US ties up Guantanamo closure funds.

This is from AFP via Yahoo.

Obama will close Guantanamo but it does not look like it will be any time soon and Obama is also considering setting up new military tribunals even though he was quite critical of such tribunals during the Bush era. No doubt these will be new. changed and much better!
It seems that no one wants Guantanamo inmates the ones that are left even though some are some such as the Uighirs are hardly a danger to the US and groups have offered to help them adjust.



US Senate ties up Guantanamo closure funds
Wed May 13, 7:18 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US senators on Thursday were to debate a bill forbidding the use of new money to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists to ship any detainees to the United States.
The Senate Appropriations Committee was to take up legislation granting US President Barack Obama's request for 80 million dollars to shutter the controversial facility by January 22, 2010 -- but attaching strict conditions.
Obama had requested the funding as part of an emergency measure to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through October 1, but quickly ran into tough Republican opposition and widespread Democratic unease.
The Senate bill would address those misgivings by forbidding the use of 50 million dollars to cover Defense Department expenses tied to closing the facility for bringing detainees to US soil.
None of the money could be spent until 30 days after Defense Secretary Robert Gates has provided a detailed plan for where the funds will go, according to a summary provided by a congressional source late Wednesday.
The bill would also stipulate that the money "can only be used to relocate prisoners to locations outside of the United States, and only if the Secretary has certified that prisoners transferred to other nations will remain in that nation?s custody as long as they remain a threat to the United States."
As for the 30 million dollars Obama sought for the Justice Department, the summary says, "no funds are provided in this Title to transfer, relocate, or incarcerate Guantanamo Bay detainees to or within the United States."
Instead, the money would go towards expenses tied to Attorney General Eric Holder's review of the status of each of the 241 detainees -- like providing space and equipment to review their cases and defray costs linked to staffing the review.
Copyright © 2009 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Cleared Guantanamo Inmates with no place to go!

You would think that the US would take responsibility for giving cleared inmates refugee status in the US. It is the least that the US could do after holding these people for years without charge. Part of the problem is that some captives such as the Uighurs are classifed as members of a terrorist group. If they are deported to China they may very well be tortured and jailed. However, if the US gives refuge to members of terrorist groups all hell would break loose among US commentators! Of course people who belong to anti-Cuban terrorist groups are a different story. They have never been classified as terrorists! The US just recently let out on bail a wanted terrorist who is accused of being involved in a plot that blew up a Cuban airliner.



82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo
U.S. Cites Difficulty Deporting Detainees

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 29, 2007; A01



LONDON -- More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

The delays illustrate how much harder it will be to empty the prison at Guantanamo than it was to fill it after it opened in January 2002 to detain fighters captured in Afghanistan and terrorism suspects captured overseas.

In many cases, the prisoners' countries do not want them back. Yemen, for instance, has balked at accepting some of the 106 Yemeni nationals at Guantanamo by challenging the legality of their citizenship.

Another major obstacle: U.S. laws that prevent the deportation of people to countries where they could face torture or other human rights abuses, as in the case of 17 Chinese Muslim separatists who have been cleared for release but fear they could be executed for political reasons if returned to China.

Compounding the problem are persistent refusals by the United States, its European allies and other countries to grant asylum to prisoners who are stateless or have no place to go.

"In general, most countries simply do not want to help," said John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "Countries believe this is not their problem. They think they didn't contribute to Guantanamo, and therefore they don't have to be part of the solution."

A case in point is Ahmed Belbacha, 37, an Algerian who worked as a hotel waiter in Britain but has been locked up at Guantanamo for five years. The Pentagon has alleged that Belbacha met al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden twice and received weapons training in Afghanistan. His attorneys dispute the charges and say he was rounded up with other innocents in Pakistan in early 2002.

On Feb. 22, without explanation, the Pentagon notified Belbacha's lawyers in London that he had been approved to leave Guantanamo. Despite entreaties from the State Department, however, the British government has refused to accept Belbacha and five other immigrants who had lived in the country, because they lack British citizenship.

This month, Clint Williamson, the State Department's ambassador for war crimes, visited Algiers to discuss possible arrangements for the return of two dozen Algerians who remain at Guantanamo, including Belbacha, but no breakthroughs were reported. That country has been slow to accept its citizens.

Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer who represents Belbacha and several other prisoners who have been cleared, said defense attorneys have tried to speed up the process by contacting foreign governments to see if there are any specific obstacles to the return of their clients. In many cases, he said, the prisoners and officials in their home countries are willing to approve the transfer, but the delays persist.

"The holdup is a mystery to me, frankly," said Katznelson, senior counsel for Reprieve, a British legal defense fund. "If the U.S. has cleared these people and they want to go back, I don't understand why they can't just put them on a plane."

