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Archive for the 'Detainee Treatment Act' Category

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21
Jul

Afghan Journalists’ “Shocking” Situation Condemned

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Afghanistan, Bush Lies, Detainee, Detainee Treatment Act, Journalist and Mohammad Jawed

..If you read nothing else, read this..

Text of report by privately-owned Afghan Ariana TV

[Presenter] National and foreign organizations for protection of journalists have described the condition of journalists in Afghanistan as shocking. They also demanded an unconditional release of Afghan journalist Jawid Ahmad, who is currently being detained in the US Bagram prison. Mariam Asi reports:

[Correspondent] Addressing a press conference held in Kabul, officials from these organizations say Jawid Ahmad, an Afghan journalist, is innocent and that the US forces have imprisoned him illegally. They say the US troops imprison innocent people in Bagram and Guantanamo detention centres on various charges.

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21
Jun

White House Dismissed Legal Advice On Detainees

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Detainee, Detainee Abuse and Detainee Treatment Act

By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer

Senior lawyers inside and outside the Bush administration repeatedly warned the White House that it was risking judicial scrutiny of its detention policies in Guantanamo Bay if it did not pursue a more pragmatic legal strategy that considered the likely reaction of the Supreme Court. But such advice, issued periodically over the past six years, was ignored or discounted, according to current and former administration officials familiar with the debates.

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16
Jun

U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Afghanistan, Bagram, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act and Dilawar

By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that’s used to corral livestock.

The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.

Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.

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14
Jun

US Guantanamo trials ‘to proceed’

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Detainee Treatment Act and Guantanamo

A key ruling by the US Supreme Court on Guantanamo detainees will not affect military trials of enemy combatants, the attorney general has said.

Michael Mukasey said he was disappointed with the court’s decision to allow foreign suspects to challenge their detention in US civilian courts.

But he said the trials of “enemy combatants” due to be held at the naval facility in Cuba would proceed.

The court’s ruling has been welcomed by US and foreign human rights groups.

It is seen as a major legal setback for the Bush administration, although it is not clear whether it will lead to prompt court hearings for the detainees.

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09
Jun

Rally calls for release of Guantanamo detainee

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Detainee Treatment Act, DoD, Hizb'ullah, Lies of the U.S. Administration and Poverty

moazzam-beggA BRITISH detainee who survived Guantanamo Bay headed a rally opposing the rise in racism against Muslims.

Moazzam Begg led the protest in Manchester on Thursday along with a vast amount of speakers and David Edgar who is one of Britain’s leading playwrights.

They join the growing demand that Gordon Brown act now to secure the release of British resident Binyam Mohamed.

Mr Mohamed is the last Brit in Guantanamo Bay and faces the death penalty on the bases of a confession tortured out of him, if found guilty by a US military commission. [Shaker Aamer is still there but is to be released to Saudi Arabia]

Campaigners say `he was abused by America and betrayed by Britain’.  [Truer words never spoken]

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05
Jun

Confessed 9/11 mastermind: “I wish to be a martyr” for organizing attacks

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, C.I.A., Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Guantanamo, Kangaroo Kourt and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

Hmm.. ten mil for a kangaroo kourt.. but can’t give poor kids health care.. tsk tsk tsk… what a farce..

The flight to Guantanamo Bay is in a word, long. Sitting side by side in web seats in the middle of a C-130 cargo plane for more than five hours was an adventure in itself. After arriving and getting an ID badge, the group of 60 or so journalists boarded buses, which were then driven to a ferry for a short ride across the bay.

The bay itself is beautiful. Rolling hills frame the clear blue waters on all sides. Guard posts and American flags dot the landscape. After arriving at the other side of the base, we made our way to an old airplane hangar that is serving as the media center.

