A Guantanamo Diary

From today’s NYT – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/washington/22gitmo.html

January 22, 2009
Obama Orders Halt to Prosecutions at Guantánamo
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

In the first hours of his presidency, President Obama directed an immediate halt to the Bush administration’s military commissions system for prosecuting detainees at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Notice of the decision came in a legal filing in Guantánamo by military prosecutors just before midnight Tuesday. The decision, which had been expected as part of Mr. Obama’s pledge to close the detention camp, was described as a pause in all war-crimes proceedings there so that the new administration can evaluate how to proceed with prosecutions.

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last 4 posts were a collaboration of jayp's all agreeing to the same drumroll...absolutely hilarious, have a party kids! better yet, why don't you all become one-and-the-same butt-buddies, you sound like one...

Senna and Jayp, this piece is not about Kashmir or Swat or Israel or any of the myriad miscellaneous political topics we discuss around here day in and day out. It is about the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and about the possible denial of the basic right of individuals to be given a chance to prove their innocence and about ensuring that there is some accountability on the part of those who the American public has entrusted with the power to detain those individuals.

From today's Washington Post...

Judge Orders Release of Young Guantanamo Detainee

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 14, 2009; 5:36 PM

A federal judge ordered the release today of a detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that the government's evidence was too weak to justify the man's continued confinement.

It is the second time U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon has ordered the release of a detainee after hearing the government's evidence. In today's ruling, Leon said the Justice Department failed to prove that Mohammed El Gharani, 21, was an enemy combatant because it relied almost exclusively on statements made by two other detainees whose credibility has been called into question by government personnel.

"A mosaic of tiles this murky reveals nothing about this petitioner with sufficient clarity, either individually or collectively, that can be relied upon by this court," Leon ruled from the bench.

Gharani, a citizen of Chad, was picked up in Pakistan and turned over to the United States in 2002. He has been held at Guantanamo Bay ever since.

The government alleged that Gharani traveled to Afghanistan and trained at an al-Qaeda-affiliated military camp, fought in the battle of Tora Bora and was a courier for high-level al-Qaeda members.

The government also alleged that Gharani was a member of a London-based al-Qaeda cell in 1998, an accusation that Leon found particularly hard to believe. Gharani was 11 at the time, living with immigrant parents in Saudi Arabia, according to the detainee's lawyers.

"Putting aside the obvious and unanswered questions as to how a Saudi minor from a very poor family could have even become a member of a London-based cell, the Government simply advances no corroborating evidence for these statements it believes to be reliable from a fellow detainee, the basis of whose knowledge is -- at best -- unknown," Leon said.

Gharani's attorneys argued that the teenager left Saudi Arabia for Pakistan in 2000 or 2001 to learn English and develop computer skills. They said he was picked up by mistake in Pakistan and should never have been turned over to U.S. authorities. They denied he had ever been to Afghanistan.

"This is a fantastic result," said Zachary Katznelson, Gharani's attorney. "Judge Leon did justice today. This is an innocent kid when he was seized illegally in Pakistan and should never have been in prison in the first place."

Justice Department attorneys declined to comment after the hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Leon's order comes in a lawsuit brought against the government challenging Gharani's detention under the legal doctrine of habeas corpus. Scores of detainees are challenging their confinement in such suits.

In November, Leon ordered the release of five detainees, all Algerians who had been living in Bosnia at the time of their 2001 arrest. Three of those men were flown to Bosnia last month. Leon has ordered that three other detainees may remain in custody at the prison. Leon is the first judge to rule in the cases. Others are pending.

As if you care about swat or israel?

Least talk abut Kashmiri Pundits OR hindus in Pakistan /Bangladesh

Re: # 13
b j bhaia

Plans And Commissions commitee.. Sachar Banerjee Sri Krishna are baby lalabyes ..or for Adult Valium to put to sleep temporarily so you dream of somethig else

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(From www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/10/obama-plans-guantanamo-cl_n_142593.html)

Obama Plans Guantanamo Close, U.S. Trials

WASHINGTON President-elect Obama's advisers are crafting plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and prosecute terrorism suspects in the U.S., a plan the Bush administration said Monday was easier said than done. Under the plan being crafted inside Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials.

But, underscoring the difficult decisions Obama must make to fulfill his pledge of shutting down Guantanamo, the plan could require the creation of a new legal system to handle the classified information inherent in some of the most sensitive cases.

Many of the about 250 Guantanamo detainees are cleared for release, but the Bush administration has not able been to find a country willing to take them.

Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

The plan being developed by Obama's team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But as details surfaced Monday, it drew criticism from Democrats who oppose creating a new legal system and from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. mainland.

Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said the president-elect wants Guantanamo closed, but no decision has been made "about how and where to try the detainees, and there is no process in place to make that decision until his national security and legal teams are assembled."

Obama seeks a break 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. At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday that President Bush has faced many challenges in trying to close the prison.

"We've tried very hard to explain to people how complicated it is. When you pick up people off the battlefield that have a terrorist background, it's not just so easy to let them go," Perino said. "These issues are complicated, and we have put forward a process that we think would work in order to put them on trial through military tribunals."

But Obama has been critical of that process and his legal advisers said finding an alternative will be a top priority. One of those advisers, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, acknowledges that bringing detainees to the U.S. would be controversial but said it 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 tougher challenge will be allaying fears by Democrats who believe the Bush administration's military commissions were a farce and dislike the idea of giving detainees anything less than the full constitutional rights normally enjoyed by everyone on U.S. soil.

"I think that creating a new alternative court system in response to the abject failure of Guantanamo would be a profound mistake," Jonathan Hafetz, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents detainees, said Monday. "We do not need a new court system. The last eight years are a testament to the problems of trying to create new systems."

