Fisk: Silenced for speaking the truth about Guantanamo

There was a brief flurry of articles about the Canadian reporters being kicked out of Guantanamo. Fisk reports that some newspapers were excluded from covering the trials but I thought it was just the reporters, or at least that is what other reports claimed.

The trials are a farce from the beginning. Obama has gone along with the "reformed" trials it would seem after closing them down temporarily. The whole idea of his being tried when at the time of the incident he was fifteen is criticized by many. He should have been considered a child soldier according to some and sent home for rehabilitation. What has always bothered me is the catch 22 legal nonsense involved in the trial. As an enemy combatant Khadr could be held indefinitely without charge but as an unlawful or unprivileged combatant he can be charged for lobbing the grenade even though a regular soldier could not. To try to kill a combatant on the other side in a battle situation would never result in a charge in ordinary warfare but terrorists don't wear uniforms! This is from the Independent UK.

Robert Fisk: Silenced for speaking the truth about Guantanamo




I began my column last week with the words "We know all about Guantanamo". I was wrong. Courtesy of the Toronto press – until a few days ago, when half of them were censored out of the drumhead courts martial that pass for "justice" in this execrable place – I have been learning a lot more.

Because the case involves a Canadian citizen – and because the Canadian government is doing sod-all for its passport-carrying prisoner – it hasn't been getting a lot of publicity on this side of the Atlantic. It should.

Omar Khadr was 15 when he allegedly – the word "'allegedly" is going to have to be used for ever, since this is not a fair trial – shot and killed a US Special Forces soldier in eastern Afghanistan in July 2002. Last week, a former US serviceman called Damien Corsetti, nicknamed "The Monster" at the Bagram jailhouse where torture and murder were widespread, agreed via a video link to the Guantanamo "court" that Khadr was trussed up in a cage "in one of the worst places on earth". "We could do basically anything to scare the prisoners," Corsetti announced.

Beating was forbidden, "The Monster" acknowledged, but prisoners could be threatened with "nightmarish scenarios" like rendition to Egypt or Israel where, according to Canada's Globe and Mail, "they would disappear". Which tells you a lot about Israel. Or what the Americans think of Israel. Quite a lot about Egypt, too, come to think of it.

I should add that Mr Khadr, who is now 23, was gravely wounded when he was brought to Bagram. As Mr Corsetti said, "He was a 15-year old kid with three holes in his body, a bunch of shrapnel in his face." The lads at Bagram – the guards and interrogators, that is – dubbed him "Buckshot Bob". Clever, huh?

Mr Corsetti, I should also add, was kind to Mr Khadr. He was earlier acquitted of charges of detainee abuse – not involving Khadr – and now says he is a disabled veteran being treated for "post-traumatic stress disorder". In other words, quite a find for Khadr's defence lawyers. Not for the Canadian government, however, which asked the Obama administration to suppress the fact that in 2003 and 2004, Khadr had given information to officials of the Ottawa department of foreign affairs and to agents of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS, for those who care).

The Canadian Supreme Court (for which I care a lot, because it appears to be fair) has already ruled that the conditions of Khadr's imprisonment at Guantanamo when interrogated by CSIS "constituted a clear violation of Canada's international human rights obligations".

Another American interrogator at Bagram, a sergeant, it turned out at the Guantanamo hearings, had questioned Khadr about his role in the Taliban. This interrogator, named Joshua Claus, was later convicted of detainee abuse – though not against Khadr. Claus also pleaded guilty to assaulting an innocent Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar who died in custody at Bagram.

We know Claus's identity because he gave press interviews to, among others, The Toronto Star, in 2008, when he claimed that his former employers were "trying to imply I'm beating or torturing everybody I ever talked to". Claus said, "Omar was pretty much my first big case. With Omar, I spent a lot of time trying to understand who he was and what I could say to him or do for him, whether it be to bring him extra food or get a letter out to his family." There was a lot more stuff at these hearings, admission of a "fear up" and "fear down" technique, for example – "fear up" apparently involved the threat of rape "by four big black guys".

In other words, another horrible, obscene story from Guantanamo. But wait. We can't have this kind of publicity show in the Canadian press, can we? Not least when Khadr's own government will do nothing for him. So get this. The Pentagon has announced that more than half of the Canadian press – including The Globe and Mail and the Star – will no longer be able to report the Guantanamo "proceedings" because they named Mr Claus as one of the interrogators – even though Mr Claus had himself given interviews to the press two years ago. But he wasn't named at Guantanamo. Get it?

