War on Terror

[Aarwaa]

What’s Happening with the Guantánamo Cases?

18/07/2008
by Andy Worthington



You may well ask. A month ago, the Supreme Court ruled, in Boumediene v. Bush, that the Guantánamo prisoners have constitutional habeas corpus rights; in other words, the right to ask why, after six and a half years’ imprisonment without charge or trial, they are being held. The highest judges in the land ruled four years ago, in Rasul v. Bush, that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights, but only granted them statutory rights, and the executive responded by persuading Congress to change the law.


With Boumediene, therefore, the Supreme Court sent a clear message to both the executive and the politicians in Congress that passing new laws — 2005’s Detainee Treatment Act and 2006’s Military Commissions Act — to deprive the prisoners of the right to hear why they are being held was actually unconstitutional.


The Supreme Court had been stirred to this apparently unusual ruling — granting habeas rights to foreigners detained in wartime — because of its grave concerns that the prisoners, held neither as Prisoners of War, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminals, who could face a trial in the US court system, had never been adequately screened through the administrative process that the government had established in response to Rasul, and had, literally, no recourse to justice whatsoever.


In this they were undoubtedly correct. The administrative hearings — the Combatant Status Review Tribunals — were savaged last year by a former insider, Lt, Col. Stephen Abraham, who derided them for drawing on appallingly weak, generalized and unsubstantiated information masquerading as “evidence,” and for being designed, essentially, to rubber-stamp the government’s unchecked assertions that the prisoners were “enemy combatants,” who could be held without charge or trial.


Two weeks after Boumediene, the Court of Appeals was finally allowed to scrutinize the government’s case against one of these “enemy combatants.” The case, Parhat v. Gates, had, like the prisoners themselves, been held in a legal limbo pending the Supreme Court’s decision, but once the judges were free to act they duly ruled that the four-year old designation of Hufaiaza Parhat, a Chinese Muslim, as an “enemy combatant” was “invalid,” and lambasted the quality of the government’s evidence as being akin to a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.


Since then, however, the headline writers have moved on, because most of the response to Boumediene and Parhat is now taking place behind the scenes. After some grumbling from the President, who told a Republican party meeting, “With this decision, hardened terrorists, hardened foreign terrorists, now enjoy certain legal rights previously reserved for American citizens,” and an extraordinary tirade from John McCain, the administration was forced to concede that it had no chance of amending the Constitution any time soon, and resorted, instead, to delaying tactics.


As the US District Court moved swiftly, and Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth announced, on July 2, that Senior Judge Thomas F. Hogan had been assigned “to coordinate and manage proceedings in all Guantánamo Bay cases so that these cases can be addressed as expeditiously as possible,” the Department of Justice began dragging its heels.


When lawyers for the prisoners and DoJ representatives met Judge Hogan last week, Assistant Attorney General Gregory Katsas “asked for two months to recruit lawyers and at least another two months to amend the existing returns [roughly 100 in total] and file 100 new ones.” He claimed, additionally, that the effort would strain the Justice Department’s resources “almost to the breaking point.”


“To its credit,” as the Miami Herald explained in a pointed editorial, “the court was skeptical, to say the least. Judge Hogan said he could not fathom why evidence would suddenly have to be changed if it had been considered strong enough to warrant holding the detainees for periods of up to six years.” In Hogan’s own words, “If it wasn’t sufficient, then they shouldn’t have been picked up.”


As the Legal Times blog put it, Judge Hogan added that he “wanted the returns filed sooner,” said he had “misgivings about granting the government ‘carte blanche’ to augment its evidence ‘without saying why,’” and reminded the government of what the Supreme Court had stated in Boumediene: “The cost of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody.” With a final flourish, he told the DoJ in no uncertain terms, “The time has come to move these forward. Set aside every other case that’s pending in the division and address this case first.”


The government was no more fortunate when it came up against District Judge Richard Leon, who had decided not to transfer his cases — 12 in total, involving 35 prisoners — to Judge Hogan. “This is going to be moved as fast as possible,” Judge Leon told a similar gathering of Guantánamo lawyers and DoJ representatives. “These men have waited long enough to get a decision. The Supreme Court has spoken. They want this done. By God, we’ll get this done.”


