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TAKE ACTION
On-line Petitions
- Support British Residents detained at Guantanamo
- Close Down Guantanamo
- Tony Benn and 43 others sent a letter last December to the UN and to the UK Attorney General asking them to investigate breaches of The Nuremberg Charter and Geneva and Hague Conventions during the Iraq War. Add your signature to the submission
- "End Injustice at Guantanamo, end imprisonment without trial"
- Justice for Dad campaign - "Add your name to the parliamentary petition for the return of Jamil Al-Banna"
- End Guantanamo - Bring them home
Other Campaign Links
The National Guantanamo Coalition -
The National Coalition of Guantanamo Campaigns consists of the following groups:-
-Birmingham Guantanamo Campaign
-Justice for Omar Deghayes Campaign (Brighton)
-London Guantanamo Campaign
-Manchester Guantanamo & Belmarsh Campaign
The above groups have come together with the purpose of jointly raising awareness of, and campaigning for the issue of Imprisonment Without Trial in Guantanamo Bay and similar US prisons around the world. The campaign primarily fights for the release of the eight British residents still detained (Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohammed, Shaker Aamer, Bisher Al-Rawi, Jamil El Banna, Ahmad Errachidi, Adhmed Ben Bacha, and Abdulnour Sameur). Jamal Kiyemba, formerly a British resident has been released to Uganda.
Watch "The Road To Guantanamo"
The official site of the film "The Road To Guantanamo"
"Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, The Road To Guantanamo is the terrifying first-hand account of three British citizens who were held for two years without charges in the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Known as the "Tipton Three", in reference to their home town in Britain, the three were eventually released, still having had no formal charges ever made against them at any time during their ordeal. The film has already engendered significant controversy due to its critical stance towards the American and British governments." click here to watch it on Google Video
Other Resources
The Center for Constitutional Rights - Guantanamo Gobal Justice Initiative - "CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
The Human Rights Watch page on Guantanamo Detainees
PDF of a 262 page FBI report on Guantanamo "Detainees Positive Responses"
The Guantánamo Blog - From the Law Office of H. Candace Gorman
- The Law office of H. Candace Gorman is a small civil rights firm in Chicago that is representing two Guantánamo Bay detainees pro bono. This weblog will provide updates on developments concerning the plight of the detainees and the ongoing injustice of current U.S. detention policies in the "War on Terror."
Guantanamo Latest News
Guantanamo Latest News
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10/04/2008 |
On March 27, five former Secretaries of State met in Athens, Georgia for the purpose of formulating bipartisan foreign policy suggestions for the next president. All five former Secretaries (Powell, Kissinger, Albright, Baker, and Christopher) agreed on two important recommendations: The U.S. should open a dialogue with Iran, and the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay should be closed. (AP, 3/28/08)
The first recommendation is a no-brainer for anybody but the Bush Administration, but it will have to wait for a new president because the only kind of diplomacy the Bush Administration understands is Gun-Boat Diplomacy. The second recommendation (closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba), could and should begin immediately. Guantanamo prison, and what has transpired there during George W. Bush's War of Terror, is an embarrassment to America.
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Author : Mick Youther |
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10/04/2008 |
As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn't talk, the Bush administration's highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army's own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war crimes charges.
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Author : Philippe Sands |
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10/04/2008 |
On the small, remote island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean halfway between Africa and Indonesia, the United States has one of the most secretive military bases in the world. From its position almost 10,000 miles closer to the Persian Gulf than the east coast of the United States, this huge U.S. air and naval base has been a major, if little known, launch pad for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the past year, the Bush administration has made improvements that point toward its use in a possible attack on Iran. The administration recently admitted what it had long denied and what journalists, human rights investigators, and others had long suspected: The island has also been part of the CIA's secret “rendition" program for captured terrorist suspects.
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Author : David Vine |
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10/04/2008 |
Under gray skies all but obscured by an opaque canopy and high concrete walls topped with razor wire, two bearded young men in tan tunics are having "rec time" inside separate chain-link pens. One jogs frenziedly back and forth in the 30-foot enclosure; the other is curled like a fetus at the base of a cement block.
It's a dreary winter afternoon, but the scene could be any time of the day or night. The hour for rec time is one of the few unpredictable features in a day in the life of a detainee.
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Author : Carol J. Williams |
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10/04/2008 |
The military lawyer for an alleged al-Qaeda fighter at Guantanamo Bay said Thursday that accounts of the firefight in which he was captured indicate some U.S. soldiers - and not his client - should be charged for war crimes.
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10/04/2008 |
The Pentagon “likely" overwrote or deleted video recordings of a Guantanamo detainee that were subject to a court preservation order, according to a Department of Defense lawyer.
In a declaration Monday night in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, associate deputy general counsel James Hourican said that “it is likely" that Yemeni detainee Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah was monitored by video recorders in the naval base set up to automatically overwrite old material when they reached capacity. As a result, he wrote, “it is likely that recordings of petitioner Abdullah were overwritten and/or deleted."
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10/04/2008 |
The U.S. base at Guantanamo has been called many things. The "gulag of our time" (Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan, May 2005). "The key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror" (Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, January 2007). The "legal equivalent of outer space" (unnamed Administration official). The right place for "the worst of a very bad lot" (Vice President Dick Cheney, January 2002) and for the "most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth" (former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, January 2002).
