Saturday, May 10, 2008

Bond Proposes Rewriting Army Field Manual To Expand Interrogation Options»

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) hasn’t been known for criticizing the Bush administration’s interrogation techniques. In fact, his most famous comment on the issue came in December 2007, when he compared waterboarding to “swimming”:

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.

The AP reports that Bond appears to have had a change of heart and is searching for a “compromise” over how the CIA can interrogate prisoners. In a letter to fellow senators yesterday, Bond proposed explicitly outlining what tactics are banned, rather than which ones are allowed:

Rather than authorizing intelligence agencies to use only those techniques that are allowed under the AFM [Army Field Manual], I believe the more prudent approach is to preclude the use of specific techniques that are prohibited under the AFM. In this way, the Congress can state clearly that certain harsh interrogation techniques will not be permissible. At the same time, this approach allows for the possibility that new techniques that are not explicitly authorized in the AFM, but nevertheless comply with the law, may be developed in the future.

Specified prohibitions in conjunction with intelligence interrogations would include: forcing the detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee and using duct tape over the eyes; applying beatings, electric shock, burns, or similar forms of physical pain; “waterboarding”; using military working dogs; inducing hypothermia or heat injury; conducting mock executions; and depriving the detainee of adequate food, water or medical care.

Bond’s proposal isn’t much of a compromise. Sure, it would ban waterboarding. But it would also give interrogators an unprecedented amount of leeway and still permit acts such as religious desecration. What exactly constitutes “similar forms of physical pain”?

The AFM doesn’t need to be rewritten, as Bond proposes. Both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Lt. Gen. Michael Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency have testified to Congress that the current AFM — which does not allow waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation tactics — provides them with “the tools that are necessary for the purpose under which we are conducting interrogations.”

Friday, May 9, 2008

Guantanamo judge may suspend trial for Canadian detainee


A military judge threatened to suspend the war-crimes trial of a Canadian detainee, scolding the government Thursday for failing to provide records of his confinement at Guantanamo.

Attorneys for Omar Khadr say details of his interrogations and mental health could provide grounds to suppress self-incriminating statements at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. Khadr is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

At a pretrial hearing, Judge Peter Brownback, an Army colonel, criticized the prosecution team led by Marine Maj. Jeffrey Groharing for demanding an expedited trial despite failing to obtain the documents from the detention center.

"I have been badgered, beaten and bruised by Maj. Groharing since the 7th of November to set a trial date," Brownback said. "To get a trial date, I need to get discovery done."

His frustration highlights the dueling interests of two military entities at Guantanamo — the tribunal system, which airs the backgrounds of terror suspects in detail, and the Joint Task Force, which tightly restricts information about inmates whom officials describe as some of America's most dangerous enemies.

Brownback said he understands the military's worry that the documents might identify prison officials who fear retribution. But he ordered the government to provide the records of Khadr's day-to-day confinement by May 22, in complete or edited form, or he will suspend proceedings.

The Toronto-born Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 15 and was taken to Guantanamo four months later. In a sworn affidavit, he said he was threatened with rape and left short-shackled to a bolt in the floor for as long as six hours. He claims he was so scared that he told interrogators what they wanted to hear.

Khadr is accused of lobbing a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer during a firefight at an al-Qaida compound in eastern Afghanistan. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on charges including murder, conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

His Pentagon-appointed attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said he believes Khadr's treatment at Guantanamo was designed to prevent him from recanting a false confession that he made under coercion at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

"He was essentially punished for not cooperating with interrogators while at Guantanamo Bay," Kuebler said.

Failure to produce the documents could derail what was likely to be the first trial of a terror suspect at Guantanamo, where the U.S. holds about 270 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Military prosecutors say they plan to prosecute as many as 80 of the suspects.

The judge could eventually dismiss the case if the military does not deliver the documents, said Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon office overseeing the tribunals.

But Kuebler said that possibility unlikely. He has urged Canada to demand Khadr's repatriation to spare him a trial he says is guaranteed to produce a conviction.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Comedy of errors as war court complex debuts

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- The Pentagon took its new $12 million war court complex out for a test run Wednesday with the arraignment of an alleged al Qaeda propagandist -- and the state-of-the-art facility failed.

Observers in the gallery sat behind soundproof glass while the accused, Ali Hamza Bahlul, spoke and gestured to the judge at the start of the proceedings.

But no sound was broadcast into the spectators' booth where international media, human rights observers, a Canadian diplomat and FBI agents were sequestered.

The prosecution, the accused and the military judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback II, exchanged words for several moments but the sound was not audible.

