LGC Newsletter – January 2022

Guantánamo Bay

The periodic review board has cleared five prisoners for release, although this does not mean they are likely to leave Guantánamo Bay in the near future. The number of prisoners now cleared for release, from among the 39 remaining after 20 years of arbitrary detention, is 18. A further 9 prisoners face no charges or trial and are held as “forever prisoners”. The five men are: Somali Guleed Hassan Ahmed (also called Guled Hassan Duran); Kenyan Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu; and Omar Muhammad Ali al-Rammah, Moath Hamza al-Alwi, and Suhayl al-Sharabi from Yemen. Somali Guleed Hassan Ahmed is the first prisoner who was previously held and tortured at secret CIA sites and alleged to be a “high-value” (or most tortured) detainee by the US military to be cleared for release.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/12/us-approves-release-five-more-guantanamo-detainees

 

In a rare and strongly-worded statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has had rare access to the prisoners almost since Guantánamo opened in January 2022, called for the release of the remaining prisoners. To mark the 20^th anniversary of this engagement on 18 January, the ICRC put out the following statement calling on the US authorities to close the prison and release the prisoners: “The ICRC is gravely concerned that the remaining people held at Guantanamo Bay have been behind bars for so many years with little or no clarity as to what will happen to them. The ICRC notes that some detainees remain in Guantanamo Bay today despite the fact they were deemed eligible for transfer more than ten years ago.

“The detainees deemed eligible by the US government should be transferred today," said Patrick Hamilton, the ICRC's head of delegation in the United States and Canada. "After 20 years and well over 100 visits, we see that the more time passes for these detainees, the more they and their families suffer. The humanitarian rationale for enabling those to leave who are cleared to do so is obvious, and all the more so for those whose departures have been delayed for so long.”

https://www.icrc.org/en/document/icrc-calls-transfers-eligible-guantanamo-detainees

 

A February hearing into the case of Abd Al-Nashiri, accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden in 2000, has been adjourned due to the “heightened risk of Covid” at Guantánamo at present. The next scheduled hearing is due to take place from 28 February in the case of an Indonesian and two Malaysian prisoners accused of involvement in the Bali bombing in 2002. The three were arraigned in August 2021 but problems arose with the interpreters whom the defendants could not understand and who were accused of bias, thus they did not enter a plea at the time. A report into the case has shown that the military judge, Commander  Hayes C. Larsen, agrees with the defendants that the interpreters were biased and has given the government until February to find adequate and security-cleared interpreters for the case to proceed, with two for each language (Malay and Indonesian), and has ordered the government to analyse the problems with the Malay interpreting at the August 2021 hearing.

https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2022/01/26/report-guantanamo-bay-terror-trial-judge-agrees-with-two-malaysians-asserti/2037658

 

LGC Newsletter – October 2021

 Guantánamo Bay

As part of an ongoing investigation in Poland into its collusion with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition torture programme, particularly in relation to Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, who has already successfully prosecuted the country for its involvement in crimes against humanity, a hearing was held at the United States Supreme Court in a case brought by his lawyers to order two CIA contractors, considered the architects of the extraordinary rendition programme, to testify about the torture he faced at an illegal secret CIA prison in Poland.

During the hearing, three of the nine judges on the panel asked why he could not speak himself: ““Why not make the witness available? What is the government’s objection to the witness testifying on his own treatment and not requiring any addition from the government of any kind?” Justice Neil Gorsuch asked.” At the same time, “The US government is blocking the request, arguing that questioning [James] Mitchell and [John] Jessen would reveal “state secrets”. After legal battles in the lower courts, the case has made it to the Supreme Court.” The judges also questioned why Abu Zubaydah remained at Guantánamo after so many years without charge or trial.

Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah, who has been held at Guantánamo without charge or trial since 2006, after over three years of illegal secret detention and torture by the CIA at locations around the world, have also filed cases at the United Nations and may also do so in the UK to obtain further information and details about the torture he faced.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/6/us-top-court-hears-guantanamo-detainee-state-secrets-case

Following the hearing, the Biden administration said it would allow Abu Zubaydah to testify in a written declaration to Polish investigators about the treatment he received in CIA detention; however, his statement is likely to be redacted to protect US torturers. The US government claims that nonetheless, this “would not prevent him from describing his treatment while in CIA custody.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/18/us-to-allow-guantanamo-detainee-to-pen-letter-on-cia-mistreatment

Following this news, one of Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers David Klein, wrote to the Supreme Court asking it to wait until the Biden administration explains what it means about allowing Abu Zubaydah to make a written statement and how much of it will be disclosed to the Polish investigators before deciding on the case. In his letter, Klein stated: “the Government will allow Abu Zubaydah to submit a written declaration about his treatment at the hands of the CIA so long as the CIA authorizes it.”

