Gitmo Lawyer Speaks Out

David H. Remes is an American lawyer who has served as a pro bono attorney for several of the prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison. He was involved in litigation surrounding the Detainees Treatment Act of 2005, which denied prisoners the ability to submit habeas corpus petitions. In this interview with WeAreChange, Remes gives us a look at the current situation in gitmo, the start of the hunger strike and some of the personal stories of the detainees he represented.

WeAreChange

Horrifying Revelations About Force-Feeding at Guantanamo

The practice of force-feeding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as a response to the mass hunger strike there has been increasingly criticized. But the military has continued to carry it out. Now, Al Jazeera has revealed in detail how the practice is takes place--and it’s not pretty.

The document states that prisoners who are force-fed are restrained by being shackled to a chair. Prisoners are also required to wear masks over their mouths to “prevent spitting and biting.” In some cases, Guantanamo prisoners are shackled for two hours. The masking and shackling of the prisoners is done to facilitate the tube that is snaked through prisoners’ nostrils until an X-ray or test dose of water confirms that the nutritional supplement reached their stomach.

Once the forced feeding process is over, a prisoner is placed in a cell that does not have running water. A guard then observes the prisoner to make sure he does not vomit up the nutritional supplement that was forced inside him. If the prisoner does vomit, he is punished. “Participation in the dry cell will be revoked and he will remain in the restraint chair for the entire observation time period during subsequent feedings,” the document reads.

More on Alternet - UN calls force-feeding at Guantanamo 'torture' (RT) - Gitmo hunger strike: Timeline

Guards shoot at Gitmo inmates forcing them to solitary cells

Inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison have clashed with guards during an attempt to end a two-month long hunger strike there. Officers tried to forcibly remove detainees from communal living quarters and isolate them in individual cells. Non-lethal rounds were fired at the prisoners as they resisted with improvised weapons. More on RT

Guantanamo Detainees Brutally Force Fed During Hunger Strike

Up to 130 of the 166 detainees left in Guantanamo are reported to be taking part in a hunger strike with at least 11 being force fed (see also this piece by Chris Hayes at MSNBC). What is not widely reported is the brutal way that detainees have been force fed by the Guantanamo medical staff, a protocol that appears to be in use now.

As detainee lawyer Ramzi Kassen explains in Doctors of the Dark Side, detainees are strapped in a 5-point restraint chair–dubbed by some detainees the “torture” chair–and large tubes that may be left in for days are jammed down their noses without anesthesia or lubricants. When detainees resist the brutal procedure, they are forcibly extracted from their cells by soldiers in full riot gear at the direction of the medical staff.

Lawyers for the despairing detainees, of whom 86 were approved for release over two years ago, are very worried that their clients will die or be permanently injured in the hunger strike.

More on Disinformation

Gitmo inmates on hunger strike over seizure of Korans and personal belongings

Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay inmates have claimed "all but a few men" are on a hunger strike over their Qurans being taken away. The condition of the strikers "appears to be rapidly deteriorating and reaching a potentially critical level," they said. Most of 130 people housed in Camp 6 of Guantanamo Bay may be involved in the strike.  More on RssiaToday

A Red Light at Guantanamo: The Absurdities of the K.S.M. Hearings

The case of the mystery button began like a story about a poltergeist. On Monday, a preliminary hearing in the military commission trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other accused 9/11 conspirators convened at Guantánamo. The courtroom is set up so that spectators behind sound-proof glass can listen to an audio feed with a forty-second delay.

As Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald describes it, “A red emergency light spins in court when a censor at the judge’s elbow hits the mute button to prevent someone from spilling national security secrets.” At just before 2:30 P.M., David Nevin, one of the defense lawyers, who was addressing a brief having to do with C.I.A. secret prisons, said he understood that “we are going to do this in a 505 and that some portion of this will turn out to be closed or secret.” As he pronounced “secret,” the light began to flash and white noise filled the audio feed, as if it had been a trigger word—even though neither the security officer or the judge had touched the button

Full story on The New Yorker

The horrible injustice of Guantanamo

On Saturday afternoon, January 11, 2013, a rally/protest demanding the closure of Guantanamo prison was held at the Ellipse, just south of the White House. One of the speakers at the event was the investigative journalist, filmmaker and author, Andy Worthington. He is the author of "The Guantanamo Files." See: andyworthington.co.uk

President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term

President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, despite his own threat to veto it over prohibitions on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Civil liberties advocates had roundly criticized the bill over Guantanamo and a separate section that could allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens on suspicions of supporting terrorism. Just as he did with last year's version of the bill, however, Obama decided that the need to pass the NDAA, which also sets the armed forces' $633 billion budget for the 2013 fiscal year, was simply "too great to ignore," according to a presidential signing statement released in the early morning hours Thursday.

