My title is the one word a military lawyer at Guantanamo has used to sum up the treatment of a hospital administrator from Sudan who is being held at Gitmo. This officer is going to testify at a hearing before the US Supreme Court on December 5th to determine whether the detentions of “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo, and the military status review hearings established and operated by the military at the prison are lawful. Naturally no American newspapers are reporting this story as of this morning, so I will refer you to this report by Leonard Doyle for The Independent for the details:
An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a devastating attack on the legal process for determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are “enemy combatants”.
The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as “unconscionable”. […]
The whistleblower’s testimony is the most serious attack to date on the military panels, which were meant to give a fig- leaf of legitimacy to the interrogation and detention policies at Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The major has taken part in 49 status review panels.
“It’s a kangaroo court system and completely corrupt,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is co-ordinating investigations and appeals lawsuits against the government by some 1,000 lawyers. “Stalin had show trials, but at Guantanamo they are not even show trials because it all takes place in secret.”
The army major has said that in the rare circumstances in which it was decided that the detainees were no longer enemy combatants, senior commanders ordered another panel to reverse the decision. The major also described “acrimony” during a “heated conference” call from Admiral McGarragh, who reports to the Secretary of the US Navy, when a the panel refused to describe several Uighur detainees as enemy combatants. Senior military commanders wanted to know why some panels considering the same evidence would come to different findings on the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority in China.
When the whistleblower suggested over the phone that inconsistent results were “good for the system … and would show that the system was working correctly”, Admiral McGarragh, he said, had no response. The latest criticism emerged when lawyers investigating the case of a Sudanese hospital administrator, Adel Hamad, who has been held for five years, came across a “stunning” sworn statement from a member of the military panel. The officer they interviewed was so frightened of retaliation from the military that they would not allow their name to be used in the statement, nor to reveal whether the person was a man or woman.
(cont.)
Not surprising news that the military had rigged these enemy combatant reviews to ensure that no one gets out of Guantanamo unless the President “decides” to permit it. Yet every time I read of this absurd judicial process straight out of Kafka that has been erected to provide the Gitmo detainees “due process” under the law, the angrier I get. The day we allowed Bush to create the prisons at Guantanamo Bay and the other outposts of his “American Gulag” was the day we stopped being the United States of America in all but name.
I’ve long maintained that these detentions and military tribunals were unconstitutional. Sadly, legal maneuvers, stall tactics and a compliant lapdog Congress has allowed the Bush administration to avoid scrutiny of the unconstitutional nature of the detentions at Guantanamo, and the military hearings of detainee status which justify the inhumane treatment of all those being held there. Indeed, the use of torture against the detainees would exclude much of the “evidence” collected by the military in any legitimate court of law, even detainees who we know to have been involved with Al Qaeda.
This is why the whole affair is both a tragedy for the detainees, and a travesty of justice for all Americans. Innocent men are being held unjustly without due process, and guilty men cannot be tried and convicted in our federal courts for their crimes because the Bush administration used torture and other extra-legal means to gather evidence against them. It is clear that the use of torture against the detainees was the reason for constructing the prison at the Guantanamo Bay in the first place. The administration couldn’t hold them at a facility on US soil because that would allow the persons it intended to torture in violation of the 8th Amendment and the Geneva Conventions to have easy access to the federal court system. So instead they were placed in an off shore hell hole at a military base we lease from Cuba, and the military was designated by executive fiat to conduct any and all hearings. This illegal process was later confirmed by a gutless Congress which discarded the right of habeas corpus last year when it passed the Military Commissions Act in response to the first Supreme Court decisions which went against the Bush administration regarding these detentions.
In short, it’s always been about the torture. That is, to allow Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and so many others play at being Jack Bauer of 24 in real life, Bush authorized the erection of this ugly edifice of secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, Abu Ghraib, etc. of which Gitmo is simply the most prominent “adornment.” They descended into the pit of darkness and dragged us down with them. That is what 9/11 really changed. And that is the true horror of that radical act of terrorism: that we could so easily rid ourselves of the trappings of our constitutional democracy in the pursuit, not of liberty or happiness, but of security from a small band of thugs.