Other prisoner advocates said the Bush administration has made its task more difficult by exaggerating the threat posed by most Guantanamo inmates -- officials repeatedly called them "the worst of the worst" -- and refusing to acknowledge mistaken detentions.

Foreign governments have also questioned why U.S. officials should expect other countries to pitch in, given that Washington won't offer asylum to detainees either.

"This is a problem of our own creation, and yet we expect other countries to shoulder the entire burden of a solution," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "There needs to be a worldwide solution here. The U.S. has to bear some of that burden. It can't simply expect its partners and allies to absorb all its detainees."

The 82 cleared prisoners who remain stuck in limbo come from 16 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, according to defense attorneys who have received official notification of their clients' status.

The 17 Chinese Muslim separatists make up the largest contingent. Other countries with multiple prisoners awaiting release include Afghanistan, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Pentagon has reduced the population at Guantanamo by roughly half since the peak of 680 people in May 2003, generally by sending prisoners back to their native countries. But U.S. officials said progress has slowed because of the complexity of the remaining cases.

Of the roughly 385 still incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to eventually put 60 to 80 on trial and free the rest. But the judicial process has likewise moved at a glacial pace, largely because of constitutional legal challenges.

Only two people have been charged under a military tribunal system approved by Congress last year. One of those cases has been adjudicated. David M. Hicks, an Australian citizen, pleaded guilty in March to lending material support to terrorists. He was sentenced to nine months in prison and is scheduled to be transferred to Australia in May to serve his time there.

Defense lawyers for some of the 82 cleared prisoners whose release is pending said Hicks received a better deal than did their clients who were not charged with any offenses. "One of the cruel ironies is that in Guantanamo, you've got to plead guilty to be released," said Wizner, the ACLU attorney. "It's the only way out of there."

Complicating the return process is that virtually all the prisoners at Guantanamo come from countries that the State Department has cited for records of human rights abuses. Under U.S. rules, a pattern of abuses in a country does not automatically preclude deportation there. Rather, U.S. officials must investigate each case to determine whether an individual is likely to face persecution.

The investigations are time-consuming and often meet with resistance from the prisoners' home countries, which can be sensitive to suggestions that they allow torture, U.S. officials said. In cases where there is a risk of mistreatment, U.S. policy is to obtain a written promise from the host government that the prisoner will not be abused and that U.S. officials will be allowed to monitor the arrangement.

"It often takes us months and months, or even years, to negotiate the human rights assurances that we are comfortable with before we will transfer someone to another country," said Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser.

Human rights groups have criticized the written assurances as unreliable. In March, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch issued a report on the fate of seven Russians who were released from Guantanamo three years ago, asserting that three of the men have been tortured since their return.

The watchdog group urged the U.S. government to find third-party countries willing to take Guantanamo inmates who are judged to be at risk for political persecution. U.S. officials countered that they have tried to do that for years, with virtually no success.

Only one country has been willing to accept Guantanamo prisoners who had never previously set foot inside its borders. Last year, after prodding by the State Department, the Balkan nation of Albania agreed to take five Chinese separatists who belong to an ethnic group known as Uighurs.

The men were captured in late 2001 after they crossed the Chinese border into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their attorneys said they were mistakenly taken into custody and had not taken up arms against U.S. forces. U.S. officials said dozens of countries refused to grant asylum to the Uighurs for fear of angering China, which considers them terrorists for leading a secession movement in the western province of Turkestan.

Seventeen other Uighurs who were caught in similar circumstances have been cleared for release but remain in Guantanamo because the State Department has been unable to find a home for them. Human rights groups have pressed the U.S. government to offer the men asylum, to no avail.

A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the Bush administration had considered granting the Uighurs asylum but that the idea was nixed by the Department of Homeland Security. The Uighurs would be rejected under U.S. immigration law, the official said, because they once trained in armed camps and because their separatist front, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2002.

Attorneys for the Uighurs said their predicament has been compounded by the Pentagon's unwillingness to say they don't pose a national security risk to the U.S. government or its allies. In announcing that the Uighurs had been approved to leave Guantanamo, military officials made a point of noting that they had not been exonerated and were still classified as enemy combatants.

"It's not a distinction that makes sense at all," said Michael J. Sternhell, a New York lawyer whose firm represents four of the Uighurs. "It's a caveat that the Defense Department is offering to cover itself."

Some human rights advocates said the Bush administration could speed things up by asking the United Nations or another international body for help.

Manfred Nowak, an Austrian law professor who serves as the U.N. special monitor on torture, said European allies and other countries would continue to duck requests to accept released prisoners as long as the U.S. government approaches them separately. An international commission responsible for finding a solution, he said, might carry more weight.