Guantanamo is now best known as the home of oversized iguanas, banana rats, and the more than 700 "enemy combatants" who have been detained, tortured, and interrogated there over the past six years as part of the Bush administration's global war on terrorism. But, the history of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay stretches much further back -- to the beginning of the last century -- when the United States wrestled this prime real-estate from Spain to become the colonial power in the hemisphere.
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Author : Frida Berrigan |
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10/04/2008 |
U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Friday he hoped Guantanamo prisoners charged in the September 11 attacks would not receive the death penalty, even though capital punishment would be fitting.
His comments were swiftly denounced by a defence attorney for one of the accused and by Amnesty International, who said they could prejudice the case.
"It's extremely disturbing," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "You have the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the country indicating that he thinks they are guilty."
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10/04/2008 |
Rights group says extracting evidence from detainees through torture infects US legal judgment.
The use of torture to extract evidence from detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has tarnished the US legal system's image and alienated allies in the war on terror, a rights group said Monday.
"The use of evidence tainted by torture and other inhuman treatment is pervasive and systematic in the cases of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, and has already infected legal judgments made there," Human Rights First said in a report titled "Tortured Justice."
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10/04/2008 |
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Tortured Justice - Using Coerced Evidence to Prosecute Terrorist Suspects (PDF) |
For years, the Bush Administration justified its reliance on military commissions as a means of expediting the prosecution of terrorist suspects. “As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed," said President George W. Bush in September 2006, “the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths
of nearly 3,000 Americans on September the 11th 2001, can face justice."1 In fact, just the opposite has
occurred. More than six years after the first men were brought to Guantánamo Bay, prosecutors have
sought charges against just fifteen men and convicted only one.
Challenges to the lawfulness of the system itself caused much of the initial delay. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the first military commission system, created by the Bush Administration, on the grounds that it violated military law and the Geneva Conventions. The administration's approval of secret detention and torture and other cruel interrogation techniques have posed additional obstacles to prosecution. Its use of military commissions to accommodate abusive interrogation methods only guarantees more protracted legal battles, and ultimately threatens the nation's ability to achieve
justice for the victims and families of September 11.
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10/04/2008 |
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Coerced Evidence Contaminating Judicial System, Undermining Terrorist Prosecutions |
The introduction of coerced evidence, obtained through the use of official cruelty, into military commission trials at Guantanamo Bay is rapidly contaminating the justice system and jeopardizing the prospects for the successful prosecution of terrorists, a new report charges.
The report--Tortured Justice: Using Coerced Evidence to Prosecute Terrorist Suspects-released today by Human Rights First, finds the Bush administration has undercut its own intended use of the military commission system to bring those responsible for 9/11 to justice, by allowing the admission of evidence tainted by torture. The administration sanctioned the use of abusive interrogation methods, believing that the need to gather information by any means to prevent future terrorist attacks took precedence over the complications it would cause down the line in prosecuting crimes that had already taken place.
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10/04/2008 |
Shortly after German-born Murat Kurnaz arrived at Camp Delta, intelligence reports show the plan was to let him go. What happened?
It was late September 2002, and construction crews were just finishing work on the main prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when three German intelligence agents arrived on the island aboard a U.S. military plane.
The reason for their visit was sensitive. The Pentagon was still arguing that those held at Guantanamo were "the worst of the worst" and "the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth," but behind closed doors CIA officials were coming to the conclusion that a number of detainees had no links to terrorism, and were working on a list of prisoners to be set free.
One of the detainees being considered for release was Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen who had been pulled off a bus in Pakistan the year before and turned over to U.S. forces
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Author : Mariah Blake |
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10/04/2008 |
By groups of five, six, 12 and sometimes even 18, the prisoners at Guantanamo are slowly being sent home. Quietly, without any of the fanfare that accompanied their arrival, they're put on planes and returned to their countries of origin.
Nobody says anything about the "worst of the worst," or about the possibility that they might chew through the planes' hydraulic lines, a fear expressed six years ago when many of them were first sent to Cuba. Instead, the Pentagon sends out a short news release -- "Detainee Transfer Announced" is the heading -- that congratulates the U.S. government on its decision not to hold detainees "any longer than necessary."
No apologies; no compensation; no suggestion of a mistake. Just a briefly-stated explanation that the person's detention is not necessary.
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Author : Joanne Mariner |
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10/04/2008 |
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Law Society joins call for immediate closure of Guantanamo Bay |
The Law Society, together with bar associations and law societies around the world, has called for the immediate closure of the US prison facility at Guantanamo Bay.
Thirty four international organisations have signed a joint letter to the US president and the Canadian prime minister to express their condemnation of the situation in Guantanamo Bay, while at the same time recognising the ongoing worldwide threat of terrorism.
The letter urges the Canadian government to repatriate and offer a fair trial to Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was arrested at the age of 15. He has spent the last 5 years in custody at Guantanamo Bay, and is now the only citizen of a Western country remaining in detention there.
