Gitmo Detainee’s Lawyer ‘Not Allowed To Tell Him’ He’s No Longer An ‘Enemy Combatant’»

Nearly two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that detainees held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to habeas corpus and can thus challenge their detention in civilian courts, a U.S. Court of Appeals dealt another blow to the Bush administration’s detention policy.

The appeals court ruled that the Pentagon improperly designated Huzaifa Parhat, an ethnic Uighur Chinese national, an “enemy combatant” after being swept up by the U.S. military in Afghanistan in 2001 and then sent to Guantánamo Bay, where he has been held since.

Despite the ruling, Parhat has yet to see any of its benefits. In fact, he doesn’t even know about it. Parhat’s lawyer told CBC radio’s As It Happens last night that Parhat is currently being held in solitary confinement and “has no idea” the appeals court ruled in his favor because, he added, “I’m not allowed to tell him”:

DEREK STOFFEL, CBC HOST: Mr. Willett, what’s your client’s reaction to this ruling?

SABIN WILLETT (PARHAT’S LAWYER): Boy what a great question that is because my client doesn’t know about this ruling because I’m not allowed to tell him. […] He’s sitting in solitary confinement today. He has no idea what’s happened as far as I know.

Indeed, it is unclear what the appeals court’s ruling actually means for Parhat. The New York Times noted that the U.S. “said it will not return Uighur detainees to China because of concerns about their treatment at the hands of the Chinese government, which views them as terrorists.” Thus, as another one of Parhat’s lawyers noted, the “court victory may not mean freedom for him.”

For now, Willett said that “we’re going to file a motion with a judge to order them to let us call him on the phone and take him out of solitary confinement.” He added, “We’ve got a man in solitary confinement that they’ve got no authority to hold at all. Its unbelievable.”

Transcript:

DEREK STOFFEL, CBC HOST: Mr. Willett, what’s your client’s reaction to this ruling?

SABIN WILLETT (Parhat’s Lawyer): Boy what a great question that is because my client doesn’t know about this ruling because I’m not allowed to tell him.

STOFFEL: He doesn’t know?

WILLETT: We’ve asked — the first thing we did was ask the government for permission to make a phone call and they haven’t given it to us. Now we have a way to send him a letter that goes through clearence and we’ve sent it and maybe in three weeks he’ll get it.

He’s sitting in solitary confinement today. He has no idea what’s happened as far as I know.

STOFFEL: Well let me ask you then, what’s your reaction to this ruling?

WILLETT: Well I’m thrilled except for the constant vexation of the inablitiy to bring this thing to a real and human close. Huzaifa Parhat
has now been determined by about as conservative a court as there is not to be an enemy combatant — this is what we’ve been saying for years — and yet I can’t get him out of solitary confinement in the hands of my own government. So it is a frustrating but somewhat thrilling moment for us. […]

STOFFEL: I suppose the next thing you need to do is to let your client know what’s happened.

WILLETT: Thats what we’re trying to do. I mean, we’ve sent him a letter. We’re going to file a motion with a judge to order them to let us call him on the phone and take him out of solitary confinement. I mean we’ve got a man in solitary confinement that they’ve got no authority to hold at all. Its unbelievable. So we’ll be in court pretty soon, trying to get some more relief but it was a good day to get that notice.

Bush: Critics Of Gitmo, Abu Ghraib And Rendition Are ‘Slandering America’»

During an interview with President Bush on Britain’s Sky News yesterday, Sky political editor Adam Boulton noted that while Bush talks “a lot about freedom,” there are many who say that some of the Bush administration’s torture and detention policies represent “the complete opposite of freedom.” But Bush quickly snapped back, saying those criticizing his policies are slandering America:

BOULTON: There are those who would say look, lets take Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, and rendition and all those things and to them that is the complete opposite of freedom.

BUSH: Of course, if you want to slander America.

So, according to Bush, below is a short — but by no means exhaustive — list of those who have suggested that Bush’s terrorism policies represent “the opposite of freedom” and thus have slandered America:

– The United States Supreme Court: The Court ruled last week that “terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to seek their release in federal court” saying that Bush’s policy compromised “the Constitution’s guarantee of liberty.”

– The Federal Bureau of Investigation: An FBI report issued last month said that according to its agents, “[m]ilitary officials at Guantanamo Bay used some aggressive techniques before they were approved, possibly in violation of Defense Department policy and U.S. law.”

– McClatchy Newspapers: An eight month McClatchy investigation found that after the Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned “perhaps hundreds” of men “in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.”

Boulton told Bush that the Supreme Court “ruled against what you have been doing” at Guantanamo but Bush wouldn’t budge, arguing that the district court, appellate court and Congress agreed that Gitmo detainees do not have to right to challenge their detention.

Boulton, a Briton, then had to remind Bush of America’s checks and balances system: “But the Supreme Court is supreme isn’t it?”

McCain And Graham Plan To Introduce Legislation Undermining Supreme Court Decision On Guantanamo

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts. Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wasted no time in publicly blasting the decision, saying they were “disappointed” in “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

This ruling will inevitably lead to a “flood of new litigation” challenging the Bush administration’s right to hold these detainees, only one of whom has received a verdict. Detainees will then finally get a decision as to their status.

Today on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol revealed that “very soon” — likely as early as next week — McCain and Graham will be introducing legislation to undermine the Supreme Court decision by setting up a “national security court”:

And I think you will see Senator Graham, accompanied by Senator McCain, come to the floor of the Senate very soon, like next week, and say, We cannot let chaos obtain here. We can’t let 200 different federal district judges on their own whim call this CIA agent here, say, ‘I don’t believe this soldier here who said this guy was doing this,’ you have to release someone,’ or, ‘Let’s build up — let’s compromise sources and methods with a bunch of trials. I mean, it’s ridiculous.



A national security court would envision a scenario “in which sitting federal judges would preside over proceedings in which prosecutors would make the case that a person should be detained.” But as Michael Hoffman and Ken Gude note in a paper for the Center for American Progress, this scenario is problematic and underestimates the U.S. criminal justice system:

Adopting a national security court system would send the United States down another unproven path prone to repeat the same mistakes. It would not further justice or American legitimacy. Rather, it would risk creating American courts that more resemble the tribunals of dictators than those of democracies. And that would be a strategic victory for Al Qaeda, not for Americans. […]

The criminal justice system, coupled with standard military trials when necessary, has and can further law enforcement, intelligence, and prevention efforts without undermining our fundamental liberties or our long-term efforts to combat terrorism. It is time to let it fully do that crucial work.