"If the U.S. is willing to do something to close down Guantanamo, then it should be done in a cooperative manner with the international community," Nowak said. "It's a question of burden-sharing. Otherwise, every individual country that the U.S. approaches says, 'Why us?' "

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

Solitary confinement at Guantanamo: Chinese Uighurs

Many of the prisoners at Guantanamo seem to be there as a result of bounty hunters. Who knows how many are there just because someone wanted to settle a score and earn money at the same time?

This Slow And Daily Tampering With The Mysteries Of The Brain
by hilzoy

From today's Washington Post:


"Chinese Uighurs who have been imprisoned for the past month at a new state-of-the-art detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being held around the clock in near-total isolation, a circumstance their lawyers say is rapidly degrading their mental health, according to an affidavit filed in federal court yesterday. (...)

The Uighurs' (pronounced weegurs) detention by the U.S. military, after being sold for bounty by Pakistanis in early 2002, has long attracted controversy. The men had just arrived from Afghanistan, where, they said, they had received limited military training because they opposed Chinese government control of their native region. But they said they never were allied with the Taliban or opposed to the United States, and had fled to Pakistan only to escape the U.S. bombing campaign.

By 2005, U.S. military review panels determined that five of the 18 captured Uighurs were "no longer enemy combatants," but they continued to be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison until their release last year. The panels did not reach that conclusion about the other 13, though all had given similar accounts of their activities during the reviews, according to declassified transcripts of the sessions. (...)

Lawyers for the remaining 13 Uighurs say the men were moved in December to Guantanamo Bay's Camp 6, a high-security facility at the base completed last August at a cost of $37.9 million. The lawyers say the government provided no explanation for the move, which came shortly after they filed a court petition in Washington seeking the expedited review.

In Camp 6, the Uighurs are alone in metal cells throughout the day, are prohibited for the most part from conversing with others, and take all their meals through a metal slot in the door, lawyer P. Sabin Willett said in his affidavit, which was based on what he was told during his visit Jan. 15-18. They have little or no access to sunlight or fresh air, have had nothing new to read in their native language for the past several years, and are sometimes told to undertake solitary recreation at night, he said.

"They pass days of infinite tedium and loneliness," according to Willett's court filing. One Uighur's "neighbor is constantly hearing voices, shouting out, and being punished. All describe a feeling of despair . . . and abandonment by the world." Another Uighur, named Abdusumet, spoke of hearing voices himself and appeared extremely anxious during Willett's visit, tapping the floor uncontrollably, he said.

The account matches another offered by Brian Neff, a lawyer who in mid-December visited a Yemeni imprisoned in Camp 6. "Detainees in Camp 6 are not supposed to talk to others, they are punished for shouting, and if they talk during walks outside they will be punished," Neff said in an e-mail yesterday. "We are extremely concerned about the . . . conditions of Camp 6 -- in particular, the fact that the detainees there are being held in near-total isolation, cut off from the outside world and any meaningful contact.""


Two weeks ago I wrote about the effects of solitary confinement. It drives people crazy. Here's an academic description (pdf):


"In my opinion, solitary confinement - that is confinement of a prisoner alone in a cell for all or nearly all of the day, with minimal environmental stimulation and minimal opportunity for social interaction - can can cause severe psychiatric harm. This harm includes a specific syndrome which has been reported by many clinicians in a variety of settings, all of which have in common features of inadequate, noxious and/or restricted environmental and social stimulation. In more severe cases, this syndrome is associated with agitation, self-destructive behavior, and overt psychotic disorganization.

In addition, solitary confinement often results in severe exacerbation of a previously existing mental condition, or in the appearance of a mental illness where none had been observed before. Even among inmates who do not develop overt psychiatric illness as a result of confinement in in solitary, such confinement almost inevitably imposes significant psychological pain during the period of isolated confinement and often significantly impairs the inmate's capacity to adapt successfully to the broader prison environment."


And another (Hinkle, L. & Wolf, H. (1956), 'Communist Interrogation and Indoctrination of `Enemies of the States': Analysis of Methods Used by the Communist State Police.' Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry (Vol. 1956, pp. 115-174)., quoted in the document linked above (p. 27)):


"He becomes increasingly anxious and restless and his sleep is disturbed ... The period of anxiety, hyperactivity, and apparent adjustment to the isolation routine usually continues from 1 to 3 weeks. ... The prisoner becomes increasingly dejected and dependent. He gradually gives up all spontaneous activity within his cell and ceases to care about personal appearance and actions. Finally, he sits and stares with a vacant expression, perhaps endlessly twisting a button on his coat. He allows himself to become dirty and disheveled. ... He goes through the motions of his prison routine automatically, as if he were in a daze. ... Ultimately, he seems to lose many of the restraints of ordinary behavior. He may soil himself; he weeps; he mutters. ... It usually takes from 4 to 6 weeks to produce this phenomenon in a newly imprisoned man. ... His sleep is disturbed by nightmares. Ultimately he may reach a state of depression in which he ceases to care about his personal appearance and behavior and pays very little attention to his surroundings. In this state the prisoner may have illusory experiences. A distant sound in the corridor sounds like someone calling his name. The rattle of a footstep may be interpreted as a key in the lock opening the cell. Some prisoners may become delirious and have visual hallucinations.

