KSM

The battered credibility of the Guantánamo trials has been further dented by revelations of hidden microphones, intelligence service interference with court proceedings and protests from lawyers who say the US military is preventing a proper defence of the alleged organisers of the 9/11 attacks.

The increasingly chaotic pre-trial hearings for the alleged mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four co-accused have slowed progress toward the full trial, to the point where it will now not start until at least 2014. But the latest developments also further undermine confidence in a military court whose legitimacy has long been questioned.

In recent days, the commander of the Guantánamo prison, Colonel John Bogdan, was forced to admit on the witness stand that secret listening devices disguised as smoke detectors were installed in the cell where lawyers met their clients, and that he knew nothing about them.

The eavesdropping was revealed in court by one of the defence lawyers, Cheryl Bormann, who said she became suspicious about the supposed smoke detectors during a meeting with her client, Walid bin Atash, who is accused of training some of the 9/11 hijackers.

“I said, Mr Guard, is that a listening device, and he said, ‘Of course not’,” she said. “Well, guess what, judge? It’s a listening device”.

The prison’s lawyer, Captain Thomas Welsh, told the court he discovered the room was fitted with hidden microphones early last year and reported it to the then warden, Colonel Donnie Thomas, to seek assurances that meetings between the accused and their lawyers were not being spied on.

Bogdan said he was not informed when he took over. He told the court that the FBI was in control of the room until 2008 and that he has since discovered that the bugs were accidentally disconnected in October during renovations but then secretly reconnected by an unnamed intelligence service two months later, suggesting they were still in use.

Bogdan denied that the microphones were eavesdropping on lawyers. “We understood that any listening to an attorney-client meeting is prohibited,” he said.

But Daphne Eviatar, senior counsel at Human Rights First who was an observer at the recent pre-trial hearings, questioned whether Bogdan could give that assurance when he claimed not to know about the bugs until recently.

“The commander of the base himself didn’t even know that the cells where the attorneys are allowed to interview their clients are all bugged. They all have audio surveillance equipment. That equipment is controlled by the intelligence agencies not the commander of the base. It’s not clear who knows what about how it was being used,” she said.

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A military lawyer at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, acknowledged Tuesday that microphones are hidden inside devices that look like smoke detectors in the rooms where defense lawyers meet detainees, but he said the government does not listen in on attorney-client communications.

Both civilian and military defense lawyers at Guantanamo Bay meet their clients at a facility known as Echo 2, a camp that has about eight meeting huts.

Navy Capt. Thomas J. Welsh, staff judge advocate at the base, said he became aware of the microphones when he saw a law enforcement agent listening in on a meeting between prosecutors and defense lawyers on a possible plea deal. The agent, wearing headphones, was sitting in a control room at Echo 2, where meetings are routinely monitored by video for security reasons.

Welsh said he was assured by the Joint Detention Group commander at the base that the audio is turned off when lawyers meet with their clients — although it can be used in other situations.

“Under my watch, definitely, we don’t listen in,” Welsh said.

Defense lawyers in the case against Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-defendants have raised concerns that the government might be listening to privileged communications.

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BY CAROL ROSENBERG

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba – The military judge presiding at the Sept. 11 trial Thursday ordered the government to unplug any outside censors who can reach into his courtroom and silence the war crimes tribunal.

Only a court security officer sitting in court, at the judge’s elbow, has the authority to hit a mute button on the proceedings if there’s a suspicion that national security information could be spilled, Judge James L. Pohl announced.

At issue was a mysterious episode Monday when the sound to spectators was suddenly replaced by white noise in court after 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s attorney David Nevin said the word “secret.”

Nobody inside court did it. The judge erupted in anger, and appeared surprised that “some external body” had the power to prevent the public from listening to the proceedings — which are broadcast in the spectator’s gallery on a 40-second delay.

“This is the last time that will happen,” the judge said Thursday. “No third party can unilaterally cut off the broadcast.”

The court was just beginning to tackle a defense request that the judge issue a protective order on whatever remnants exist of the CIA’s secret overseas prison network. President Barack Obama ordered those facilities closed on taking office.

Defense lawyers say the five men now charged as the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings were tortured at those places. The chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, says no evidence obtained other than voluntarily will be used at their death-penalty trial.

 

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Carol Rosenberg - The Miami Herald Lawyers for the five alleged Sept. 11 conspirators wrote Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Thursday, asking him to order the Pentagon to offer national TV broadcasts of their death-penalty tribunals at Guantánamo.

“This is the most significant criminal trial in the history of our country,” wrote nine military lawyers and four civilian defense lawyers.