As ThinkProgress reported on Friday, at one time, McCain and Graham advocated a solution similar to the Supreme Court ruling. In 2003, they called on then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to “formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals or to return them to their countries for appropriate judicial action.” Clearly, things change when you’re running for a third Bush term.

Families sue over Guantánamo Bay suicides

The US department of defence is being sued over the suicide deaths of two Guantánamo Bay prisoners.

The New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents dozens of Guantánamo detainees, said it was seeking unspecified damages on behalf of the families of Salah al-Salami and Yasser al-Zahrani, both Saudis.

The claim was announced yesterday, on the second anniversary of their deaths with another detainee from Yemen. All three hanged themselves inside their cells with bed sheets.

"After two years, there has still been no public accounting for what happened to these men," Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer at the centre, said in a statement.

The centre said it could not find the family of the Yemeni man.

The US military said the suicides prompted a complete review of operations at the detention centre in Cuba.

"As we value life, the deaths two years ago were deeply saddening," Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman and navy commander, said yesterday.

The military would release the results of its investigation of the deaths when the findings were ready, he said.

Washington is forging ahead with the prosecution of about 80 of the roughly 270 men being held at Guantánamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to the Taliban or al-Qaida.

They include the UK resident Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, who is accused of an al-Qaida dirty bomb plot to attack apartment buildings in the US.

His lawyers have condemned the charges against him as part of a US "rush to charge as many people as possible at Guantánamo Bay prior to President Bush leaving office".

About this articleClose This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday June 11 2008. It was last updated at 12:03 on June 11 2008.

Omar Khadr labelled 'good kid' by U.S. captors

Prison stay could radicalize him, officials told

OTTAWA — The U.S. soldiers holding Omar Khadr believe the detained Canadian is a "good kid" who is not only "salvageable" but actually runs the risk of becoming a radical if he stays in Guantanamo Bay, according to Foreign Affairs reports.

The documents - likely the most significant ever made public in the case - will almost certainly put pressure on Ottawa to finally attempt to bring Mr. Khadr home.

Two reports written by Department of Foreign Affairs officials who visited Mr. Khadr in Guantanamo Bay in March and April of this year describe a "likeable, funny and intelligent young man." Those aren't just the sentiments of the Canadian officials, but also the U.S. soldiers charged with guarding Mr. Khadr, and whose fellow soldier the Canadian is alleged to have killed.

"Omar is 'salvageable,' 'non-radicalized' and 'a good kid' who is well-liked both within the Camp and by [Joint Task Force] staff," a Foreign Affairs official notes in March. "JTF staff seems to look out for him by stopping by to chat on occasion, convincing him to meet with his lawyers and encouraging him to 'keep his nose clean.' "

But perhaps the most significant observation comes a report dated a month later.

"... our U.S. military contact repeated what he had said during the welfare visit conducted in March," a Foreign Affairs official writes. "He said that extended detention in Guantanamo would however run the risk of turning [Mr. Khadr] into a radical."

The reports have not yet been made public, but were obtained by The Globe and Mail. At least one of the reports is expected to be presented to members of a House of Commons subcommittee studying the Khadr case in Ottawa as early as today.

Virtually every prevailing opinion about Mr. Khadr over the years is contradicted by the reports. Canadian officials describe a hopeful young man who is nonetheless aware of how serious his situation is.

"The overarching theme of much of our discussions focused on his desire to get out of Guantanamo, to return to Canada, to fix his health, to educate himself, to have a family and to eventually find a job satisfying his personal commitment to help those in need," a Foreign Affairs official writes. "By contrast, he also expressed a hyper-awareness of the challenges that he would face, but demonstrated no bitterness or anger, emphasizing instead a desire to move forward in life."

In another report, an official says Mr. Khadr tells him he is in Guantanamo Bay because of his family, and wants another chance.

"He wonders however why Canada is so quiet on his case and commented that, while Canada was the best country in the world to live in, it was not as strong as the UK to defend its citizens abroad, although both countries have the same Queen.

"He hopes that Canada will intervene to get him out of Guantanamo [he said he hoped PM Harper will do something]."

Mr. Khadr's relationship with his much-loathed family - widely believed to be one of the reasons the government has refused to try to bring him home - is also described in one of the reports. An official notes that Mr. Khadr barely talks about his family and doesn't seem overly keen to call them.

"The [U.S. official] told me later that one of his last phone calls had initially been cancelled by his mother, because she couldn't make herself available."

Officials also list Mr. Khadr's myriad health problems: He has no vision in his left eye and his right eye is deteriorating because of shrapnel embedded in the eye's membrane. He still has shrapnel in his right shoulder, and it causes the metal detectors at the prison camp to go off.

Mr. Khadr says he doesn't like the 14-day rotation of meals, which he describes as heavy and covered in "red sauce." However, he makes sure to keep within a specific weight range so he isn't force-fed.

Some of the items Mr. Khadr requests from the Canadian officials are surprising. He asks for, among other things, a book on French for beginners, a first-aid book and a stress ball.

The U.S. military's responsiveness to those requests is mixed: Mr. Khadr is allowed an origami book brought for him by a Canadian official, but not the paper accompanying the book.

When a Canadian representative asks why Mr. Khadr did not get a pillow brought for him, a U.S. official notes that "pillows were only handed out as incentives for detainees being interrogated and that since Mr. Khadr had lawyers and was no longer subject to interrogation, he was not eligible for one."

Mr. Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2002, is due back in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom later this month. He faces multiple charges - including the murder of a U.S. soldier during an Afghan firefight - before a military commission. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

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.

Classified documents from Guantanamo captive's Combatant Status Review Tribunals

In mid 2004 shortly after the United States Supreme Court made its ruling in Rasul v. Bush the United States Department of Defense set up Combatant Status Review Tribunals to convene to consider the combatant status of captives held in it Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.

Read on: WIKILEAKS

Top Bush aides pushed for Guantánamo torture

Senior officials bypassed army chief to introduce interrogation methods

America's most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques of terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, leading to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, the Guardian reveals today.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.