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/guantanamo-lawyer-says-case-should-be-put-hold-supreme-court

Full letter: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-827/197445/20211025123903253_AZ%202021.10.25%20Letter%20to%20Mr.%20Harris%204872-4094-1312%20v.1.pdf

 

The prisoner reviewer board has cleared two more prisoners for release. Yemeni Sanad Yislam al-Kazimi, 51, and Afghan Assadullah Haroon Gul, 40, were both cleared for release on 7 October by the review board. It has been recommended that al-Kazimi is sent to Oman, in view of the ongoing war in Yemen. Neither has been tried or charged while held at Guantánamo.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211014-us-approves-freeing-two-guantanamo-detainees

In Gul’s case, following a habeas corpus application to review his prisoner status and grounds for detention filed in 2016, two weeks later, a US judge granted his application and ruled that there is no legal basis for him to be held at Guantánamo; such a ruling has not been made in over a decade. The details and reasoning of the ruling remain classified.

In spite of this ruling, and two more prisoners being cleared for release, it does not mean that any prisoners will be released soon or that plans are underway to facilitate this.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/21/judge-says-us-held-afghan-militant-unlawfully-at-guantanamo-bay

 

Following their arraignment in late August, more than 15 years after arriving at Guantánamo, one of two Malaysian prisoners in a case also involving an Indonesian prisoner has filed a motion to have the arraignment, at which they were given details of the charges against them, annulled as “a Malay translator provided by the US government was incompetent and an Indonesian translator helping the prosecution was biased.” Malaysian “Mohammed Nazir Lep said the Indonesian translator had stated last year that “I don’t know why the government is wasting so much money on these terrorists; they should have been killed a long time ago”. A motion posted on the website of the US Military Commission’s office said the “real and apparent bias prevented her from functioning as a true, accurate and impartial voice of the court”.” At the hearing, the three men refused to enter a plea, “citing incompetence of the translators which resulted in inaccurate translations.” The matter also delayed the hearing. Nazir’s lead counsel Brian Bouffard said “the US government had not secured a competent Malay translator “despite the extraordinary amount of time the government has had to prepare for the prosecution of this case”. Lawyers are asking for the arraignment to held again, properly.

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2021/10/18/malaysian-in-guantanamo-terror-trial-says-translator-was-biased/

 

The UAE has repatriated the remaining 12 Yemeni former Guantánamo prisoners it accepted from the US between 2015 and 2017. A group of 6 others were repatriated to Yemen in July where they were quickly released and reunited with their families. The 12 men arrived in Yemen on 27 October and their families were asked to come to a military base to meet them after release. Although the UAE government has not commented, the Yemeni government has said that those released in July received some funds from the UAE and Yemeni governments. The UN and human rights organisations have condemned the forced repatriations by the UAE and have claimed that the men were told to return to Yemen or face indefinite detention in the UAE; they had been detained in some form since their “release” from Guantánamo by the US to the country.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uae-sends-12-former-guantanamo-detainees-yemen-lawyer-official-2021-10-28/

 

During his sentencing hearing, for the first time, Guantánamo prisoner Majid Khan described some of the torture he suffered at the hands of the CIA. This torture was used to extract his confession and convict him in a secret plea bargain. Although he may be freed next year in spite of being given a 26-year sentence, almost a decade after he was convicted, those involved in his torture remain free, in spite of having committed crimes against humanity that were detailed in the 2014 US Senate report into the CIA’s torture programme. He said he was “left terrified and hallucinating”. “Khan spoke of being suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, doused repeatedly with ice water to keep him awake for days. He described having his head held under water to the point of near drowning, only to have water poured into his nose and mouth when the interrogators let him up. He was beaten, given forced enemas, sexually assaulted and starved in overseas prisons whose locations were not disclosed. “I would beg them to stop and swear to them that I didn’t know anything,” said Khan, reading from a 39-page statement. “If I had intelligence to give I would have given it already but I didn’t have anything to give.””