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10/04/2008 |
Like the Nazi's, we keep pushing our 'liberating ideals' until the axis of power shifts and we are defeated. If one believes that Auswitch was a consequence of the rise of fascism, it is certainly too late now to avoid Guantanamo, and all we can do is fight it. Fascism is here today because we allowed it to be here
When Hermann Hesse warned of the rise of fascism in Germany he was rejected by a majority of the population. The truth is that most people were experiencing first hand the benefits of fascist ideology. Today we look at that part of our global history with shame, asking ourselves how something like Auswitch could be allowed to happen. The problem is that while we identify it in our past, we are reluctant to acknowledge it happening in our present. During the rise of the short-lived Nazi empire, criticizing Hitler and his party to the average German civilian would have undoubtedly received strong rejection. Today the same holds true to critics of the mighty 'democratic' empire, built by the U.S. with the submissive support of its 'client states'.
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Author : Pablo Ouziel |
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10/04/2008 |
The cadre of civilian lawyers representing terrorism suspects held by the military at Guantanamo Bay are not allowed to meet their clients in private, without video surveillance. All their mail and notes must be turned over to the military. Classified information cannot be shared with their clients. They are not entitled to everything the government knows about their clients.
Months before the trials of some of the detainees are set to begin, some of the attorneys say the Defense Department's regulations for their work are so onerous that they will be unable to provide a fair and adequate defense of their clients.
"How can I defend him if he is not allowed to see or hear classified information?" asked Brent Mickum, the Washington attorney representing alleged al-Qaeda operative Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida. "He can't play a meaningful role in his own defense."
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Author : Josh White, Walter Pincus and Julie Tate |
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10/04/2008 |
Iraqi born businessman Bisher al-Rawi claims he was beaten and interrogated for four years after being arrested and flown to Afghanistan, then Guantanamo Bay.
Mr al-Rawi came to England in 1985 after his father was arrested by Saddam Hussein's secret police and was granted UK residency.
He was educated at Millfield, the public school in Somerset, and University College London.
Mr al-Rawi was detained first in Gambia, along with his Jordanian business partner Jamil al-Banna, at Banjul airport on a business trip in November 2002. The pair said they were in Gambia to set up a factory processing peanut oil.
Mr al-Rawi was rendered into detention in "the dark prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan. He claims he was denied food, water and light.
He was then taken to Bagram airbase, where he said he was beaten up and then on to Guantanamo Bay in early 2003, where he was interrogated for four years before finally being released in March 2006.
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Author : Richard Edwards |
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24/01/2008 |
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Newly released documents reveal fate of original Guantanamo detainees |
One former Guantanamo captive is studying liberal arts in England. Another is famously free, released from an Australian jail after a U.S. military mandated nine-month prison sentence.
A third is in Kuwait, with his wife and five children, still traumatized, his lawyers says, by his U.S. captivity.
On Jan. 11, 2002, the Pentagon transferred its first 20 men from Afghanistan to its detention center in southeast Cuba, calling them ''the worst of the worst'' of U.S.-held prisoners in the war-on-terror.
Now, a Miami Herald study has found that seven of those men have since gone home, some with little fanfare, others after well-publicized campaigns for their freedom.
Meantime, a dozen of those first detainees remain there - none currently charged with crimes - six years after Pentagon photographs stirred international outrage by showing the men shackled on their knees at Camp X-Ray.
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Author : Carol Rosenberg |
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24/01/2008 |
Spain aided the detention and interrogation of two former Guantanamo detainees, a court has been told.
Jamil el-Banna, 45, from London, and Omar Deghayes, 38, of Brighton, East Sussex, returned to the UK last month but now face deportation to Spain.
On arrival in Britain, the men were held under European arrest warrants alleging they were members of an Al Qaeda cell operating in Spain.
Edward Fitzgerald, QC, told a hearing in London it was "obvious injustice".
Mr Fitzgerald, who is the men's lawyer, told Westminster Magistrates' Court there was compelling evidence the Spanish authorities complied with the so-called "rendition" of the men by allowing the plane carrying them to cross Spanish airspace
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24/01/2008 |
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Psychologists for Social Responsibility joins call to Shut Down Guantanamo! |
SHUT DOWN GUANTÁNAMO!
END SIX YEARS OF TORTURE & OTHER HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
Psychologists for Social Responsibility joins Witness Against Torture, Amnesty USA, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and others today in an International Day of Action to demand the closure of the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay. PsySR and other advocates for justice will gather for a 10 a.m. rally on the National Mall and a march to the Supreme Court. Some participants will march in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, symbolically bringing Guantánamo's detainees before the high court.
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Author : Psychologists for Social Responsibility |
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24/01/2008 |
While the nightmarish interrogations of the early years have ceased, the prisoners today suffer from isolation and total uncertainty over their future
Six years after the first prisoners arrived at the “war on terror" prison camp dubbed Gitmo, on January 11, 2002, the US government's stated intention of shutting it seems far from materializing.
Calls for closure of the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention center have increased in the lead-up to the anniversary. Amnesty International plans demonstrations Friday from Britain to Bahrain, Paraguay to the Philippines, and of course in Washington.
Two years ago President George W. Bush said he wanted to close the detention center on the US naval base on Cuba. But due to legal concerns ... there has not been much progress," US Defence Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged in late December.
The camp has changed a lot in six years. The original open-air cages, images of which shocked the world, have gone to weeds and iguanas. Most of the inmates now live in modern cells built in 2006 and modeled on US maximum security prisons.
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Author : Fanny Carrier |
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24/01/2008 |
Three British residents held at the US Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba without charge for more than four years have been detained after arriving back in the UK tonight.
