LGC Newsletter – August 2022

 Guantánamo Bay

On 8 August, the US Department of Justice issued a motion opposing Majid Khan’s habeas petition filed in June at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, having not been released after he completed his sentence at Guantánamo Bay on 1 March. In response to Khan’s claims that “his detention is “arbitrary, indefinite and perpetual, and does not serve its ostensible purpose of preventing his return to the battlefield.””, the DoJ responded that “in addition to its “diligent” pursuit of diplomatic efforts to resettle Khan and its continued “prioritizing” of this effort, Khan’s petition also raised questions for which there currently exists no precedent and that there are constitutional questions that the court should refrain from reaching at this time”". Majid Khan is seeking that “the Biden administration approve Khan’s transfer anywhere outside of Pakistan, where Khan faces risk of persecution.” The US claims that it is urgently seeking a third state to host Majid Khan.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/us-responds-guantanamo-detainees-request-habeas-relief

 

The periodic review board has again refused to clear former CIA secret prison prisoner Abu Faraj al-Libi for release. He has never been charged or tried at Guantánamo.

LGC Newsletter – July 2022

 Guantánamo Bay

Yemeni prisoner Khalid Ahmed Qasim, who has been held without charge or trial at Guantánamo for over 20 years, has been cleared for release by the periodic review board. He is one of 21 of the remaining 36 prisoners who have been cleared but will remain at Guantánamo for now as the US looks for safe third countries to host them. Only four of the remaining prisoners are “forever” prisoners, whose status has not been clarified and are being held indefinitely; three of them were previously tortured at CIA secret facilities around the world before arriving at Guantánamo.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/20/politics/guantanamo-detainee-cleared-for-release/index.html

 

A three-week pre-trial hearing commenced in the case of Abd Al Nashiri, accused of involvement in attacking a US navy vessel in the Gulf of Aden in 2000. During the hearing, it was revealed that he had told FBI agents that he had been waterboarded by the CIA, as testified by an interpreter; however, this information is not included in the official account of his interrogations prosecutors want to use as evidence of his confession in his death-penalty trial. The interpreter’s testimony also revealed that “The C.I.A. had a secret role at Guantánamo in the detention and interrogations of the men by F.B.I. and Navy law enforcement agents, including collecting the notes from interrogations” and “The C.I.A. required that the interrogators write their accounts of what they learned on agency computers, which were classified”. During the pre-trial hearing, lawyers also raised arguments related to his mental health situation. As a member of the courtroom staff tested positive for Covid-19, the hearing was closed before the end of the first week until at least the middle of the first week of August.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/us/politics/gitmo-prisoner-torture-cia.html

https://www.lawdragon.com/news-features/2022-07-29-critical-suppression-hearing-resumes-in-guantanamo-uss-cole-bombing-case

LGC Newsletter – June 2022

Guantánamo Bay

One of the very few “convicted” (through torture evidence and secret plea bargain) prisoners at Guantánamo, Majid Khan completed his 10-year sentence on 1 March. His lawyers are now suing the US government for failing to release him for more than three months, “arguing that the US has an obligation to resettle him somewhere, based on his cooperation with authorities”. One of his lawyers, Katya Jestin, said in a statement: “"The government's failure to transfer Majid after serving his sentence makes the military commissions system utterly pointless.

“Why have a trial and sentencing, let alone plead guilty and cooperate with the United States, if you aren't released at the end of your sentence? It's a failure of policy and may have larger programmatic consequences for the government.”

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/guantanamo-majid-khan-sues-us-imprisonment-beyond-scheduled-release

 

Iraqi prisoner Nashwan al-Tamir, aka Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, entered a plea bargain on 13 June before the military commission, pleading guilty to “war crimes charges for his role in al-Qaida attacks against U.S. and allied forces along with civilians in Afghanistan”. Held at Guantánamo for over 15 years and with pre-trial hearings in his case dragging on for many years with no clear progress, “He pleaded guilty to four of five charges against him, including conspiracy and several violations of the international laws of war as an al-Qaida commander early in the conflict in Afghanistan that formally ended with the U.S. withdrawal in August.

“He was facing up to life in prison but is expected to be eventually transferred out of Guantanamo and sent to a third country under the terms of his plea deal after he undergoes additional medical treatment at the base”.

“This is the first plea agreement in a Guantanamo case since the election of President Joe Biden, whose administration has been working to gradually reduce the number of prisoners at Guantanamo and move at least closer to being able to close it”.

https://www.voanews.com/a/iraqi-held-by-us-at-guantanamo-pleads-guilty-to-war-crimes-/6615588.html

 

Former Algerian prisoner Saber Lahmar, who was released to France in 2009 and has been joined by his family there, has been given a 10-year sentence in Bordeaux for spreading jihadist propaganda and reportedly inciting people to go and fight in Syria. His co-defendant was acquitted of all charges. He has consistently denied the charges and his lawyers have said they will appeal the sentence. He was never charged or tried at Guantánamo.

https://california18.com/france-lahmer-former-detainee-at-guantanamo-heavily-sentenced/5238452022/

 

Asadullah Harun Gul, one of the last two Afghans left at Guantánamo, has been released to his family in Afghanistan after more than 15 years and over 6 months after winning a habeas corpus petition in the US courts in which the judge ordered his release. There are now 36 prisoners at Guantánamo.

https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/rights-freedom/free-at-last-the-afghan-harun-gul-is-released-from-guantanamo-after-15-years/

