Tweet
US judge: Guantanamo evidence must be made public
Mon Jun 1, 2009 7:03pm EDT
* Decision involved more than 100 cases by prisoners
* Victory for detainee lawyers, news organizations
(Adds Justice Dept. comment)
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) – A federal judge rejected on Monday a U.S. government request to keep secret the unclassified evidence that it says justifies the continued imprisonment of more than 100 Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the government cannot keep the documents known as factual returns from public disclosure and must seek court approval to keep specific information secret.
"Public interest in Guantanamo Bay generally and these proceedings specifically has been unwavering," Hogan wrote. "Publicly disclosing the factual returns would enlighten the citizenry and improve perceptions of the proceedings’ fairness."
SNIP>
The sealed court documents outlined the government’s case for the continued holding of the detainees. The documents were filed in response to petitions by the detainees seeking their court-ordered release.
The ruling was a victory for detainee lawyers and a coalition of news organizations. They argued the news media and the public have a constitutional right of access to the documents.
The judge ordered the U.S. Justice Department to publicly file its unclassified records or show the court what specific information it wants to keep secret by the end of next month.
Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, hailed the ruling.
"For far too long, the government has succeeded in keeping information about Guantanamo secret and used secrecy to cover-up illegal detention and abuse," he said. "The decision marks an important step towards restoring America’s open court tradition that is essential to both accountability and the rule of law."
The Justice Department was reviewing the ruling, spokesman Dean Boyd said. He said the government never sought to keep the information sealed indefinitely but only until the completion of an appropriate classification review. (Editing by Jackie Frank)
27 Comments
Recommended.
Nice catch. Thanks Scout.
Important stuff! Thanks for bringing it up!
After being held without charge since 2002.
****************
” A Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay has died of an “apparent suicide,” U.S. military officials said.
The Joint Task Force that runs the U.S. prison in Cuba said guards found 31-year-old Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih unresponsive and not breathing in his cell Monday night.
In a Tuesday statement, the military said the detainee was pronounced dead by a doctor after “extensive lifesaving measures had been exhausted.” “
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31069767
yeah, thanks.
Hey Boo. Thanks for the recommend. I was hoping someone with more expertise would write a diary on this – didn’t happen.
I hope this ruling sets the example for future judicial rulings on all this claiming ’state secrets’ crap.
scout
Thanks, bluebutterfly. I thought to write a diary on your link, but it’s an AP story and rules say not to use those. I’ll search for a different source.
This is a heartbreaker. In GITMO since Feb 2002, about age 31 when he died – thus into GITMO at age about 24 with no hope of a fair trial or release ever. Never charged.
As a result of going on a hunger strike he was down to 86 pounds. Had he been given some hope even in Feb 2009, he maybe would have lived. Did the last spark of hope die when Obama announced that indefinite detentions would continue?
Just another example of Obama’s lack of transparency…
Oh, Jim, but per DOJ, they were gonna be transparent….someday. (/s)
Anybody want to venture a guess as to how long one of them “appropriate classification reviews” takes??
Something, I left a comment containing a request @4 in your Weekly Torture Letter diary. It’s o.k. if I’m asking too much.
My guess is that an appropriate classification review is one of those things that can be put off until there is no one left who remembers what it was for or why it was needed.
Here are more details on the dead Yemeni detainee. The story of his being in Afghanistan and his capture is much like that of John Walker Lindh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…..Al_Hanashi
He was with the Taliban before anyone knew anything about AQ and was fighting the Northern Alliance.
When does it stop? Another prisoner dead. Another one where there was no evidence against him that was valid. Another one held and tortured since 2002. Damn it all..he didn’t even have a lawyer. How bloody convenient that he died soon after finally being appointed one. Suicide, eh? What did he do, swallow his forced-feeding tube? How many more will die before that hell hole is shut down?
****************
“‘Salih was being force-fed in a restraint chair; the other six surviving inmates are being force-fed from bed,’ Remes said, adding that he didn’t think the Yemeni had any legal representation until two lawyers arrived in February. ‘They were due to see him for the first time in a couple of weeks,’ he said.” “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…..Al_Hanashi
On May 21st, it was decided that Ghailani gets a trial in New York. Ghailani was tortured and made claims against Salih. Salih dies before any testimony from Ghailani that might exonerate him.
