Thursday, May 31, 2018

LGC Newsletter – May 2018

Guantánamo Bay
Pre-trial hearings at the Guantánamo Bay military commissions do not take place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan; thus, brief hearings took part prior to Ramadan in early May and will resume again in late June.
During the pre-trial hearing in early May, lawyers for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of five men accused of involvement in attacks on New York in September 2001, demanded more and better tests funded by the government to ascertain the extent of the brain damage he suffered while held in secret CIA prisons. Proof of brain damage could spare him from facing the death penalty. In a March memo, his lawyers wrote “that MRI scans conducted at Guantánamo on Jan. 31 were flawed, and missing 75 percent of the data their experts sought. But the limited data shows "evidence of head injuries consistent with the physical trauma suffered by Mr. Mohammed and documented in the SSCI Executive Summary," the so-called torture report produced by the Senate intelligence committee in 2014 that condemned the spy agency's Black Site program.
Lawyers for Sheikh Mohammed also sought to have death penalty case, if not the whole case, dismissed on the ground that controversial remarks by Donald Trump in his tweets had “unlawful influence”. Having tweeted, concerning more recent attacks on New York, that he wanted the defendant to receive the death penalty, lawyers contended this could prejudice the jury when the 9/11 case goes to trial.

In the case of Abd Al Nashiri, facing the death penalty in a separate case, which has been stalled since late 2017, when his civilian legal team quit after discovering their confidential communications were being spied upon, a federal court ordered “instructed the Justice Department to submit top-secret information about suspected eavesdropping on attorney-client meetings at Guantánamo”. The case concerns whether two of the lawyers are allowed to quit the case. The case has been on hold since February after the judge froze proceedings to seek guidance from a superior court over his powers and those of the court.
However, the court then dropped the inquiry into spying on confidential lawyer-client meetings using listening devices that the lawyers had found in their meeting rooms. The two lawyers, who were also seeking to appeal and find out from the court whether the military commission judge can force them to represent the client even though they quit on ethical grounds, were told they can represent themselves before the US Court of Military Commissions Review. They had previously not been allowed to.

Following an executive order by Donald Trump at the end of January to Defense Secretary James Mattis to define the US’ policy on the transfer of new prisoners to Guantánamo Bay, the 90-day deadline given expired in early May. The Pentagon announced that Mattis had sent the White House his recommendations but so far no details have been disclosed. The announcement was made shortly after Mattis told journalists “right now I'm not working that issue”.

There are currently 40 prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay. On 2 May, Saudi prisoner Ahmed Al Darbi, 43, was returned to Saudi Arabia to serve the rest of his sentence imposed by a military commission at Guantánamo. He is the first and only prisoner to be transferred by Donald Trump. Al Darbi was arrested in Azerbaijan in June 2002 and rendered to US custody in Afghanistan in late 2002. He was tortured physically, mentally and sexually into confessing his involvement in terrorist activities. In 2014, he pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain whereby he would provide testimony against other prisoners facing trial. He was sentenced to 13 years, which he will serve in Saudi Arabia, at least offering him the opportunity to see his wife and children. He is likely to be freed in 2027. He was originally due to be returned in February.

Extraordinary rendition
On 10 May, the UK government issued an apology, which was read out in the House of Commons, to Libyan rendition survivors Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his wife Fatima Boudchar, who were kidnapped in southeast Asia in 2004 and “rendered” to torture in Libya with the help of MI6. In an unusual statement, Prime Minister Theresa May said the couple had suffered “appalling treatment”. They will also receive a £500,000 pay out although they have not claimed compensation. At the same time, the UK still claims not to have any liability for what happened to the couple and further details of the UK’s actual involvement have not been released.
 
Gina Haspel has been appointed the new director of the CIA. Haspel had run a CIA torture facility in Thailand in 2002 under the extraordinary rendition programme. When questioned by senators about her role there and her views on torture, she was evasive. Nonetheless she received enough support to take the top position in the US spy agency.

On 31 May, the European Court of Human Rights found Lithuania and Romania complicit in running secret CIA torture facilities. A complaint brought by Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah against Lithuania found that between 2005 and 2006 the state had hosted a secret CIA torture prison, knew he was being tortured there and then allowed him to be transferred to further torture elsewhere. Abd Al Nashiri, currently facing the death penalty at Guantánamo successfully sued Romania for holding him for 18 months at a CIA detention facility called Detention Site Black it ran between 2003 and 2005. The court found both states guilty of multiple rights’ abuses and ordered the states to pay the respective victims €100,000 each.