Well we all know the saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin: Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. It seems we get what we deserve in this life, or at least those who voted for Mr. Bush deserve. The rest of us, unfortunately, also must suffer the consequences of the fear and blind hatred represented by those votes. A tyrant and a war criminal as our ruler.
Yeah, but Stalin had secret trials too. So there’s legal precedent.
‘A military base we lease from Cuba’.
Ha! As if Cuba leases the base willingly. Not as if Battista, the dictator who was overthrown by Castro, hadn’t ‘leased’ the base to the U.S. in perpetuity. Who has ever heard of anything so ridiculous? Even Hong Kong was leased to the British for so many years (100?), not in perpetuity. But in the Americas the cards are stacked heavily on one side. Isn’t one of the most disgusting aspects of the U.S. detention prisons on Cuba that they’re not physically staining the U.S. mainland but a small, vulnerable island which the U.S. has dominated in the past and longs ever so much to dominate again in the future. Ask HRC what she thinks about all this and she’ll start waffling about freedeom and justice, U.S. generosity and heartfelt compasiion, before giving the mic to her ‘charismatic’ husband. I’m so angry and bitter about all of this. But who might care?
Hong Kong Island itself was ceded to the British in perpetuity, in the Convention of Chuenpeh However the New teritories, the larger part of the crown colony were ceded later in the second convention of Beijing but only for 100 years.
when The new teritories were returned, Hong Kong was returned with them.
Thanks, I didn’t know that. Anyway the Chinese got everything back. I suppose Britain had no choice. When will the U.S. ever cede Guantanomo?
Without the new territories, there isn’t enough water supplies to run the current population on the island apparently
so its a philosophical Sat! And the word for this fruitless bullshit is unc……! And the focus you want us to examine is the plight f the guan…. prisioners. Well thats simply uncon…..!
How about all the better uncs that this group of horrors has rammed down our throats.
Where to start- lets see- 9/11 and the behavior of the dems in Congress. Or how about the WMD’s? Who! should have started with the great theft of 2000.
Anyhow, always bigger and better I say- we could share thoughts regarding the uncon…. destructio of a city! Yeah- that was a real unc!
What about the blatant lying to us and congress- Oh and how about the unc behavior of the dems. At least some of them knew from the gitgo that we all were being fed a pile of shit. Now that is a definite unc.
Just a couple of more — yup, Gen Betray-us! Not the ad but the response! Npw that rates right up there.
So, now the latest- FEMA- an unc dept.and their latest UNC…..! Their own “reporters”- pretty unc. don’t ya think?
And last but definitely not least. Us! Yup, Us! What we are doing is the real UNC! You all figure it out if youare willing to face yourselves in the mirror. I have done it and beside the physical ugliness staring back- the reality that I have unc let these bastards steal this great country and I haven’t even whimpered!
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FEMA’s greatness: of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We’re told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of external affairs, and by “Mike” Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. WaPo
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Dutch lawmakers who recently visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat.
The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that “Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.”
… Before the Guantanamo exchange, the lawmakers had discussed a debate in the Netherlands about whether the country should maintain its 1,600 troops serving in NATO’s Afghanistan operations.
“You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany,” Lantos said, according to the Dutch lawmakers.
“The comments killed the debate,” said Harry van Bommel, a member of the Socialist Party. “It was insulting and counterproductive.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Hi Oui…My way or the highway seems to be the extent of US diplomacy now days from either political camp. It seems I recall something about pride/arrogance goeth before the fall.
Everyone including politicians say something stupid once in awhile but these last 7 years of bushco seems to have reversed that–where only once in awhile do politicians say something that makes sense. The few who do make sense are the ones considered crazy or unamerican.(or both)
The list grows ever longer of countries we’ve managed to piss off.
I’m so old, I remember when American newspapers broke this kind of story.
how old?
Ya say ya want uncon……? Well try this on for size!:
Tuesday, while “wildfires raged” in California, FEMA staged a live press conference at which agency staffers posed as journalists and asked softball questions. One of those staffers, Director of External Affairs John “Pat” Philbin, has now resigned. He has instead landed an “amazing opportunity” to head public affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 5:04 pm | Comment (31)
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Posted by Amanda at 5:04 pm
Permalink | Comment (31)– This from Think progress! Does this make the unc list?