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DETAINEE PROFILES & ACTIONS
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 The remaining British detainee in the Guantanamo Bay prison is on a hunger strike and says he is being treated inhumanely. (PLEASE WRITE the DOJ!)
Shaker Aamer has been held at the US prison in Cuba for almost 10 years. He was cleared for release in 2007 when the Bush administration acknowledged it had no evidence against him.
The British government continues to press for his release.
Mr Aamer wants to be freed or sent for a “just and public” trial.
He was born in Saudi Arabia but has British residency, and his wife and two children live in London.
‘Years of hardship’
BBC Radio 5 live’s Victoria Derbyshire programme has obtained a letter, written and signed by eight detainees including Mr Aamer, alleging that they have been treated inhumanely during his detention. In the letter, he describes himself, and fellow detainees, as “hostages.”
He adds: “Inhumane treatment is taking place at the hospital among other areas, especially affecting the sick and those who are on (hunger) strike and our deprivation of real treatment, health, diet and appropriate clothing which are not provided to us, nor we are allowed to provide them for ourselves.”
The letter concludes: “After these years of hardship that we have spent here – we want you to consider our cases as soon as possible and give us the right to a just and a public trial or set us free without conditions.”
Responding to the letter, Col Donnie Thomas, the Joint Detention Group Commander – the senior military policeman in charge of all the camps – told the BBC: “It is totally false. I take my mission very seriously. In 19 months here, that is my mission. These detainees are treated with the highest dignity and respect and humanity.”
Mr Aamer was captured in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in December 2001. He was flown to Guantanamo in February 2002 and is one of 172 untried inmates.
By Nasouh Nazzal
Plan to deport Barghouti to Amman as Israel refuses his return to West Bank
Ramallah The possible deportation of Fatah leaders serving life imprisonment in Israeli jails is the key hurdle in reaching a deal between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at the Amman exploratory meetings to secure an extension to the Quartet deadline which expires Thursday.
Israel has categorically refused to release Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat, secretary-general of the Palestine Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, if they were to return to their West Bank homes. So. Jordanian and European mediators proposed that they be deported to Jordan to resolve the issue, Gulf News has learnt.
With all due respect and right to freedom for all the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, their release will be the last thing the Palestinian people want to exchange their demand of colony freeze
Tayseer Khalid, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation
Continue reading Prisoner release on cards to restart peace talks between Israel, Palestine
The focus on Guantanamo over the past couple years has been misplaced. In fact, the number of detainees there has been dissipating somewhat. The detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, by contrast, have exploded, with detainees captured throughout the world moved over to Bagram – and shielded from any habeas proceedings – rather than Gitmo. Bagram has become the black hole. So it’s good news, on its face, that the Administration wants to repatriate non-Afghan detainees out of Bagram.
The Obama administration is considering the repatriation of most, if not all, of the non-Afghan detainees held at the main American-run prison in Afghanistan, an effort to oversee their transfer before U.S. officials relinquish control of the facility, according to administration officials.
The foreign prisoners, who number close to 50, were in some cases picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan and in others detained in third countries and taken to the prison by the CIA, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
With the U.S. government planning to hand over control of the prison, American officials believe that Afghan authorities are unlikely to have any interest in either continuing to hold the foreigners or in putting them on trial. By beginning the repatriation process soon, officials believe they can negotiate transfers with the detainees’ home countries, arrange for post-transfer monitoring, and secure diplomatic assurances that detainees will not be abused when they return home.
I think 50 is an incredibly low number. As in, not credible. I’ve heard reports of several hundred new detainees at Bagram. And I don’t know how the Yemeni naitonals will be handled given the instability in that country.
Continue reading US Resolves to Deal with Non-Afghan Nationals at Bagram Prison
By Rosalinda Diaz
Human rights activists marched from the White House to the Supreme Court building earlier this month to protest the perpetually delayed closure of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
The group demonstrated against President Obama’s failure to uphold his original campaign promise to shut down the facility upon his election. This month marks the ten year anniversary of the military site’s use, which continues to elicit strong responses from supporters and detractors over its procedures’ legality and constitutionality.
