Guantánamo Bay
On 3 March, in a 6-3 decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled
to prevent CIA contractors, psychologists James Elmer Mitchell and John Bruce
Jessen, the architects of the extraordinary rendition programme, from being
questioned as part of a criminal investigation in Poland into the unlawful
detention and torture of Abu Zubaydah, a current “forever prisoner” at
Guantánamo. “The court found that the government could assert what is called
the “state-secrets privilege” to prevent the contractors from being questioned
because it would jeopardise national security.” and that “The contractors’
testimony “would be tantamount to a disclosure from the CIA itself”.”
Nonetheless, as one of the judges, Neil Gorsuch, pointed out in his dissenting
opinion, “much of what the government claims to be a state secret is already
widely known. “There comes a point where we should not be ignorant as judges of
what we know to be true as citizens,” Gorsuch wrote. “Ending this suit may
shield the government from some further modest measure of embarrassment. But
respectfully, we should not pretend it will safeguard any secret,” Gorsuch
added.”” Commenting on the ruling, Dror Ladin, from the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) stated, “Today a majority of the Supreme Court allowed
the CIA to declare secret the widely-known location of its torture facility in
Poland. US courts are the only place in the world where everyone must pretend
not to know basic facts about the CIA’s torture program. It is long past time
to stop letting the CIA hide its crimes behind absurd claims of secrecy and
national security harm.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/us-supreme-court-blocks-testimony-over-guantanamo-detainee
https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/03/fractured-majority-allows-government-to-withhold-information-on-torture-at-cia-black-sites/
Saudi prisoner Mohammad Al-Qahtani is the second prisoner to be
repatriated by the Biden administration. Currently, 38 prisoners remain at Guantánamo.
Al-Qahtani, who suffers from mental health problems which have degenerated
further through US torture and unlawful detention for over 20 years, was
returned to Saudi Arabia to receive psychiatric treatment there. He had
previously faced charges as a potential accomplice in the 9/11 attacks in New
York, but this was dropped after it was established that his confession had
been obtained through torture. One of his lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, stated, “After
two decades without trial in U.S. custody, Mohammed will now receive the
psychiatric care he has long needed in Saudi Arabia, with the support of his
family. Keeping him at Guantanamo, where he was tortured, and then repeatedly
attempted suicide, would have been a likely death sentence.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/after-20-years-at-guantanamo-mohammad-ahmad-al-qahtani-transferred-out-of-detention-facility-back-to-saudi-arabia
A
defence lawyer representing one of the defendants in the 9/11 case, Yemeni
Walid Bin Attash, since 2011, Cheryl Bormann, resigned abruptly from the case
after telling the court that her “performance and conduct” are being
investigated by the Pentagon’s Military Commissions Defense Organization. The
judge in the case, Colonel Matthew McCall, has since issued an order dismissing
her and ordering the appointment of a replacement. While details have not been
released concerning the investigation, Bormann has previously been forthright
in her views on her client’s case, referring “to prosecutors as working for
'the government that wants to kill him.'” Finding a replacement could be a
lengthy process and prosecutors have more recently asked the judge to
reconsider his decision as her client, the defendant, has not publicly
consented to this.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10600481/Defense-lawyer-9-11-suspect-resigns-performance-conduct-investigation.html
At the
same time, while pre-trial hearings did not go ahead in the case this month,
discussions are underway, but are suspended for the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan which starts in early April, to reach a plea bargain which would see the
defendants avoid the death penalty in return for a guilty plea. Over the past
decade, pre-trial hearings in the case have been mired in issues related to the
torture of the defendants in secret CIA detention; a plea bargain could avoid
the need to consider this.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/15/september-11-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-prosecutors-plea-deal-report
The
first pre-trial hearing at the military tribunal this year was held on 28 March
in the case of Nashwan al Tamir (Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi) with a new judge, Lieutenant
Colonel Mark F. Rosenow. The hearing consisted mainly of questions to the new
judge by the prosecution and defence and other procedural matters. The next
hearing in this case is scheduled to take place in June.
The
Pentagon announced on 11 March that Majid Khan, whose confession was obtained
through the use of torture and was convicted through a secret plea bargain that
included giving evidence against other prisoners, had completed his prison
sentence. He pleaded guilty in 2012 to “delivering $50,000 from Pakistan to a
Qaeda affiliate. The money was used in the 2003 bombing of a Marriott hotel in
Jakarta, Indonesia, that killed about a dozen people.” He was sentenced almost
a decade later, when he was given a 26-year sentence in October 2021. Horrified
by the nature of the torture that led to his confession, the military jurors
urged the war court to show him clemency, which it did by reducing his sentence
to 10 years; it thus ended on 1st March. However, the Pakistani
national is unlikely to be released soon, as he must be transferred to a safe
third country. He cannot return to Pakistan as “when he first pleaded guilty,
he became a U.S. government witness, and his life could be in danger were he
sent there.” His lawyer J. Wells Dixon from the Center for Constitutional
Rights stated, “There is no basis left to continue to hold Majid Khan at Guantánamo.
The United States must send him to a safe, third country where he can be
reunited with his wife and his daughter, who he never met.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/us/politics/terrorist-gitmo-sentence-majid-khan.html
Extraordinary
rendition
United
Nations human rights expert Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the Special Rapporteur on the
promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while
countering terrorism, submitted a report to the Human Rights Council, in which
she “called on States to ensure that the post 9/11 legacy of secret detention,
rendition and torture is not forgotten and its ongoing consequences are tackled
head on.” While expressing particular concern “about the normalization and
expansion of secret detention practices in northeast Syria and Xinjiang,
China.”, she “highlighted the experiences of those rendered to the detention
site at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – and stressed that 38 Muslim men continue to be
held at this site in conditions which meet the legal threshold for torture,
cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law. “Not a single
man who was rendered across borders, tortured, arbitrarily detained, separated
from family has received an adequate remedy. Many who were returned home
continue to live with long-term social and psychological trauma. No-one was
held accountable for systematic practices of torture and rendition.””
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=28288&LangID=E
From
Matrix Chambers (UK): “The Court of Appeal has today allowed an appeal brought
by Abu Zubaydah, a detainee at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
in a claim for complicity in torture against the UK Government. The claimant
alleges that from 2002-2006 he was arbitrarily detained at secret US “black
site” prisons located in six different countries (“the Six Countries”), where
he was subjected to extreme mistreatment and torture by the CIA. He contends
that from at 2002 the UK security and intelligence services were aware that he
was being arbitrarily detained, mistreated, and tortured, in CIA “black sites”
but nonetheless sent questions to the US intelligence agencies to be used in
their interrogations of him for the purpose of attempting to elicit information
of interest to the UK intelligence services. The claimant claims that by acting
in this way, the UK security and intelligence services committed the torts of
misfeasance in public office, conspiracy to injure, trespass to the person,
false imprisonment and negligence.
“In
February 2021 the High Court ruled that the applicable law for these claims
against the UK Government was the laws of the Six Countries, meaning that the
question of whether the UK Government was liable to the claimant would be
determined by reference to the laws of Thailand, Lithuania, Poland, the United
States (or possibly Cuba), Afghanistan and Morocco. In a judgment handed down
today, the Court of Appeal overturned that conclusion, finding that the High
Court had made a number of “important errors of law” and ruling
that the claimant’s claims are governed exclusively by English law.”
https://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/news/court-of-appeal-allows-appeal-in-claim-by-guantanamo-bay-detainee-against-uk-government/