Guantánamo Bay
After Guantánamo Bay prisoner Majid Khan read out a statement
containing details of the torture he faced in CIA torture prisoners during his
sentencing hearing at the end of October, members of the jury in the case wrote
a letter “urging clemency for Guantanamo Bay detainee Majid Khan, calling his account
of torture at so-called CIA black sites a “stain on the moral fiber of
America”. The seven officers were part of an eight-member military jury that on
Friday [29 October] issued a sentence of 26 years in prison to Khan for his
support of al-Qaeda in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Khan had
previously pleaded guilty in 2012 to serving as a courier for the group and
helping to plan attacks.” The letter, published in The New York Times,
stated that his treatment went “well beyond enhanced interrogation techniques,
instead being closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern
history. This abuse was of no practical value in terms of intelligence, or any
other tangible benefit to US interests,” the letter said. “Instead, it is a
stain on the moral fiber of America; the treatment of Mr Khan in the hands of
the US personnel should be a source of shame for the US government.”” Khan is
expected to be released next year due to the plea deal which formed the basis
of his conviction, which the jury was not told about. It is not known whether
this letter will have any influence on the case.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/1/stain-on-moral-fiber-us-military-jury-condemns-detainee-tortur
https://www.justsecurity.org/78933/military-officers-handwritten-clemency-letter-at-guantanamo-what-it-says-about-who-we-are/
A 3-week pre-trial hearing was held in the case of five men accused
of involvement in the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York City. The case,
sitting with a new judge, Colonel Matthew McCall, did not call any witnesses
for this hearing and instead focused on procedural matters and the disclosure of
evidence to the two parties, especially of classified and secret prosecution
evidence relating to the torture of the defendants; hearings were not held on
every single day during the 3-week period.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/politics/guantanamo-torture-fbi-cia.html
https://www.lawdragon.com/news-features/2021-11-08-lawyers-in-9-11-case-seek-evidence-of-psychological-scars-of-cia-interrogators
The Pakistani government has announced that 73-year old Saifullah
Paracha, the oldest prisoner held at Guantánamo, will soon be repatriated to
Pakistan. He was cleared for release earlier this year and is in bad health.
The Pakistani government said that it is “coordinating with the US authorities
for the repatriation of Paracha and some other Pakistanis from Guantanamo Bay.
“In a written reply to the Senate, the US State Department stated
that Washington was in contact with Islamabad and the two countries were
completing the necessary formalities for Paracha’s extradition to Pakistan.”
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2330145/oldest-guantanamo-bay-prisoner-to-be-extradited-to-pakistan-soon-says-govt
The family of Abdulqadir al Madhfari, one of twelve former Yemenis
prisoners released to the UAE in 2016 and repatriated to Yemen in October,
reported that he disappeared in mid-November after being detained by Houthi
militia members. Suffering from mental health problems since his detention at
Guantánamo and then in the UAE, he was effectively released only in October and
several weeks later was detained again. His family do not know where he is
being held and have been denied access to him.
https://theintercept.com/2021/11/19/guantanamo-detainee-disappeared-yemen/
On 25 November, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg
found in a case brought by two French former prisoners, Nizar Sassi and Mourad
Benchellali, in Sassi and Benchellali
v France, that the French
foreign ministry and intelligence services had not breached Article 6 of the
European Convention on Human Rights (right to a fair trial), when they visited
the men at Guantánamo seeking information for their own investigations in
France on three separate occasions, and that the statements given while in
detention were not used to bring criminal charges against them in France. Upon
their release from Guantánamo in 2004, without charge or trial, the two were
tried and convicted of terrorism offences, and subsequently filed a complaint
on their release. The Court had previously thrown out their claim under Article
3, prohibition of the use of torture. Considering the visits and questioning an
administrative matter, the Court dodged having to deal with the lawfulness
under European law of member states questioning their citizens while held in
unlawful arbitrary detention abroad.