“The only way to dispel the pervasive distrust of these proceedings, and the substantial damage to our country’s reputation, is to allow the entire country, and world, to observe the proceedings for themselves.”

The lawyers wrote the letter less than two weeks after they argued a motion before the 9/11 judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, to authorize national broadcasts. Pohl has yet to rule, but he said he believed only Panetta has the authority to make that decision.

Currently, the public can watch pre-trial hearings in that case by getting to an auditorium at Fort Meade, an Army base in Maryland, or by applying to watch at Guantánamo as a journalist or legal observer.

Families of 9/11 victims get special segregated screening rooms in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Massachusetts. A division of the war court prosecutor’s office also administers lotteries to choose about a dozen family members of Sept. 11 victims they fly to the remote base to watch the proceedings in a court gallery.

Defense lawyers argued that the video feed should be provided freely to television outlets to broadcast as much as they choose.

Prosecutors replied that the war court at Guantánamo is modeled after court martial and federal criminal trial practice, which forbid TV broadcasts.

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By Miral Sattar

2006

I had been following Uzair Paracha’s trial closely in the news. I, like many others, was confident the jury would announce a ‘not guilty’ verdict.

Uzair Paracha, 26, is a Pakistani native and a graduate from the elite business school IBA, Institute of Business Administration. He is a legal immigrant who grew up in both the US and Karachi, Pakistan. To further his family’s ventures, he started his real estate business in February 2003. On March 28, 2003, he was arrested by FBI agents at his office and taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan.

Uzair Paracha’s father had asked him to check the immigration status for a friend of a friend, Majid Khan. Unbeknownst to Paracha, Majid Khan was a suspected Al-Qaida operative. After Uzair Paracha made that call to the INS, he was arrested for impersonating an Al-Qaida operative.

In November 2005, a jury found Paracha guilty of terrorism charges for helping a suspected al-Qaida operative sneak into the US. He could face up to 75 years in prison for making a phone call.

The verdict surprised and shocked me. It reminded me of Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird,” a novel which takes place in the 1960s. Lee’s story revolves around two children and their father, Atticus Finch. In the novel, Atticus defends Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of sexually assaulting a racist’s daughter. Despite Atticus’ strong defense, the jury in the novel finds Tom Robinson guilty.

Surely, a lot has changed since the 1960s. After all, isn’t justice blind? In the novel Atticus states:

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal – there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States of the humblest J. P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.”

But the legal system consistently fails the very people it is supposed to defend. The government offered Paracha a plea to plead guilty a month before his trial. If Paracha plead guilty he would only have to serve five years. Since Paracha had already served three, that meant he would only have had to serve 15 more months. He went to trial to clear his name and instead could now face up to 75 years in prison. After 5 short hours of deliberation Paracha’s jury found him guilty on all accounts.

According to his friends and family, Uzair Paracha was on the path to success. He traveled back and forth between NYC and Pakistan for his family ventures. In Pakistan, Paracha’s father worked in Karachi, shipping clothing made in Pakistan to companies in the United States such as K-Mart. Paracha’s father is a well known philanthropist in Karachi, Pakistan who has built schools, orphanages and hospitals. During one trip in 2003, Paracha says he was subject to 72 hours of interrogation and torture until he told the FBI what they wanted to hear. According to Paracha his confession was a direct result of fear and exhaustion during his interrogation.

The U. S. Government has kept Uzair Paracha in solitary confinement for almost three years. Before his detainment, Uzair Paracha weighed 170 lbs. Currently, his weight is at 114 lbs. He is held in solitary confinement in a room the size of an average household closet. There is no heat and the light is on 24 hours a day.

The Paracha family tragedy is doubled. Paracha’s father, Saifullah Paracha, has been held as an enemy combatant since 2003. Right now, he is detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There has been pressure from the United Nations to close down the camp due to inhumane conditions for inmates. The Bush Administration recently released the names of the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay. There are approximately 500 inmates imprisoned at the military base without any formal charge. The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are imprisoned indefinitely.

Even more than 40 years after Harper Lee’s novel was written, I find myself asking, is justice really blind? Racial bias and prejudice again have won. Uzair Paracha awaits sentencing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. As the war against terror continues, we realize justice is not blind. For some, America is the land of opportunity, but for others who arrive here it is the land of crushed spirits and dreams.
Urge Congress to shut down Guantonomo Bay and Secret Prisons by sending a letter to your Congressman
Urge Attorny General Gonzales to appoint an independent council and release all Torture Documents though the ACLU.
Stop force feeding of detainees on the hunger strike through Amnesty International
Write a letter about the prisoners held at Bagram in Afghanistan
Educate yourself.
Sign the petition for Uzair Paracha and Saifullah Paracha. Sign here

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Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, examines a recent statement from the US military that appears to have been issued for propaganda purposes, and explains how its timing seems designed to deflect attention from recent negative publicity relating to the proposed trials of Guantánamo prisoners.