The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date, is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which appear in today's Guardian.

In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, reveals that:

· Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.

· Myers believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at Donald Rumsfeld's defence department.

· The Guantánamo lawyers charged with devising interrogation techniques were inspired by the exploits of Jack Bauer in the American TV series 24.

· Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the army's field manual.

The lawyers, all political appointees, who pushed through the interrogation techniques were Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes. Also involved were Doug Feith, Rumsfeld's under-secretary for policy, and Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two assistant attorney generals.

The revelations have sparked a fierce response in the US from those familiar with the contents of the book, and who are determined to establish accountability for the way the Bush administration violated international and domestic law by sanctioning prisoner abuse and torture.

The Bush administration has tried to explain away the ill-treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by blaming junior officials. Sands' book establishes that pressure for aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the top and was sanctioned by the most senior lawyers.

Myers was one top official who did not understand the implications of what was being done. Sands, who spent three hours with the former general, says he was "confused" about the decisions that were taken.

Myers mistakenly believed that new techniques recommended by Haynes and authorised by Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use by the military at Guantánamo had been taken from the US army field manual. They included hooding, sensory deprivation, and physical and mental abuse.

"As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled," writes Sands. "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him."

Myers and his closest advisers were cut out of the decision-making process. He did not know that Bush administration officials were changing the rules allowing interrogation techniques, including the use of dogs, amounting to torture.

"We never authorised torture, we just didn't, not what we would do," Myers said. Sands comments: "He really had taken his eye off the ball ... he didn't ask too many questions ... and kept his distance from the decision-making process."

Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell, US secretary of state at the time, told the Guardian: "I do know that Rumsfeld had neutralised the chairman [Myers] in many significant ways.

"The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important communications, meetings, deliberations and plans.

"At the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful chairman in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for the job".

He added: "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."

Internal Justice Dept. Investigation Includes Yoo Torture Memo

Just how bad were John Yoo's now-infamous torture memos?

After numerous calls from Congress for the DoJ to get digging, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility told Congress in February that it is busy investigating Yoo's infamous August, 2002 torture memo. That one, signed by then Office of Legal Counsel chief Jay Bybee, limited the definition of torture to physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." It was the administration's so-called "golden shield" which permitted the CIA to use its most aggressive interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding.

And then in March of 2003 came Yoo's memo broadly authorizing the use of torture by military interrogators on unlawful combatants. Now OPR has told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) that it will be investigating that memo, too.

It is far short of a criminal investigation. OPR's job is to police whether the Department's lawyers behave professionally, and so in this case, OPR's chief Marshall Jarrett has informed Congress that the investigation will be covering "whether the legal advice contained in those memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys."

So the question for OPR will be whether Yoo came to his roundly-denounced conclusions in a professional, ethical manner. OPR's investigations are usually not publicly released, but Jarrett wrote that "OPR will consider releasing to Congress and the public a non-classified summary of our final report." There's no telling when that would be.

There are plenty of grumbles that the limited scope and independence of OPR's investigation (OPR reports to the attorney general) mean that it won't tell us enough and won't result in any changes. And Attorney General Michael Mukasey has already made it clear that no matter how deeply flawed an Office of Legal Counsel memo might have been (or be), anyone who relied on it "could not be the subject of a prosecution."

U.S. to televise Guantanamo trials to 9-11 families

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - The U.S. military will televise the Guantanamo trial of accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other suspects so relatives of those killed in the attacks can watch on the U.S. mainland.

"We're going to broadcast in real time to several locations that will be available just to victim families," Army Col. Lawrence Morris, chief prosecutor for the controversial war crimes court, said at the naval base recently.

In February, military prosecutors charged Mohammed and five other captives with murder and conspiracy and asked that they be executed if convicted of plotting to crash hijacked planes into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

No trial date has been set but they are the first Guantanamo prisoners charged with direct involvement in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Morris said several of the victims' relatives asked to watch the trials at the detention center set up in Guantanamo Bay naval base to try foreign terrorism suspects.

The base sits on a dusty patch of the island of Cuba and does not have many flights, beds or courtroom seats to accommodate spectators.

The trials will be beamed to closed-circuit television viewing sites on military bases at Fort Hamilton in New York, Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Fort Meade in Maryland and Fort Devens in Massachusetts, Morris said.

The military is borrowing a page from the civilian court sentencing hearing of Zacarias Moussaoui, a flight school student who is the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the September 11 plot. He pleaded guilty to conspiring with al Qaeda and was sentenced to life in prison.

U.S. federal courts normally ban cameras. But through an act of Congress, Moussaoui's 2006 court hearing in Virginia was shown by closed-circuit television to victims' families at courthouses in Boston, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

"We got much more information from those hearings than we ever got from the 9-11 Commission," said Lorie Van Auken, whose husband Kenneth died in the World Trade Center, referring to the investigation the U.S. Congress launched into the attacks.

FAIR TRIALS OR SHOW TRIALS?

Some of the victims' relatives praised the U.S. military for ensuring they had access to the Guantanamo proceedings.

Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother, Donald and Jean Peterson, died on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, called the prosecutors "true patriots," and said he was grateful for "the ability to see justice being fulfilled in one of the most significant attacks on America's heartland."

Others urged the trials be televised nationwide without restriction because of the sweeping impact of the attacks.

The broadcasts will mark the first time a Guantanamo detainee's face has been shown publicly. The U.S. military prohibits journalists and other visitors from taking photographs or video that shows faces, citing a provision of the Geneva Conventions that aims to protect war captives from "insults and public curiosity."

The U.S. military lawyer assigned to defend Mohammed, Navy Capt. Prescott Prince, said if the trials are truly fair, then broadcasting them widely would prove that to the world. But he worried about setting a precedent by televising what he suspects will be show trials.

"I can just imagine American soldiers and sailors and airmen being subjected to similar show trials worldwide," he said.

He said he doubts the defendants can get a fair trial in the Guantanamo court because it accepts hearsay evidence that may have been obtained through cruel and dehumanizing means. The Geneva provision cited in shielding prisoners' faces also bans "acts of violence or intimidation," he noted.

The CIA held Mohammed in a secret prison for years and acknowledged interrogating him with methods that included the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.

