Showing posts with label Guantanamo Bay captives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guantanamo Bay captives. Show all posts

May 28, 2008

Private contractors interrogated Chinese Uighars

Albania must have looked "pretty good" to the Uighars being held in Guantanamo Bay - after their release.

ABC News: Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators

is this a case of subcontracting by the Chinese to Americans?
or Americans subcontracting to private 'services'?
... or is it another case of private contractors or secret services inserting themselves into the military Chain of Command & leaving low-ranking military to take the heat if they get caught?

& why ARE they doing China's dirty work?
Does the US control their domestic & foreign policies?: "Moody's: U.S. rating could be pressured in long term"
Dehumanized Cruelty: New Abu Ghraib Pictures Released
"Sleep through the Static" ~ Jack Johnson

ABC News: Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators.
By JUSTIN ROOD, May 20, 2008

U.S. Army troops stand guard over Sally Port One at Camp Delta where detainees are held at the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.

U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out:
"Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely we're better than that."

An official authorized to speak on behalf of the Defense Department but who declined to be named confirmed it was Pentagon policy to allow officials from other countries to have access to interview their nationals at Guantanamo but declined to discuss the specifics alleged in the report.

According to Fine's report, the FBI agent said the Uighur detainee told him that the night before his interrogation by Chinese officials, "he was awakened at 15-minute intervals the entire night and into the next day." The detainee also allegedly said he was "exposed to low room temperatures for long periods of time and was deprived of at least one meal."

"The agent stated that he understood that the treatment of the Uighur detainees was either carried out by the Chinese interrogators or was carried out by U.S. personnel at the behest of Chinese interrogators," the report by the Department of Justice inspector general stated.

U.S. forces captured roughly three dozen Uighurs in eastern Afghanistan shortly after invading the country in October 2001. The men said they were working there to earn money for families back home and to evade the Chinese government, which is known for taking a harsh and uncompromising line with separatist Uighurs.

The U.S. State Department has found China to have suppressed the religious freedom of Uighurs, who are Muslim, and has accused the Chinese government of persecuting, even executing, those who advocate Uighur independence.

Related:
WATCH: CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 1
CIA Destroyed Videos of Interrogations
CIA Rendition: The Smoking Gun Cable
In 2006, after the United States released five Uighurs from Guantanamo, China asked for them to be repatriated so they could be prosecuted as terrorists. The United States declined to do so, out of concern they would not be treated humanely. Instead they transferred the men to Albania, which was the only country out of 90 approached by the U.S. government who would take them.

The Pentagon says it is trying to release and resettle the majority of the 17 Uighurs who remain in Guantanamo, although it says it still considers them enemy combatants and a threat.

Click Here for the Investigative Homepage.

"Chinese Detainees Are Men Without a Country"
For the Chinese Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs ), there is no end in sight.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China 'crushing Muslim Uighurs'
12 Apr 2005 ... Two US-based human rights groups accuse China of a "crushing campaign" against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang.
BBC NEWS | a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/from_our_own_correspondent/3164882.stm"
>China's Uighurs
Louisa Lim reports from Kashgar where a modernisation programme is stripping Uighurs of their old ways.
China's Muslims - Strangers in their own land
Uighurs struggle in a world reshaped by Chinese influx
In China's far west, the Muslim ethnic group finds itself relegated to menial jobs.
As world watches Tibet ...
14 Apr 2008 ... Conversations in the marketplaces and along the sandy streets of this city reveal that Han Chinese and Uighurs live side by side...

U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan
By ERIC SCHMITT and TIM GOLDEN, Published: May 17, 2008

Who is Wackenhut? & why are so many psychiatric & detention facilities outsourced to their privatized 'care' & transport services?

School of the Americas Watch

January 26, 2008

We are all created equal ... it is SELF EVIDENT

Miscarriage Of Justice

How many Muslims have they Captured,
Miscarriages of Justice Manufactured.

Depriving them of the freedom they Deserve,
Separating them from the ones they Love.

Injustice in the name of Democracy,
In truth it’s nothing but Hypocrisy.

Illegally tortured in their secret Prisons,
The price we pay for being Muslim Citizens.

From your dependant children you’re taken Away,
For the agenda of oppressors they must Pay.

You only ever live life Once,
Now imagine it in a cell without a Chance.