LGC Newsletter – May 2022

Guantánamo Bay

In a pre-trial hearing in early May in the capital case of Abd Al-Nashiri, accused of involvement in an attack on a military vessel in the Gulf of Aden in 2000, CIA torture architect, contract psychologist Dr James Mitchell, testified how “how he and his partner in building the CIA interrogation program, Dr. Bruce Jessen, conducted three waterboarding sessions of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri over multiple days in November 2002 in an effort to stop what the Bush administration believed was “a second wave” of terrorist attacks to follow those on Sept. 11, 2001.” They stopped as the victim was too small in size to continue; at the time, Al-Nashiri weighed only 120 lb. Providing more of the kind of confessional testimony that should be used in his own war crimes trial, “Mitchell said that al Nashiri began providing useful intelligence in subsequent interrogation sessions at Location 3, leading the interrogation team to “taper off” from what the CIA referred to as its “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or “EITs.” For al Nashiri, Mitchell said these techniques also included sleep deprivation, slapping, periods of confinement in a box and a process of being repeatedly pushed hard against a wall known as “walling.” According to his testimony, Mitchell based the techniques on those he used as an instructor in the Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE, program, which puts trainees through abusive situations to prepare them for capture by hostile forces.

“Mitchell said Monday afternoon that al Nashiri would crawl into the confinement box to get away from the bright lights in his cell that were on 24 hours a day.

“Nashiri actually liked being in the box,” Mitchell said.”

In the same hearing, another Guantánamo prisoner, Yemeni Abd al Salam al Hilah, who has been cleared for release, was due to give two days of testimony against Al-Nashiri, however on the morning of his testimony, he refused to attend court. Attending the following day, he stated “he had “nothing to hide” but was concerned that the government would “manipulate” his answers and use them against him. His voice rising at times, al Hilah said that both he and his family have suffered during his 20 years in U.S. custody.

“Lyness [al Hilah’s lawyer] rose to say that his client’s statement was a “clear invocation” of his right against self-incrimination. [Judge] Acosta agreed and decided that the deposition would not go forward. He recessed the commission until the next hearing, scheduled to start July 25”.

https://www.lawdragon.com/news-features/2022-05-03-architect-of-cia-interrogation-program-testifies-to-repeated-abuse-of-uss-cole-suspect

Former British resident, Ugandan Jamal Kiyemba, who was released from Guantánamo without charge or trial in 2007, has been charged and faces trial for alleged membership in 2021-2022 of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group designated a terrorist organisation in Uganda, along with others. He has been remanded in custody pending investigation. He denied the charges.

https://observer.ug/news/headlines/73623-ex-guantanamo-bay-inmate-remanded-to-luzira-prison-over-adf-terror-links

 

LGC Newsletter – April 2022

 Guantánamo Bay

Algerian prisoner Sufiyan Barhoumi, 48, was repatriated in early April, after spending almost 20 years at Guantánamo. Kidnapped in Pakistan, he was never put on trial, and was cleared for release by the periodic review board in 2016. It took an additional six years to reunite him with his family in Algeria.

There are currently 37 prisoners held at Guantánamo, most of whom have been cleared for release.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60970825

The last Algerian prisoner held at Guantánamo, Said Bin Brahim Bin Umran Bakhush, has also been cleared for release this month by the periodic review board.

In addition, the youngest prisoner currently held at Guantánamo, Yemeni Hassan Bin Attash, who was handed over to the US by Pakistani security forces in 2002, has been cleared for release. He was 17 at the time and has never been charged. Brother of one of the 9/11 defendants, he was brought to Guantánamo in 2006 at the same time as his brother but has never met him there.

https://www.democracynow.org/2022/4/28/headlines/guantanamos_youngest_prisoner_cleared_for_release_20_years_after_he_was_jailed_without_charges

 

Former Mauritanian prisoner, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, is suing the Canadian government for $35 million for its alleged role in his 14-year detention at Guantánamo. Ould Slahi claims that the Canadian government, “caused, contributed to and prolonged [his] detention, torture, assault and sexual assault at Guantanamo Bay."

“Slahi, a Mauritanian national, lived in Montreal from November 1999 to January 2000, during which time he was investigated by security services. Slahi, 51, is accusing Canadian authorities of harassing him during their investigation, with the stress forcing him to return to Mauritania.

“The core of Slahi's claim is that Canadian authorities shared false information about his activities and otherwise contributed to events that eventually led to his arrest, after which he was transported first to Jordan and Afghanistan, and then Guantanamo Bay, where he spent 14 years imprisoned without charge.”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guantanamo-bay-detainee-lawsuit-canada-1.6428886

 

Defence lawyers have visited the now-closed CIA-run camp 7 at Guantánamo where prisoners were held from 2006 to 2021. They have described the conditions they saw as “exceedingly disturbing” and that the prisoners, who were considered “high-value detainees” and had previously spent several years in various secret CIA torture prisons around the world, were held in conditions similar to being “buried alive”. They have called for any sentences given to prisoners held there currently facing trial to be reduced in view of the ordeal of being held prisoner there.

The lawyers “are currently gathering information and evidence, including taking photographs and bringing experts to inspect the now-abandoned site. The attorneys also want anything that the men said while detained at the camp to be excluded from their cases, arguing that the camp was "indistinguishable" from the CIA black sites where detainees were tortured.”

Pre-trial hearings in the 9/11 case involving five prisoners due to be held next month have now been cancelled.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/guantanamo-detainees-cia-camp-reduced-sentences

A pre-trial hearing did, however, take place in the case of Yemeni prisoner Abd Al-Nashiri in the last week of April. Key witnesses in the hearing include CIA torture architect James Mitchell and army torturer Damien Corsetti. Other witnesses include agents who had interviewed another suspect in this same case.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2022/04/27/Cuba-USS-Cole-organizer-hearing-Guantanamo-Cuba/7921651100208/