Some of the victims' relatives also said they thought the trials should be held in a regular court, open to the public and using only "evidence that's above reproach."

"This is not about revenge, it's about justice," said Valerie Lucznikowska, a New Yorker whose nephew Adam Arias died in the World Trade Center.

"I don't want it to be a lynching. I'm concerned that people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we won't be able to find them guilty because of what we've done with them. It's a horrible conundrum."

Pentagon Records Detail Prisoner Abuse

WASHINGTON - Military interrogators assaulted Afghan detainees in 2003, using investigation methods they learned during self-defense training, Pentagon documents released April 16 show.

Detainees at the Gardez Detention Facility in southeastern Afghanistan reported being made to kneel outside in wet clothing and being kicked and punched in the kidneys, nose and knees if they moved, according to the documents.

A 2006 Army review concluded that the detainees were not abused but that the incident revealed "misconduct that warrants further action."

The documents, which were turned over April 16 to the American Civil Liberties Union, focus on the 2003 death of Afghan detainee Jamal Nasser, who died in U.S. custody at the Gardez facility.

The documents detail interrogation techniques used on eight detainees, including Nasser, who were suspected of weapons trafficking.

The Army review found that abuse did not cause Nasser's death. But the documents include interviews with some interrogators who acknowledged slapping the detainees - a technique they learned during survival training at the Army's SERE school. SERE stands for Survive, Evade, Resist and Escape.

"You say you gave permission for (redacted) to hit detainees during interrogations; did you have a memorandum or order from your higher headquarters authorizing that?" a military criminal investigator asked one of the interrogators, according to a November 2004 transcript among the more than 300 pages of documents.

"No, I did not have a memorandum and had not seen one," the interrogator answered, according to the transcript. "I used tactics that were used in SERE."

The investigator continued: "Did you see (redacted) hit detainees during the interviews?"

"Yes, open or closed slaps, not punches," the interrogator answered.

In another interview that day, according to the documents, the Army investigator asks whether "you ever heard of a tactic of pouring cold water or a water and snow mix on persons captured?"

"They do spray cold water on prisoners," the interrogator answered, referring to SERE lessons. That interrogator was unaware, however, of men in his unit pouring cold water over the detainees, as the Afghans later complained.

ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said such interrogation techniques are taught at SERE schools only to show Soldiers how to withstand them from enemy captors. She called the methods, when used together, a form of torture.

"They were intended to be defensive methods, not offensive methods," Singh said. "This raises serious questions about the interrogation methods that were being applied in Afghanistan."

SERE methods were also used on detainees by military interrogators in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Singh said.

The Pentagon and the Army did not immediately respond to requests for comment April 16.

The 2004 criminal inquiry of Nasser's death was among a string of probes into alleged abuse of prisoners in U.S. jails in Afghanistan.

Trying to deflect the kind of scandal that followed the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan ordered a review of their secretive network of about 20 jails at bases across Afghanistan.

Nasser was among eight detainees who were held at Gardez for between 18 and 20 days. The Army concluded he died of a stomach ailment.

'Extraordinary-rendition' procedure unreliable, says CIA vet who created it

DURHAM, N.C. — The creator of the CIA's "extraordinary-rendition" program says he has always distrusted interrogation intelligence flowing from the controversial practice, given that the admissions it produced were usually "very tainted" by foreign agencies who jailed suspects at the behest of the United States.

Michael Scheuer, an outspoken anti-terrorism crusader, took part in a Duke University law-school panel on Friday. There, experts debated the future of the highly controversial snatch, jail and interrogate program that he created, and whether it should survive beyond the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which has often justified rendition as an intelligence gold mine.

In Canada, rendition has become synonymous with the process that resulted in Ottawa's Maher Arar spending a year in a Syrian jail, where he was beaten with electric cables during the first phases of his captivity. Canadian officials have apologized to the telecommunications engineer and compensated him with $10-million (U.S.), upholding that he was wrongly smeared in intelligence exchanges emanating from Canada, prior to the U.S. decision to render him.

The Bush administration has proven far less contrite in the Arar affair and similar cases, blocking lawsuits on the grounds that probing rendition would illegally spill state secrets.

An estimated 100 to 150 people have been rendered to foreign prisons by the U.S. program, of which Mr. Scheuer remains a big booster. Now retired, he created the program when he was a Central Intelligence Agency analyst tasked with hunting down Osama bin Laden. He said the program has been enormously valuable, at least in terms of taking high-level terrorists off the streets and seeing what documents they carried.

But he added that resulting interrogations proved dubious once suspects were sent to third-country prisons, such as Syria or Egypt. "You could bet on the testimony given to you, it was altered in a way that would serve the interests of the country that was giving it," he said. "So, it was very tainted, in the sense that if Country X or Country Y interrogated these people, you would really have some information, but it would be far from coupled with what was actually being said."

Mr. Scheuer didn't dispute that torture has occurred in foreign jails where the United States sent suspects - "You'd have to assume that 80 per cent [of prisoners rendered to Egypt] are not going to have a good time," he said - but said simply that he didn't particularly care. "I'm perfectly happy to do anything to defend the United States, so long as the lawyers sign off on it," he said.

After 9/11, the Bush administration decided to enhance Mr. Scheuer's pre-existing rendition program with international "black-site" prisons where U.S. officials would lead interrogations in secret CIA jails. "I am much less experienced in the Bush administration," Mr. Scheuer conceded. "I ran rendition operations from July '95 until June of '99."

Speaking at Duke, Mr. Scheuer did put some distance between the program he hatched in 1995 and events that occurred after 2001. "The bar was lowered after 9/11," he said.

In addition to Mr. Arar's case in Canada, high-profile renditions controversies have arisen in Germany and Italy. Mr. Scheuer made a point of saying he would personally put the German suspect back on a rendition plane, but did not say the same that about the other two cases. The program he conceived was restricted to targeting only the highest level terrorism suspects, he said.

Questioned about the Arar affair, Mr. Scheuer asserted that that rendition was not technically a CIA job, but rather an FBI initiative, by agents working in cahoots with unspecified agencies north of the border.

That prompted a response from Canadian lawyer Ron Atkey, who was in attendance to give a speech about the years he spent inside the Arar Commission battling government secrecy to reveal what Canada knew about the CIA rendition program.