Information already in the public domain is no longer in the public domain when it isn't mentioned at a drumhead trial in Cuba. (Yes, let's just remember that Guantanamo is actually in bloody Cuba!) The Pentagon didn't even call the reporters concerned – they used email, of course, because there might have been an argument, mightn't there?

Fairness in court? Not that we are going to find out. Khadr's father was an al-Qa'ida official. His life was almost certainly saved by US medics – there are some good guys in these wars – but he was most definitely tortured; and Canada (here I quote the Globe and Mail's excellent editorial) "in a sneaky and illegal fashion, participated in the abuse. It turned the fruits of its own interrogations of Mr Khadr to the prosecution, at a time when the military commissions had no explicit bar against evidence obtained coercively".

Too bad we won't have to hear much more about this trial, not in Canada, at least. The Star and The Globe and Mail have since made no reference to Claus's identity. Not surprising, I suppose. But remember, you read it here.

More from Robert Fisk

Judge questions Dirty Bomb Plot Orders US to yield papers.

This is from the NY Times. There is ample evidence against the CIA claims it does not conduct or condone torture or render anyone for torture. In fact this is just standard denial in the face of plenty of contrary evidence in cases such as Maher Arar , Almalki, Nurredin, El-Maati etc. etc. etc. etc. Of course it is true that they do not condone the torture in public and make sure that when they render someone for torture they get assurances that there will be no torture. But the CIA does know that countries such as Morocco and Syria and Egypt use torture in interrogation.
This is what is called willful ignorance.

October 31, 2008
Questioning ‘Dirty Bomb’ Plot, Judge Orders U.S. to Yield Papers on Detainee
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
WASHINGTON — Saying he questioned the government’s claim that a Guantánamo Bay detainee had planned a radioactive-bomb attack in the United States, a federal district judge ordered the Justice Department on Thursday to give the detainee’s lawyers documents on his treatment.
The documents are central to the claim of the prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, that he falsely confessed to the dirty-bomb plot and other offenses only after being tortured in Morocco at the direction of the United States.
“My concern is getting to the truth,” the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, said at a hearing.
The case of Mr. Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born former British resident, has drawn international attention and been at the center of diplomatic tensions between the United States and Britain. This week, British officials said they had referred questions about his treatment for possible criminal investigation by their law enforcement authorities.
The tension between the governments has intensified in recent weeks after the Pentagon dropped war crimes charges against Mr. Mohamed and the Justice Department said it would no longer rely on its dirty-bomb claims as a justification for holding him.
At the Thursday hearing, Judge Sullivan asked why, after more than six years, the government had stepped away from its claims about a dirty-bomb plot. “That raises a question as to whether or not the allegations were ever true,” the judge said.
In 2002, John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, announced that a plot to detonate a radioactive bomb in the United States had been foiled and an American citizen, Jose Padilla, detained. The Pentagon has claimed that Mr. Mohamed assisted Mr. Padilla.
After Mr. Padilla was held for three and a half years in a naval brig, the Justice Department abandoned its dirty-bomb claims against him. He was convicted of other charges in 2007.
Pressed by Judge Sullivan on Thursday as to whether the government stood behind its assertion of a dirty-bomb plot, a Justice Department lawyer, Andrew I. Warden, said, “The short answer is yes.”
But Mr. Warden said the government could prove that Mr. Mohamed was being properly held without evidence of that plot. Military prosecutors have said they will file new charges against Mr. Mohamed with the Guantánamo war crimes tribunal, but they have not said whether the bomb plot will be among those charges.
The government claims Mr. Mohamed confessed to the plot and to attending Qaeda training camps.
But Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer for Mr. Mohamed, said in court Thursday that all his confessions were made after “he was tortured again and again and again until he just parroted what his torturers wanted him to say.” In Morocco, Mr. Katznelson said, Mr. Mohamed was beaten and repeatedly cut with razor blades on his genitals and elsewhere.
Mr. Mohamed’s lawyers have laid out a detailed argument that he was subjected to the government’s program of rendition to other countries. They say evidence shows that American intelligence agents transferred him to Morocco.
The documents Judge Sullivan directed the government to turn over concern Mr. Mohamed’s treatment during the two years he was held in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan after he was first detained at the airport in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002. Mr. Katznelson said evidence of torture would prove that Mr. Mohamed had never voluntarily admitted to the dirty-bomb plot or any other involvement with Al Qaeda.
The government has said Mr. Mohamed’s claims of torture are not credible. A Moroccan consular official, Karim el-Mansouri, said in an interview that he had no details on Mr. Mohamed’s case but that Morocco protected human rights. Paul Gimigliano, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, said: “The C.I.A. does not conduct or condone torture. Nor does it transport individuals anywhere for the purpose of torture.”
Last week, a British court ruled that 35 documents in British intelligence files concerning Mr. Mohamed’s treatment should be turned over to his lawyers. The court said the documentation “lends some support to his claim that the confession was obtained after a period of two years incommunicado detention during which he was tortured.”
The material Judge Sullivan has now ordered the government to turn over would be any additional information about Mr. Mohamed’s treatment.
The British court had said it would wait to order the actual release of the 35 documents, to give Judge Sullivan an opportunity to rule on the issue first. By the time they arrived in court Thursday, however, Justice Department lawyers had turned over those documents. That followed a letter Tuesday from a British government lawyer to the British court’s judges that said the home secretary had referred to law enforcement officials in Britain “the question of possible criminal wrongdoing” in the treatment of Mr. Mohamed.