Libyan-born Omar Deghayes and Algerian Abdennour Samuer were arrested under the Terrorism Act shortly before landing at Luton airport around 7pm and taken to a central London police station for questioning.
The third man, Jordanian Jamil el-Banna, was detained but not arrested and taken to a police station in Bedfordshire.
The three men were on board a chartered aircraft with a civilian flight crew and a doctor.
Officers from the Metropolitan police's counter-terrorism command were on the flight along with uniformed officers from the Met, who acted as an escort team at the request of the Foreign Office.
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Author : Haroon Siddique |
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24/01/2008 |
Three British residents held by the US at Guantanamo Bay for four-and-a-half years have been detained after arriving back in the UK.
Omar Deghayes and Abdenour Samuer were arrested under the Terrorism Act after they arrived at Luton Airport and are being questioned at Paddington Green.
Jamil el-Banna was not arrested but is being detained under the act and questioned at a Luton police station.
The BBC understands two of the men may face an extradition request from Spain.
BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said Mr el-Banna would face such a request while Mr Deghayes could also be wanted by the Spanish authorities.
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Author : |
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24/01/2008 |
A United Nations human rights investigator said his visit to the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay last week left him wondering whether it would be possible for detainees' lawyers to mount an adequate defense.
Martin Scheinin visited the naval base in Cuba from December 3-7 at the invitation of the U.S. government, while a tribunal in the case of Salid Ahmed Hamdan, an accused guard for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was under way.
Scheinin did not address the details of that case in his remarks to the 47-state U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday. But he said: "The hearings provided graphic illustrations of the practical difficulties in providing fair trials at a distant military base."
He added they "confirmed the difficulties or even impossibility of the defence to provide evidence, as neither witnesses from abroad or high-value detainees from the Guantanamo facility next door could be heard, at least in this particular occasion."
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24/01/2008 |
Four of the five British residents held by the US at Guantanamo Bay are to be released, the BBC has learned.
The UK government requested the release of all five men in August after previously refusing to intervene as they were not British citizens.
Jamil el-Banna, Omar Deghayes and Abdenour Samuer will come back to the UK, while Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer will return to his native Saudi Arabia.
The government has not confirmed the move and a release date is unknown.
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24/01/2008 |
The Pentagon's twice-derailed effort to try a former child soldier who allegedly killed a Delta Force commando in Afghanistan resumes Thursday - and few expect the proceedings to go smoothly.
Almost six years after the first men captured by the United States and its allies were brought in chains to this U.S. military base, not a single one has been tried by the military tribunals, called commissions, set up by the Bush administration. One detainee, an Australian, was convicted in March in a pretrial plea bargain.
Anticipation has been building for the trial of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2002. Lawyers for the prosecution and defense, journalists and members of human rights groups that will monitor the proceedings flew arrived in Guantanamo on military planes Tuesday.
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Author : Michael Melia |
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24/01/2008 |
A US military judge who in June dismissed war crimes charges against a young Canadian prisoner at Guantanamo said yesterday that he was criticised by the Department of Defence (DOD) over his ruling.
The topic arose as Toronto-born Omar Khadr appeared before a tribunal at the US naval base in southeast Cuba on reinstated charges of murdering an American soldier in Afghanistan in 2002.
The DOD people, they didn't like what I wrote,the judge, Army Colonel Peter Brownback, said at the hearing.
Brownback did not specify who at the Defence Department had expressed displeasure or give other details.
Khadr's military lawyer, Lieutenant-Commander William Kuebler, questioned Brownback about his impartiality to preside over the case. He asked the judge if he recalled telling lawyers during an October 24 conference call that he had “taken a lot of heat" for dismissing the charges, which were later reinstated.
I may well have said something like that, Brownback said.
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24/01/2008 |
The U.S. government has for years had secret evidence that could help a young Canadian prisoner defend himself in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals, a military defense lawyer said on Thursday.
Prosecutors notified prisoner Omar Khadr's military lawyer two days ago of the existence of "potentially exculpatory evidence" from a U.S. government eyewitness to the battle in Afghanistan that resulted in Khadr's capture in 2002, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler said.
"It's an eyewitness the government has always known about," Kuebler told reporters after Khadr was arraigned for the third time on charges of killing a U.S. soldier. "This is something that was buried because nobody ever looked."
It was unclear when military prosecutors learned about that witness and they declined to speak to reporters at the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba.
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Author : Jane Sutton |
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24/01/2008 |
More than 70 prisoners in the American detention camp in Guantanamo Bay do not want to return home fearing what will happen to them, the BBC has learned.
A File On 4 investigation has been told that some detainees were mistreated and tortured, after being sent back to their home countries.
The United States wants to close the prison camp.
But a senior State Department official claims there will be some security risks in letting some detainees go.
President George W Bush has said he would like to end the Guantanamo detention camp.
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24/01/2008 |
The U.S. military's operating manual for the Guantanamo prison camp has been posted on the Internet [pdf], providing a glimpse of the broad rules and tiniest minutia for detaining suspected terrorists.The 238-page manual, “Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta," is dated March 27, 2003, and signed by Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was then the commander of the prison that still holds about 300 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects.
It appears to be an authentic copy of the rules as they existed at the time at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, a spokesman for the Guantanamo detention operation, Lt. Col. Ed Bush, said on Wednesday.