Mr. Atkey pointed out Canadian agencies were found to have had no foreknowledge of the U.S. decision to put Mr. Arar on a Gulfstream jet and fly him to the Middle East, after his 2002 arrest in a New York airport.

"The biggest piece of baloney," Mr. Scheuer said. "They [the Canadians] were totally surprised like Captain Renault in Casablanca," he quipped.

The allusion referred to a scene in the 1942 film, where a duplicitous French gendarme shuts down an illegal casino operation in Morocco - saying "I'm shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here!" even as he is handed a big win from the roulette wheel.

Mr. Scheuer went on to describe certain U.S. newspaper reporters as "scurrilous" traitors for revealing details of the rendition program.

After the panel, however, he said he wasn't necessarily familiar with the domestic investigations that led to the Arar affair.

New roadblocks delay tribunals at Guantánamo

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba: When military officials announced war crimes charges against six detainees for the Sept. 11 attacks two months ago, the move was part of an effort to accelerate the Bush administration's sluggish military commission system, which has yet to hold a single trial.

But the Sept. 11 case immediately hit a snag. Military defense lawyers were in short supply, and even now, two months later, not one of the six detainees has met his military lawyer.
The delay in getting lawyers to those detainees, which largely grew out of a struggle within the Pentagon over legal resources, is indicative of the confounding obstacles facing this latest effort to expedite the military tribunals.

Since fall, when charges had been lodged against just three detainees, military officials have charged 12 more terrorism suspects. Yet there is a growing consensus among lawyers inside and outside the military that few of those cases are likely to actually come to trial before the end of the Bush administration.

"Speed is going to be very, very difficult to accomplish here," said Stephen Saltzburg, a military law expert at George Washington University. "They may be overconfident that if they just push ahead, all the ducks will end up in a row. I don't think that's going to happen."

The road to a trial is difficult in some cases partly because they involve potential death penalties and claims of torture by interrogators, issues that raise thorny legal questions that could take months or longer to sort out. But even comparatively simple cases without capital penalty issues are proceeding slowly.

In addition, just as the Pentagon is pushing to try cases in part to show the viability of the tribunal system, some civil liberties groups and defense lawyers are working to slow the pace, partly to keep the system from gaining legitimacy by eliciting testimony against terrorism suspects that could inflame Americans. They say they plan a dizzying array of challenges to try to prevent any significant number of what they call political trials.

They are particularly focused on the Sept. 11 case, which for more than six years has been expected to be the centerpiece of the Bush administration's military commission system.
"The government can be assured that this will not be a quick show trial," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Not if we can help it."

The ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers announced a plan last week to provide experienced defense lawyers for some detainees.

The standoff over the military lawyers for the Sept. 11 suspects grew out of a long-running dispute over legal resources at the Pentagon. The chief military defense lawyer for Guantánamo, Colonel Steven David, said in an interview that he lacked enough experienced lawyers and other staff members.

Guantánamo military defense lawyers have long said they are not given resources by the Pentagon to match the investigative capability of the military prosecution, which draws on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies. Until a handful of new military lawyers were appointed this week to represent Sept. 11 defendants, the military defense office was sharply outnumbered, with 15 defense lawyers to battle 31 prosecutors.

But Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, an official of the Office of Military Commissions at the Pentagon, argued that the defense office was staffed well enough to have begun to defend the Sept. 11 case the day it was announced.

In a recent interview, Hartmann, who has been pressing to move more quickly on the Guantánamo cases, made clear that he was impatient. "You have to get the train moving so you can get to a destination," he said. "And the train hadn't been moving."

But even with enough lawyers, David said, there were countless impediments to quick trials, including questions about how the tribunals are to deal with detainees' claims of torture. Lacking precedents and clear rules, he said, "there are issues within issues within issues."

At a news conference here on Wednesday, the deputy chief military prosecutor, Colonel Bruce Pagel, said that while the government wanted quick trials, the pace would largely be determined by military judges.

"There is just no predicting that," Pagel said. "There are just too many variables."
Each of the 14 cases now pending presents legal tangles. In one, the morass grew so thick that the judge scheduled pretrial proceedings after the date he had set for the trial, evidently realizing that there were too many unresolved issues to rush the case. In another, a detainee refused to leave his cell for an arraignment and had to be forcibly extracted.

On Wednesday, proceedings were delayed when a detainee complained that the tribunal translation was flawed. After that was resolved, the detainee, Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al Darbi, declared the proceeding political and refused to participate, adding, "History will record these trials as a scandal against you."

Prosecutors planned this week to arraign two suspects, one who they say was a Qaeda paymaster and the other, they say, a propaganda chief. But that rudimentary step is not to go off as they had hoped. The case of the propaganda chief had to be postponed because his military lawyer had recently left the defense office, taking that case back to its starting point.

By chance, the alleged paymaster and the alleged propaganda chief were the first ones identified for war crimes trials by the Pentagon back in 2004. Yet all Guantánamo cases were derailed in 2006 when the Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration's first war crimes system.

The first trial of a detainee under the new system is now scheduled for May 28. But defense lawyers for that defendant, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was a driver for Osama bin Laden, have filed nearly 30 legal motions, raising questions that included procedural issues and basic challenges to the Guantánamo system itself.

Andrea Prasow, one of Hamdan's lawyers, said her experience in a comparatively simple Guantánamo case showed the extraordinary complexities that seem certain to entangle all of the battles here.

It may be possible, Prasow said, for one or two cases to be tried by the fall. But, she said, "I don't see how it is remotely possible for the others to get under way."

Some of the defense requests in Hamdan's case show the kinds of issues that are tying prosecutors in knots. His lawyers have accused Pentagon officials of improperly influencing the prosecution by directing that charges be filed for political reasons and, the lawyers said, demanding "sexy" cases to attract public attention. They also claim that Hamdan is so psychologically damaged by the conditions under which he has been held that he is incapable of assisting his lawyers.

The Hamdan defense has worried prosecutors by winning the right to submit written questions to four detainees who were formerly held in secret CIA prisons.

The request to question prisoners like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attack, brought strong objections from prosecutors who said it could be a national security threat.

When a military judge allowed very limited written questions, the prosecutors pleaded with him to reconsider. The judge stuck with his ruling.