Click here to read the rest of Confessed 9/11 mastermind: “I wish to be a martyr” for organizing attacks

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05
Jun

Lawmakers demand freedom for Chinese held at Gitmo

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Guantanamo, Lies of the U.S. Administration, Torture, USA, Uyghur and human rights

By LARA JAKES JORDAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers chastised the Bush administration on Wednesday for allowing the Chinese government to interrogate Chinese Muslim detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay and demanded they be freed in the United States.

The two lawmakers, Reps. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said the Uighurs — members of a Chinese ethnic group — should be compensated and apologized to for any abuse they may have suffered while held in the detention center at U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Uighurs fled their homeland in western China and settled in Afghanistan and Pakistan, only to be swept up later in the U.S.-led dragnet for terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.

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05
Jun

Testimony on Improving Detainee Policy: Handling Terrorism Detainees within the American Justice System

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Detainee Abuse and Detainee Treatment Act

Before the US Senate Judiciary Committee

By Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director

Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling us together today and for inviting me to testify.
You have heard today from witnesses who described the strength of the American justice system and its success in handling terrorism cases. I fully agree that America’s traditional institutions of justice, including federal civilian courts and military courts martial, both can and should be used to deal with those who have committed, planned or conspired to commit acts of terrorism. These courts have developed procedures to handle these complex cases effectively, striking a pragmatic balance between the government’s interest in protecting classified information, and the need to protect the rights of defendants and to preserve the fairness and legitimacy of criminal proceedings.

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03
Jun

US guards say Canadian Guantanamo detainee a ‘good kid’

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Afghanistan, Canada, Children, Detainee, Detainee Treatment Act, Guantanamo, High Profile, Kangaroo Kourt, Military Tribunal, Minor, Omar Khadr, Politics, Politics of Fear, Torture, Torture flights, URGENT Health Issue, Withholding Medical Treatment and human rights

I’m speechless.  Simply without words to express the horror I feel as I read this article.  No sight in one eye, the other is going, He grew up in a 6×8 cell alone.  He’d just lost his father before he was taken… what do they expect him to do or say?  His health is terrible and clearly they did not get the medical help he needed to save his one eye that he could actually see out of!

OTTAWA (AFP) — Canadian Omar Khadr, the youngest detainee held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is a “good kid” and “salvageable,” according to his captors, cited in Canadian government files published Tuesday.

Khadr was 15 years old when he was arrested by the US army in Afghanistan in 2002 on suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda and of killing a US soldier.

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03
Jun

Pentagon charges Afghan detainee with terror support

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Guantanamo and Kangaroo Kourt

Just a reminder - these people were fighting a civil war - not flying planes into buildings.  Afghanistan has been in a civil war for years.  Going for the jihad in Afghanistan does not mean fighting against the US or being involved in terrorist acts.  Please read this.  Also Andy Worthington here.

whathumanrightsgif

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Pentagon prosecutors have charged an Afghan prisoner with spying on U.S. troops in Afghanistan and participating in a rocket attack, according to documents released on Monday.

Mohammed Hashim, who has admitted working for the Taliban and al Qaeda, was charged on May 30 with providing material support for terrorism and spying.
According to the Pentagon, Hashim attended al Qaeda training camps and then made himself available to carry out attacks between December 2001 and October 2002.

He conducted reconnaissance missions against American and coalition forces and participated in at least one rocket attack against U.S. troops for al Qaeda, according to the charges.

“I helped out (Osama) bin Laden,” Hashim said at a previous hearing at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That hearing determined his status as an “enemy combatant” at the detention center.