According to third-year global studies and economics major Armand Amin, Human Rights Board’s Persian Student Group co-president, public apathy toward the facility jeopardizes basic human rights.
“I believe it’s extremely important that we recognize and understand that what our government has undertaken with Guantanamo and various other CIA black sites directly works against the human rights agreements that the international community created in order to protect itself from the recurrence of the atrocities of the mid-20th century,” Amin said.
In 2002, the Bush administration instituted a policy allowing the government to detain prisoners affiliated with terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda without trial at Guantanamo Bay.
Amin said the detention camp’s operations violate several international laws established in the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners.
Continue reading Delay of Guantanamo Bay Closure Incites Protests
FD Editor’s Note: More accusations…
Hysen Sherifi had brother hire hit man for $5,000, authorities say
IHysen Sherifi and five other men who federal prosecutors accuse of plotting holy war overseas from their North Carolina homes will remain jailed until trial because they are dangerous and may flee, a federal judge ruled in August 2009.
RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina man sentenced to prison recently as part of a homegrown terrorist ring has been accused in a federal court document of plotting to kill witnesses who testified against him at trial.
An affidavit unsealed in federal court Monday accuses Hysen Sherifi of plotting against the witnesses from his jail cell. Authorities say an FBI informant posing as a hit man met with Sherifi’s brother and a female friend and accepted $5,000 and a photo of an intended victim.
FBI agents have arrested the brother, Shkumbin Sherifi, and Nevine Aly Elshiekh, a school teacher. Now in federal custody at the New Hanover County Jail, each is charged with a felony count of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.
Hysen Sherifi, 27, was sentenced to 45 years in prison earlier this month in what prosecutors described as a conspiracy to attack the Marine base at Quantico, Va., and targets abroad. Five others, including construction contractor Daniel Patrick Boyd, have been sentenced to federal prison terms for terrorism charges related to raising money, stockpiling weapons and training in preparation for jihadist attacks.
No charges have been filed at this time against Hysen Sherifi related to the new plot, according to a search of a federal court database.
Shkumbin Sherifi and Elshiekh await a scheduled first appearance Friday in federal court in Wilmington. The two have applied for court appointed lawyers, who have not yet been assigned.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Raleigh has released no information about those arrested.
Continue reading North Carolina terror suspect plotted to kill witnesses: FBI
Jane Sutton Reuters
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – A U.S. military judge ordered the commander of the Guantanamo detention camp to testify on Tuesday about orders he gave that limit the mail prisoners can receive from their lawyers.
The dispute about the handling of confidential legal correspondence pits military jailers against military defense lawyers even as the military prepares to expand the number of Guantanamo prisoners facing war crimes charges that could eventually lead to their execution.
The judge, an Army colonel, cannot compel the prison camp commander, a Navy admiral, to change the mail policy. But he could halt the prosecution of an alleged al Qaeda bomber accused of murdering 17 U.S. sailors if he believes the policy violates prisoners’ rights to a fair trial or puts defense lawyers in an ethical bind.
Prosecutors in the trial of Saudi captive Abd al Rahim al Nashiri have asked that his mail be subject to the same screening procedures that the camp commander, Rear Admiral David Woods, imposed last month for the other 170 men held captive at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba.
Under Woods’ order, only documents that were originated by defense lawyers and signed by them can be delivered as legal mail, and even those are subject to a cursory scan by a review team.
Anything else must be sent by regular U.S. mail, and is subject to redaction or rejection by censors. Defense lawyers say the rule is so narrow that they would be prohibited from sending their clients a copy of the law pertaining to their case, or the resumes of expert witnesses called to testify on their behalf.
Continue reading Guantanamo commander summoned to testify in court
By Noah Berlatsky
America wants to forget the abuses of Guantanamo and the like, but Beneath the Blindfold shows that the consequences of brutal interrogations linger for a long time.