Military escorts scrambled to halt the proceedings and notify the judge -- even as the accused offered hand-written notes to the court.

Wednesday marked the debut of the Pentagon's showcase ''Expeditionary Legal Complex'' -- designed to try six alleged 9/11 co-conspirators simultaneously.

It is a maximum-security, eavesdropping-proof complex that arms security officers with a mute button to silence a defendant -- were he to blurt out a U.S. national security secret, such as where he was interrogated overseas by the CIA, or how.

But Wednesday's trial run took place during more mundane proceedings -- an effort to arraign the 39-year-old Yemeni named Bahlul as an al Qaeda co-conspirator for allegedly serving as Osama bin Laden's media secretary in Afghanistan around the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

''This was a technical difficulty; this was not a kill-switch employment issue,'' said Air Force Capt. Andre Kok, a commissions spokesman inside the soundproofed room.

An Army sergeant serving as the court technology specialist was later brought to the observers booth to explain, ''The hard-drive keeps crashing.'' They swapped out the hard drive several times and resumed the proceedings a little over an hour later.

Bahlul then launched into a one-hour monologue in Arabic. He said he did not dispute the U.S. allegations against him, pledged his allegiance to bin Laden and rejected the authority of the military court.

''I'm telling you now I will never deny any actions I did alongside bin Laden fighting you and your allies, the Jews,'' he said. ``We will continue our jihad and nothing will stop us.''

Even though the United States toppled Islamic law in its post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan, he proclaimed, God will have the last word.

``He can sink the whole continent of the United States if he wants.''

Bahlul is accused of three war crimes violations at the first U.S. military tribunals since World War II: conspiracy, providing material support for terror and solicitation to commit murder.

Conviction carries a life sentence.

The session was the first since the former war crimes prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis testified in the original, older courtroom on April 28 that the Pentagon rushed the terror trials to get them going before President Bush leaves office.

Problems persisted throughout the session. At the new state-of-the-art press room adjacent to the razor-wire-ringed court complex, a closed-circuit broadcast of the proceedings froze on an image of the military judge midsentence, his mouth agape.

English translation of Bahlul's speech was at times inaudible.

Then, as the charges were read, the power was cut to the courtroom, turning the screen nearly black as an alarm sounded -- and Brownback ordered the reading to continue.

Guards surrounded the detainee, unshackled in his seat, just feet from the judge as the proceedings went on.

Throughout it all, Bahlul stonily rejected the proceedings. He alternately said he would boycott them and that he wanted to serve as his own defense counsel, a right granted by Congress in the 2006 Military Commissions Act.

He flatly refused his Pentagon appointed attorney, an Air Force Reserves major, saying he would rather represent himself at trial, silently.

The judge, however, assigned Maj. David Frakt as ''standby counsel'' -- a status that will allow him to assist the court, if the not the detainee, to organize a defense.

Bahlul sat through the morning session in his tan prison camp uniform, refusing to participate when others spoke besides himself.

He refused to enter a plea at the arraignment but earlier passed three Arabic language notes to the judge: one declaring his rejection of the court, another declaring his plan to boycott and the last affirming his ``renewal of allegiance to Osama bin Laden.''

Bahlul, who was earlier charged in an abandoned 2006 effort to stage military commissions, is seen as the godfather of the emerging movement to boycott the proceedings by enemy combatants held for as much as six years behind the razor wire at Camp Delta.

Last time, at his 2006 hearing, he fashioned a hand-drawn sign declaring, ''Muquata'a'' -- Arabic for boycott -- and rejected his U.S. military defense counsel.

At times Wednesday, he waved the old boycott sign -- provided to him by the judge.

At times he crossed his wrists in a symbol of an ''X'' -- double foul.

Bahlul is accused of being a member of bin Laden's inner circle, of preparing a propaganda video about the suicide bombing of the USS Cole destroyer off the coast of Aden, Yemen, and acting as ''personal secretary and media secretary'' of bin Laden ``in support of al Qaeda.

He also allegedly ran al Qaeda data processing and media equipment and at times served as a bin Laden bodyguard armed with a bomb belt, rifle and grenades.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Guantanamo detainee sues British government for torture info

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Attorneys for a detainee held here as an alleged al Qaeda co-conspirator filed suit against the British government on Tuesday, claiming it would violate its own foreign policy by permitting a former resident to face war crimes trial here with evidence allegedly obtained by torture.

Pentagon officials have not yet charged Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohammed, 29, with war crimes. In the last, aborted U.S. effort to stage military commissions, he was accused of planning to explode a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in New York City.