Members of the human rights coalition that had urged Obama to follow through on his veto threat blasted his decision as a cave to congressional Republicans. "President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. “His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended.”

Huffington Post

Also see: A Death at Guantanamo on The Atlantic

US Supreme Court Rejects ALL Guantanamo Detainee Torture Suits

Jose Padilla, a United States citizen, was incarcerated for four years without trial for an alleged 2002 "dirty bomb" plot and has been trying to sue U.S. officials for his mistreatment while detained in a military brig in South Carolina.
Despite Padilla receiving direct support by the ACLU, he has been unsuccessful at attempting to hold accountable those who have been responsible for his horrendous treatment.  Padilla's case has come to represent the overall demand by Guantanamo detainees that their cases be objectively considered. 

Yesterday, June 11, all cases filed by detainees were rejected by the United States Supreme Court, leaving little doubt as to the path this country is heading toward with its conclusion that American citizen or not, your rights end where the U.S. government says they end, regardless of Constitutional principles or legal review.
Jose Padilla has been dealt legal blow after legal blow; first having Atlanta's 11 Circuit Court of Appeals rule against U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke in September 2011, who noted that Padilla had been confined under harsh conditions and had not injured anyone, among other considerations. The majority issued their opinion in vague language that alluded to "an impermissible comparison to sentences imposed in other terrorism cases, and was based in part on inappropriate factors," as well as his suspected Al Qaeda training. (Source)

In January of this year, Padilla was then denied by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virgina as having any right to even file suit for his claims of illegal detention and torture. 

Activist Post

Bush and Associates Found Guilty of Torture

Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) - The five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered a guilty verdict against former United States President George W. Bush and his associates at the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal hearing that had started on Monday.
On the charge of Crime of Torture and War Crimes, the tribunal finds the accused persons former U.S. President George W. Bush and his associates namely Richard Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, former Defence Secretary, Alberto Gonzales, then Counsel to President Bush, David Addington, then General Counsel to the Vice-President, William Haynes II, then General Counsel to Secretary of Defence, Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and John Choon Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General guilty as charged and convicted as war criminals for Torture and Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment of the Complainant War Crime Victims.

Earlier in the week, the tribunal heard the testimonies of three witnesses namely Abbas Abid, Moazzam Begg and Jameelah Hameedi. They related the horrific tortures they had faced during their incarceration. The tribunal also heard two other Statutory Declarations of Iraqi citizen Ali Shalal and Rhuhel Ahmed, a British citizen.
The witnesses were taken prisoners and held in prisons in Afghanistan (Bagram), in Iraq (Abu Gharib, Baghdad International Airport) and two of them namely Moazzam Begg and Rhuhel Ahmed were transported to Guantanamo Bay.

uruknet.info

New military trials at Guantánamo

The alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four suspected co-conspirators will face a new trial before a Guantánamo war crimes tribunal on charges that could carry the death penalty, the Pentagon has said. The five are accused of planning and executing 2001 hijacked airliner attacks on New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, resulting in the deaths of 2,976 people.

They are charged with terrorism, hijacking an aircraft, conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war and other counts, and were referred to a capital military tribunal, meaning they could be sentenced to death if convicted, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama halted the previous trial and wanted them prosecuted in civilian court. Congress opposed the move and the administration was forced to shift it back to Guantánamo. The decision to refer the case to a military commission means the five will be arraigned before a military judge at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba within 30 days.

guardian.co.uk

Inquiry into MI6 role in abduction and torture of Libyans

Scotland Yard has opened a criminal investigation into secret MI6 rendition operations that resulted in leading Libyan dissidents being abducted and flown to Tripoli, where they were subsequently tortured in Muammar Gaddafi's prisons.

The announcement came as the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute individual MI5 or MI6 agents following lengthy investigations into allegations of British complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The new investigation is to focus on Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a military commander of forces that opposed Gaddafi's rule, and Sami al-Saadi, who lodged complaints with the police last November after the chance discovery of a cache of classified documents in an abandoned Libyan government office laid bare the role MI6 played in their rendition.

Saadi was detained in Hong Kong in 2004 and then forced on to a plane to Tripoli with his wife and four children in an operation that MI6 mounted in co-operation with Gaddafi's intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa.

Belhaj was detained in Bangkok after an MI6 tip-off and allegedly tortured by US agents for several days before being flown to Tripoli, where he was imprisoned for several years and tortured.

The Guardian

But:

British spies escaped immediate criminal charges over torture complicity Thursday, but the country's top prosecutor ordered a new investigation into claims that intelligence shared with Moammar Gadhafi's regime led to the torture or rendition of Libyans.