Beneath the Blindfold
“Didn’t he get the memo that we’re not relitigating the past?” That’s what Rahm Emanuel reportedly shouted at a White House intermediary early in the Obama administration’s tenure when he learned that Eric Holder had plans to investigate Bush-era torture. As Glenn Greenwald has discussed at length, the Obama White House has decided that our country shouldn’t hold Bush, or Rumsfeld, or John Yoo, or anybody accountable for interrogations using torture which violate international and domestic law. Or, as Emanuel put it, “It’s not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back and any sense of anger and retribution.”Hector Arisitzábal, who was tortured by police in Colombia because his brother was a Marxist, has a somewhat different perspective:
Afterwards, after I was let go I had nightmare after nightmare, fantasy after fantasy, of doing the worst things imaginable to my torturer. I came back, I worked, but I wasn’t there.
For Emanuel, energy and time are something we can allocate rationally. Torture was an unfortunate policy, but that’s all the more reason to not think about it too hard. For Arisitzábal, on the other hand, torture is a trauma, a recurring nightmare. It isn’t something you can bracket in pragmatism. It snaps your life in half, and the tragedy is precisely that you can’t go back to what you were before the break.
Continue reading A Documentary Makes the Case Against Torture by Interviewing the Tortured
The military commission hearing in the case of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri (pronounced al-NAH-shiri) beginning today will once again put on the world stage two of the worst U.S. ideas: Guantánamo and the death penalty.
The hearing takes place in Guantánamo — bad idea number one — where al-Nashiri has been detained for years, following his secret imprisonment and torture. As our European allies in countries including Poland, the U.K. and Spain are forced to deal with their complicity in the shameful U.S. program of torture and secret prisons and as our enemies continue to use the detention camps as a recruiting tool, the reasons to close Guantánamo, not start new trials there, are mounting.
Al-Nashiri’s hearing is in a capital case, the second really bad idea we cling to in this country. We still have the death penalty, although we are in the minority, and we share the distinction of “most executions” with human rights outlaws: China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen.
The fact that the hearing is in the military commissions (we’re going to stop counting bad ideas now) — will force Rick Kammen, longtime capital defender and al-Nashiri’s “learned counsel,” to make an argument he hasn’t needed in a long time, maybe a couple of decades. At issue is an indigent defendant’s right to receive funding for the investigation and the experts needed to defend against capital charges and the death sentence, and to ask for that funding outside the interested ears of the prosecution. (In legal Latin, such hearings are called “ex parte,” and they are as routine as the sound of ceiling fans in such bastions of “enlightened” capital practice as the courts of Mississippi and Louisiana.)
Continue reading Guantanamo and the Death Penalty: Two Terrible Ideas Come Together
Submitted by maureen on Sat, 01/14/2012 – 20:46
“I think Islam has been on trial,” said Nevine Elsheikh yesterday after three young USMuslims were handed down long sentences in a federal court in North Carolina. The men, all between the ages of 23 and 27, were found guilty of terrorism conspiracy-related charges in a case that raises questions about preemptive prosecution in domestic terrorism cases.
Defense attorneys for Omar Aly Hassan, Hysen Sherifi and Ziyad Yaghi urged the judge to consider minimum sentences because the government’s case rested on testimony from paid undercover FBI informants and immature posts some of the defendants made on Facebook and other Internet forums. No specific act of harm was identified in the indictment.
Even so, all three received nearly maximum recommended sentences. Omar Aly Hassan was sentenced to 15 years (in his case, the maximum sentence) with credit for the two and a half years he has already served; Kosovo native Hysen Sherifi was sentenced to 45 years and may face deportation upon release; and Ziyad Yaghi was sentenced to 380 months, or approximately 31.5 years. The men have 14 days to appeal the convictions.
“Corrupted ideology the substance of conspiracy”
The case against the three is part of a pattern of preemptive prosecution of domestic terrorism cases, in that defendants are prosecuted before any act is actually committed. In this case, all of the defendants were convicted of conspiring to provide material support to an unspecified group of terrorists in an unspecified place at an unspecified time, and Sherifi and Yaghi were convicted for conspiracy to kidnap, kill, maim or harm an unspecified group of people in an unspecified place at an unspecified time.
Continue reading Life sentences for young US Muslims convicted of vague terrorism conspiracy by “sleeping” jury
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The remaining British detainee in the Guantanamo Bay prison is on a hunger strike and says he is being treated inhumanely. (PLEASE WRITE the DOJ!)