LGC Activities:
The LGC held its third monthly Shut Guantánamo! demos outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms in May. Here is a video of our action: 

Please join us on 7 June at 12-2pm for our next monthly demonstration. The address is 33 Nine Elms Ln, London SW11 7US, nearest underground: Vauxhall. More details available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/954230551413655/ All are welcome to join us.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

LGC Newsletter – April 2018

Guantánamo Bay
Ahead of pre-trial hearings resuming, on 30 April, in the case of five men accused of involvement in terrorist attacks in New York in September 2001, a lawyer for one defendant, Ammar Al-Baluchi, asked “a military judge to order the prison to permit the public release of art he makes in his cell” at Guantánamo. Lawyer Alka Pradhan and her team filed a pleading “accusing the Department of Defense of violating the captive’s rights by making it more difficult for him to draw and paint and by blocking him from giving his artwork to his attorneys”. Producing the artwork is therapeutic for Al-Baluchi who was severely tortured by the US in secret jails over a number of years before he was brought to Guantánamo. The ban on the release of his work was imposed in November 2017 when a watercolour he made was included as part of a New York City art exhibition of prisoners’ artworks.
Another defendant, Ramzi bin Al Shibh, spent at least two weeks this month being held in an isolation cell with no bed or running water, with only a prayer mat and a Qur’an and access for one hour a day to legal material “as punishment for protesting conditions in his Guantánamo confinement”. His lawyer reported that “He's in really, really bad shape” and that being placed in isolation was re-traumatising him. Since being placed in isolation on 12 April, he has been on hunger strike, accepting only water. He is since reported to have been returned to his normal cell, with the punishment having ended, but is still on hunger strike. Al Shibh told his legal team that he was “punished for shouting at his guards, at one point scratching the lens of his cell’s monitoring camera and for putting stones in his toilet to cause another captive's toilet to overflow”.
Also ahead of the hearing, on 27 April, the military judge ruled that the US was at war with Al Qaeda at the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York, although he did not specify in his ruling when that war began. The ruling is crucial for the trial of the five men to proceed before a military commission; without war, they can only be tried by a civilian court only. The question was raised by the lawyers of Saudi defendant Mustafa Al Hawsawi, in an attempt to have the charge against him dismissed. The judge based on ruling on “Congress and two presidents hav[ing] said so

Two Libyan prisoners released to Senegal in April 2016 have been sent back to Libya on 4 April by the Senegalese authorities. Prior to their return, one of the men, Omar Khalifa Mohammed Abu Bakr, had told his lawyer that he fears for his life if returned there. The two men were granted humanitarian asylum by the West African country in 2016 but since early 2018 it has been threatening to deport them. Since their reported return to Libya, a country overrun by militias since the US-led war in 2011, both men have “disappeared”. The other man, Salem Abdul Salem Ghereby, who has a wife and children in Libya, had expressed his wish to return there.
According to the NGO Cage, Ghereby was being held at Mitiga airbase in Tripoli whereas Omar Khalifa was detained in Senegal following a failed attempt to deport him. There have been no official reports of their whereabouts or of who is holding either of the men.
It should be recalled that both men were released by the Obama administration which also started the bombing of Libya which has led to the current deterioration of the security situation in the country.

On 13 April, Saudi prisoner Ahmed al Darbi had his sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty to war crimes in a plea bargain deal in February 2014. Al Darbi was tortured into confessing involvement in the bombing of ships in the Arabian Sea after 9/11. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison, which began to run as of the time of his trial and not since he was seized in 2002; he could thus be released in 2027. He has been due to be returned to his native Saudi Arabia since February to serve the rest of his sentence there. This was the first sentencing hearing at Guantánamo since 2011.

Lawyers for Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, who says his real name is Nashwan al Tamir, have protested a potential trial timetable for mid-2019, saying they have not had enough time to prepare and that the defence team is subject to change. He was one of the last prisoners to be brought to Guantánamo and is facing non-capital charges but faces the prospect of a life sentence.

Extraordinary Rendition
Macedonia has issued a formal apology to Khaled El Masri, the German citizen of Lebanese origin in whose rendition it assisted in 2003. He was detained in the country while on holiday and was interrogated for more than 3 weeks. He was accused of being a member of Al Qaeda before being handed over the CIA who then took him to Afghanistan and tortured him before releasing him in rural Albania months later.
In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Macedonia to pay him compensation of €60,000 after the country was found to have breached his human rights. However, the country has never investigated the crimes and no one has been held to account.
On the other hand, both the US and Germany have remained silent. Current German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier refused to apologised when asked to during his election campaign last year; in 2005, he came under fire for suppressing information the German government had at the time on his case and acting too slowly on it. The US itself quickly realised it had the wrong man.
Furthermore, Germany has failed to provide him with adequate rehabilitation and medical support. Since his return to Germany, El Masri has been arrested and jailed several times for violent behaviour, which has been linked to his untreated torture trauma.
 
In a letter, the Scottish Lord Advocate James Wolffe has suggested that a police investigation into torture flights through Scotland may continue until the US hands over a full unredacted copy of the US Senate committee Torture Report, which has been requested by the Scottish authorities but has not been acquiesced.

On 20 April, a federal judge prevented attempts by the Trump administration to transfer a US citizen accused of fighting with ISIS in Syria to Saudi Arabia. The unidentified man has been held without charge since he surrendered to the US over 7 months ago. He will remain at a US military detention facility in Iraq for now. The man is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued “that any transfer would violate the detainee's constitutional and legal rights because the government has not charged him or proved that it legally detained him in the first place”.

LGC Activities:
The LGC held its second monthly Shut Guantánamo! demos outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms in April. This demo was in solidarity with the Iraqi people 15 years after the war there started. Please join us on Thursday 3 May at 12-2pm for our next monthly demonstration. The address is 33 Nine Elms Ln, London SW11 7US, nearest underground: Vauxhall. More details available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/192571218047863/ All are welcome to join us.