ACLU: U.S. blocking payments to Guantanamo attorneys

This is from McClatchy.
As the final part of the article points out the ordinary supposition that a person is innocent until proven guilty is thrown out the window in these trials.
"" Rankin said OFAC's role in the case was triggered because the Bush administration has designated Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, and the other four defendants as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists.''
There was no explanation, however, of how that designation squares with the administration's insistence that the military commissions operate under the assumption that the accused are considered innocent until proven guilty.""
So these persons are considered innocent even though they are already classified as specially designated global terrorists! Justice as farce. The blocking of payments is just another part of the Bush administrations' techniques of obstructing justice and making sure there are convictions.


ACLU: U.S. blocking payments to Guantanamo attorneys


By Carol Rosenberg Miami Herald
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — 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.
Treasury Department spokesman John Rankin declined to comment on the showdown with the ACLU, citing privacy policies.
But he said the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control "is treating this request with the seriousness it deserves and strives to process license applications as expeditiously as possible.''
OFAC is perhaps best known for enforcing regulations against Americans' spending money in places like Cuba or North Korea. But OFAC also is responsible for making certain American funds aren't sent to terrorist groups.
The ACLU announced in April that it was teaming with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to provide top-flight criminal attorneys to Guantanamo detainees facing the death penalty before military commissions at Guantanamo for their alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks.
Under the program, called the John Adams Project after the second American president, who earned criticism from fellow colonists from defending British soldiers, attorneys representing the detainees would be paid for travel, expenses, research and copying as well as $250 an hour. The ACLU said $8.5 million had been set aside for the project. Romero said attorneys already are due $200,000 in payments.
The program was endorsed by a wide range of lawyers including former Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director William Webster.
Participants include Boise, Idaho, lawyers David Nevin and Scott McKay, who are defense consultants to alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed, 43; Seattle attorneys Jeff Robinson and Amanda Lee, defending Mohammed's nephew, Ammar al Baluchi, 30, who noted at his June 5 arraignment that he is a Microsoft certified computer engineer; and Chicago lawyer Tom Durkin, defending Ramzi bin al Shibh, accused of organizing some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Nevin declared himself surprised at the standoff, especially since the ACLU had long been "in the business of defending people's rights.''
He added: "Obviously, everyone is going to do whatever is required to be done. But, intuitively, it seems odd to me that anyone's permission is necessary.''
The Treasury Department's Rankin this week offered no timetable for when the license might be issued.
''OFAC processes thousands of license requests each year for a variety of sanctions programs and consults with other offices and leadership in the U.S. Treasury and other agencies as the circumstances merit,'' he said.
Rankin said OFAC's role in the case was triggered because the Bush administration has designated Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, and the other four defendants as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists.''
There was no explanation, however, of how that designation squares with the administration's insistence that the military commissions operate under the assumption that the accused are considered innocent until proven guilty.