Senate Judiciary Committee member John Cornyn, R-Texas, said it would be a "colossal mistake to treat terrorism as a mere crime."

"It would be a stunning disappointment if the one of the new administration's first priorities is to give foreign terror suspects captured on the battlefield the same legal rights and protections as American citizens accused of crimes," Cornyn said Monday, noting that the Senate overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding Senate bill last year opposing bringing detainees to the U.S.

Obama did not vote on that measure. He has said the civilian and military court-martial systems provide "a framework for dealing with the terrorists," and Tribe said the administration would look to those venues before creating a new legal system. But discussions of what a new system would look like have already started.

An Obama administration will want to avoid the criticisms that have marked the Bush administration's military commissions. Human rights groups and defense attorneys have condemned the commissions for lax evidence rules and intense secrecy. Some military prosecutors have even quit in protest.

"It would have to be some sort of hybrid that involves military commissions that actually administer justice rather than just serve as kangaroo courts," Tribe said. "It will have to both be and appear to be fundamentally fair in light of the circumstances. I think people are going to give an Obama administration the benefit of the doubt in that regard."

Some weren't so sure.

"There would be concern about establishing a completely new system," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Judiciary Committee and former federal prosecutor who is aware of the discussions in the Obama camp. "And in the sense that establishing a regimen of detention that includes American citizens and foreign nationals that takes place on U.S. soil and departs from the criminal justice system _ trying to establish that would be very difficult."

Though a hybrid court may be unpopular, other advisers and Democrats involved in the Guantanamo Bay discussions say Obama has few options.

Prosecuting all detainees in federal courts raises many problems. Evidence gathered through military interrogation or from intelligence sources might be thrown out. Defendants would have the right to confront witnesses, meaning undercover CIA officers or terrorist turncoats might have to take the stand, jeopardizing their cover and revealing classified intelligence tactics.

That means something different would need to be done if detainees couldn't be released or prosecuted in traditional courts. Exactly what remains unclear.

"I don't think we need to completely reinvent the wheel, but we need a better tribunal process that is more transparent," Schiff said.

According to three advisers participating in the process, Obama is expected to propose a new court system and may appoint a committee to decide how such a court would operate. Some detainees likely would be returned to the countries where they were first captured for further detention or rehabilitation. The rest could probably be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts, one adviser said. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing talks, which have been private.

One challenge will be figuring out what to do with the 90 or so Yemeni detainees _ the largest group in the prison. The Bush administration has sought to negotiate the release of some of those detainees as part of a rehabilitation plan with the Yemeni government. But talks have so far been fruitless.

Waleed Alshahari, who has been following Guantanamo issues for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, said the plan being discussed by the Obama team was an improvement over the current system. But he said he expects most detainees to be released rather than stand trial.

"If the U.S. government has any evidence against them, they would try them and put them in jail," Alshahari said. "But it has been obvious they have nothing against them. That is why they have not faced trial."

Whatever Obama decides, he should move quickly, Tribe said.

"In reality and symbolically, the idea that we have people in legal black holes is an extremely serious black mark," Tribe said. "It has to be dealt with."

Jay

"ousted"... in India they make muderer ,Dacoits Rapist
,Embezzler even worse punishment they make them Ministers

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Re: # 8

Okhla99, thanks for reading it!

The rationale/analogy you offer – that wheat accompanies chaff– is precisely what most Americans have held on to for a number of years – whenever thinking of the Gitmo and other such facilities. That has been the case because, by and large, in the U.S. like in any other country, most people are supportive of what is done in the name of the country. It is not so just for the USA. It happens in the subcontinent, too – so Pakistanis tend to discount what may have been done by the ISI and (to a smaller extent) the Indian public may disregard when Kashmiri protesters get beaten up. (In fact, IMHO, this is one reason why we are seeing a perceptible hardening in the attitude of the average individual at this time.) People tend to disregard what they consider “aberrations� when those get committed committed during the pursuit of a “larger� goal.

However, the point Ms. Khan seems to have made in her book is that her interviewees were not a selected/filtered subset of individuals – they represented a random batch – with the only attribute that they were not “high value� detainees. She makes the point that such “high value� detainees at Gitmo were indeed very few (perhaps only a dozen or so among the hundreds of the Gitmo detainees). Those individuals were housed in a separate facility altogether and Ms. Khan had no access to any of them. So, Ms. Khan appears convinced that most detainees were like the ones that she did interview and tragically, some very simple, basic, cursory checks would have cleared them. Instead, a lot of resources seem to have been spent by those in charge on simply using one pretext or another to deny due process and to hide all information. Ms. Khan is convinced that most ordinary Americans would not consider the alleged high number of the “aberrations� as falling within what you call an acceptable “band�.

In an operation of this magnitude, there are bound to be some mistakes. Alongwith thousands of talibans if some 8 or 10 or 100 innocents are falsely implicated by their neighbours, informers, then no hue and cry need be raised in view of the greater good. This level of innocent casualties should be within the "band of acceptability". In India, a Sikh police officer carried out much worse against the Sikhs in the nineties.But he successfully eliminated Sikh terrorism. He also caused a lot of innocent persons to die or disappear as suspected terrorists. But again, the percentages were within the "band of acceptability". Hence no hue and cry.

Pakistan will probabnly be doing a similar exercise over the next few years. Harsh circumstances lead to harsh decisions.

And sometimes innocents suffer.

The Washington Post article by M.R.Khan (having the same title "My Guantanamo Diary", published on April 30, 2006) which she later expanded into the complete book, is available at the URL listed below – and represents alternative reading material for those who do not have the time necessary to read the whole book (or who can not get the book). The material therein appears in the early part of the book.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/29/AR20060429001 45_pf.html

Atif2, thank you for reading it.

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