Al-Ghizzawi is now allowed to spend some time with his fellow prisoners, some time watching movies, and he can attend some language classes (English).My other client, Razak Ali, has always been in Camp 4-one of the “better” camps at Guantanamo and he has never had the serious health and psychological problems that come with being held in solitary confinement…for literally years. That being said…these years have been very hard for both men.
Their cases are slowly working through the system. Razak Ali’s case was delayed because his original judge had a heavier caseload of Guantanamo cases than the other judges. His case was moved to a different judge and despite the “justice” departments attempts to do everything it can to delay his case it is slowly moving ahead. In Al-Ghizzawi’s case I agreed to a temporary stay of his case so that the Obama Review Team could review his situation. Now that it is clear that the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to move the men that need diplomatic resettlement help I have asked the judge to lift the stay and set a hearing date for his Habeas petition.
Both men have now started their eighth year at Guantanamo. Neither man will ever be charged with wrongdoing. The same people who ran this litigation for the Bush administration are running things for the Obama administration. Those bright attorneys that Obama put into place and which gave some of us great hope for a change are standing like deer in the headlights. It reminds me of the old saying that being smart will only get you so far..or as the kids say “no guts, no glory.” There is definitely a shortage of guts.
“Terrorist Incapacitation” – the new gloss for indefinite detention … If tax lawyers can be indicted for fraudulent advice, why not John Yoo for torture advice? ... Suppressed report on “interrogation policy” due to see the light of day
Michael Jackson’s death provided the perfect cover for a Friday afternoon “bad news dump”, e.g. the strategically leaked report that the Obama administration is drafting a Bush-like executive order to allow indefinite detention of terrorist suspects.
Mr Obama’s rumoured move would shortcut Congress’ new legislation restricting his power to bring detainees to the US.
Detainees are challenging the new law as a backdoor attempt to frustrate the Supreme Court’s mandate of habeas in the Boumediene decision.
Quite fortuitously, the Democrat-friendly Brookings Institution simultaneously released its proposed Model Law for Terrorist Incapacitation, TI being the new gloss for indefinite administrative detention.
The report, by security court advocate Ben Wittes, draws on the expertise of tainted and even criminally-implicated Bush appointees such as Jonathan Fredman, the CIA lawyer who flew down to Guantánamo and counselled interrogators that, “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it (torture) wrong”.
The ground has already been prepared with testimony to Congress on existing security detentions.
The discredited military commissions are also back on the agenda.
In Boumediene, the court said the Constitution isn’t something that can be turned off and on like a tap.
But that’s precisely what Congress and Obama have in mind.
Justice (but not Pentagon) lawyers are offering a few morsels of due process, yet it’s still hard to see – after Hamdan – how military commissions can be used for non-war crimes occurring before there was a war or outside theatres of war.
As he points out, tax lawyers were recently indicted by the Justice Department for providing the same sort of fraudulent advice.
The Wall Street Journal, quick to the defence of its columnist John Yoo, came up with a startling theory: the act of pursuing Yoo could lead to lawsuits against the Obama administration for its decision to close Guantánamo.
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While Guantánamo detainees who have been held for as long as eight years are being released, the Obama administration continues to litigate habeas cases where it has no evidence.
One such case is that of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco.
He’s one of the men subjected to a second Combat Status Review Tribunal when the first one departed from script and found no combatant status.
To date most of the detainees (75 percent) have been found not to be “terrorists” when, after years of government obstruction, their habeas cases were considered on the merits.
In al-Ginco, Judge Leon ruled that the intervening imprisonment and mistreatment of a former Taliban or al-Qaida adherent by his own side ended his status as an “enemy combatant” detained in Guantánamo.
The CIA Inspector-General’s long-suppressed 2004 report on the Bush administration’s “interrogations” policy is due out soon and should have plenty to say about the psychologists who “designed” the system.
Apparently Bradbury attempted to evade the Geneva Conventions’ Common Article Three, or justify its violation, after the Supreme Court expressly ruled the Article applied.
John Yoo’s memo on the Convention Against Torture is also sought.
Not surprisingly, the American Civil Rights Union (a right-wing foil to the ACLU) thinks the recently-disclosed Bush DoJ torture memos (see my post of April 23) are just great
Unlike Charles Swift, the Navy officer who won the Hamdan case in the Supreme Court and was forcibly retired, Dan Mori was able to stick with the military until a new regime arrived.
In an interesting historical parallel, Col. Kenneth Royall (seen here), an Army Judge Advocate appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt to represent the WW II German saboteurs in the famous ex rel Quirin military commissions case, also exceeded his brief.
Against orders, and in the face of presidential opposition, Col. Royall took the case to the Supreme Court, challenging the legality of Roosevelt’s commissions.