***************
” Salih was one of around 50 prisoners at Guantánamo who had survived a massacre at Qala-i-Janghi, a fort in northern Afghanistan, at the end of November 2001, when, after the surrender of the city of Kunduz, several hundred foreign fighters surrendered to General Rashid Dostum, one of the leaders of the Northern Alliance, in the mistaken belief that they would be allowed to return home. Instead, they were imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, a nineteenth century mud fort in Mazar-e-Sharif, and when some of the men started an uprising against their captors, which led to the death of a CIA operative, US Special Forces, working with the Northern Alliance and British Special Forces, called in bombing raids to suppress the uprising, leading to hundreds of deaths. The survivors — who, for the most part, had not taken part in the fighting — took shelter in the basement of the fort, where they endured further bombing, and they emerged only after many more had died when the basement was set on fire and then flooded.
In Salih’s case, as in the cases of many — if not the majority — of prisoners at Guantánamo, the false allegation I identified above is not the only piece of untrustworthy material masquerading as evidence in his file. As I reported just two weeks ago, when it was announced that one of Guantánamo’s “high-value detainees,” Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, was to be put forward for trial in a federal court in New York, I discovered during my research for my book The Guantánamo Files that another allegation against Muhammad Salih had been made by Ghailani, while he was held in unknown conditions in a secret prison run by the CIA. “
http://www.andyworthington.co……uantanamo/
acq74- you & fellow travelers here @ FDL provide a much needed light among the deep darkness. It is an honor to know you. Steady on my friends, steady on…
The depth of the human soul never ceases to amaze… the following poem was written by a fellow Gitmo inmate & kindred soul / spirit of Muhammad Ahmanid Abdallah Salih. We must NEVER fail to affirm and defend the HUMANITY and civil rights of these prisoners (& those who came before them in other unspeakable wars). It is a paradox that we can be heart stricken by the outrages expressed in the content of such poetry while at the same time recognize the limitless capacity of the human soul to seek out and create beauty amid the most horrific of conditions.
Death Poem
By Jumah al Dossari
Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.
Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.
And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the “protectors of peace”.
Arrested in Pakistan and held in solitary confinement since 2003, Jumah al Dossari’s mental wellbeing is worrying his lawyers. The 33-year old Bahraini national has tried to kill himself 12 times since his incarceration in Guantanamo. On one visit, his lawyer found him hanging in a bedsheet noose, with a deep gash in one wrist. In a letter Mr Dossari wrote in 2005, he said: “The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people and I have been destroyed.”
see these links:
http://books.google.com/books?…..=9#PPP1,M1
http://www.adorfman.duke.edu/w…..tanamo.htm
http://www.independent.co.uk/n…..54005.html
First the US pays bounties to fill up prisons with innocent boys and men. Now it pays people to plant targeting chips to facilitate drone strikes in Pakistan. Poor men are paid to be informants. The US has gone past the point of redemption with this one. I’m sure this will inflame people more than releasing torture photos ever could. Hours or days later means that even if there was a ‘legitimate’ target originally, he could be long gone before the strike. Targeting civilians is a war crime even if it is authorized by Gates, or the commander on the ground.
****************
” The CIA is equipping Pakistani tribesmen with secret electronic transmitters to help target and kill al-Qaida leaders in the north-western tribal belt, in a tactic that could aid Pakistan’s army as it takes the battle against extremism to the Taliban heartland.
That success is reportedly in part thanks to the mysterious electronic devices, dubbed “chips” or “pathrai” (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination.
“Everyone is talking about it,” said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. “People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it.”
According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders.
Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. “There are body parts everywhere,” said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike.
A former CIA officer who served in Waziristan in 2006 said that small American teams comprising CIA agents, radio experts and special forces soldiers are stationed inside Pakistani military bases across the tribal belt.
From there, the CIA recruits a network of paid, and sometimes unwitting, informers – known as “cut-outs” – to help identify targets, he added. In most cases they are poor local men. “
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..n-pakistan
Thank you, tx49holdem. It’s good to have you with us.
I’ll need some time to cope with what you have shown us. A diary must be written – I feel so inadequate.
The US controllers have confiscated and hidden away or destroyed all these poems they have detected. Pathetic that in all their loud, mean imposition of power and terror that the thing the jailors most fear is the pen of a poet. That old saying, “the pen is mightier than the sword” still rings true.
Blue, I’m pretty certain you’re way ahead of me on this: How long before these chip-weapons are used by the Thought Police against those of us labeled “different”, who speak out and expose the wrongs of the powerful?