Judge Leon also explained, as Reuters described it, that he “would not allow the Department of Defense or the CIA to delay the cases while reviewing classified information used to hold the prisoners as enemy combatants.” “Let there be no doubt that the Department of Defense and the CIA must be prepared to come to the courtroom and defend their decisions if we get any sense that there is an effort by those agencies to slow” down the proceedings,” he said, adding, in a comment that echoed Judge Hogan’s doubts about the government’s delaying tactics, “that he probably would require the government to show why it wants to file new evidence to justify holding a detainee.” He then “ordered both sides to provide status reports by July 18, addressing issues including when and where the detainee had been taken into custody” and “scheduled closed meetings with both sides for July 23 and 24,” adding that he wanted to decide the cases before the next President takes office in January 2009.


Lawyers for the prisoners are now working overtime preparing their cases, in the hope that the elusive justice that their clients have been seeking for so many years is almost within reach.


Problems remain, however. Even with rulings comparable to Parhat v. Gates, the difficulty of finding new homes for many of these men has not been resolved. Hufaiza Parhat remains in Guantánamo, despite his success in the Court of Appeals, because he cannot be returned to China, as a result of treaties preventing the return of foreign nationals to countries where they face the risk of torture.


The government recently announced that 54 prisoners in total (20 percent of Guantánamo’s current population) are awaiting release from Guantánamo if suitable homes can be found. As I have reported before, many of these men are from countries including Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Uzbekistan, where they too would face torture — or worse — if repatriated, and there are fears that, even if many of the other prisoners are finally vindicated by a US court, many of them will also be unable to return home.


As the Miami Herald editorial concluded, accurately, “In cases where the government’s evidence is either weak or nonexistent, judges will be able to order suspects released, but they lack authority to bring detainees into the United States. That’s why the Bush administration should be working overtime to find countries that will take them back.”


Few are mentioning it, but it should also be asked if now is not the time for serious discussions to take place regarding finding homes for these men in the country whose government was responsible for their wrongful imprisonment in the first place.


Andy is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press).



SOURCE: www.andyworthington.co.uk

[Aarwaa]

What's Next for Gitmo?

17/07/2008



Now that detainees held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right of habeas corpus, members of one congressional body are asking, how will that work?



While the Supreme Court, with its decision in Boumediene v. Bush, granted prisoners held as enemy combatants at Guantanamo the right to their day in court, many questions remain unanswered—including whether the Boumediene decision applies to "enemy combatant" prisoners held by the US in facilities other than the famed prison camp in Cuba. On Monday, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an entity of Congress also known as the Helsinki Commission, asked the guidance of three experts in a packed hearing room. (Though officials from the departments of justice, defense, and state were invited to testify, none attended.)



Much of the argument against granting full rights under US and international law to enemy combatants centers on the possibility those prisoners will "return to the battlefield" if released. While that's an acknowledged risk, said Jeremy Shapiro, research director for the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, there's more to consider.



"The question of whether a returned detainee poses a danger needs to be weighed against the danger that the existence of Guantanamo is doing every day in creating recruits for terrorism," he said. "It is not simply the case that you will release somebody into a static pool of terrorists. The problem of Guantanamo, the image of Guantanamo, is creating in Europe and the world is, I would argue, on a daily basis adding to our terrorism problem."



Matthew Waxman, now a Columbia Law School professor, served as the Pentagon's chief legal adviser on detainee issues, where he earned the ire of David Addington, the famed enforcer for Vice President Dick Cheney. Waxman's transgression? Insisting that Pentagon guidelines on detainee treatment incorporate language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment. At Monday's hearing, he advised lawmakers not to seek an easy fix to a complicated problem.



"When I say that there's no simple and ready alternative, what I'm really getting at is there's no easy solution out there that's gonna take care of the whole problem on its own," Waxman told the commission. "[R]ather than looking for a one-size-fits all solution, such as 'send them all to their home countries,' 'bring them all into the United States', 'prosecute them all,' the solution to Guantanamo probably lies in a combination of all of those things."



Then he added another option to the list, one he conceded was "controversial": "new legislation that might create what's sometimes called administrative detention or preventive detention authority—to hold somebody inside the United States."



Rounding out the panel was Gabor Rona, international legal director for Human Rights First, and former legal adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. (See Brian Beutler's coverage of how Pentagon advisers and Gitmo officials hoped to evade ICRC detection of cruel and inhumane practices used in prisoner interrogations there.)



Rona took on the very notion of the "enemy combatant" and the standards of what constitutes "hostile acts" against the US.



