One small step for humankind..

A Federal Judge has ordered the release of a Russian gent being held at Gitmo for eight years. From Jurist:

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday ordered the release of Russian Guantanamo Bay  detainee Ravil Mingazov. Judge Henry Kennedy Jr ordered the government to "take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Mingazov's release forthwith." Government lawyers are currently reviewing the 44-page ruling, which has not yet been declassified. Mingazov, a former ballet dancer, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and turned over to US authorities. The Pentagon claimed he was captured in a raid on a suspected terrorist safe house and that he had attended a terror training camp, but Mingazov denied the claims. Mingazov is seeking release to a country other than Russia, after Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in 2007 that seven former Guantanamo detainees suffered abuse and torture at the hands of Russian law enforcement agencies following their release from US custody in 2004.

Thursday's ruling brings to 35 the number of Guantanamo detainees who have prevailed in habeas corpus proceedings in federal court. The government has prevailed in only 13 cases. In March, the DC court denied the habeas petition of Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Makhtar Yahia Naji al Warafi on its merits, allowing the US government to prolong the detention indefinitely. Earlier that month, a federal judge ordered the release of Mauritanian Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who had been accused of planning the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Slahi has been in US custody for over seven years and brought a habeas petition, claiming that he had been tortured in prison and had made confessions under duress. In late February, a DC judge ruled that the government can continue to hold indefinitely two Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainees, even though Fahmi Salem Al-Assani and Suleiman Awadh Bin Agil Al-Nahdi had been cleared for release by the Bush administration two years ago.

It's a damn shame that it takes a judge to do the right thing...Wtf ever happened to doing whats right morally? So far 35 prisoners have been prevailed and that is a good thing ain't it?

Senate passes bill to allow Gitmo prisoners to be tried in US

The yahoo’s in the House passed their version last week. From Jurist:

The US Senate voted 79-19 Tuesday in favor of a bill permitting Guantanamo Bay detainees to be brought to the US for trial. The measure was part of a $42.7 billion spending bill for the US Department of Homeland Security.While the detainees still may not be released on US soil or housed in US jails, the bill requires the Obama administration to develop a plan for the anticipated closure date of Guantanamo Bay in January 2010. Navy Rear Admiral Tom Copeman has announced that he can clear the base of all detainees given only 10 days notice and appropriate logistical support. Meanwhile, a group of retired generals has launched a national ad campaign in support of closing the facility. Tuesday’s bill also extends the life of the E-Verify program, which permits employers to check on the immigration status of their new employees. The bill will now go to President Barack Obama for his signature.

This doesn’t mean the US can now house prisoners in the US proper..Oh hell no..the assholes in congress won’t allow that. My thought is they don’t want the scrutiny that would come with incarcerating them in US prisons.

Obama administration denies UN rights groups access to Gitmo

I would not of believed this if someone had told me about it. I had to read it with my own two eyes. From Jurist:

The US government has turned down requests from two separate UN investigators to visit the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, the Washington Post reported Thursday. UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak and UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Martin Scheinin had each requested access to the facility as well as detailed information about the detention center and detainees. Nowak also requested interviews with several high-value detainees, but the requests were denied. US officials have said they are willing to cooperate with UN investigators but are unable to share secret intelligence information. While UN officials concede that the Obama administration is no longer engaging in many of the controversial practices of the Bush administration, Scheinin indicated that he is concerned that other countries are still citing US policies to justify abusive practices. Also Thursday, US Vice President Joe Biden said that Guantanamo will close by January.

Kinda makes me sick..how about you m'dear reader? What do they have to hide? Evidently quite a bit. Same shit just a different administration.

ps..out of town so please bear with me with regard to posting..I have no access to a computer except at night..very late at night.

Human Rights groups give Obama a piece of their collective minds..