But a major battle is expected if, as seems likely, Hamdan's defense follows that request with a demand that those former CIA detainees be called to testify in public.

J. Wells Dixon, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the charges, which seek the death penalty against the six men charged with the 2001 attack, are so complex that defense teams in those cases will need months, if not years, to prepare. The center represented one of the six men in a case challenging his detention before the war crimes charges were filed.

"There is no possibility," Dixon said, "that these cases are going to proceed to trial any time soon."

Hartmann said trials in any system could be subject to delays. But he said he had told military prosecutors and court officials not to get distracted as problems cropped up.

"My guidance to people," he said, "is 'keep moving' and when the rocks start to fall on you, you move a little faster."

Pentagon Releases DOJ Torture Memo

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon made public a now-defunct legal memo that approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques against terror suspects, saying that President Bush's wartime authority trumps any international ban on torture.

The Justice Department memo, dated March 14, 2003, outlines legal justification for military interrogators to use harsh tactics against al-Qaida and Taliban detainees overseas - so long as they did not specifically intend to torture their captives.

Even so, the memo noted, the president's wartime power as commander in chief would not be limited by the U.N. treaties against torture.

"Our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the president is free to override it at his discretion," said the memo written by John Yoo, who was then deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.

The memo also offered a defense in case any interrogator was charged with violating U.S. or international laws.

"Finally, even if the criminal prohibitions outlined above applied, and an interrogation method might violate those prohibitions, necessity or self-defense could provide justifications for any criminal liability," the memo concluded.

The memo was rescinded in December 2003, a mere nine months after Yoo sent it to the Pentagon's top lawyer, William J. Haynes. Though its existence has been known for years, its release Tuesday marked the first time its contents in full have been made public.

Haynes, the Defense Department's longest-serving general counsel, resigned in late February to return to the private sector. He has been hotly criticized for his role in crafting Bush administration policies for detaining and trying suspected terrorists that some argue led to prisoner abuses at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Yoo's memo became part of a debate among the Pentagon's civilian and military leaders about what interrogation tactics to allow at overseas facilities and whether U.S. troops might face legal problems domestically or in international courts.

Also of concern was whether techniques used by U.S. interrogators might someday be used as justification for harsh treatment of Americans captured by opposing forces.

The Justice Department has opened an internal investigation into whether its top officials improperly authorized or reviewed the CIA's use of waterboarding, which simulates drowning, when interrogating terror suspects. It was unclear whether the Yoo memo, which focuses only on military interrogators, will be part of that inquiry.

The declassified memo was released as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit to force the Bush administration to turn over documents about the government's war on terror. The document also was turned over to lawmakers.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said its release "represents an accommodation of Congress' oversight interest in the area of wartime interrogations."

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's national security project, said Yoo's legal reasoning puts "literally no limit at all to the kinds of interrogation methods that the president can authorize."

"The whole point of the memo is obviously to nullify every possible legal restraint on the president's wartime authority," Jaffer said. "The memo was meant to allow torture, and that's exactly what it did."

The 81-page legal analysis largely centers on whether interrogators can be held responsible for torture if torture is not the intent of the questioning. And it defines torture as the intended sum of a variety of acts, which could include acid scalding, severe mental pain and suffering, threat of imminent death and physical pain resulting in impaired body functions, organ failure or death.

The "definition of torture must be read as a sum of these component parts," the memo said.

The memo also includes past legal defenses of interrogations that Yoo wrote are not considered torture, such as sleep deprivation, hooding detainees and "frog crouching," which forces prisoners to crouch while standing on the tips of their toes.

"This standard permits some physical contact," the memo said. "Employing a shove or slap as part of an interrogation would not run afoul of this standard."

The memo concludes that foreign enemy combatants held overseas do not have defendants' rights or protections from cruel and unusual punishment that U.S. citizens have under the Constitution. It also says that Congress "cannot interfere with the president's exercise of his authority as commander in chief to control the conduct of operations during a war."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said the memo "reflects the expansive view of executive power that has been the hallmark of this administration." He called for its release four months ago.

"It is no wonder that this memo ... could not withstand scrutiny and had to be withdrawn," said Leahy, D-Vt. "This memo seeks to find ways to avoid legal restrictions and accountability on torture and threatens our country's status as a beacon of human rights around the world."

Amid grimness and beatings, a sense of change

The sprawling prison complex at Guantánamo Bay looks from a distance like many of the hastily built resorts round the Caribbean, the camps occupying a narrow strip of sand by the palm-lined sea-shore, with fencing to keep the locals out.

But through the military checkpoint, the grimness of the world's most infamous prison becomes apparent: barbed wire and watchtowers and heavy nylon matting hiding it from outside eyes.

Once inside it becomes grimmer still. Prisoners at Camp Six, where there are maximum security cells, are isolated for 22 hours a day, allowed into a small courtyard for two hours to exercise. Confrontations with guards and beatings are commonplace. Many have been tortured, if not at the camp, then before they arrived. About 10 are on hunger strike. Two have been force-fed for more than 800 days.

At Camp Six military guards, working in strict rotation, peer through peepholes at least once a minute. A prisoner, briefly glimpsed, is bedraggled, only a tiny glimmer of curiosity in his eyes at a break in the routine brought about by the presence of a handful of journalists.

A senior US medical officer at the camps, who preferred not to be named, admitted that about 10% to 15% of the prisoners were receiving treatment for medical or psychological problems, but insisted this was comparable to prisons on the US mainland.

Reporters are not allowed to speak to prisoners but lawyers can, and they regard conditions at Guantánamo as much worse than anywhere else in the US prison system. One of the lawyers, Wells Dixon, from the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, said he had been going to the camps for years and had seen a marked deterioration in prisoners' health. "Camp Six was set up to destroy them physically and mentally, and it worked," he said.

Almost seven years since the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan and five years since the occupation of Iraq, there are still 275 detainees at Guantánamo (down from a high of 775), held without trial. They have come from a wide arc stretching from North Africa through the Middle East to the Muslim regions of western China.

Rear Admiral Mark Buzby, commander in charge of the Guantánamo camps, inside the US naval base on the eastern end of Cuba, said in an interview that his conscience was clear. "I have to get up every morning and look in the mirror and believe that I am doing something that is morally and legally correct. And believe me I can do that every single morning."