It says incoming prisoners are to be held in near-isolation for the first two weeks to foster dependence on interrogators and enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process."
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24/01/2008 |
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24/01/2008 |
British lawyers have joined the call on the Canadian Government to intervene over Omar Khadr, the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay who has now spent a quarter of his life in captivity there.
The Criminal Bar Association is urging action by the Canadian Prime Minister to seek the repatriation of Mr Khadr, who is now 20 but who has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since he was 15.
Mr Khadr, a Canadian, is the only person in modern history to be tried for war crimes that he allegedly committed as a minor.
He has twice been brought before military commissions in Guantanamo and twice had charges against him dismissed. Mr Khadr was then returned to detention without charge.
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Author : Frances Gibb |
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24/01/2008 |
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UN human rights expert to observe Guantanamo military commission hearings |
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Martin Scheinin [will attend military commission hearings at Guantanamo Bay beginning Wednesday, according to a statement by Scheinin on Tuesday. Scheinin said that the United States invited him to attend hearings as a follow up to an earlier visit to Guantanamo in May. Scheinin expects to observe an evidentiary hearing for Yemeni Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan The US Supreme Court in October declined to review an appeal by Hamdan challenging the constitutionality of the military commission system. Hamdan, allegedly a driver for Osama bin Laden, last year successfully challenged President George W. Bush's military commission system when the Supreme Court ruled that the commission system as initially constituted violated US and international law. Hamdan now faces trial under the subsequently passed Military Commissions Act of 2006
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Author : Jaime Jansen |
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24/01/2008 |
A Paris prosecutor has thrown out a complaint against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture in Iraq and at the U.S. military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer for one of the four groups that filed the case said Friday.
The prosecutor dismissed the case on the grounds that Rumsfeld benefits from immunity, said attorney Patrick Baudoin, president of the International Federation of Human Rights. The organizations that brought the complaint have asked the prosecutor to reconsider.
The complaint was filed Oct. 25 during a visit by Rumsfeld to Paris.
Prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said Rumsfeld is covered by the immunity accorded to heads of state or government and foreign ministers for acts during their time in office, according to a letter seen by The Associated Press. The French Foreign Ministry advised the prosecutor's office in the matter, the letter said.
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Author : Pierre-Antoine Souchard |
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24/01/2008 |
Just over a week ago, a major operating manual for the US military's prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was leaked and posted on the internet. Among other disclosures, it reveals that isolation and sensory deprivation of prisoners was official Army policy. We take a look at how this affects the debate within the American Psychological Association and the participation of its members in interrogations.
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24/01/2008 |
Nearly six years ago, Bosnian authorities ordered the release of six men picked up on suspicion of plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. An investigation found no evidence against the six Algerian natives.
Instead of freedom, however, they got a trip to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were branded enemy combatants by the Bush administration and have been held since. They have not been charged with a crime.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the Algerians and about 300 other prisoners at Guantanamo can go to U.S. courts to challenge their confinement. Just three detainees are facing charges at the moment, although Pentagon officials have talked about eventually holding military trials for 60 to 80 prisoners.
The prisoners want the justices to order prompt court hearings, considering the length of their detention so far.
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24/01/2008 |
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments this week on the rights of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the public is getting another peek at how detainees have been treated there.
A leaked copy of a March 2004 manual of Gitmo's "Standard Operating Procedures" for Camp Delta was published yesterday by the Web site Wikileaks.org. It deals with everything a guard at Guantanamo would need to know, from how to remove detainees' clothing when they first arrive (cut it off) to what guards should do if they find a detainee's plastic foam cup with writing on it (confiscate it). Rolls of toilet paper are considered "comfort items" that can be given to detainees as rewards.
The manual also confirms previous reports about dogs being used at the facility and detainees spending time in "segregation cells," either as punishment or for intelligence gathering. The nearly 250-page document provides details about the daily operations at the facility in the days before the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal surfaced publicly. What happened at the prison in Iraq focused attention on the Guantanamo facility and its commander, Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller.
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Author : Josh White |
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24/01/2008 |
The tarnished U.S. human rights image faces a major test this week as the Supreme Court considers whether terrorism suspects held for years without charges at Guantanamo Bay are wrongly detained.
The court's nine justices on Wednesday are to hear the appeal of Guantanamo prisoners who say a 2006 law unconstitutionally denies them a meaningful way to challenge in court their detention at the U.S. Naval Base on Cuba.
The case is being watched by governments and human rights activists around the world, who say President George W. Bush has overreached his powers and trampled on rights in the war on terrorism he launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
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Author : Randall Mikkelsen |
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24/01/2008 |
An inmate at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay slashed his throat with a sharpened fingernail, US officials have confirmed.
The prisoner, described by his lawyer as an Algerian held for six years, required several stitches and spent a week under psychiatric observation.
US officials characterised the incident as an act of "self-harm" rather than a suicide attempt.
There are just over 300 prisoners still being held in the base in Cuba.
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24/01/2008 |
Nearly six years ago, Bosnian authorities ordered the release of six men picked up on suspicion of plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. An investigation found no evidence against the six Algerian natives.