Why shouldn't they? He has flipped on several key issues lately. It was a private off the record meeting so there isn't any news to report other than a few leaks or statements from attendee's, like HuffPo's piece or CBS new's article and Michael Isikoff's appearance on Rachel Maddow's show this evening discussing the meeting:

From the HuffPo piece:

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Massimino detailed what she described as a "lively and detailed and serious" discussion on some of the days most vexing national security issues. Over the course of roughly an hour and fifteen minutes, Obama, along with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Attorney General Eric Holder, advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, foreign policy hand Dennis McDonough, and counter-terrorism chief John Brennan, held court with a group of academics, as well as officials with the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

As for whether the discussions got heated or Isikoff's statement that Obama was compared to Bush, Massamino said:

"I think that many of us were disappointed by the announcement about the military commissions and wondered what the reasoning was behind that. And to be honest, I am still wondering having been in this meeting today. I don't think that this fits the overall framework that the president had articulated about using our values to reinforce a counter terrorism strategy against al Qaeda."

Isikoff was much more negative on Maddow's show, stating Obama wasn't pleased with the Bush/Obama reference. The NYT writeup of the meeting contained this:

The discussion, in a 90-minute meeting in the Cabinet Room that included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other top administration officials, came on the eve of a much-anticipated speech Mr. Obama is to give Thursday on a number of thorny national security matters, including his promise to close the detention center at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Human rights advocates are growing deeply uneasy with Mr. Obama’s stance on these issues, especially his recent move to block the release of photographs showing abuse of detainees, and his announcement that he is willing to try terrorism suspects in military commissions — a concept he criticized bitterly as a presidential candidate.

The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed.

*snip*

“He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can’t charge and detain,” one participant said. “We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.” (emphasis mine)

Stunning? I would say it's extremely friggin ironic..

Gitmo lawyer reassigned after filing complaint

The assholes running the kangaroo court at Guantanamo are still screwing around with the truth, inspite of having a new Commander in Chief. From Jurist:

The US Navy on Friday reassigned Lieutenant Commander William Kuebler, a military lawyer who had been in charge of defending Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, after Kuebler filed a formal complaint against a military official overseeing the case. Kuebler had worked on the case for two years before he was fired after alleging that the military's chief Guantanamo defense lawyer, Colonel Peter Masciola, had a conflict of interest in overseeing the case. Kuebler said Masciola should be removed from the case because Masciola said Khadr should also face civil liability for the alleged killing of a US soldier, despite his role overseeing Khadr's defense. Khadr is the only Canadian citizen currently being held in Guantanamo, and Canadian officials have said they may investigate the circumstances surrounding Kuebler's removal.

Kuebler has long criticized Masciola's handling of the case, and in February said that he had prompted an investigation of the defense team's ethics based on Masciola's leadership. In January, a US intelligence official said in pre-trial testimony that Khadr admitted he threw a grenade that killed a US soldier in 2002. He has been charged with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, and spying. In January, US President Barack Obama ordered Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to halt all military-commission proceedings involving Guantanamo detainees pending a review of their detentions. That month, a military judge granted the Obama administration's request for a continuance of Khadr's case until May 20.

Khadr was 15 years old when he was tossed in Gitmo and the key thrown away. He is now in his 6th-fucking-year of being held at Guantanamo. Not only was this kid renditioned..he was also tortured. He has spent a quarter of his life behind bars in Guantanamo.

What kind of people torture children? What do they tell themselves so they can look in the mirror each morning?

Federal Judge grants habeas petition to Gitmo prisoner.

This looks like a good omen to me. From Jurist:

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday granted a habeas corpus petition filed by Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Yasin Muhammed Basardh, ordering his release from the prison. His detention came under exclusive review of the court after a panel for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit [official website] suspended its consideration of his case in light of the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which it said gave the District Court sole jurisdiction over the matter. Justifications for Basardh's release were kept classified. The US government was ordered "to take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate the release of petitioner Basardh forthwith."