Buzby claimed that many of the inmates, if not detained, "would be very actively engaged in jihad and would be doing their very best to take American and coalition lives. And the reason I know this is because they are very happy to tell us that every single day."

Lawyers questioned whether it was possible to hold a fair trial, given that some of the evidence that might be used against the prisoners had been obtained by torture. Buzby said it would be for the judge to decide whether the evidence was admissible. In contrast with the torture used in secret CIA detention centres round the world, Buzby said his preference was for interrogators building a rapport with detainees and offering incentives. "We use the Subway sandwich and the Big Mac." Asked whether he regarded waterboarding - which simulates drowning and was used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-declared mastermind of 9/11 - as torture, he admitted: "I would certainly not want it done to me."

The prisoners react in various ways to indefinite confinement. Some are compliant, and these are mainly held in Camp Four, where they are free to wander round a small compound and chat to other inmates, can attend classes in English and have access to a library, in which one of the most read books, according to the librarian, is the latest Harry Potter in English.

Confrontation common
But confrontation is never far away. One of the guards at Camp Six, Patrick Zintel, told of how the prisoners retaliate. "They pile faeces by the door and when a guard comes in, they will throw it at them," he said. Such incidents are common enough for the US to put an eye-wash dispenser outside the cells.

Another guard, Chris Cookson, said that such incidents also occurred in the camps where the inmates are supposedly compliant. "I came out of an office and a cocktail of water, urine and faeces came out of nowhere and splattered the person in front," he said.

The guards retaliate heavily. Clive Stafford Smith, the London-based lawyer for some of the inmates and author of Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side, which recounts the experiences of the prisoners, said he had seen the scars from such beatings. "Sadly, the emergency reaction force [a five-strong team of guards] still responds to minor infringements by beating them up."

There is a sense of uncertainty about Guantánamo. Although the Bush administration promised that the first of the trials at Guantánamo will finally begin this year, guards and lawyers are unsure how much longer the camps will exist. All the leading candidates in the US presidential race -the two Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the Republican John McCain - have promised to close Guantánamo on entering the White House on January 20 next year.

Stafford Smith predicted that Guantánamo will close rapidly and welcomed the prospect because the prisoners are likely to be moved to the US mainland where they will be subject to US law.

Defence lawyers divide the detainees into three categories. The first are those like Mohammed who could go on trial. Buzby said he expected about 80 to go on trial. Of the remainder, 80 have already been cleared for release but cannot find a country that will take them. The others are awaiting clearance.

Uncertainty
The defence department said earlier this month that Mohammed, who is held at Camp Seven, a CIA camp whose existence was only revealed this year, and five others are to be tried on charges that carry the death penalty.

Yet another camp has been built for Mohammed's trial. Camp Justice, begun in September and completed at the start of this month, consists of a windowless courthouse, holding cells and tents for 550 officials, lawyers and journalists.

Shayana Kadidal, another lawyer with the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has more clients at Guantánamo than anyone else, said he thought the trial would be nowhere near completion by the time Bush leaves office. Reflecting the sense that these are the dying days of Guantánamo, the air force engineers who built Camp Justice said it could be dismantled in a month.

Gitmo captive: I was threatened with rape

WASHINGTON -- In a fresh document from the Guantánamo war court files, Canadian captive Omar Khadr alleges that he was repeatedly threatened with rape as an interrogation technique in Afghanistan and at U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

The partially censored nine-page affidavit, signed by Khadr on Feb. 22, covers old ground already investigated, including allegations of abuse at Guantánamo that emerged in 2005, prompting a Navy criminal investigation.

But the document includes never-before revealed allegations, such as the rape threats and a partially censored description of regaining consciousness after his capture to discover he was being interrogated in an American field hospital in Afghanistan. He was 15.

Once released from medical care to the Bagram detention center, he said, ``I was interrogated many, many times. For about the first two weeks to a month that I was there I would be brought into the interrogation room on a stretcher.''

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, repeated the Pentagon's long-held conviction that Guantánamo captives are treated humanely and that any credible allegations of mistreatment are investigated and dealt with in keeping with military standards.

"In this case, we have no evidence to substantiate these claims," he wrote in an e-mail. He also noted that all approved interrogation techniques are published in the Army Field Manual on Interrogations and that an al Qaeda training manual "teaches its operatives to make false claims of abuse."

The details are emerging in the military trial case of Khadr, now 21, accused of the grenade killing of a U.S. Army commando in a July 2002 firefight. The document was admitted to court last week as part of the pretrial arguments over access to potential witnesses for Khadr's upcoming summertime trial before U.S. military officers, called a military commission.

Meantime, the Canadian's Pentagon lawyers have been searching for interrogators and other witnesses to his capture, in which he was shot twice in the back in a U.S. raid on a suspected al Qaeda compound. They also want witnesses to the interrogations in Afghanistan and later in Guantánamo.

The lawyers are seeking to punch holes in the prosecution case alleging that Khadr, as an al Qaeda conspirator since age 10, was the only enemy combatant who could have thrown the grenade that fatally wounded Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., in a firefight near Khost, Afghanistan.

Speer died of his wounds days later at a U.S. military hospital in Germany. Last week, the defense revealed at a pretrial hearing that the brigade commander at the firefight wrote two accounts, with the same date.

In the first account, a brigade commander identified to the public as ''Lt. Col. W'' wrote that the grenade thrower was killed on the spot. In the second, according to Navy Cmdr. William Kuebler, written two months later, Lt. Col. W said only that the enemy was ''engaged,'' leaving open the possibility that he had survived.

Khadr was the only survivor.

The documents are under seal at the Office of Military Commission along with the other defense motions from last week's case.

Now, the affidavit, a 63-item statement by the Canadian who grew up between Toronto, South Asia and U.S. detention, offers Khadr's most comprehensive account of his alleged treatment -- an English document crafted with his lawyers, which does not name his guards and interrogators, at least in the portion not blacked out by military censors.

For example, after his capture and regaining consciousness, he said, he was guarded by ``a young blond soldier who was about 25 and a Mexican or Puerto Rican soldier.''

The document is riddled with threats of rape wielded by the United States and its allies.