An issue we choose to ignore Today,
Whilst people still suffer in Guantanamo Bay.

What will it take for you to Realise?
Their racist plots have begun to Materialise.

Restrained and confined by control Orders,
A developing police state over shadows Us.

Invasion of privacy at their Discretion,
Call it a security measure; yet another Deception.

God is on the side of the Oppressed,
So never let this issue get you Depressed.

Now is the time that we are being Tested,
Or will we truly realise when we’re also Arrested?

Written by Silent Wind

  • Supplication Du'aa

    O Allah! For You is all praise - You are the Light of the Heavens and the Earth and all that is in them. O Allah raise the standing of Islam and the Muslims, and degrade the standing of kufr and the kaafireen and shirk and the mushrikeen. Destroy the enemies of the Deen and protect the lands of Islam. O Allah! Grant victory to Your religion, Your book and the sunnah of Your Prophet and Your slaves. To You we complain of our weakness, our failure and our shame before the people. O Most Merciful, You are the Lord of the weak and oppressed. O Allah America came with her army and iron, with her oppression and arrogance, she came to challenge You and deny Your Messenger and to slaughter the weak and oppressed believers in Iraq and Afghanistan. O Allah bring about what You promised them! O Allah we seek Your protection and Your promise. O Allah bring down Your help and support, You are our Helper and Supporter. O Allah grant aid and victory to the Mujahideen wherever they are. Our Lord pour upon them patience! O Allah! Break free the shackles of our prisoners and return them to their families safely. O Allah! They are in urgent need of Your Mercies, so send upon them Your Mercies! O Allah! Whoever has harmed them, then harm him, and whoever has shown enmity to them, then show enmity to them. O Allah! Rectify the affairs of the Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sheeshan and wherever they may be. O Allah! Do not grant a disbeliever any way to harm us. O Allah! We seek refuge in You from a bad decree, being taken over by misery, the gloats of the enemies, and the pains of afflictions, and we seek refuge in You from the disliked manners, deeds, desires and diseases. O Allah! Grant us security in our lands, and continue to bless us with peace and settlement there. O Ever-Living! O Self-Subsisting and Supporter of all! By Your Mercy we seek assistance, rectify for us all of our affairs and do not leave us to ourselves ever for the blink of an eye or less than that. All praises are to Allah Lord of the worlds and send Your prayers, peace and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad and on his family, companions and followers. ALLAHUMMA AMEEN ALLAHUMMA AMEEN ALLAHUMMA AMEEN
Catapault that propaganda, DoD!! Catapault it good!
You are bankrupting our future, you really are ..
If you are reading, have a friggin look: http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/gitmo/facilities.html
Why do they leave their victims FACELESS?
Why do we send Muslims to lie about the conditions
and put lies in the US press when the answer is JUSTICE?
Have we lost all respect for human life?
Why do we not speak with those who pray within the barbed wire,
who have already been tortured long enough?
What is true torture?
Is it not justice to let a man pray in PEACE,
surrounded by his loved ones when
he has done nothing wrong?

HOW IS THIS COMFORT??
When will the wait for real justice be answered?
What future is there for anyone when this goes on day after day ..

Where are the "black sites"? All of them.
How can the PR guy at the CIA actually say in the NYT
publically so to speak that
torture is just a small, well-run program?
Who supervisers the torturers? Other torturers?
Will the meek inherit the earth?
Are we all created equal or are we NOT.

January 24, 2008

Citizen Padilla (Part II: Manufacturing a Terrorist Mastermind)

lzkoch@comcast.net's picture

Written with Brad Jacobson. Part II of a series. Read Part I.

The case of Jose Padilla came to public attention five years ago and concluded January 22 when he was sentenced to serve 17 years and four months for conspiracy. Along with Padilla, “conspirators” Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi were sentenced to 16 years and nine months, and 12 years and eight months, respectively.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke rejected the prosecutors' contention that the crimes deserved life prison sentences, noting that while they were "serious," there were no acts of terrorism on U.S. or foreign soil, no attacks on officials, nor any plot to overthrow the U.S. government. “There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, killed or kidnapped anyone in the United States or elsewhere," said Cooke.

Federal prosecutor John Shipley said the government will appeal the sentence as too lenient. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has the reputation of being the most conservative appeals court in the nation.

