposing of, or sealing, any intelligence reports received from the CIA as a result of torture”.

Although the findings absolve the agencies of involvement in the rendition programme, they still knew the US was arbitrarily and illegally holding detainees and yet still put questions to the CIA to ask them, thus condoning part of the illegal action of the US. One of the people to whom questions was put is current Guantánamo prisoner, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was then being held at a secret CIA torture prison. The 2014 report revealed he had been waterboarded 183 and he is currently potentially facing the death penalty at Guantánamo on the basis of evidence obtained through the use of torture. In addition, New Zealand agencies could have contributed information that led to the tortured detainees being captured.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/398398/nz-spies-received-intelligence-from-tortured-detainees-watchdog 

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12264027

In a deposition case as to whether two CIA contractor psychologists who helped to design the CIA extraordinary rendition programmes, James E. Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, can be questioned as part of an investigation in Poland into the extraordinary rendition and torture of Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 to allow the two men to answer limited questions by the investigation and for the first time in a court called the treatment Abu Zubaydah received “torture”. Abu Zubaydah was held in Poland from December 2002 to September 2003 at a secret CIA facility and tortured. He has successfully prosecuted the Polish state for this at the European Court of Human Rights, acknowledging he was tortured. Poland was only one of the countries he was shuttled between and tortured after his kidnap in 2002 and until he arrived at Guantánamo in 2006, by which time the CIA has not only conceded they had the wrong man but were willing to admit it. He nonetheless remains at Guantánamo, secluded from other prisoners, and has never faced charge or trial.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/california/story/2019-09-19/court-calls-us-enhanced-interrogation-techniques-torture

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/court-calls-u-s-enhanced-interrogation-techniques-torture

LGC Activities:

The October Shut Guantánamo! demo will be on 3^rd October at 12-2pm outside the US Embassy, Nine Elms Lane, SW11 (nearest underground: Vauxhall): https://www.facebook.com/events/3700619786630763/