The suit seeks to extract from the British government any secret intelligence that the two war on terror allies may have exchanged in the case in a bid to prove any trial would be tainted by torture.

Pakistani security forces arrested Mohammed at the Karachi airport in April 2002. From there, his lawyers claim, he disappeared into a secret network of U.S. supported prisons -- including 18 months in Morocco between 2002 and 2004.

There, according to an affidavit his London lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, he confessed under torture to crimes he never committed.

''The torture included shackling, being suspended from walls and ceilings, brutal beatings and being cut all over his body with a scalpel, including his genitals,'' according to the 21-page petition filed Tuesday at the British High Court of Justice.

``Unsurprisingly, the claimant co-operated to avoid further torture.''

President Bush has said the United States does not engage in torture.

Under military commissions law, evidence obtained through coercion may be admitted at trial, if the military judge considers it necessary. But evidence from torture is banned, because it is illegal under both U.S. and international law.

It will be up to each detainee's judge to decide the distinction between the two once the trials get under way in the first exclusively U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.

Mohammed lived seven years in London, starting at age 16. His family had fled his native Addis Ababa, first to the Washington, D.C., area, then to Britain.

He claims he never joined al Qaeda but confessed to crimes he never committed under torture. His lawyers say he traveled to Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on a religious journey to shake a drug habit.

His attorneys argue in the pleadings that the British government has evidence that could help Mohammed prove he was tortured and are obliged to assist in his defense under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, as well as British law.

''Mr. Mohammed has been the victim of extraordinary rendition, horrific torture, years of detention without trial, all apparently with the assistance of or, at least, the Nelsonian blindness of the British government,'' solicitor Richard Stein said, releasing the suit on behalf of the legal aid organization Reprieve. ``It beggars belief that they will not lift a finger to help a British resident when he may face the death penalty.''

Since the Bush administration opened the Guantánamo prison camps in January 2002, the British government has systematically succeeded through diplomatic channels in securing the release of its citizens plus several former legal British residents held here as ``enemy combatants.''

Some of the citizens had been earlier identified as candidates for trial by commission.

British legal experts have long argued that the U.S. war court doesn't meet international norms; some have called it a ``kangaroo court.''

Last year, it specifically included Mohammed's name on a list of detainees whose release it sought, to no avail.

Now, his attorneys suspect he will be charged as the Pentagon prosecutor revives old cases earlier halted by the Supreme Court.

In part to prove their case, the lawyers quote Mohammed as telling them from behind the razor wire at Guantánamo that in his first year of secret detention his interrogators referred to material in his case provided by the British intelligence service MI-5.

In the earlier aborted war court cases, Mohammed was among the most colorful of commission defendants.

He spoke extemporaneously at pretrial proceedings in British accented English, declared the process a ''CON-mission,'' insisted on serving as his own defense attorney and wore a Pakistani-style tunic and trousers he had his attorneys dye fluorescent orange to illustrate his prison camp attire.

In the intervening years, according to his Pentagon attorney, Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, he has declined emotionally and mentally in the isolation of this offshore Navy base, at times smearing feces on the walls of his cell and on himself to protest his conditions.

Prison camp spokesmen have confirmed the presence of a feces smearer and said he was segregated from the other ''enemy combatants'' because he was disruptive but have never identified the man under a policy they say is designed to protect a detainee's privacy.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Iraqi Sues US Contractors Over Torture

LOS ANGELES - An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors May 5, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.

Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

Phone messages left for Arlington, Va.-based CACI and New York City-based L-3 Communications, formerly Titan Corp., were not immediately returned May 5. There was no phone number listed for Stefanowicz at his Los Angeles address.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles because Stefanowicz lives there, seeks unspecified monetary damages.

The firms provided interrogators or interpreters to assist U.S. military guards at Abu Ghraib, which became notorious when photos made public in early 2004 showing U.S. Soldiers abusing and humiliating detainees. Military investigators later concluded that much of the abuse happened in late 2003 - when CACI and Titan's interrogators were at the prison.

CACI and L-3 were accused of abusing Abu Ghraib prisoners in earlier lawsuits. In November a federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed the suit against L-3 but allowed the one against CACI to proceed.

In an interview with The Associated Press on May 5in Istanbul, Turkey, al-Janabi said he hopes the lawsuit sheds light on what happened to him and other detainees.

"God willing the righteousness will emerge and God willing the criminal will receive his punishment," al-Janabi said.

Al-Janabi, 43, said he was detained by U.S. troops during a late-night raid in which he and his family were beaten by their captors. He said he was taken to a military base where he was stripped naked, a hood was placed on his head and his hands and legs were chained.