We all know some who would do anything for money or acceptance into the “in group”…or for food…
esseff44, my guess is that your guess is exactly right! My guess is that the court may get a few worthless scraps and tatters left from a great computer crash or fire caused by faulty electrical wiring…
There is no need for chip-weapons in the US. That is what the National ID cards, chipped driver licences, and chipped passports, are all about. The government insists that it has the right to track its citizens; contrary to what the Constitution says. Don’t need drone attacks to kill in the US..you have the Patriot Act to detain and disappear anyone that the government chooses to label as a threat to national security. An act that expires in December. The time to fight against its renewal is now. A few states has refused to have the National ID cards. Some people’s eyes are wide open as to their government’s motives.
The US has a lot of detention centers and approval to spend $37million to build more on military bases over the next two years was passed by congress on January 22/09. Your government will not openly kill, it will detain in camps. Sound like history repeating itself? It is.
This can be stopped by investigating the last batch of crimials..Bush and his cabal. This bill has been ignored. If it passed, it would be a very good thing for the citizens of America.
**************
Bill H R 104
To establish a national commission on presidential war powers and civil liberties.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled
SECTION 1. ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMISSION.
There is established the National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties (hereinafter in this Act referred to as the ‘Commission’) to investigate the broad range of policies of the Administration of President George W. Bush that were undertaken under claims of unreviewable war powers, including detention by the United States Armed Forces and the intelligence community, the use by the United States Armed Forces or the intelligence community of enhanced interrogation techniques or interrogation techniques not authorized by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, ‘ghosting’ or other policies intended to conceal the fact that an individual has been captured or detained, extraordinary rendition, domestic warrantless electronic surveillance, and other policies that the Commission may determine to be relevant to its investigation (hereinafter in this Act referred to as ‘the activities’).”
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h104/text
Blue, this sounds tinfoil-hat, but I’ve been concerned about the digital TV mandate and the gov’s contribution to each householder owning a TV. Why is gov pushing this or even getting involved in it?
I’ve seen the clips of the detainment centers with the acres of plastic coffins and their lids; and the peculiar buildings, railroad tracks and fences with top wires turned inward. I may end up there someday since going along to get along was never an option for me.
Got a new subject for you to enlighten me on: Have you ever heard of The Silk Road Strategy Act the US Congress passed on March 10, 1999 and 5 days later the bombing of Serbia began?
The article is about ‘pipelineistan’. I had read various articles about this or that aspect of it but in this Mother Jones article the picture becomes more clear. I’m beginning to suspect this whole ‘hate Arabs’ campaign is and always has been a big set-up to steal their oil and other rescources. As expected, you’ll see where Cheney, Z. Brzenski and Kissinger came in and remain in. [I bet not one American in 50 ever heard of this Act.]
9/11, the anthrax letters, shock and awe, scare/fear mongering, patriot act, ’smoke-um-out’, threat level warnings, OBL, and all the sorry killings and unspeakable acts of these wars all serve to distract us from seeing what is really going on as they take over the oil and build the multitude of prisons along the route of these pipelines planned back in the 1990s…..
It’s a pretty long article (and I need to read the lead-up articles by the author), but I’d appreciate your thoughts on it when you have time.
Thanks, Blue
Blue, I’ve read of this bill and agree it needs to pass, but frankly I don’t think it has a prayer. Too many in congress sold out too long ago either to the Big Oil boys, the corporations, the banks and/or the military industrial complex. America in 5 or 10 years will not be a welcome sight, IMHO.
Answer to the first question is money and control of the programming. It will take lots of money for anyone to set up a new station under digital technology. The few who control the MSM now will remain in control forever.
*************
The first Silk Road had lots of blah blah on promoting democracies, human rights, etc. in the countries under discussion. The very last line of the Act lists the countries. So, what really happened in these countries and what is happening today? The Silk Road might be aptly named the Oil and Heroin Pipeline Road.
**************
“(2) COUNTRIES OF THE SOUTH CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA- The term `countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia’ means Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan “
http://www.eurasianet.org/reso…..kroad.html
The update in 2006 was entered by Brownback and Kyl (and others)..two of the three who entered the update in 1999. More talk about US interests in the above mentioned areas. The US claims the right to energy security by controlling the governments of these countries is basically what it says through the whole act. Lots of that democracy is mandatory crapo. It is of note that the Iran’s right to nuclear power is denied. This is an outright lie and your congress agreed with it. Honestly, to save your country a viable third party is mandatory. Year after year both parties claim the right to take what other countries possess.