Instead of freedom, however, they got a trip to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were branded enemy combatants by the Bush administration and have been held since. They have not been charged with a crime.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the Algerians and about 300 other prisoners at Guantanamo can go to U.S. courts to challenge their confinement. Just three detainees are facing charges at the moment, although Pentagon officials have talked about eventually holding military trials for 60 to 80 prisoners.
The prisoners want the justices to order prompt court hearings, considering the length of their detention so far.
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24/01/2008 |
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The case of the Guantanamo lawyer, the detainees and the illegal pairs of pants |
Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Friday, 14 September 2007
For more than five years lawyers representing terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay have been pressing the American government to disclose the evidence against their clients.
Well now they have. And it doesn't make pleasant reading.
Commanders at the US naval base in Cuba have written to lawyers for two of the inmates accusing their clients of wearing contraband underpants and Speedo swimming trunks which they claim have been illegally smuggled into the high-security compound.
In a bizarre development that would be laughable if it did not have such serious implications, the US prison's staff judge advocate has now launched an official inquiry to discover who is behind the smuggling operation. The judge has named the prisoners' lawyers as the two prime suspects.
These allegations are the latest in a series of increasingly desperate attempts by the Guantanamo authorities to undermine the relationship between human rights lawyers and their clients. Muslim prisoners have also been told that their legal representatives are practising Jews or confirmed homosexuals.
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Author : Robert Verkaik |
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06/09/2007 |
· Relatives of UK resident publicise allegations
· Family of Libyan national release detailed dossier
A British resident held by the US as an alleged terrorist has claimed his captors repeatedly tortured him, subjecting him to beatings, sexual abuse and threats of execution.
Omar Deghayes, 37, is one of five British residents who the United Kingdom government last week asked the US to release from Guantanámo Bay, after years of refusing to help them because they were not UK citizens.
Yesterday the family of Mr Deghayes decided to release a detailed dossier of alleged torture which the former law student dictated to a lawyer who visited him in the Cuban internment camp.
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Author : Vikram Dodd |
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15/08/2007 |
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Life of house arrest awaits Guantanamo detainees on return to UK |
Five British residents held in Guantanamo Bay could be placed under control orders when they are returned to the UK following a request for their release from Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister.
The Home Office plan has emerged after the United States government stepped up its warnings about the five men, claiming they posed a terrorist "risk" and accusing one of direct links to al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden.
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Author : James Kirkup |
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15/08/2007 |
Dangerous Jihadis, or victims of a Pentagon smear campaign? New claims about five British residents still held in Guantanamo bay.
Earlier this week Jamil al-Banna's family were told the UK now backs their calls to bring him home. Cleared for release by the Pentagon - it is just a matter of time.
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Author : Keme Nzerem |
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15/08/2007 |
The Pentagon has claimed that five terror suspects whom Britain wants back from Guantanamo Bay have close ties to some of Al-Qaeda's most high-ranking leaders.
Only days after Gordon Brown took the surprise decision to call for their release, a senior American official this weekend disclosed previously classified evidence to show that the men are “extremely dangerous individuals".
Sandra Hodgkinson, who is in charge of US detention policy, warned that the suspects may seek to rejoin the war on terror and could pose a risk to the UK if not kept under close scrutiny.
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Author : Dipesh Gadher |
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15/08/2007 |
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Tunisian sent home from Guantanamo says he was beaten by US soldiers |
A Tunisian man released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay says he was beaten by American soldiers while in custody in Afghanistan, his lawyer said.
The former detainee also says U.S. medics amputated his frostbitten fingers unnecessarily and against his will, the attorney said.
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15/08/2007 |
Reluctance by other countries to take custody of terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay is delaying Washington's ability to shut the widely criticised prison camp, US President George W Bush said last night."I did say it should be a goal of the nation to shut down Guantanamo. I also made it clear that part of the delay was the reluctance of some nations to take back some of the people being held there," Bush said.
"This is a fairly steep order. A lot of people don't want killers in their midst, and a lot of these people are killers. The sooner that tribunals could start for inmates of the camp the better it is. It's not as easy a subject as some may think on the surface," he said.
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15/08/2007 |
The 14 so-called ``high-value'' detainees who were transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last year have all been declared enemy combatants and are subject to trial.
The Pentagon announced the declarations Thursday.
The detainees, including suspected planners of the Sept. 11 attacks, the USS Cole bombing and the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, will now be thrust into a military trial system mired in legal challenges and hampered by lengthy delays.
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Author : Lolita C. Baldor |
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15/08/2007 |
The U.S. says it holds about 360 men at Guantanamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban but does not release precise figures.
The military has determined that about 80 can be transferred provided it receives assurances from the countries that receives them that they will be treated humanely and will not be permitted to threaten the U.S. or its allies.
The military expects that eventually about another 70 will be cleared for transfer.
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15/08/2007 |
Bronwen Maddox loosk at the Government's decision to ask the US to send back five former British residents held at Guantanamo Bay is the right one
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Author : Bronwen Maddox |
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15/08/2007 |
The brother of one of the five UK residents set to be released from Guantanamo Bay said he expects to see him return home within weeks.
Law student Omar Deghayes, 37, who has been held at the camp since 2002, was named as one of the detainees whose freedom has been officially requested by the British Government.
His older brother, Abubakar, speaking from his home in Brighton, said the family had been "crying tears of joy" at the thought they would be reunited soon. But he hit out at the Government for failing to intervene earlier.