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/29/going-die-guantanamo-prisoner-torture-testimony

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/29/in-first-guatanamo-detainee-details-cia-torture-in-court

LGC Newsletter – April 2021

 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.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guantanamo-bay-closed-detention-camp-b1826720.html#comments-area

 

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.

https://www.jurist.org/news/2021/04/guantanamo-detainee-loses-bid-to-dismiss-charges-and-disqualify-judge-over-conflicts-of-interest/

 

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.

https://www.justsecurity.org/75828/biden-teams-litigation-tactics-on-guantanamo-undercut-biden-policy-to-close-the-prison/

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.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/26/us-supreme-court-to-hear-palestinian-guantanamo-prisoner-case

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.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/30/guantanamo-detainee-abu-zubaydah-to-file-complaint-with-un-agency

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.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/overseas-operations-bill-uk-government-drops-bid-shield-soldiers-war-crimes-prosecutions

LGC Newsletter – March 2021

 Guantánamo Bay

Former Guantánamo prisoner Lotfi Benali died in Mauritania on 9 March 2021. A Tunisian national, he was 55 and had been suffering from a long-term illness. He spent more than 13 years at Guantánamo without charge or trial. He was then sent by the Obama administration to Kazakhstan as Tunisia refused his repatriation. However, Kazakhstan refused to allow him to remain there permanently and he later moved to Mauritania which agreed to allow this Guantánamo refugee to live there. He was suffering from multiple physical and mental health problems at the time of his death, some that preceded his capture by the US and some that he acquired during US imprisonment without charge or trial for over a decade.

A 2016 interview with The Guardian after his arrival in Kazakhstan: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/30/worse-than-guantanamo-ex-prisoner-struggles-with-new-life-in-kazakhstan

 

Extraordinary Rendition

Human rights NGO Redress has filed a complaint with the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal in relation to “evidence to suggest that UK intelligence agencies encouraged, facilitated, or conspired with US authorities in the torture and ill-treatment” of Guantánamo prisoner Mustafa Al-Hawsawi, a Saudi national who was kidnapped and tortured in secret CIA detention for over three years before arriving at Guantánamo Bay, where he is one of five defendants in the capital case related to the September 2001 attacks in New York City. The complaint has been made against the potential involvement of various government agencies, “namely the Security Service (MI5), the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Defence Intelligence, Ministry of Defence (MoD)”. The NGO is seeking documents and information about their involvement and complicity in his torture. Hawsawi has already successfully brought a case against Lithuania at the European Court of Human Rights concerning its involvement in his torture when he was illegally detained there.

https://redress.org/news/mustafa-al-hawsawi-18-years-on-from-his-detention-by-us-forces-legal-challenge-seeks-to-determine-the-extent-of-uk-involvement-in-his-torture/

 

 

LGC Newsletter – February 2021

 Guantánamo Bay

Former Sudanese prisoner, Ibrahim Othman Ibrahim Idris, who arrived at Guantánamo on the day it was opened on 11 January 2002, has died aged 60 in Sudan. Suspected of having worked as a bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden, he was never charged at Guantánamo and was released in 2013. A lawyer has attributed his death “to medical complications he had from Guantánamo”. The exact cause of death is unknown but he is known to have been in ill-health and another former Sudanese prisoner has said that he was tortured at Guantánamo. His health deteriorated at Guantánamo and he suffered mental health problems while there and after his release.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/ibrahim-idris-dead.html

 

 

US president Joe Biden has launched a formal review into the current situation at Guantánamo and has said that he intends to close the facility, where 40 prisoners remain, before the end of his term. An executive action to this end may be signed in the coming weeks or months, although it is not a priority of the current administration and there are no details of what the current US government plans to do.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-guantanamo-exclusive-idUSKBN2AC1Q4

In this response to this, a group of UN human rights experts have called on the US government to “address ongoing violations being committed against the 40 or so inmates still incarcerated there” and to investigate allegations of torture and other human rights abuses.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/02/1085492

LGC Newsletter – September 2020

Guantánamo Bay

In a unanimous decision, a federal appeals court upheld the indefinite decision of Yemeni “forever prisoner” Abdulsalam Al Hela, 52, ruling that Guantánamo prisoners do not have due process rights. His defence argued that the “evidence against him relied on anonymous hearsay and that he never joined or supported Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group.”

This decision could affect the case of five prisoners accused of involvement in attacks on New York City in September 2001, who are currently awaiting trial, as it has long been held, since the 2008 ruling in Boumediene v Bush, that prisoners can only challenge their detention through habeas corpus. The decision can be appealed. Al Hela’s lawyer, David Remes said: "Due process is one of the most fundamental constitutional guarantees, and to rule that it simply does not apply to Guantanamo detainees contradicts those most fundamental values that the due process clause exists to protect”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/us/politics/guantanamo-detainees-due-process.html https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/defense-expected-ask-review-courts-ruling-against-due-process-gitmo-detainees

 

Colonel Stephen Keane has been appointed the new judge in the case of the five prisoners accused of involvement in attacks on New York City in September 2001 after the previous judge, the fourth in the case which is still at pre-trial stage after almost a decade, announced in March he was leaving the case to retire. “No hearings in the case have been held at Guantánamo since February, in part because of a complicated two-week quarantine requirement for newcomers to the base to safeguard its 6,000 residents. (Forty of them are prisoners and 1,500 of them are soldiers assigned to the wartime prison.)”.