"The definition of enemy combatant encompasses a huge swath of activities, many of which that have nothing to do with the battlefield—associating with terrorists, for example," Rona explained. "So when the United States releases [an individual] and declares that they are no longer an enemy combatant, that doesn't mean that they had made the correct decision in the first place that this person had engaged in hostilities against the United States." In one case, Rona said, a detainee was deemed to have engaged in hostilities against the US for having published an op-ed critical of "US policies and practices."



Rona also contended that no new legal architecture is needed in the face of the Supreme Court's decision. "If we continue to look for the perfect, we will never find a solution and it will continue to be the enemy of the good," Rona said. "The good is the federal criminal justice system."



—Adele M. Stan, The Media Consortium


http://www.cageprisoners.com/print.php?id=25476

[Aarwaa]

Al-Qaeda's origins and links

Al-Qaeda, meaning "the base", was created in 1989 as Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden and his colleagues began looking for new jihads.

The organisation grew out of the network of Arab volunteers who had gone to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight under the banner of Islam against Soviet Communism.

During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.

The "Arab Afghans", as they became known, were battle-hardened and highly motivated.

In the early 1990s Al-Qaeda operated in Sudan. After 1996 its headquarters and about a dozen training camps moved to Afghanistan, where Bin Laden forged a close relationship with the Taleban.

The US campaign in Afghanistan starting in late 2001 dispersed the organisation and drove it underground as its personnel were attacked and its bases and training camps destroyed.

Cells across the world

The organisation is thought to operate in 40 to 50 countries, not only in the Middle East and Asia but in North America and Europe.

In western Europe there have been known or suspected cells in London, Hamburg, Milan and Madrid. These have been important centres for recruitment, fundraising and planning operations.
Attacks attributed to al-Qaeda or associates
1993: World Trade Center bombing
1996: Killing of 19 US soldiers in Saudi Arabia
1998: East African bombings
2000: Attack on USS Cole in Yemen
2001: Suicide attacks on New York and Washington
2002: Attack on Israeli tourists in Mombasa
2003: Four simultaneous bomb attacks in Riyadh


For training, the group favours lawless areas where it can operate freely and in secret.

These are believed to have included Somalia, Yemen and Chechnya, as well as mountainous areas of Afghanistan.

There have been reports of a secret training camp on one of the islands of Indonesia.

Unlike the tightly-knit groups of the past, such as the Red Brigades in Italy or the Abu Nidal group in the Middle East, al-Qaeda is loosely knit. It operates across continents as a chain of interlocking networks.

Individual groups or cells appear to have a high degree of autonomy, raising their own money, often through petty crime, and making contact with other groups only when necessary.

Defining al-Qaeda?

This loose connection between groups has raised a question of definition. When we talk about al-Qaeda do we refer to an actual organisation or are we now talking about something closer to an idea?

Al-Qaeda's main figures
At large: Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri
Captured by US: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah
On trial: Zacarias Moussaoui, Mounir al-Motassadek
Jailed: Richard Reid
Believed dead: Mohammed Atef


Attacks like the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh and the attack on Israeli tourists in Mombasa in 2002 are widely attributed to al-Qaeda. But were these attacks in any way planned or financed or organised by Bin Laden or the organisation he is still believed to lead?

Some analysts have suggested that the word al-Qaeda is now used to refer to a variety of groups connected by little more than shared aims, ideals and methods.

We do however know that several radical groups are or have been formally affiliated with al-Qaeda. The most important is the radical wing of the Egyptian group Islamic Jihad whose members took refuge in Afghanistan and merged with al-Qaeda.

Its leader is Ayman al-Zawahri, a ruthless Egyptian believed to be the brains behind al-Qaeda and the mastermind of many of its most infamous operations.

These include the attacks on two US embassies in Africa in 1998 and the 11 September attacks against New York and Washington.

There are also believed to be links with:

Militant Kashmiri groups
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU
The Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines;
The GIA, or Armed Islamic Group, in Algeria and its radical offshoot known as the Salafist group, or GSPC.

'War on terror'

Western police forces and intelligence agencies have had some successes in breaking up al-Qaeda cells, closing down front companies and freezing assets as part of the "war on terror".

Some of its top leaders have been killed or captured, and interrogations of some members at Guantanamo Bay have further weakened the organisation.

However, uprooting the organisation in its entirety has been a highly complex and frustrating task.

In a recent report on Iraq and the war on terror, the Oxford Research Group noted that despite the detention of many of its members, al-Qaeda "remains vibrant and effective".

Most frustratingly, the fate and whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden himself is still a deep mystery.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...st/1670089.stm