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15/08/2007 |
The Government called on America yesterday to release five foreign nationals from Guantanamo Bay detention centre who were formerly British residents. The request by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, to Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, represented a U-turn by the Government, which had previously resisted moves to force it to take responsibility for the men. The move also raised concerns over security. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has requested the release of five men. The Government had won cases in the High Court and Court of Appeal after claiming that it had no responsibility to negotiate for the men's release and any attempt to force it to do so would be counter-productive because the US would not negotiate with third countries.
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Author : Duncan Gardham |
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15/08/2007 |
The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has written to the United States government urging the release of five former UK residents still being held in Guantanamo Bay.
The move reverses the policy of the Blair administration NOT to press for their release because they are not British citizens.
The Foreign Office said it had reviewed the policy in the light of recent steps taken by the United States to reduce the number of detainees in Guantanamo.
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15/08/2007 |
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Miliband adopts a tough stance to demand release of five prisoners from Guantanamo |
Ministers have demanded the return of five former UK residents being held in Guantanamo Bay, in a dramatic break by Gordon Brown with Tony Blair's refusal to intervene on behalf of non-British nationals.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, has written to his counterpart Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to formally ask the men are freed from the contentious US detention camp in Cuba.
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Author : Gerri Peev |
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15/08/2007 |
An interesting publication, the Guantanamo Bay Gazette. You can find it online easily enough. For residents of the sole American military base sited in a country with which the United States has no diplomatic relations, it contains a deal of useful information.
An article in the latest issue, entitled "Stay vigilant - even in GTMO", must have caught a few eyes. Petty theft and incautious drinking are always troublesome, even in the military. Those with higher thoughts were perhaps happier to know that an Islamic service, among several other varieties, would be taking place in Sanctuary C last Friday at 1.15pm.
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Author : Ian Bell |
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15/08/2007 |
The UK government has requested the release of five British residents from US custody at Guantanamo Bay. Who are they and how did they come to be in US detention?
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15/08/2007 |
The request by the British government for the release of five UK residents from Guantanamo Bay is a switch in policy and another sign that the new government of Gordon Brown is quietly distancing itself from that of Tony Blair.
It perhaps signals a greater readiness to be more flexible in the conduct of what President Bush called the "war on terror" after the attacks of 9/11.
And the United States itself seems keen to resolve as many cases at Guantanamo as it can.
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Author : Paul Reynolds |
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15/08/2007 |
The British government has requested the release of five former UK residents being held in Guantánamo Bay, the Foreign Office said today.
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, has written to the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, asking that the men be freed from the US base in Cuba. They are not British nationals but had lived in the UK before they were detained, the Foreign Office said
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Author : Mark Tran |
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15/08/2007 |
In March, Mariane Pearl, the widow of the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, received a phone call from Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General. At the time, Gonzales's role in the controversial dismissal of eight United States Attorneys had just been exposed, and the story was becoming a scandal in Washington. Gonzales informed Pearl that the Justice Department was about to announce some good news: a terrorist in U.S. custody-Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda leader who was the primary architect of the September 11th attacks-had confessed to killing her husband. (Pearl was abducted and beheaded five and a half years ago in Pakistan, by unidentified Islamic militants.) The Administration planned to release a transcript in which Mohammed boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.
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Author : Jane Mayer |
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06/08/2007 |
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Red Cross report said to blast U.S. interrogation techniques as "tantamount to torture" |
CIA interrogation techniques approved by President Bush are described in a confidential Red Cross report as "tantamount to torture," according to a report in The New Yorker magazine.
After being denied access for five years to terror suspects, the Red Cross last year interviewed 15 detainees after their transfer to Guantanamo. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda leader thought to be the primary architect of the Sept. 11 attacks. Congressional and other Washington sources familiar with the report said that it harshly criticized the C.I.A.'s practices, author Jane Mayer writes in an article titled The Black Sites in the August 13 issue.
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Author : Sherwood Ross |
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06/08/2007 |
A federal appeals court ordered the government yesterday to turn over virtually all its information on Guantánamo detainees who are challenging their detention, rejecting an effort by the Justice Department to limit disclosures and setting the stage for new legal battles over the government's reasons for holding the men indefinitely.
The ruling, which came in one of the main court cases dealing with the fate of the detainees, effectively set the ground rules for scores of cases by detainees challenging the actions of Pentagon tribunals that decide whether terror suspects should be held as enemy combatants.
It was the latest of a series of stinging legal challenges to the administration's detention policies that have amplified pressure on the Bush administration to find some alternative to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where about 360 men are now being held at the United States naval base.
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Author : William Glaberson |
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06/08/2007 |
On July 26, Lt. Col. Stephen E. Abraham testified on Capitol Hill that the Bush administration's legal system at Guantanamo - used to determine which detainees should be held indefinitely as enemy combatants - relied on shaky evidence and pressured officers to rush hundreds of hearings.
This is profoundly damaging to the United States' reputation around the world. And it buttresses my belief that President Bush should close the facility within a year, and come up with a process for transferring detainees and ensuring that they face justice.
Abraham is the first Guantanamo insider to go public, and his testimony is further evidence that the Bush administration has set up a separate and lesser system of justice for Guantanamo detainees. It is clear that the administration's attempts to hold and process detainees at Guantanamo are another example of its efforts to expand presidential authority.