Not all men who first experience total isolation react in precisely this manner. In some, the symptoms are less conspicuous. In others, dejection and other despondence earlier, or later. Still others, and especially those with preexisting personality disturbances, may become frankly psychotic."


Here is a table showing the prevalence of some psychiatric symptoms among prisoners in solitary confinement in a supermax prison:

Symptom % Presence Among Prisoners
Ruminations 88
Irrational anger 88
Oversensitivity to stimuli 86
Confused thought process 84
Social withdrawal 83
Chronic depression 77
Emotional flatness 73
Mood, emotional swings 71
Overall deterioration 67
Talking to self 63
Violent fantasies 61
Perceptual distortions 44
Hallucinations 41
Suicidal thoughts 27

Think about that. Fully 41% of the supermax prisoners have hallucinations, as compared to 1.7% of the general population. Likewise, 84% report 'confused thought processes', as compared to 10.8% of the general population.

To convey what solitary confinement does to a person would take a truly gifted writer; luckily for us, a truly gifted writer made the attempt. Here is Charles Dickens, on his visit to a Philadelphia prison where people were kept in solitary confinement:


"There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven years, and who in a few months’ time would be free. Eleven years of solitary confinement!

‘I am very glad to hear your time is nearly out.’ What does he say? Nothing. Why does he stare at his hands, and pick the flesh upon his fingers, and raise his eyes for an instant, every now and then, to those bare walls which have seen his head turn grey? It is a way he has sometimes.

Does he never look men in the face, and does he always pluck at those hands of his, as though he were bent on parting skin and bone? It is his humour: nothing more.

It is his humour too, to say that he does not look forward to going out; that he is not glad the time is drawing near; that he did look forward to it once, but that was very long ago; that he has lost all care for everything. It is his humour to be a helpless, crushed, and broken man."


And here, finally, is Sabin Willett (pdf), the Uighurs' lawyer, on his clients:


"The January 15 meeting was my third meeting with Abdusemet. In previous meetings he had struck me as a kindly man, quite gentle, pleasant in affect, calm, and prone to smile and laugh. On January 15 he appeared extremely anxious. His foot tapped the floor uncontrollably. His affect was deeply sad. He refused offers of the food we had brought. He appeared to be in despair.

He said Camp 6 was "the dungeon above the ground." He said that when they led him into Camp 6, he recalled a movie he had once seen aout a Nazi concentration camp, "a place where, when they take you in, you never come out." (...)

Abdusemet asked us to communicate a message from one of the other Uighurs on his pod to his wife: "Tell her to remarry. She should consider me dead."

Abdusemet asked me, "What did we do? Why do they hate us so much?" (...)

Abdulnasser said he felt as though he were living underground, "in tunnels." He said he knew the building was above ground, but that it felt underground. He said our visit was "a single ray of light in a place of darkness." (...)

Abdusemet, Khalid and Abdulnasser said they had been visited by a "doctor," to ask, whether they were mentally stable. Following these visits, according to Abdulnasser (who understands some English), MPs taunted him with statements like, "Are you going crazy yet?" (...)

Abdusemet advised that one of the other Uighurs on his block was "hearing voices," and had been shouting out indiscriminately. Abdusemet said the man had been punished by being forced to wear the orange jumpsuit.

Abdusemet said, "I am starting to hear voices, sometimes. There is no one to talk to in my cell and I hear these voices.""



These men were captured by bounty hunters nearly five years ago. They are in all likelihood innocent of any crime, and of any act against the United States; they have certainly never been tried and convicted of any. We have held them in captivity since then, away from their wives and families. If they returned home now, their children probably wouldn't recognize them -- and as those of you who have kids will surely recognize, those are some of the saddest words there are.

And now, for some unfathomable reason, we have decided to lock them up in solitary, where we are driving them insane. Even if they were guilty, this would be wrong: having your mind and your spirit broken apart should not be the penalty for any crime. Our government is doing it to the innocent.

I'll leave the last word to Charles Dickens, who is a better writer than I am:


"I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated once, debating with myself, whether, if I had the power of saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ I would allow it to be tried in certain cases, where the terms of imprisonment were short; but now, I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day, or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree."

Posted by hilzoy at 10:54 PM in Torture and Detention | Permalink