"They (U.S. troops) did not tell me what was the reason behind my arrest ... during the interrogation, the American Soldier told me I was a terrorist ... and I was preparing for an attack against the U.S. forces," said al-Janabi, who denied the accusation and claims he was forced to give confessions under "savage" intimidation.

The lawsuit also claims the contractors conspired in a cover-up by destroying documents and other information, hid prisoners during periodic checks by the International Red Cross and misled military and government officials about what was happening at Abu Ghraib.

Al-Janabi was released in July 2004 and wasn't charged with any crime, according to the lawsuit. He also was forced to form a human pyramid in the nude with other prisoners, according to the lawsuit, but his Philadelphia-based attorney Susan Burke said it wasn't known if he was in the infamous photo that became public.

"Most of this conduct was repeated on more than one occasion," Burke said.

At one point after passing out, al-Janabi said, he was told by an L-3 translator "welcome to Guantanamo." He said he even asked a cellmate whether he could see the ocean from a window.

"I lost the sense of time after the prolonged hours of abusive interrogation and thought that I was transported to Guantanamo," al-Janabi told the AP.

The Abu Ghraib photos drew international criticism about the way detainees were treated and damaged the U.S. military's image in Arab countries. Eleven U.S. Soldiers were convicted of crimes at the prison, which was closed and transferred to Iraqi control.

Monday, May 5, 2008

US mulls Guantanamo closure as Bush term nears end

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration could announce plans by the end of its term in January to close Guantanamo prison and an upcoming Supreme Court ruling might be the impetus for this, senior U.S. officials and experts say.

The government is under international and domestic pressure to close the prison, which opened at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba in January 2002 to house terrorism suspects caught after the invasion of Afghanistan.

"A decision could be made in this administration to announce the closure of Guantanamo. It is unlikely in the next nine months that Guantanamo could be physically (closed) but it is possible the policy decision could be taken to close it," said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition he was not identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Officials say planning and debate has intensified in recent months over how to deal with Guantanamo, which President Bush acknowledges has tarnished America's image and human rights advocates say has damaged U.S credibility.

"Everyone is agreed that we need to find a way that eventually leads to the closure of Guantanamo, which is the president's policy decision. It is a very complicated matter," said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule within weeks whether Guantanamo prisoners have rights under the U.S. Constitution even though they are held on the base in Cuba, where the United States has had a presence for about 100 years.

The court decision could influence whether the U.S. government announces plans to close the prison before Bush leaves office in January 2009, several officials said.

"If the Supreme Court concludes that the detainees have constitutional rights, then there would be little legal difference between holding them in Guantanamo or holding them on the (U.S.) mainland," one senior official said.

"It's possible the Supreme Court decision could provide an impetus to a policy decision to close Guantanamo," he added.

"LEGAL BLACK HOLE"

Most of the 280 prisoners at Guantanamo have been confined for years without charges. About 500 prisoners have been released, and the United States has said it intends to try 60 to 80 of those still in detention under war crimes tribunals.

Matthew Waxman, a former senior Defense and State Department official who dealt with detainee policy, has argued strongly for the closure of Guantanamo but he said the Supreme Court's decision could "cut both ways."

If inmates were now seen to have the same rights in Guantanamo Bay as on the U.S. mainland, then there could be little strategic reason to move them.

"The major criticism of Guantanamo is that it represents a so-called legal black hole," said Waxman, now a professor at Columbia Law School in New York.

Bush and other senior U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have all said they want Guantanamo Bay closed but they point to logistical and other problems.

There is also a drive to announce the closure before Bush leaves office rather than have his successor claim credit.

All of the presidential candidates have expressed a wish for Guantanamo to be closed and while the policy decision could be taken by this administration it will be up to them to implement it.

White House, Defense, Justice and State Department lawyers are still arguing the options, including the transfer of detainees to high security military prisons in the United States, moves that will be opposed by local politicians.

The Justice Department is concerned that transferring the detainees to the United States would result in an onslaught of litigation from detainees who would try to use the U.S. justice system to seek their release.

One option is the Disciplinary Barracks at Ft Leavenworth Army base in Kansas, but the state's senior Republican senator, Sam Brownback, has made clear he will fight that. A naval facility in South Carolina is also being considered.

Senior U.S. officials also hope countries reluctant so far to take home their own detainees will step forward once the U.S. government makes clear its intention to close the prison.

"Our allies talk a lot about concern of Guantanamo Bay but when they are asked to take their foreign nationals back, then they tend to stop talking," said Johndroe.