The order comes after a Tuesday stay of proceedings against fellow Yemeni detainee Ayman Saeed Batarfi and follows a call by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Sunday for the US and Yemen to agree on a repatriation plan that provides "meaningful legal process" for the nearly 100 Yemeni detainees still at Guantanamo Bay. The repatriation plan dates back to July 2008, when Yemeni officials met with a visiting US delegation to discuss the possible transfer of Yemeni detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, with the US voicing concerns that they would be freed upon their return. The stay of proceedings against Batarfi follows a January executive order from US President Barack Obama directing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within one year and a review and disposition of all individuals held at the facility.

Lets here it for the little guy. Because if you think about it...this is who we are: fair and equitable or nightmarish dictatorial bags of batshit that torture and run kangaroo courts.

Oh...And today, m'dear reader, is the big dog and pony show in Congress on the Obama Budget. It should be a real comedy of errors and just fine slapstick comedy period.. if recent history shows us anything.

Obama signs executive order to close Gitmo, end torture.

Oh Happy Day! He just finished signing the executive order to close Gitmo within one year of today. He also signed an E.O that disallows torture of prisoners. From MSNBC:

Moving quickly to reverse his predecessor's policies on the treatment of terror suspects, President Barack Obama on Thursday signed an executive order to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year.

He also signed an executive order to require that all U.S. interrogations of terror suspects must now conform to the U.S. Army Field Manual, a move meant to restrict what the CIA can do. The presdient created an interagency task force to advise him on detainee policy.

He is starting off on the right foot...or is that the left foot? ;)

120-day Hold put on Gitmo trials.

AP WaPo and Reuters are reporting that a 120 day hold has been placed on any military tribunal trials at Gitmo...by Presidential Order. From Reuters:

Hours after taking office on Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered military prosecutors in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals to ask for a 120-day halt in all pending cases.

Military judges were expected to rule on the request on Wednesday at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an official involved in the trials said on condition of anonymity.

The request would halt proceedings in 21 pending cases, including the death penalty case against five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 hijacked plane attacks in 2001.

Prosecutors said in their written request the halt was "in the interests of justice."

This is a great day folks. ;)

Gitmo detainees leaving..few at a time.

This is a day of hope and change....for lots of people. Especially Haji Bismullah:

For nearly six years, Haji Bismullah, an Afghan detainee at Guantánamo Bay, has insisted that he was no terrorist, but had actually fought the Taliban and had later been part of the pro-American Afghan government.

Over the weekend, the Bush administration flew him home after a military panel concluded that he “should no longer be deemed an enemy combatant.”

Asked about the panel’s decision, which was not publicly announced and seemed to acknowledge a mistake of grand proportions, a Pentagon spokeswoman said, “Mr. Bismullah was lawfully detained as an enemy combatant based on the information that was available at the time.”

Lawyers for Mr. Bismullah, 29, presented sworn statements from officials of the American-supported Afghanistan government of Hamid Karzai that indicated Mr. Bismullah had been named as a terrorist by collaborators of the Taliban who wanted to take over his position as a provincial official. In fact, after Mr. Bismullah was shipped to Guantánamo, a local official said in a sworn statement, one of his accusers stole his car and drove it for two years.~NYT.

Doesn't that make your blood boil? Don't you want to take a baseball bat to someone's head who calls all the men held at Gitmo terrorists, scum and vermin? Another set of ruined lives gets a new start:

The US Department of Defense on Saturday announced it had transferred six detainees out of Guantanamo Bay. The detainees, four of whom were sent to Iraq, one to Algeria, and one to Afghanistan, were found to be eligible for transfer after what DOD called "a comprehensive series of review processes." ~Jurist.

And George W. Bush has less than 24 hours left in the White House. Too bad he isn't being transferred to Gitmo.

Martin Luther King had it right. Judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

But you can not even count on be judged correctly in Bush's War's..especially when all the checks and balances we have relied on for hundreds of years have been removed by idiots who think they know it all.

Tags: Haji Bismullah

Where will they go?? How about home?