Prosecutors have been investigating claims of mistreatment by detainees who were eventually sent to the United States prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. Most of the torture allegations come from terror suspects who were either initially held in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or sent to other countries such as Morocco for interrogation.

AP

Gitmo 10 years on: So much for closure

The US's Guantanamo Bay is marking its 10th anniversary, despite Obama’s repeated promises to close the infamous prison. The president even signed a new law authorizing the indefinite detention of terror suspects. ­Human-rights groups are organizing events to mark the occasion and respond to the broken promises. Obama has been criticized for not having a plan on how to close the detention facility, or at least for what to do with terror suspects.

Many believe the prospect of closing Guantanamo Bay has now become much more difficult, thanks to the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act by Congress (NDAA), signed by President Obama on December 31. Within that bill lie provisions that allow for the military to jail indefinitely anyone it considers a terrorism suspect – without charge or trial.  With that increased leniency, increased space to hold those prisoners will no doubt be needed.

Suspect Murat Kurnaz, one of seven hundred suspects who have passed through during 10 years, was captured in Pakistan in 2001 while working for an NGO that helped young people quit drugs. He was sent to Guantanamo and tortured – for five years – like many others allegedly being abused, never getting a trial.

“I got waterboarded after I had seen a couple things. A couple of people got killed in front of me. Some of them, they got just kicked on the head until he died and the other one he was hanging on chain until he died,” former Guantanamo Bay detainee Kurnaz says. He was forced to confess he was a member of Al-Qaeda, though he told them again and again he was not. “It was freezing cold.  It was winter time and I had no clothes on, so I was hanging there for many days,” Kurnaz remembers. “When the interrogator came they pulled me back down and he asked me are you going to sign or not and every time I said no, he just made like this and pulled me back up.”

It is stories like this that draw fierce condemnation. (RT)

Gitmo Files: WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantánamo Prisoners

5 WikiLeaks Hits of 2011 That Are Turning the World on Its Head -- And That the Media Are Ignoring

Between Collateral Murder, the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Diary, and Cablegate, it appeared as though 2010 would go down in history as the most shocking year in WikiLeaks revelations.

The 'worst of the worst' included children, the elderly, the mentally ill, and journalists. In April of this year, WikiLeaks released the Guantanamo Files, which included classified documents on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees. These files paint a stunning picture of an oppressive detention system riddled with incoherence and cruelty at every stage.

They shed new light on the persecution of Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj, who was caged at the camp for more than six years and then abruptly released without ever being charged. His crime was working for Al Jazeera. It was also revealed that almost 100 of the inmates sent to Guantanamo were listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strikes or attempted suicide. Officials in charge also found it appropriate to detain children and old men, including an 89-year-old Afghan villager suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

See 4 other revelations at AlterNet

WikiLeaks: Guantanamo Bay terrorist secrets revealed

The Daily Telegraph, along with other newspapers including The Washington Post, today exposes America’s own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world’s most dangerous terrorists. This newspaper has been shown thousands of pages of top-secret files obtained by the WikiLeaks website.

The disclosures are set to spark intense debate around the world about the establishment of Guantanamo Bay in the months after 9/11 – which has enabled the US to collect vital intelligence from senior Al Qaeda commanders but sparked fury in the middle east and Europe over the treatment of detainees.

The files detail the background to the capture of each of the 780 people who have passed through the Guantanamo facility in Cuba, their medical condition and the information they have provided during interrogations.

Only about 220 of the people detained are assessed by the Americans to be dangerous international terrorists. A further 380 people are lower-level foot-soldiers, either members of the Taliban or extremists who travelled to Afghanistan whose presence at the military facility is questionable.

At least a further 150 people are innocent Afghans or Pakistanis, including farmers, chefs and drivers who were rounded up or even sold to US forces and transferred across the world. In the top-secret documents, senior US commanders conclude that in dozens of cases there is “no reason recorded for transfer”.

However, the documents do not detail the controversial techniques used to obtain information from detainees, such as water-boarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation, which are now widely regarded as tantamount to torture.

More on the Telegraph

Also see The Guantanamo Files on The Guardian

Pentagon Seeks Death Penalty Against USS Cole Bombing Suspect

The Defense Department announced Wednesday that it is seeking the death penalty against a Guantanamo Bay detainee in connection with the USS Cole bombing in Yemen more than a decade ago.

Military prosecutors have re-filed terrorism and murder charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, of Saudi Arabia, the first case to move forward since President Obama ordered military trials to resume at Guantanamo Bay. The charges allege that Al-Nashiri led the planning and preparation for the USS Cole attack that blew a hole in the ship, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 40.

