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Entries in Guantanamo Bay (26)

Friday
Feb272009

Today's Top Journalism: Torture is OK if It's Sunny

binyam2Today intrepid reporter Ben Leach of The Daily Telegraph gives us the inside story on a case involving torture, extraordinary rendition, and deprivation of basic human rights:

Binyam Mohamed, the British resident released from US detention base Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, has told friends that Britain is too cold.
Thursday
Feb262009

Fact x Importance = News: The Stories We're Watching (26 February)

sharifPolitics and the Law: Sharif Barred from Office in Pakistan

The Pakistan Supreme Court yesterday maintained a ban on former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (pictured) from standing for election and removed his brother, Shahbaz, as Governor of Punjab Province. The decision comes a week before elections for the upper chamber of Parliament.

Demonstrations followed the decision, with Sharif supporters blaming President Asif Ali Zardari for the verdict. It is likely that they will join a Long March on 12 March, led by lawyers demanded the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, removed by Zardari's predecessor Pervez Musharraf.

(It would be impolite of me, since the media didn't mention it, to note the disparity in the handling of the Sharifs' case with that of Zardari. The current President was long in exile because of charges of corruption, but these were waived by the Pakistani courts last year so he could assume office.)

Somalia in Upheaval

Violence and turmoil is far from new in the African country, but the lack of an effective central government is even more apparent in recent days. Just after new President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed took up office in Mogadishu, the Islamist faction al-Shabab took control of a border town, overpowering pro-Government forces.

More than 65 people died in yesterday's fighting.

Canada Speaks on Guantanamo Bay: We're Tougher than the Brits

The Globe and Mail reports:
Ottawa won't seek the return of Omar Khadr, the only Canadian and last remaining westerner left in Guantanamo, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said yesterday after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton....

“As a matter of fact, I reiterated Canada's position on this,” said Mr. Cannon. “What I have said on numerous occasions is that this individual is allegedly a murderer and [stands] accused of terrorism.”
Tuesday
Feb242009

The "Other" Guantanamo: Report of the Center for Constitutional Rights

Related Post: Text of Pentagon Review of Conditions at Guantanamo Bay
Related Post: Everyone OK at Guantanamo Now. Leave Us Alone.

gitmo4On the same day that the Pentagon released its report on conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the Center for Constitutional Rights has issued far different results from its investigation:
The majority of the men being detained are in isolation. They go weeks without seeing the sun. Fluorescent lights, however, remain on 24 hours a day in Camp 5. According to the report, “improvements” cited by the military are, by and large, public relations activities rather than meaningful improvements in detainees’ conditions....The report details multiple cases of abuse occurring in the last month and a half.

The CCR's summary of its report follows. The full report is also available on-line.

Center for Constitutional Rights Experts Dispute Government Assertion That Guantánamo Complies With Geneva Conventions

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) released a report on the current conditions in Camps 5, 6, and Echo following the press conference today of Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, who delivered his own report on conditions to the White House on Friday. Adm. Walsh determined in his report that conditions at the base meet the standards of the Geneva Conventions, an assertion the attorneys dispute.

CCR’s report, “Conditions of Confinement at Guantanamo: Still in Violation of the Law,” covers conditions at Guantánamo in January and February 2009 and includes new eyewitness accounts from attorneys and detainees. The authors address continuing abusive conditions at the prison camp, including conditions of confinement that violate U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.

“The men at Guantánamo are deteriorating at a rapid rate due to the harsh conditions that continue to this day, despite a few cosmetic changes to their routines,” said CCR Staff Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei. “They are caught in a vicious cycle where their isolation causes psychological damage, which causes them to act out, which brings more abuse and keeps them in isolation. If they are going to be there another year, or even another day, this has to end.”

Despite President Obama’s executive order of January 22, 2009, requiring humane standards of confinement at Guantanamo and conformity with “all applicable laws governing the conditions of such confinement,” including the Geneva Conventions, attorneys assert that detainees at Guantanamo have continued to suffer from solitary confinement, psychological abuse, abusive force-feeding of hunger strikers, religious abuse, and physical abuse and threats of violence from guards and Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) teams.

The majority of the men being detained are in isolation. They go weeks without seeing the sun. Fluorescent lights, however, remain on 24 hours a day in Camp 5. According to the report, “improvements” cited by the military are, by and large, public relations activities rather than meaningful improvements in detainees’ conditions.

In a declaration made February 13, 2009, Col. Bruce Vargo, commander of the Joint Detention Group at Guantánamo, stated that, “There are no solitary confinement detention areas at JTF-GTMO…Detainees typically are able to communicate with other detainees either face-to-face or by spoken word from their cells throughout the day.” By this, say attorneys, he means that the men can yell through the metal food slot in the solid steel doors of their cells when it is left open and through the crack between the door and the floor.