I am talking about Gitmo, and the 'prisoners' that are still held there. From Jurist:

A spokesman for Australian Prime Minister Kevin Ruddsaid Saturday that Australia would be willing to consider acceptance of Guantanamo Bay detainees on a case-by-case basis, according to a report in The Australian. Rudd's spokesman confirmed that Australia, along with other countries, has been approached by the United States concerning prisoner resettlement possibilities. Australia strongly supported US policy in the "war on terror" under the leadership of former prime minister John Howard and was complicit in the Guantanamo detention of Australian national David Hicks, who was finally transferred to Australian custody in 2007. While no final decision on the closure of the detention camp has been reached, US President-elect Barack Obama remains committed to closing the facility.

The prospect of closing Guantanamo Bay has raised concerns about where to relocate the released prisoners. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently ordered the Pentagon to draft a proposal for closing the facility in anticipation of a possible presidential order. Germany and Portugal have both stated a willingness to accept Guantanamo detainees in support of the facility's closure and have urged other countries to do so as well. The Netherlands, on the other hand, has said it will not accept detainees for resettlement and Spain has expressed strong reservations. The United Kingdom has said it will consider transfers on a case-by-case basis. French officials Friday suggested a unified European Union stance on the issue but France has not explicitly expressed a willingness to accept detainees itself. France holds the European Union presidency through December 31.

What a fucked up mess, how many were tortured, how many are innocent..and yet...these people have never been convicted of doing shit. We paid people to rat them out, we held many of them for years before letting them go home....it makes me scream.

Gates tells the Pentagon to start planning the closing of Gitmo

From Jurist:

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has ordered the Pentagon to draft a proposal for shutting down the military prison at Guantanamo Bay in preparation for a possible order from President-elect Barack Obama, a Pentagon spokesperson said Thursday. Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters that Gates wants to have a plan in place in the event Obama issues an order shortly after his inauguration to close the facility. Morrell said:

[Gates] has asked his team for a proposal on how to shut it down [and] what would be required specifically to close it and move the detainees from that facility, while at the same time ensuring that we protect the American people from some very dangerous characters.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] Executive Director Anthony Romero applauded the move [press release], saying:

The fact that Defense Secretary Gates is finally taking steps to close down Guantanamo and its unconstitutional military commissions is a welcome and encouraging sign that President-elect Obama intends to fulfill his campaign pledge. This is an important first step toward turning the page on eight years of shameful policies that allowed torture and violations of domestic and international law.

Also Thursday, the ACLU, along with Amnesty International USA, Human Rights First, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a letter to Obama calling on him not to create a similar detention system, should he close Guantanamo and end the military commissions system.

It can not happen soon enough for those still languishing there. Obama must end the torturing of this individuals as well as provide them with due process. Gates is stepping up to the plate on this issue and I do applaud him for that move.

“As President, I will close Guantánamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions”

Those words above were spoken on August 1st, 2007 by President-elect Barack Obama. We need to hold him to those words.

To that end, the ACLU and Brave New Foundation have created the video below as well as this site. The ACLU and Brave New Foundation are collaborating on a series of videos containing direct testimony from those with firsthand knowledge of the system of injustice that thrives at Gitmo.



Close it down President Obama..shut the fucking place down and end the military commissions. Please. Restore the rule of law and end the madness that is Gitmo and the military commissions kangaroo court.

To sign a letter demanding the above, click here.

Obama planning to try Gitmo detainees in US courts?

From FindLaw:

President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

A third group of detainees - the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information - might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

The move would be a sharp deviation from the Bush administration, which established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba and strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States. Obama's Republican challenger, John McCain, had also pledged to close Guantanamo. But McCain opposed criminal trials, saying the Bush administration's tribunals should continue on U.S. soil.