The prosecution’s appeal notwithstanding, Padilla’s sentence yesterday was the final act in the government’s five-year sideshow of unconstitutional bait-and-switches and Kafkaesque legal procedures, all beginning with the announcement of Padilla’s arrest on June 10, 2002. Not once did then Attorney General John Ashcroft use the words “alleged” or “reportedly” in his hastily convened news conference in Moscow, where he first leveled the implausible and ultimately unprovable charges.

“We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device or ‘dirty bomb’ in the United States,” Ashcroft said, claiming Padilla’s arrest had “disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot,” one that would have caused “mass death and injury.” Charges that nuclear weapons experts would later confirm to be highly exaggerated.

Ashcroft, in earlier testimony before Congress, shortly after 9/11, laid down an iron curtain around any criticism of government policies and decisions concerning President Bush’s declared but never Congressionally sanctioned “War on Terror”:

We need honest, reasoned debate and non fear-mongering. To those who pit Americans against immigrants and citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.

And with that one swipe, the American press stood at attention, saluted and, like lemmings, marched in lockstep off the cliff.

Thus it came as no surprise that newspaper headlines and lead stories on television and radio announced Padilla was “guilty” of planning to create and ignite a radioactive device or a so-called “dirty bomb.” Padilla’s “capture” at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, eight months after 9/11, proved to Americans and the rest of the world that the United States was capable of taking firm steps to win its “War on Terror.” Any serious questioning about the evidence or legality of the Government’s charges was effectively silenced, including voices dedicated to the protection of civil liberties, like those of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Claiming that Padilla showed “conduct in the preparation for acts of international terrorism,” President Bush declared him an “enemy combatant,” a concept inserted in the little read or understood USA Patriot Act that had recently been passed by Congress. (Later, the U.S. Supreme Court would judge that Bush’s actions were more in keeping with a “king” than a U.S. President.) Bush also denied Padilla the basic Constitutional rights accorded every U.S. citizen -- access to an attorney.

Padilla was then transferred to New York City, where his case came under the jurisdiction of Federal District Court Judge (now Attorney General) Michael Mukasey. Though Mukasey almost immediately -- much to the near hysterical distress of the Government -- ruled Padilla must be given access to an attorney and even assigned a specific federal public defender to assist in Padilla’s defense.

In an effort to persuade Judge Mukasey that Padilla was a serious and immediate threat who should be denied Constitutional rights granted to all U.S. citizens, the Government handed him an unsworn “declaration” by Michael H. Mobbs. This declaration later known as the “Mobbs declaration,” was a six-page, double-spaced document detailing Padilla’s alleged activities with al Qaeda. In part, it read:

Padilla and his associate conducted research in the construction of a "uranium‑enhanced" explosive device. In particular, they engaged in research on this topic at one of the AI Qaeda safe houses In Lahore, Pakistan...Padilla's discussions with Zubaydah specifically included the plan of Padilla and his associate to build and detonate a "radiological dispersal device” (also known as a “dirty bomb") within the United States, possibly in Washington, DC. The plan included stealing radioactive material for the bomb within the United States. The "dirty bomb" plan of Padilla and his associate allegedly was still in the initial planning stages, and there was no specific time set for the operation to occur.

Mobbs was a faceless Richard Perle acolyte, a Pentagon political waterboy-advisor to Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense, the same Doug Feith who, according to General Tommy Franks in Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, is “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”

Several days after the Mobbs declaration was delivered, when it became clear that Mukasey was holding to his decision to grant Padilla his own attorney, Padilla was spirited away in the middle of the night to a Naval brig in Charleston, S.C., out of the reach of civilian-judicial authority. In the brig, Padilla would be subjected to sensory deprivation techniques over the next three and a half years. Only in the last months of his solitary confinement would he be allowed to speak with his lawyer. By that time, his lawyers observed radical changes in his mental stability.

The five-and-a-half-year legal saga of Jose Padilla is unequaled in its denial of a U.S. citizen’s rights. It represents one of the most significant battles in a war on the Constitution masked by the “War on Terror.”

This war on the Constitution has been waged by a whole team (none of whom had served a day in combat): Ashcroft; Vice President Dick Cheney; his chief of staff David Addington, Cheney’s extra-smart bully and Èminence grise; and behind them a Department of Justice lackey, David Yoo, who churned out legal memos that supported every contention, including torture, all of which later were found to be unconstitutional concepts.