The report details multiple cases of abuse occurring in the last month and a half. For example, “On the afternoon of January 7, 2009, Yasin Ismael was in one of the outdoor cages of Camp 6 for “recreation” time. The cage was entirely in the shade. Mr. Ismael asked to be moved to the adjoining empty cage because it had sunlight entering from the top. The guards, who were outside the cages, refused. One guard told Mr. Ismael that he was “not allowed to see the sun.” Angered, Mr. Ismael threw a shoe against the inner mesh side of the cage; which bounced harmlessly back onto the cage floor. The guards, however, accused Mr. Ismael of attacking them and left him in the cage as punishment. He eventually fell asleep on the floor of the cage, but hours later he was awakened by the sound of an IRF team entering the cage in the dark. The team shackled him, and he put up no resistance. They then beat him. They blocked his nose and mouth until he felt that he would suffocate, and hit him repeatedly in the ribs and head. They then took him back to his cell. As he was being taken back, a guard urinated on his head. Mr. Ismael was badly injured and his ear started to bleed, leaving a large stain on his pillow. The attack on Mr. Ismael was confirmed by at least one other detainee.”

One detainee in Camp 6 wrote to his attorney in January 2009, “As I told you, we are in very bad condition, suffering from aggression, beating and IRF teams, as well as the inability to sleep except for a few hours. Soldiers here are on a high alert state and if one of us dares to leave his cell and comes back without any harm, he is considered as a man who survived an inevitable danger.

Hunger strikes continue among a large number of men at Guantanamo. Hunger strikers are brutally force-fed using a restraint chair and often unsanitary feeding tubes, and are beaten for refusing food, a practice that continued within the last month and a half. Force-feeding hunger strikers is considered by the World Medical Association to be a violation of medical ethics and has continued unabated since President Obama’s Executive Order.

Detainees are still denied access to communal prayer: military officials continue to classify hearing a call to prayer through a food slot as communal prayer, which does not comport with the requirements of Islam. There has been no Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo since 2003, despite repeated requests. In addition, the report found that then men are also subject to body search procedures that require the men to subject themselves to a scanner that visually strips the men naked each time they leave their cells for attorney meetings or recreation. This humiliating and degrading experience, particularly given the men’s strong religious background, has led them to stay in their cells all day, refusing attorney meetings and recreation entirely.

The Center for Constitutional Rights issued a series of recommendations to ensure the conditions at Guantanamo satisfy legal standards for the humane treatment of the detainees during the interim period while its closure is being implemented. They are, in brief,

* Close Camps 5, 6 and Echo immediately, end solitary confinement, and move the men there to facilities with lawful and humane conditions of confinement.
* End religious abuse of detainees, including the violations of detainees’ right to practice their religion freely and the use of routine strip scanning and strip searching.
* Cease the use of IRF teams and all other physical abuse of detainees immediately, including ending temperature manipulation and sleep deprivation.
* End the feeding of individuals against their will or under coercive circumstances.
* Allow detainees immediate access to independent medical and psychological professionals and cease the practice of forcible medication of detainees.

“If President Obama is going to uphold the law and enforce his own Executive Order, he must close Camps 5, 6, and Echo and improve conditions immediately,” said CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren. “He should quickly remedy and end the Guantánamo created by his predecessor, not embrace a whitewash of it. I hope Attorney General Eric Holder has a freer hand to report the true conditions at the base from his visit there today than did Adm. Walsh, whose boss has overseen Guantánamo for the last two years.”

CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee” there. CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. In addition, CCR has been working to resettle the approximately 60 men who remain at Guantánamo because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture.
Tuesday
Feb242009

Text: The Pentagon Review of Conditions at Guantanamo Bay

Related Post: The “Other” Guantanamo - Report of the Center for Constitutional Rights
Related Post: Everyone OK at Guantanamo Now. Leave Us Alone.

gitmo2REVIEW OF DEPARTMENT COMPLIANCE WITH PRESIDENT’S EXECUTIVE
ORDER ON DETAINEE CONDITIONS OF CONFINEMENT


"After considerable deliberation and a comprehensive review, it is our judgment that the conditions of confinement in Guantánamo are in conformity with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions."

Read report in full....
Tuesday
Feb242009

War on Terror Watch: Everyone OK at Guantanamo Now. Leave Us Alone.

Related Post: The “Other” Guantanamo - Report of the Center for Constitutional Rights
Related Post: Text of Pentagon Review of Conditions at Guantanamo Bay

gitmo1Headlines will be devoted to the US Department of Defense's review of the Guantanamo Bay facility today: "Guantanamo detainees treated humanely, Pentagon report says". There will be highlighting of pleasant recommendations such as "more human-to-human contact, recreation opportunities with several detainees together, intellectual stimulation, and group prayer".

Insofar as an accused agency can investigate itself --- sort of the equivalent of Bernard Madoff telling the worlds that his accounts balance up quite nicely now --- this is welcome to hear. It will bolster the public show of President Obama, who requested the report last month, of putting Guantanamo above board even if it cannot be closed in the near-future.

But, how shall we put this? Horse Gone. Stable Door Bolted. Nothing in this report will meet the requirement of an investigation not of Guantanamo Now but Guantanamo Then. Until and unless there is an enquiry into the abuses that took place between 2002 and 2009, until and unless there is an admission by the US Government that it carries responsibility for those abuses, until and unless there is an assurance that this will not happen again, Camp X-Ray/Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay will be a reminder that America's leaders were prepared to jettison law and morality and the values they put forward.

And who is to say that the same process cannot and will not play out in another case? Perhaps four, eight years from now the Pentagon can give us the same assurances over a Camp Bagram in Afghanistan, even as today more detainees are being put into a facility which has also had its share of abuses and tortures but which --- for the moment --- remains out of the public spotlight.