The plan being developed by Obama's team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But it is almost certain to face opposition from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. and from Democrats who oppose creating a new court system with fewer rights for detainees.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and Obama legal adviser, said discussions about plans for Guantanamo had been "theoretical" before the election but would quickly become very focused because closing the prison is a top priority. Bringing the detainees to the United States will be controversial, he said, but could be accomplished.

"I think the answer is going to be, they can be as securely guarded on U.S. soil as anywhere else," Tribe said. "We can't put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there."

The last line really says it all..."We can't put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there." There must be a rule of law used to process these individuals, not the very people that 'captured' them also running the trials. There must be habeas corpus, there must be evidence hearings, our rule of law must be applied across the board to all these individuals...some of whom have been sitting in cells for over 5 years and have never been charged.

Update: Obama's top brass tonight, per Olbermann's show, said they do want to close Gitmo however, they have no concrete plans in place yet on how to deal with the prisoners there. The ACLU is also pressing Obama to close Gitmo on day one of his administration.

Feds blocking payments to Gitmo lawyers..

This is such bullshittery I can not even begin to deal with it. From the TPM writeup:

The U.S. government is blocking the American Civil Liberties Union from paying attorneys representing suspected terrorists held here, insisting that the ACLU must first receive a license from the U.S. Treasury Department before making the payments.

ACLU director Anthony Romero on Tuesday accused the Bush administration of "obstruction of justice" by delaying approval of the license, which the government argues is required under U.S. law because the beneficiaries of the lawyers' services are foreign terrorists.

"Now the government is stonewalling again by not allowing Americans' private dollars to be paid to American lawyers to defend civil liberties,'' Romero said

.

I can not believe we, the universal we, have stooped so fucking low. Can you? Sweet Jesus in a speedo..this is SO disgusting, I can not spit words for it right now. Sick bastards are running the country.

Federal Appeals court shoots down ‘enemy combatant’ label on a detainee

I could of found a better word than ’shoots’ probably, but none the less this is an important ruling. From McClatchy:

A federal appeals court for the first time has rejected the military’s designation of a Guantanamo detainee as an enemy combatant.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned as “invalid” a military tribunal’s conclusion that prisoner Huzaifa Parhat is an enemy combatant.

The court directed the Pentagon either to release or transfer Parhat or to hold a new tribunal hearing “consistent with the court’s opinion.”

The status review tribunal is bullshit. The whole military tribunal is bullshit. With the SCOTUS ruling recently and now this from last month, which went largely ignored by the MSM, the courts seem to be slowly chipping away at BushCo’s kangaroo court. There are still 270 people being held at Guantanamo.

Gitmo doubling up on lawyers.

From Jurist:

The Pentagon has said that an additional 108 military lawyers and paralegals will be assigned to work on the cases of prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay, twice the current number. Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal advisor to the Office of Military Commissions, made the announcement last Thursday, the same day as five men charged with plotting the Sept. 11 attacks were arraigned. Before a military commission at Guantanamo bay, a critical move in the legal proceedings against some of the 19 detainees awaiting trial.

Hartmann said that the additional lawyers will ensure fair trials, but critics argue that the allocation of additional resources is political, designed to finish the commissions before the November elections and to avoid the possible result of a Supreme Court ruling expected later this month on whether federal courts may consider the legality of Guantanamo detentions. Hartmann himself was recently disqualified by a US military judge from participating in the trial of Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan because he was deemed too closely associated with the prosecution. Reuters has more. American Forces Press Service has additional coverage. (emphasis mine)

Gee, ya think it's remotely possible that this is political? I say that with the snark button on full tilt...

Crossposted at Sirens Chronicles, which btw has a marvelous new look. ;)

"We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions."

I have shuddered at the thought that most, if not all, of the individuals to be tried in BushCo's kangaroo court known as the military tribunals would be found guilty. That they would be found guilty on shoddy or non-existing evidence coerced out of them by torture and certainly without any decent representation.

Great gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands has occurred on this topic for me. This might cause some folks to see me as a loony lefty, among other things. As if that matters to me what people think of me.