In Padilla’s case, a game plan was developed to convince a fearful American public that this low-grade thug, this simple-minded gang member from the Southwest side of Chicago, a recent convert to Al Qaeda, was capable of unleashing radioactive hell in the United States.

As it turned out, the government couldn’t have picked a better patsy.


lew.koch@gmail.com


No-hearings hearings from Wikipedia

I think everyone should be aware of how this works - or doesn't work. This is a major issue - because while most Americans are unaware of all this - the rest of the world is certainly NOT. Our children and grandchildren are going to have to live with the fact that we committed war crimes. Please read and get active!

No-hearing hearings

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

No-hearing hearings is the title of a study published by Professor Mark P. Denbeaux of the Seton Hall University School of Law, his son Joshua Denbeaux, and some of his law students, on October 17, 2006.[1][2]

The study analyzes the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT's) for 393 detainees held on Guantánamo Bay.[3] The study is notable because it is the first to document that the OARDEC convened multiple Tribunals for some captives when their original Tribunals determined they should not have been classified as enemy combatants.

The Denbeauxs represent two detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

Contents

[hide]

[edit] The study

The report was based upon information given by lawyers for 102 Guantanamo detainees and transcripts of the tribunals which were released by the government under a Freedom of Information Act law-suit filed by the Associated Press.[1][2][3][4] It analyzes the background of prisoners on Guantánamo Bay and how their status had been determined.

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunals

This is the trailer where the Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held. The detainee's hands and feet are shackled to a bolt in the floor in front of the white plastic chair.[5][6] Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed.[7]

The Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held by the United States Department of Defense between July 8, 2004 through March 29, 2005, for the purpose of confirming whether the detainees they had been holding in Guantanamo Bay detainment camps in Cuba had been correctly classified as unlawful combatants.

Following the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld ruling (November 2004) the Bush administration began using Combatant Status Review Tribunals to determine the status of detainees. By doing so the obligation under Article 5 of the GCIII was to be addressed.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

These hearings were conducted based on the assertion by the Bush administration that detainees in the war in Afghanistan were not eligible for prisoner of war status according to the terms of Article 2 of the GCIII and therefore designated unlawful combatant.

Since the CSRT's do not qualify as competent tribunals the study compares them to civilian trials under U.S. criminal law.

[edit] Findings in the report

The analysis by Denbeaux et al. led to the following conclusions:[1][2][3]

  • The government did not produce any witnesses in any hearing.
  • The military denied all detainee requests to inspect the classified evidence against them.
  • The military refused all requests for defense witnesses who were not detained at Guantanamo.
  • In 74 percent of the cases, the government denied requests to call witnesses who were detained at the prison.
  • In 91 percent of the hearings, the detainees did not present any evidence.
  • In three cases, the panel found that the detainee was “no longer an enemy combatant,” but the military convened new tribunals that later found them to be enemy combatants.

According to Associated Press Mark Denbeaux said “These were not hearings. These were shams,” and called the hearings a show trial.[3]

[edit] Comment

With the Military Commissions Act in mind the Washington Post stated:[4]

If the actual trials of the detainees are as empty and shallow and pre-ordained as were the Status Review Tribunals there is every reason to be mortified at the prospect -- made real by the legislation -- that the federal courts will be frozen out of vital oversight functions. If a regular trial court proceeding were this shoddy, this unwilling to perform a truth-seeking function, this unable to achieve a fair process, the judge presiding over it would be impeached.

Nat Hentoff opined in the Village Voice that

conditions of confinement and a total lack of the due process that the Supreme Court ordered in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

makes US government officials culpable for war crimes.[8] His article continues to state:

Co-author Joshua Denbeaux tells me: "The government's own documents proved that the government's claims that the prisoners were the 'worst of the worst' was a false and shameful public relations ploy . . . We hope that our reports will convince Congress to amend the Military Commissions Act and restore federal jurisdiction." If that happens, the prisoners could contest their conditions of confinement, their imprisonment, and their sentences.