In what appears to be nothing more than propaganda masquerading as news, the US military has announced, as Reuters described it, that it will “televise the Guantánamo trial of accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other suspects so relatives of those killed in the attacks can watch on the US mainland.”

Army Col. Lawrence Morris, the chief prosecutor of Guantánamo’s system of trials by Military Commission, stated, “We’re going to broadcast in real time to several locations that will be available just to victim families,” adding that the footage would be “beamed to closed-circuit television viewing sites on military bases at Fort Hamilton in New York, Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Fort Meade in Maryland and Fort Devens in Massachusetts.”

While there seems little doubt that Col. Morris is sincere, it’s also apparent that the trial under discussion will not be taking place anytime soon, and that announcements of broadcasts designed to appeal to the families of 9/11 victims are premature, to say the least, and more judiciously regarded as attempts to shore up the disputed legitimacy of the Commission process.

Conceived by Dick Cheney and his close advisers in November 2001, as an alternative to either the US court system or the US military’s own judicial processes, the Military Commissions have been heavily criticized for allowing the possibility of withholding evidence from the accused and of using evidence obtained through torture. This latter provision was later dropped, but the possibility of using evidence obtained through coercion remains at the discretion of the government-appointed military judge, and it should also be noted that this is an administration that has found it notoriously difficult to differentiate between acts of torture and acts of coercion.

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“This is the time to demonstrate to the world that the United States need not abandon its principles even as it seeks to ensure the safety of its citizens.” Janet Reno, former Attorney General and member of ACLU Guantanamo Defense “Dream Team”

It’s a difficult question, but it deserves a serious answer. Here’s why. The only reason the Bush administration has decided to conduct a trial for Mohammed, the alleged terrorist mastermind of the attacks on September 11, is because they feel confident in the outcome. It’s a slam dunk. There’s no chance that the perpetrator of the biggest act of terrorism in American history will be found innocent. Bush thinks a Mohammed conviction will be a vindication for his kangaroo courts (Military tribunals) at Guantanamo Bay as well as reinforce the belief that the president has the inherent right to arbitrarily imprison anyone he chooses if he brands him an enemy combatant. It is a cynical power-play meant to increase presidential authority while further undermining fundamental legal protections. That means that the so
-called tribunals will be choreographed by the Bush public relations team to rehash 9-11 in as frightening terms as possible invoking the same, worn demagoguery we’ve heard for the past six years.

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Published: April 4, 2008

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union and one of the country’s leading lawyers’ groups, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said Thursday that they had assembled experienced teams of lawyers to defend some of the most notorious detainees at Guantánamo, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has said he was the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The joint statement by the two groups said they were preparing an $8 million program to oppose vigorously the government’s prosecutions of at least seven of the detainees who were once held in secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons.

Those detainees, five of whom have been charged with participation in the Sept. 11 attacks, include men who were held in harsh conditions and subjected to aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding. The groups portrayed their effort as part of an American tradition of providing vigorous representation to unpopular defendants.

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by Andy Worthington

Andy Worthington is a historian based in
London. He is the author of
The Guantánamo Files, the first book
to tell the stories of all the detainees in
Guantanámo. He writes regularly on issues
related to Guantánamo and the
“War on Terror” on his Web site.

The U.S. Department of Defense announced Monday that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian captured after a gunfight in Gujrat, Pakistan, in July 2004, would be the fifteenth Guantánamo prisoner to be tried by military commission, in connection with his alleged involvement in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998.

Specifically, Ghailani is charged with “murder in violation of the Law of War, murder of protected persons, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the Law of War and terrorism” – plus conspiracy to commit all the preceding offenses – for his alleged role in securing and transporting material used in the Tanzanian bomb, and for helping to purchase the truck that was used in the attack. He is also charged with “providing material support to terrorism,” based on allegations that, after the bombing, he fled to Afghanistan, where he continued working for al-Qaeda “as a document forger, physical trainer at an al-Qaeda training camp, and as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.”

Ghailani is the sixth of the 14 so-called “high-value detainees” – those held in secret, CIA-run prisons, who were transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006 – to be put forward for trial by military commission. He joins Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Walid bin Attash (plus Mohammed al-Qahtani, a notorious victim of torture in Guantánamo), who were put forward for trial in February in connection with the 9/11 attacks.

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