I want the guilty to be found guilty...but I doubt that even a third of the people still being held in Gitmo are guilty of anything, even though they are considered 'high value' detainees by the people in charge.

Recently, one of those high-value guys saw the case against him dismissed. The alleged 20th hijacker, Mohammed al-Qahtani's case came to an abrupt end. The reason? He was tortured and tortured...and tortured some more. As Slate's Dahlia Lithwick notes:

The decision not to try him comes from the convening authority for the commissions, Susan Crawford. She didn't give an explanation for halting the prosecution, but, then, we don't really need one.

Lithwick's column states the reason that we might never see any of the 'high value' detainees tried and automatically convicted is because of the military itself. In her and Emily Bazelon's mind, there are honorable men and women involved in the Gitmo military commission hierarchy. While I have no doubt that some of the people involved are honorable and have a conscience, I still don't trust the majority of them to do the 'right thing' and end the Gitmo madness.

Dahlia and Emily start with Charles Swift, the defense lawyer from the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps who was appointed in 2002 to represent Salim Hamdan. Mr. Swift was a good and honorable man, to be sure. He has even publicly voiced his opposition to the military commissions. His opposition most likely cost him his military career.

Next, they lay out the case for Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for the tribunals. He is an honorable man only because when it came time for him to actually prosecute detainees, which he had completely backed, he was stunned to learn which cases he was given. Cases without merit...but plenty of torture. From the Slate write up:

He resigned last October and went on an op-ed tear, writing that "full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system" because it "had become deeply politicized." Davis, who still maintains that the charges against Mr. Hamdan are "warranted by the evidence," was called to testify in Hamdan's case last month by the defense because of his indictment of the system.

Keith Allred is a military judge. That is pretty high up the food chain if you ask me. Allred bounced a biggie from Hamdan's trial. Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann has been removed from any further participation in Hamdan's prosecution by Allred because he determined that Hartmann directed prosecutors "to use evidence that the Chief Prosecutor considered tainted and unreliable, or perhaps obtained as the result of torture or coercion." (Allred also made a finding of fact that while interviewing Davis for the chief-prosecutor position, Department of Defense Gen. Jim Haynes told him, "We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions." So now that's the official account. Good to know.).

As I read further, I relax a bit. I realize that all might not be lost, that inherently good, honest people will not throw away their conscience just because their boss tells them to...they believe in the rule of law. The article rattles off four more names of individuals whose conscience trumped their bosses orders in BushCo's kangaroo court in Gitmo:

Four others—Maj. Robert Preston, Capt. John Carr, Capt. Carrie Wolf, and Lt. Col. Stuart Couch—have also left, apparently because of micromanagement and the interference of which Davis complained, including the demand that they use what they deemed to be unreliable coerced testimony.

That these individuals have sacrificed their careers in order to hold onto their belief system makes me feel that much better. It takes a lot for someone who is a career military officer to say fuck it and go very public with their opposition to the bullshit that is the Gitmo military commission.

We can only hope more of them are waiting in the wings. Beause there is still too much time left before January 21st gets here and the next Democratic President can put an end to the madness down in Guantanamo and shut the doors forever.

Crossposted at UnCapitalist Journal

Guantanamo-Even children are charged and held

I had no idea that the U.S. held a 15-year old child in Gitmo. He has been there for six years, now being 21 years of age and a canadian citizen. His name is Omar Khadr.

From Reuters:

His military lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, had argued in February hearings at the Guantanamo naval base that Khadr was a child soldier illegally conscripted by his father, an al Qaeda financier. He urged the judge to drop the charges, which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, issued a ruling on Wednesday agreeing with prosecutors' position that the law authorizing the Guantanamo trials contained no minimum age.

*snip*

Kuebler called the ruling "an embarrassment to the United States" and said Canada would share in the embarrassment if it allows its citizen to be tried at Guantanamo. He said Khadr would be the first child soldier tried for war crimes in modern history.