I’d never heard of the act, either, but this is my thought after reading both the 1999 and 2006 versions. Simply, it is PNAC under another name. PNAC’s plans to take the oil of other countries was spelled out almost identically to what the Silk Road does. Same objective, the Silk Road is just hidden under diplomatic pretense talk of forging friendly ties with these countries. PNAC is more straight forward..aka..we are going to take it. Remember, Israel was formed because of oil. The intent to take the oil in Arab countries in the Middle East was set in motion long ago.
Oh ya..they let 911 happen in order to get 100,000s of 1,000s of troops and contractors into Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s puppet leader was a signer of PNAC and his brother is the main heroin dealer. Oil and heroin profits for the neocons and the CIA and never ending war for the MIC.
*****************
“(13) The pressing need for diversification of energy resources makes access to Central Asian and Caspian Sea oil and gas resources a high energy security priority of the United States.
(14) The dangerous and destabilizing policy statements of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and actions by the Islamic Republic of Iran in the area of nuclear power, including uranium enrichment, threaten international security in general and regional security in Europe and Asia in particular. ”
http://www.theorator.com/bills109/s2749.html
The jury is still out on that one. Resistance is not futile. Never before have so many been trying so hard to get their government to change course. The bad politicians have to get voted out one by one and replaced by good ones. A slow process but it can be done.
Adam Kokesh wants to run for congress. The power of one is not to be overlooked. Can you imagine..a vet who is against illegal wars being a member of congress?
********
http://kokeshforcongress.com/
” To rebut claims that American ideals are the reality and “the distortions of the American idea” a temporary falling-away from that reality, Chomsky offers a brief review of the history of American imperialism, focusing on the 20th century.
“In the past 60 years,” Chomsky continues, “victims worldwide have also endured the CIA’s ‘torture paradigm.’ … There is no hyperbole when Jennifer Harbury entitles her penetrating study of the U.S. torture record Truth, Torture, and the American Way. It is highly misleading, to say the least, when investigators of the Bush gang’s descent into the sewer lament that ‘in waging the war against terrorism, America had lost its way.’”
According to Chomsky, the only notable innovation of the Bush administration was to carry out torture itself, rather than farming it out to proxies — an earlier practice to which the Obama administration has now reverted.
Chomsky also cites a 1980 study showing “that U.S. aid ‘has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens.’ … Not surprisingly, U.S. aid tends to correlate with a favorable climate for business operations and this is commonly improved by murder of labor and peasant organizers and human rights activists.”
Chomsky further notes that when the US signed the International Convention on Torture, it carefully excluded the forms of “mental” torture, such as sensory deprivation, that were at “the core of the CIA torture paradigm.”
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…..arly-days/
“Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld could soon be in trouble for the role he played in human rights abuses committed in the Guantanamo prison, a United Nations expert said Wednesday.
“In a year or two, his responsibilities will be established. Wherever he goes, he will face difficulties,” Leandro Despouy, who is Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told journalists in Geneva.
A US bipartisan Senate report released late last year found Rumsfeld and other top administration officials responsible for abuse of Guantanamo detainees in US custody.
It said Rumsfeld authorised harsh interrogation techniques on December 2, 2002 at the Guantanamo prison, although he ruled them out a month later.
Despouy said the “strong resistance” put forward by the former US administration to current US president Barack Obama’s decision to close the detention centre has nothing to do with the officially cited reason of “national security” considerations.
Rather they are fearful that they may be taken to task once the detention centre is closed, said Despouy. “
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/R…..32009.html
Thanks, Bluebutterfly. I’ll have to re-read and think some about all this (not that it really makes a whit of difference what I do).
The Silk Road Strategy Act of 1999 was an update?? I’ll have to try to find the first version and see when it was enacted and who sponsored it. I noted that Phil Gramm was a driver on the 1999 version (he also the driver on getting rid of Glass-Stegal which landed us in the credit default swaps grand loss at the Wall Street Casinos).
If I were younger I might think of going to New Zealand — probably only a matter of time before the US sees something there that it must grab.
Thanks for all your time and thought in answering my questions. After a lot of thought and work I may try to write a diary on the Silk Road Strategy Act and what it reveals. It’s a big subject and I note that P. Escobar of Asia Times emphasizes that every word is copyright protected.
I’m glad you’re ‘out there’, Blue, and hope all is looking positive for you. [not prying, just letting you know I care - no need to respond].