LGC Newsletter – October 2020

Guantánamo Bay

The latest judge in the case of five men held at Guantánamo Bay, after years of torture and secret detention at CIA facilities around the world and accused of involvement in attacks on New York City in September 2001, has quit after just two weeks in his new job. Col. Stephen Keane was given the post on 17 September and quit on 2 October, “citing a series of potential conflicts that could make him appear biased.” He was the fifth judge in the case, which was set to go to trial in January 2021 but is still at pre-trial stage almost nine years after the defendants were charged and almost two decades after the events took place. During his two weeks in the post, he made two important orders, one to cancel all hearings until 2021 and the other to delay the start of the trial until at least August 2021.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/02/919694781/new-9-11-judge-at-guant-namo-quits-after-two-weeks

A new judge, Air Force judge Lt. Col. Matthew McCall, was appointed on 16 October, however the prosecution quickly protested due to his lack of experience – less than two years – as a military judge and called him unqualified to hear the case. The rules for military tribunals require the judge to have at least two years of experience. He has ordered an extension for litigation deadlines by 30 days, although the protest is still being considered.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/us/politics/guantanamo-bay-trial-sept11.html

With recent US government plans and contracts to build new housing units for court staff scheduled for 2022, it appears that the anticipated start of the trial will be in 2022, more than 20 years after the events took place.

In the other capital case of Abd Al-Nashiri, accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden in 2000, the military judge has set the next pre-trial hearing in that case for 15 March - 2 April 2021.

 

Salahidin Abdulahad, one of four Chinese Uighurs who were released from Guantánamo to Bermuda in 2009 has had his British citizenship application blocked by a speeding ticket he was given almost four years ago. Along with the other three, he applied for British citizenship in 2018, so that the men can leave the island, something they were unable to do as they did not have Chinese passports and in applying for them, the Chinese government would have demanded their return to China, from where they had initially fled to Afghanistan. He did not meet the Home Office’s “good character criteria” and has since reapplied. He is hoping with a British passport he can travel to Canada to reunite with his wife and three children who have moved there. He has health problems for which he needs treatment and which make it difficult for him to live alone. The other men have become British Overseas Territory citizens.

royalgazette.com/news/article/20201016/uighur-denied-passport-over-speed-conviction/

 

Following a decision in September in an appeal brought by Yemeni “forever prisoner” Abdulsalam Al Hela, upholding his indefinite decision and ruling that Guantánamo prisoners do not have due process rights, his lawyers have filed a brief asking for a full appeal court “to consider the question of whether the Due Process Clause applies to Guantanamo detainees”.

 

A federal appeals court has refused to consider the appeal of the 2010 war crimes conviction of former Sudanese prisoner Ibrahim Al-Qosi, a former driver for Osama Bin Laden, who was convicted on a single charge of providing material support for terrorism. In another successful appeal at Guantánamo, it was held that this charge did not qualify as a war crime and thus could not be tried by a military commission. His conviction was the first under the revised rules introduced by the Obama administration. The appeal should have been straightforward, however after he returned to Sudan in 2012, his lawyer lost contact with him and no more was heard from him. The US alleges that Al-Qosi went to Yemen and joined Al-Qaida there. It is claimed that he has featured in videos urging support for Al-Qaida, however the videos shown in the US media show a picture of Al-Qosi and audio, without proof it is his voice. Other than these alleged online videos, masterfully and allegedly produced in war-torn Yemen where communications and utilities are very poor, no one has reported having seen Al-Qosi in many years. The media has promoted Al-Qosi from someone convicted of a crime that effectively does not exist to a terrorist mastermind, backed up by the US State Department offering $4 million as a reward for information about him, “calling him an emir of the Qaeda affiliate” [in Yemen].

Nonetheless, lawyers for Al-Qosi in the US filed an appeal against his conviction. However, the court refused to hear the case as the judges said that his lawyers had not provided proof that he had “authorized counsel to pursue these petitions.” as he had had no contact with “any attorney in this case for eight years”. “The general in charge of the military commissions defense teams, Brig. Gen. John G. Baker of the Marines, has said he assigned lawyers to the appeal because, by law, every Guantánamo conviction is entitled to appellate court review.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/us/politics/guantanamo-detainee-appeal.html

 

A group of UN Special Rapporteurs have expressed concerns about the possible repatriation of 18 men (17 Yemenis and one Russian) to their home countries from the UAE where they were resettled. Since their arrival in the country in 2016 and 2017, the men have been held at secret locations with limited access to their families and to medical and legal representation. Now the country is threatening to repatriate them or detain them indefinitely (without charge or trial). One of the three Afghans who were repatriated by the UAE in December 2019 said that he was forced to return to Afghanistan against his will.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/10/1075462

 

LGC Activities:

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.

LGC Newsletter – July 2017

NEWS:

Guantánamo Bay

On 5 July, the Canadian government of Justin Trudeau announced that it had reached a settlement with former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Khadr, 30. It agreed to pay him CAN$10.5 million (£6 million) and give him an apology, ending a lawsuit filed by his lawyers while he was still in Guantánamo. They sued the Canadian government for its complicity in his torture by the US and the breach of his constitutional rights when he was still a teenager. This was backed by a Canadian Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that Canadian government officials had participated in interrogations knowing that Khadr has been tortured, as shown in the documentary film You Don’t like the Truth: Four Days inside Guantánamo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I5R3qkYnaI 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40510618

The payment was expedited ahead of a court case brought in Canada by the widow of the US army sergeant he is alleged to have killed and another soldier who claims Khadr blinded him. Khadr pleaded guilty to the murder in a secret plea bargain in 2010 that would see him leave Guantánamo in 2012; it was his only way out of the prison. The court case aimed to block the payment to Khadr for them to receive the funds, following their award of $134 million (£103 million) in 2015 in a US lawsuit they filed against Khadr. Lawyers for the couple filed the case in the Canadian courts in anticipation that Khadr would settle his previous case with the Canadian government. However, when their case went to court on 13 July, a judge in Toronto dismissed the claim to have Khadr’s assets frozen. The judge called the request “extraordinary”.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/omar-khadr-accounts-1.4203035

The settlement, which is an admission of wrongdoing by the Canadian government, has provoked a storm of controversy among supporters of the right-wing government responsible for the abuse of Omar Khadr’s human rights.