One of his first orders has been to cancel all hearings in the case until next year, due to the restrictions, and delay the start of the trial until at least August 2021.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/us/politics/military-judge-guantanamo-bay-911-trial.html

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/30/918454831/trial-of-sept-11-defendants-at-guant-namo-delayed-until-august-2021

 

A federal appeals panel has refused to delay a court-ordered, independent medical examination of Saudi prisoner Mohammed Al-Qahtani, “to decide whether he should be repatriated to psychiatric care in Saudi Arabia.” “Justice Department lawyers have warned that the first use of a mixed medical commission — one doctor from the U.S. Army and two from a neutral country chosen by the International Red Cross and approved by the United States and Saudi Arabia — would be disruptive and unleash more requests by other prisoners.”

“Lawyers for Mr. Qahtani, and a psychiatrist who was consulted on the case, made a novel argument for enacting an Army regulation that includes medical-repatriation provisions of the Third Geneva Convention for prisoners of war. Their position is that Mr. Qahtani can only be effectively treated in his homeland.

"Most claims of torture of Guantánamo detainees center on what happened in the C.I.A. prison network before their transfer to military custody. But leaked documents show that Mr. Qahtani was subjected to two months of continuous, brutal interrogations at Guantánamo’s Camp X-Ray — sleep deprivation, dehydration, nudity and being menaced by dogs — while under the care of military medics from the same prison operation that provides his medical care now.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/politics/court-guantanamo-outside-health-review.html

 

Extraordinary Rendition

In early September, the Trump administration announced sanctions against the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is investigating alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan as part of an investigation into war crimes by all parties in that country. The US is not a member of the ICC and does not consider itself to be affected by it. Nonetheless, it has placed sanctions on Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the head of jurisdiction at the court Phakiso Mochochoko; they were added to the “Treasury Department's "Specially Designated Nationals" list. The designation freezes any assets they might have in the U.S. or subject to U.S. law.”  https://www.npr.org/2020/09/02/908896108/trump-administration-sanctions-icc-prosecutor-investigating-alleged-u-s-war-crim

 

Court documents in the case brought by the family of Harry Dunn, who was killed after his motorcycle was hit by the car of Anne Sacoolas, “wife of Jonathon Sacoolas, an operative for the CIA”, who was allowed to return to the US and avoid prosecution, have revealed that around 200 US personnel working in the UK have benefited from a bulk diplomatic immunity deal under the war on terror. Sacoolas claimed diplomatic immunity from prosecution, after she fatally hit Mr Dunn while driving the wrong way on the road, near RAF Croughton in Sussex. “The documents show that, in 1995, 2001, and 2006, Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials made a case to ministers to extend diplomatic immunity – including providing immunity from criminal prosecution – to an estimated 200 staff working at the RAF Croughton base in Sussex” and “The heavily-redacted documents include a ministerial submission from 2006 which identifies the base’s role in ‘war on terror’ operations as a reason for granting bulk immunity. This 2006 submission to ministers notes the “increased demands brought on by the global war on terrorism and the war in Iraq” and raises a concern that granting bulk diplomatic immunity to multiple US staff would provoke a “possible read-across by the media to rendition flights”.”

https://www.scottishlegal.com/article/bulk-diplomatic-immunity-conferred-on-us-personnel-in-britain-court-documents-reveal

 

Controversial new legislation that will allow immunity from prosecution for British military personnel for potential war crimes, including torture, committed overseas passed its second reading in parliament. “The bill, which will end the right to bring legal cases against British soldiers for alleged offences that are more than five years old, has been criticised by senior military figures and human rights groups, who say it will damage Britain's reputation abroad and act as a "licence to torture".”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-british-troops-immunity-prosecution-human-rights-b674479.html

At the same time, the Conservative Party launched the covert human intelligence sources bill “allowing confidential informants working for MI5 and the police to break the law […] amid a row about whether committing crimes such as murder and torture should be explicitly banned”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/24/uk-set-to-introduce-bill-allowing-mi5-agents-to-break-the-law

 

LGC Activities:

The LGC is saddened by the death of long-term activist John Lloyd who was a regular at our monthly demonstrations outside the US Embassy and at demonstrations organised by the Guantanamo Justice Campaigns and other organisations. He and his banners offering a poignant reminder of the wrongdoing of the US and UK governments will be very much missed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/29/john-lloyd-obituary

 

The London Guantánamo Campaign’s monthly Shut Guantánamo! demonstrations continue online for the present at 12-2pm on the first Thursday of each month. To take part, please email a photo/video of your banner to us at london.gtmo@gmail.com or share your picture/video to our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/London-Guantánamo-Campaign-114010671973111/ or via Twitter at that time.