Al-Nashiri was first charged in 2008, but those charges were later withdrawn after President Obama took office, as his administration undertook a sweeping review of the Guantanamo Bay detention program. Al-Nashiri had been waterboarded during the Bush administration.

FoxNews.com

Former CIA agents have confirmed rumours that the agency tortured terror suspects at a detention center in Poland. One agent allegedly held a drill to a prisoner's head while he was naked and hooded.

Former CIA agents have confirmed for the first time that the agency tortured prisoners at a "black site" detention center in north-eastern Poland at the height of the war on terror. According to the Associated Press, a former CIA agent identified only as "Albert" tortured the terror suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri multiple times with an electric drill at the converted Stare Kiejkuty military base near Szymany in the Masuria region of Poland.

Al-Nashiri is the suspected mastermind behind one of the first large al-Qaida attacks, which targeted the US destroyer USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden in October 2000. According to former CIA agents who preferred to remain anonymous, Albert tortured the suspect for two weeks in December 2002. The claim is backed up by a review by the CIA's inspector general, which reads: "The debriefer entered the detainee's cell and revved the drill while the detainee stood naked and hooded."

Spiegel Online

Obama to restart Guantanamo military commissions

US President Barack Obama is lifting the two-year freeze on new military trials for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Mr Obama also announced a new process for continuing to hold those detainees not charged or convicted but deemed too dangerous to free.

He said the measures would "broaden our ability to bring terrorists to justice". Mr Obama had pledged in January 2009 to close the prison within a year.

"The American system of justice is a key part of our arsenal in the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates," Mr Obama said in a statement.

Full article on BBC News

More evidence of US war crimes

Military documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union after a lengthy lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act provide important new evidence of American war crimes. The documents include autopsy reports and investigative reports on the deaths of 190 prisoners held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The more than 2,600 pages of documents were turned over to the ACLU on January 14 and made public on the organization’s web site five days later.

An ACLU statement said that 25 to 30 cases were “unjustified homicides.” US military investigators themselves identified many of the deaths as homicides, although there were very few trials or convictions of the soldiers involved.

The ACLU issued a statement declaring: “So far, the documents released by the government raise more questions than they answer, but they do confirm one troubling fact: that no senior officials have been held to account for the widespread abuse of detainees. Without real accountability for these abuses, we risk inviting more abuse in the future.”

Some of the deaths are well known cases of atrocities committed by American soldiers, such as the killing of four prisoners who were shot and then thrown into a Baghdad canal in 2007. Others are previously unknown or not widely reported.

The autopsy reports make for gruesome reading. One document details the beating death in 2003 of Abid Mowhosh, a prisoner at Abu Ghraib, the infamous prison outside Baghdad that was the site of the largest number of deaths.

The autopsy report concludes: “This 56-year-old Iraqi detainee died of asphyxia and chest compression. Significant findings of the autopsy included rib fractures and numerous contusions (bruises), some of which were patterned due to impacts with a blunt object…”

full story on wsws.org

Guantanamo still open at 9th anniversary

Nine years ago to the day, a prison for "war on terror" detainees opened its doors in a remote US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And despite grand promises, it is unlikely to shut any time soon. "At this point, it is clear that Guantanamo will not be closed during this presidential term, or maybe even the next one, despite administration claims that it remains committed to the goal," Columbia University professor, Matthew Waxman, told AFP.

On January 11, 2002, about 20 prisoners arrived at the base, hooded, handcuffed and clothed in distinctive orange prison garb. They were put on display for the world to see, behind the bars of the prison erected on the military base rented from Cuba since the beginning of the 20th century.

Guantanamo quickly became a notorious symbol for the worst of the US excesses in the war on Al-Qaeda launched in the days that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

And rights groups around the world celebrated when new President Barack Obama swore just after his inauguration on January 22, 2009 to shut down the prison, opened by his predecessor George W. Bush. But two years later some 173 prisoners still languish behind its doors. And Obama's room for manoeuvre has been severely curtailed amid a fierce debate over the future of its high-profile foreign inmates.

Read more at Raw Story

US Tortured Guantanamo Bay Prisoners with Neuropsychiatric Malaria Drug

The US Defence Department forced all "war on terror" detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called "pharmacologic waterboarding."

The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not.

The revelation, which has not been previously reported, was buried in  documents publicly released by the Defence Department (DoD) two years ago as part of the government's investigation into the June 2006 deaths of three Guantanamo detainees.

Army Staff Sgt. Joe Hickman, who was stationed at Guantanamo at the time of the suicides in 2006, and has presented evidence that demonstrates the three detainees could not have died by hanging themselves, noticed in the detainees' medical files that they were given mefloquine. Hickman has been investigating the circumstances behind the detainees' deaths for nearly four years.

More on AlterNet