On 7 July, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited Guantánamo Bay with his deputy to show support for the continuing existence of the detention camp. He had previously called the facility “a very fine place”. Although it was his first visit to Guantánamo as attorney general, he had visited in 2005 under George Bush’s administration.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/08/politics/sessions-at-guantanamo-bay/index.html

The visit had raised expectations that President Trump might send new prisoners to Guantánamo as he has said he would, however on 21 July, rather than send a foreign prisoner to Guantánamo, an Algerian-Irish terrorism suspect was extradited from Spain to face trial in a US federal court, suggesting that Trump may not fill up Guantánamo with new prisoners after all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/opinion/al-qaeda-trial-federal-court.html

Pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo in the case of five men accused of involvement in the September 2001 attacks in New York have been put on indefinite hold over a dispute between the judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, and military officials about how he travels to Guantánamo Bay. He says that he must be kept separate from other participants in the proceedings, including lawyers, family members and journalists who travel over by plane. He has used a speedboat to travel over to Guantánamo. However, a change of policy in June means no longer has access to the boat. He then ordered the hearings be put on holding until the issue is resolved. The next set of pre-trial hearings are set for late August and it is unclear that they will go ahead.

The judge in the death penalty case of Abd Al-Nashiri, Air Force Colonel Vance Spath, has issued a similar order halting proceedings.

A resolution to the problem is currently being studied.

http://www.wptv.com/news/state/travel-feud-cancels-911-cole-case-hearings-at-guantanamo

 An appeal against the conviction of former Sudanese prisoner Ibrahim Al Qosi was halted shortly after it started after a dispute over his legal representation before the military tribunal. Al Qosi was convicted through a plea bargain in 2010 of being a driver for Osama Bin Laden. He was transferred to Sudan in 2012 after release. He has since “disappeared” and media claims have been made that he has joined Al Qaeda based on alleged videos although there is no substantive evidence of this or his whereabouts. The appeal tribunal, the Court of Military Commission Review, sent the case to a lower court to find out whether Al Qosi wants to appeal and to determine whether he has taken up arms against the US. During the hearing, the prosecution argued that only the original lawyer in his case, one of the lawyers who filed the appeal Suzanne Lachelier, was able to represent him and that he may not be aware than an appeal was under way; it argued a unilateral appeal cannot be brought in his defence. Defence lawyers stated that they can bring the case even though they have no contact with Al Qosi. The appeal case against a Guantánamo military tribunal conviction is being heard by the same judge hearing cases before the military tribunal. According to one of the defence lawyers, “The reality of this dilemma is that we’re in new territory. This has never been done.”

http://reut.rs/2tK5vcf

On 20 July, former French prisoners Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi filed a request to have former US president George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld summoned to France to be questioned in their case against the arbitrary detention and torture they faced in US hands. Both men were released without charge and returned to France in 2005, where they filed a complaint immediately against the treatment they received. On 19 April, the Paris public prosecutor’s office requested the dismissal of the case as no US official has been prosecuted or brought for questioning. It is up to the judge to decide whether to drop the case. Lawyers for the two men have asked the judge to issue an arrest warrant for Major Geoffrey Miller, who commanded Guantánamo from November 2002 to April 2004.

http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2017/07/20/d-anciens-detenus-a-guantanamo-demandent-l-audition-de-bush-et-rumsfeld-en-france_1585118

Former prisoner Syrian refugee Jihad Dhiab was deported from Morocco on 22 July back to Uruguay after he made another attempt to leave the country and reunite with his family who are refugees in Turkey. Officials in Uruguay apparently did not know that he had left the country as he travelled on a fake Tunisian passport which was detected when he arrived for a stopover in Morocco. Promised by his lawyers and officials that he would be reunited with his family when he left Guantánamo in 2014, Dhiab has not seen his wife in over 16 years. His family are also refugees from the current conflict in Syria. This was his fourth attempt to leave Uruguay, following previous attempted visits to Brazil, South Africa and Russia. He was questioned by Interpol on his return to the country and later released.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ex-gitmo-detainee-mysteriously-surfaces-in-morocco-deported-to-uruguay-1.3517496

Extraordinary Rendition:

On 28 July, a judge in Washington ruled that a case against two CIA contractors who designed the extraordinary rendition’s torture programme can go ahead in September, in spite of various arguments brought up by them, including some of the defences Nazis used during the Nuremberg trials. The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of three victims. If successful, the case is likely to lead to other victims bringing claims as well.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-28/torture-case-heads-to-trial-over-cia-interrogation-methods

LGC Activities:

The July Shut Guantánamo! monthly demonstration was on 6 July. Our next monthly demonstration is on Thursday 3 August at 12-1pm outside the US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, W1A, and 1.15-2.15pm outside Speaker’s Corner, Hyde Park, opposite Marble Arch: https://www.facebook.com/events/288464181622576/