[edit] Captives named in the study

id name notes
32 Faruq Ali Ahmed
  • According to the "No-hearing hearings" study his Personal Representative told his Tribunal that he disagreed with their ruling.[1]
45 Ali Ahmad Muhammad Al Rahizi
  • According to the "No-hearing hearings" study his Personal Representative told his Tribunal that Al Rahizi made an informed choice to not attend his Tribunal although the record showed he only met with him for 24 minutes, did not read the Tribunals procedures to him, and did not leave a copy behind for Al Rahizi to read.[1]
58 Musa Abed Al Wahab

"It is not clear how the personal representative could have advised the Tribunal that the detainee had affirmatively declined to participate when he had yet to meet with the detainee."

156 Allal Ab Aljallil Abd Al Rahman Abd
  • The "No-hearing hearings" study reported that his Tribunal President deemed hospital records that would provide an alibi for him, during the time he was alleged to have been in Afghanistan, participating in terrorist activities were "not reasonably available".[1]
220 Abdallah Saleh Ali Al Ajmi
  • The "No-hearing hearings" study reported that Al Ajmi was the first captive to have a Tribunal convened.[1] The study observed the Al Ajmi's only met with him once, for ten minutes. Al Ajmi did not attend his Tribunal.
250 Hassan Anvar
  • The "No-hearing hearings" study documents that Hassan Anvar was one of the Gunatnamo captives whose original Tribunal initially determined that he had not been an "enemy combatant" in the first place, only to have later Tribunals convened to overturned that determination, and confirm his enemy combatant status.[1]
277 Bahtiyar Mahnut
  • The "No-hearing hearings" study criticized Mahnut's Tribunal President for arbitrarily ruling that Mahnut's witness requests would be repetitious.[1]
333 Mohamed Atiq Awayd Al Harbi
  • The "No-hearing hearings" study reported that Al Harbi was an example of a captive whose request for exculpatory evidence was not satisfied.[1]
552 Faiz Mohammed Ahmed Al Kandari
556 Abdullah Mohammad Khan
  • The "No-hearing hearings" study documents that Abdullah Mohammad Khan was one of the Gunatnamo captives whose original Tribunal initially determined that he had not been an "enemy combatant" in the first place, only to have later Tribunals convened to overturned that determination, and confirm his enemy combatant status.[1]
654 Abdel Hamid Ibn Abdussalem Ibn Mifta Al Ghazzawi
  • The "No-hearing hearings" study documents that Al Ghazzawi was one of the Gunatnamo captives whose original Tribunal initially determined that he had not been an "enemy combatant" in the first place, only to have later Tribunals convened to overturned that determination, and confirm his enemy combatant status.[1]
680 Emad Abdalla Hassan
  • The "No-hearing hearings" criticized Emad Abdalla Hassan's Tribunal for failing to find his passport, which would have confirmed his alibi.[1]
928 Khi Ali Gul
  • The study entitled, "No-hearing hearings", cited Khi Ali Gul as an example of a captive who was unreasonably denied the testimony of exculpatory witnesses.[1]
1463 Abdul Al Salam Al Hilal

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Mark Denbeaux, Joshua Denbeaux, David Gratz, John Gregorek, Matthew Darby, Shana Edwards, Shane Hartman, Daniel Mann, Megan Sassaman and Helen Skinner. No-hearing hearings. Seton Hall University School of Law. Retrieved on April 2, 2007.
  2. ^ a b c Nat Hentoff. "Bush's War Crimes Cover-up", Village Voice, December 8, 2006. Retrieved on April 2.
  3. ^ a b c d "Gitmo detainees denied witnesses: Lawyer calls legal proceedings ‘shams,’", MSNBC, November 17, 2006. Retrieved on April 2.
  4. ^ a b Andrew Cohen. "Gitmo Justice Is a Joke", Special to the Washington Post, November 30, 2006. Retrieved on April 2.
  5. ^ Neil A. Lewis. "Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court", New York Times, November 8, 2004.
  6. ^ "Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals"", Financial Times, December 11, 2004.
  7. ^ Annual Administrative Review Boards for Enemy Combatants Held at Guantanamo Attributable to Senior Defense Officials. United States Department of Defense (March 6, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-09-22.
  8. ^ Nat Hentoff. "Our Own Nuremberg Trials", Village Voice, December 17, 2006. Retrieved on April 2.
--
Please visit and take action at: http://freedetainees.wordpress.com/

ShareThis