The United States and Canada have ratified an international treaty, the Child Soldier Protocol, that outlaws recruitment of combatants under age 18 and requires governments to help child soldiers recover and reintegrate into society.

Christ, this is out-fucking-rageous. They have no shame..our warmongering fuckwits. In order to capture this child..they shot him twice...in the back.

U.S. and the CONVENTION ON ELIMINATION OF all forms OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION.

Surely as there is a sunrise tomorrow, the United States has once again blow off something they swore to uphold. This time around its the United Nations CONVENTION ON ELIMINATION OF all forms OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION.

In 1994, the US Senate ratified this treaty, wherein they promised to “provide reports every two years on racial discrimination in the United States. The reports were to include anywhere in the world where the US military is in charge. In other words, the United States military, no matter where it was on the globe, agreed to report discrimination. That now includes Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.”

One Hundred and Seventy-three nations signed this treaty. All of them, including the US, promised to provide reports on their countries progress or lack of it in certain areas such as health care, education and prison terms. There was a two day meeting on the most recent reports submitted by the participating nations. The U.S. government submitted a 115-page report (pdf) and sent a 25 person delegation to Geneva to defend its..cough.. record. Who contributed to this report?

This report was prepared by the U.S. Department of State with extensive assistance from the White House, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and other relevant departments and agencies of the federal government and of the states. Contributions were also solicited and received from interested members of the numerous non-governmental organizations and other public interest groups active in the area of civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights in the United States.

As to how many outside groups actually participated it's unknown. My guess is the bulk of the report was prepared by “Bushies” which control all areas of the federal government as we all are aware of at this point in time. Especially after numerous Congressional hearings regarding the dismissed AG's and the politicization of all branches of our federal government.

A coalition of 250 delegates has taken issue with the US and it's handling of discrimination at the conference, stating we, as a nation, have failed dismally to live up to our obligations. U.S. Human Rights Network Executive Director, Ajamu Baraka gives us his take on the matter:

"The persistent and systematic issues of racial discrimination have not been addressed by this government," said Baraka. "From Katrina, the ongoing crisis of Katrina in the Gulf Coast in the south, migrant rights, the ongoing police brutality, housing issues-we find that these issues have escaped the scrutiny and the readjustment by the U.S. government in their obligation to the CERD (Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) treaty."

To continue reading, click here.

tags: Rendition, Human Rights, Racial discrimination, Guantanamo, Abu-Gharaib, racial profiling

All Gitmo interrogations were filmed..

According to Jurist, the proof can be found in a new report released by the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research. A few of the individuals within the report actually represented detainees and FOIA requests bear out their stories. Here is a section from the beginning of the report, which is a PDF:

More than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantánamo since 2002.

Every interrogation conducted at Guantánamo was videotaped. The Central Intelligence Agency is just one of many entities that interrogated detainees at Guantánamo.

The agencies or bureaus that interrogated at Guantánamo include: the Central Intelligence Agency and its Counterterrorism Center; the Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF); the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) of the FBI; Defense Intelligence Analysis (DIA); Defense Human Intelligence (HUMINT); Army Criminal Investigative Division (ACID); the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI); and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). Private contractors also interrogated detainees.

Each of these entities has identical motives to destroy taped investigations as has the Central Intelligence Agency. As one former senior Central Intelligence Agency official put it: “It’s a qualitatively different thing—seeing it versus reading about it.”
One Government document, for instance, reports detainee treatment so violent as to “shake the camera in the interrogation room” and “cause severe internal injury.” Another describes an interrogator positioning herself between a detainee and the camera, in order to block her actions from view.

The Government kept meticulous logs of information related to interrogations. Thus, it is ascertainable which videotapes documenting interrogations still exist, and which videotapes have been destroyed.

The report is 40 pages long and I have not slogged through it in it's entirety yet, the ball and chain is on my last nerve today..but I will do it later...after I hide the body ;p