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Author : Dianne Feinstein |
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06/08/2007 |
Military doctors violate medical ethics when they approve the force-feeding of hunger strikers at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, according to a commentary in a prestigious medical journal.
The doctors should attempt to prevent force-feeding by refusing to participate, the commentary's three authors write in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
"In medicine, you can't force treatment on a person who doesn't give their voluntary informed consent," said Dr. Sondra Crosby of Boston University, one of the authors. "A military physician needs to be a physician first and a military officer second, in my opinion."
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06/08/2007 |
At least 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees have been killed or recaptured after taking up arms against allied forces following their release.
They have been discovered mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but not in Iraq, a US Defence Department spokesman told The Age yesterday.
Commander Jeffrey Gordon said the detainees had, while in custody, falsely claimed to be farmers, truck drivers, cooks, small-arms merchants, low-level combatants or had offered other false explanations for being in Afghanistan.
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06/08/2007 |
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Majority of Guantanamo Bay suspects threat to U.S., says report |
The military compiled sufficient evidence to show that all but a few of the 516 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004-05 were a threat to the U.S., according to a new government report.
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point said in a 39-page report that only six captives posed no risk based on an analysis of the military's publicly available profiles of each detainee.
The Bush administration is under pressure from human rights groups to close Guantanamo and bring the detainees under the U.S. judicial system. If that happens, the Pentagon says, it would have to release most detainees because the military lacks the more stringent evidence needed to win convictions in U.S. courts.
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Author : Rowan Scarborough |
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06/08/2007 |
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Guantanamo cell is better than freedom, says inmate fighting against release |
An inmate of Guantanamo Bay who spends 22 hours each day in an isolation cell is fighting for the right to stay in the notorious internment camp.
Ahmed Belbacha fears that he will be tortured or killed if the United States goes ahead with plans to return him to his native Algeria.
The Times has learnt that Mr Belbacha, who lived in Britain for three years, has filed an emergency motion at the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC asking for his transfer out of Guantanamo to be halted. He was cleared for release from Camp Delta in February and his lawyers believe that his return to Algerian custody is imminent.
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Author : Sean O'Neill |
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06/08/2007 |
Captured on a trip to the Gambia, rendered through Afghanistan and then held at Guantanamo Bay, Bisher al-Rawi was released in March after spending more than four years in captivity without charge.
Now, in this exclusive televised interview, he's told Channel 4 News how the MI5 officers that recruited him to work for the British Government later interrogated him, before breaking their earlier promises to help.
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Author : Jon Snow |
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06/08/2007 |
A British resident who was seized by the CIA, transported on an "extraordinary rendition" flight and held at a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sharply criticized U.S. and British officials in an interview published Sunday.
Bisher al-Rawi, who moved to England as a teenager after fleeing Saddam Hussein's Iraq, reportedly served as an intelligence source to Britain's MI5 domestic spy agency and helped it keep track of Abu Qatada, a Muslim cleric in London accused of being Osama bin Laden's "ambassador in Europe."
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06/08/2007 |
Six prominent human rights groups are charging that US authorities are secretly holding 39 terror suspects. One of the groups, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, has filed a lawsuit in US federal court demanding the disclosure of information concerning disappeared detainees, including ghost detainees and unregistered prisoners.
"What we're asking is where are these 39 people now, and what's happened to them since they 'disappeared'?" said Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, one of the organizations in the coalition.
The new report, titled "Off the Record: U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the 'War on Terror'" - reveals the names of "the disappeared" - some for the first time. The organizations said their information was based on interviews with former prisoners and officials in the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
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Author : William Fisher |
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06/08/2007 |
· Technicality applies to all 385 inmates, colonel rules
· Canadian and Bin Laden's driver see cases dismissed
The Bush administration's plans to bring detainees at Guantánamo Bay to trial were thrown into chaos yesterday when military judges threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15 and dismissed charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden.
In back-to-back arraignments for the Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national, the US military's cases against the alleged al-Qaida figures were dismissed because, the judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction.
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Author : Suzanne Goldenberg |
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06/08/2007 |
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Yemeni Languishes at Guantanamo Long After U.S. Approved Release |
The word came in May 2006: Ali Mohammed Nasser Mohammed, a slight, 24-year-old Yemeni with curly black hair and a wispy beard, would be freed from Guantanamo after more than four years. He got a checkup. His photo was taken, as were his fingerprints. He was measured for clothes and shoes, then offered a meeting with the Red Cross.
As the Pentagon tersely put it later in an e-mail to his attorneys: "Your client has been approved to leave Guantanamo."
"He never went home," said Martha Rayner, one of the lawyers.
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Author : Anthony Shadid |
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06/08/2007 |
Shutting down the prison is a good way for Congress to start restoring American values and international standing.
Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Sunday that he would shut the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "this afternoon" because of the harm it has done to this country's image. Closing Guantanamo - something even President Bush thought was a good idea for a while - is long overdue. But relocating its 385 inmates would be the beginning, not the end, of an overhaul of the flawed system that the Bush administration and Congress created to deal with suspected terrorists.
The problem with Guantanamo is not the "where" but the "what": indefinite confinement during a conflict that, unlike traditional wars, could last for decades. Alleged enemy combatants in such an open-ended "war" - wherever they are held - should be given a meaningful opportunity to assert their innocence.
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