Click here to read the rest of Pentagon charges Afghan detainee with terror support

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03
Jun

Meeting Report: Binyam Mohamed: The Last Londoner in Guantánamo Bay

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Abuse, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Kangaroo Kourt and UK

Over 100 people attended a public meeting organised by the LGC on Saturday 31 May concerning the plight of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident currently facing a military tribunal and potentially the death penalty at Guantánamo Bay

Meeting Report: Binyam Mohamed: The Last Londoner in Guantánamo Bay

At the start of the meeting, David Harrold speaking

At the start of the meeting, David Harrold speaking

Binyam Mohamed is a 29-year old Ethiopian national who came to the UK in 1994 as an asylum seeker. He lived and worked in west London for over 7 years. While travelling in South Asia in 2002, Binyam was kidnapped in Pakistan and handed over by the Pakistani military, who were selling foreign nationals at the time for $5000, to the American military, in whose hands he has been ever since. A victim of the “extraordinary rendition” programme, Binyam was taken to Morocco for 18 months where he was tortured horrendously, including having a scalpel used to make incisions on his penis to force confessions from him. He was then “rendered” to the notorious “Dark Prison” in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was held for several months before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay in September 2004 where he has been held ever since.

In November 2005, based on the torture he was subjected to in Morocco, Binyam was charged with conspiring to plot attacks against the US. Although he faced a preliminary hearing, he was never fully tried. Along with four other British residents, his release and return to the UK was sought by the British government in August 2007.

Click here to read the rest of Meeting Report: Binyam Mohamed: The Last Londoner in Guantánamo Bay

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01
Jun

Report was wrong: Detainee didn’t get call from Sudan

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Abuse, Bush Lies, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi and Kangaroo Kourt

By CAROL ROSENBERG

crosenberg@miamiherald.com

This courtroom illustration shows Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan appearing before an earlier, since aborted military commission Aug. 27, 2004 in Guantánamo, Cuba. By his recent appearance, his beard was gray.
ART LIEN / POOL SKETCH ARTIST
This courtroom illustration shows Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan appearing before an earlier, since aborted military commission Aug. 27, 2004 in Guantánamo, Cuba. By his recent appearance, his beard was gray.

  • Terror suspect phones Sudan to hire own lawyer
  • Archive | Guantánamo documents
  • Trials get thornier with boycott

A military spokesman erred last week by telling journalists that an alleged al Qaeda conspirator at Guantánamo received a Red Cross-assisted telephone call from home.

Ibrahim al Qosi of Sudan has not yet been able to talk to his relatives, said Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum in an email clarification late Friday from the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Qosi, 47, had asked his military commissions judge on Thursday to help him call his brother in Sudan, to ask him to hire him a civilian lawyer. The judge told military lawyers to arrange the call, and report back by July 1.

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30
May

Afghanistan: The Brutal and Unnecessary War the Media Aren’t Telling You About

By Dazeylin 1 Comment
Categories: Afghanistan, Andy Worthington, Detainee, Detainee Abuse and Detainee Treatment Act
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
First Posted on February 26, 2008

They say journalists provide the first draft of history. With the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, that draft led to an almost universal consensus, at least among Americans, that the attack was a justifiable act of self-defense. The Afghanistan action is commonly viewed as a “clean” conflict as well — a war prosecuted with minimal loss of life, and one that didn’t bring the kind of international opprobrium onto the United States that the invasion of Iraq would lead to a year later.

Those views are also held by many Americans who are critical of the excesses of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.” But there’s a disconnect there. Everything that followed — secret detentions, torture, the invasion of Iraq, the assault on domestic dissent — flowed inevitably from the failure to challenge Bush’s claim that an act of terror required a military response. The United States has a rich history of abandoning its purported liberal values during times of war, and it was our acceptance of Bush’s war narrative that led to the abuses that have shattered America’s moral standing before the world.

Click here to read the rest of Afghanistan: The Brutal and Unnecessary War the Media Aren’t Telling You About

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30
May

Guantanamo man in plea to Brown

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Abuse, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Extradition, Guantanamo and Kangaroo Kourt

Binyam Mohamed

Binyam Mohamed came to the UK as an asylum seeker in 1994

A British resident facing trial for terror offences at Guantanamo Bay has written to Prime Minister Gordon Brown to plead for help in freeing him.

Binyam Mohamed says he is considering suicide, the Independent reports.

He denies involvement with terrorism and writes that any evidence against him has been extracted through torture during six years’ detention by the US.

The 29-year-old, from west London, is the last Guantanamo detainee with automatic right to British residency.

Downing Street has declined to comment on the letter.

Click here to read the rest of Guantanamo man in plea to Brown

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29
May

Sudanese Journalist Detention Reveals Guantanamo Embarrassment

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Extended Solitary Confinement, Guantanamo, Hunger Strike, Sami al-Haj, Sudan, Torture and war crimes

San Francisco Bay View, Commmentary, Safiya Ghori

Almost seven years after 9/11, Guantanamo Bay remains a shameful symbol of the War on Terror. The United States continues to argue that the Constitution has no jurisdiction outside U. S. borders, thereby violating international and national law. Guantanamo Bay has since housed hundreds of men accused of being linked to terrorism, who have been continually mistreated and denied their rights.

President George W. Bush has repeatedly assured Americans that the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay are “the worst of the worst.” Last week, one of these men, Sami Al-Hajj, was released after spending more than seven years in U. S. custody. He was released without ever being prosecuted.

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27
May

Homeland insecurity

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act and Torture

Brutal, possibly illegal interrogations of suspected terrorists serve no purpose and should be stopped

The information has been withheld, leaked and reported piecemeal for years, but now it is finally laid out in scrupulous, disturbing detail in a new report from the Justice Department’s inspector general: American interrogators repeatedly and systematically mistreat suspected terrorists detained in military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, possibly breaking the law and tainting future criminal proceedings.

Compiled from surveys of more than 1,000 FBI agents, the report details their eyewitness accounts of detainees abused by both civilian and military interrogators. It also traces the agents’ efforts to pass on their concerns to higher authorities — a depressing procession of often anguished complaints and concerns met with indifference and inaction from administration officials.

Click here to read the rest of Homeland insecurity

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27
May

6th detainee boycotts Guantanamo war-crimes trial

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Boycott Trial, Detainee, Detainee Treatment Act and Kangaroo Kourt

By David McFadden

Associated Press

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - An Afghan detainee was dragged from his cell yesterday to his first pretrial hearing at Guantanamo, then refused to participate, telling the judge he felt “helpless.” Mohammed Kamin joined a growing detainee boycott of the war-crimes trials at Guantanamo. The military judge, Air Force Col. W. Thomas Cumbie, said Kamin tried to bite and spit on a guard on the way to the courtroom.

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26
May

Blumner: America’s road to torture and those who kept silent about it

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Guantanamo, Torture and Torture flights

By Robyn Blumner

Bystander guilt. That is what FBI and Justice Department officials have on their conscience and what John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and FBI Director Robert Mueller should be haunted by every day. The long-awaited report from the Justice Department inspector general on abusive detainee interrogations says that the FBI should be credited for its ”professionalism” due to the way FBI agents separated themselves from the harsh methods meted out by military and CIA questioners. They did do that. But that was not enough.

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20
May

Report: FBI Slow in Reporting Detainee Abuse

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Bush Lies, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act and F.B.I.

By Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer

FBI officials should have moved more quickly to sound alarms about abusive interrogation practices its agents witnessed in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report by an agency watchdog released this morning.

The lengthy study by the Justice Department’s inspector general clears the FBI of engaging in coercive questioning of terrorism suspects, concluding that “the vast majority of FBI agents deployed in the military zones” adhered to bureau policies and balked at more aggressive tactics used by Defense Department and CIA employees and contractors.
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20
May

Detainee Treatment Act

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Detainee, Detainee Treatment Act and McCain Amendment

For those who haven’t read this yet.. it’s also in pages as a [resource]

Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 [White House] December 2005

Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, as included in the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006 and agreed to by the US House and Senate and signed by President Bush, December 30, 2005 [incorporating the McCain Amendment and the Graham-Levin Amendment on detainees]. Full text from THOMAS:

Click here to read the rest of Detainee Treatment Act