''On several occasions at Bagram, interrogators threatened to have me raped or sent to other countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Israel to be raped,'' he alleges in Item 23. By Item 55, he has been transferred to Guantánamo, and he is taken to interrogation with an Afghan man, who ''told me that I would be sent to Afghanistan and raped.'' In Item 56, he says, an interrogator pulled his hair, spit in his face and threatened to bring in an Egyptian ``to rape me.''

The document also revisits old allegations -- such as his description on arriving in Guantánamo, at age 16, and hearing someone in the military say, ``Welcome to Israel.''

Or his claim, investigated by the military, that in March 2003 guards splashed his prison camp uniform with Pine Sol and dragged him around an interrogation booth, like a human mop, because he had urinated on himself during a bout of shackled isolation.

Pentagon and Guantánamo spokesmen did not reply Tuesday to queries on what that investigation found or whether anyone was disciplined.

The current prison camps spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, in February declined to address allegations emerging at the military commissions, saying, ``It is likely best for all of us to hear what the attorneys have to say during the hearings.''

Davis: DoD General Counsel ‘Leaned On’ Me To Rush Detainee’s Trial Ahead Of Australian Elections

In March 2007, Australian native David Hicks, who was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, became the first person to be sentenced by a military commission convened under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. At the time, critics charged that Hicks’ sudden plea bargain appeared to be the result of a political deal between Vice President Cheney and then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

A month before Hicks’ sentence was announced, Cheney visited Howard in Australia, where the Australian PM lobbied for the trial to “be brought on as soon as humanly possible and with no further delay.” At the time, Howard was in a tough re-election fight and Hicks’ fate was an issue in the campaign.

Yesterday, Col. Morris Davis — who was the lead prosecutor in Hicks’ trial — told Australia’s Herald Sun that he was “leaned on” by the Pentagon in a manner that “only made sense in political context“:

On the end of the line was the Pentagon’s general counsel, William “Jim” Haynes. He asked Colonel Davis how soon he could charge Hicks. The Australian had been held in custody without a hearing for five years after being picked up in Afghanistan in late 2001. […]

The only way Colonel Davis could make sense of what he was hearing from Mr Haynes was in the context of what he was reading about the political environment in Australia. […]

Colonel Davis says the phone calls he got from Mr Haynes and the timeline in Australia in which a “loyal ally” in Mr Howard was eyeing a difficult election and wanted to get the Hicks matter put to rest, means the nine-month sentence deal that got Hicks home has a “bad odour”..”

Davis, who has previously said that he “felt pressure to pursue high-profile convictions ahead of the 2008 elections, resigned from his position in October 2007 after he was placed under Haynes in the chain of command. Last week, Davis told the Nation that Haynes had insisted to him in 2005 that the Pentagon “can’t have acquittals” at Guantanamo because they’d “been holding these guys for so long” and it would be difficult to “explain letting them get off.”

Haynes announced yesterday that he is resigning in order to return “to private life next month.”

Pentagon to challenge interview of 9/11 suspect

Pentagon prosecutors are challenging a military court's decision to let Osama bin Laden's driver send written questions to alleged senior al Qaeda members held incommunicado at Guantánamo.

Defense lawyers for Salim Hamdan, 36, want to ask reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, known in CIA circles as ''KSM,'' and six other ''high-value detainees'' what they know about Hamdan's role in al Qaeda's organization.

Based on their answers, they will decide whether to call as defense witnesses any of the seven men, who are fellow detainees now but were held and interrogated for years by the CIA.

Last week, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, Hamdan's military commission judge, ruled that defense lawyers could submit questions to an independent security officer to give to Mohammed and the others held in a restricted prison camp on the base called Camp 7.

The judge ordered that the questions and answers be strictly limited to the time before Hamdan's capture in November 2001 in Afghanistan. Censors will black out any responses that don't cover that time period.

Navy Lt. Catheryne Pully, a military commissions spokeswoman, said on Monday that the prosecution would seek ''reconsideration'' of the judge's decision, which the prosecutors believed raised ``a lot of complicated issues.''

Intelligence officials have described as national security secrets the CIA sites where Mohammed and 14 other detainees were held before their September 2006 transfer to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Now they are held in Camp 7, segregated from other detainees at an undisclosed site on the remote U.S. Navy base. The prison camps' spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, has not been able to say whether the location of the camp itself is a national security secret.

Allred gave the prosecution until Tuesday to find an independent security officer -- who does not work for the prosecution -- to handle the defense lawyers' questions and detainees' answers, if they choose to reply.

Hamdan attorney Andrea Prasow, a civilian on the Defense Department team, said the Pentagon prosecutors agreed to identify the security officer but notified the team on Saturday that they would ask for reconsideration of the question.

Hamdan's lawyers wanted to meet the men in person to assess their credibility as potential witnesses at Hamdan's summertime trial.

The lead defense lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brad Mizer, said the attorneys also sought face-to-face meetings with the detainees because, after years in CIA custody, the captives might suspect written questions as an interrogation trick.

Allred's remedy to the defense lawyers mirrors a 2003 formula proposed by a federal judge at the civilian trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who eventually pleaded guilty to providing material support for al Qaeda and is now serving a life sentence.

In that case, the Justice Department refused to let the defense send questions to Mohammed, the reputed 9/11 mastermind. At the time, he was under CIA interrogation, and the government argued his testimony would harm the war effort.

In this instance, the men Hamdan's lawyers seek to question are now among 15 former CIA detainees in military custody at Guantánamo.

• Mohammed, who according to Pentagon transcripts confessed to plotting the 9/11 attacks along with a long string of other al Qaeda suicide bombings, as well as beheading Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

• Ramzi bin al Shib, a Yemeni and Mohammed's alleged go-between with some of the 9/11 attackers.

• Walid bin Attash, another Yemeni who supposedly trained some of the hijackers.

• Mustafa al Hawsawi, who supposedly helped get funds to the Sept. 11 suicide squads.

Those four men were identified as candidates for execution at Guantánamo as part of a complex, six-detainee prosecution the Pentagon unveiled last week. Their charge sheets await approval from a Bush administration appointee. None of them yet have lawyers.

In addition, Hamdan's lawyers asked to interview Abu Faraj al Libi, Abdul Rahim al Nashiri and Abdul Hadi al Iraqi because of their knowledge of other al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan not tied to the Sept. 11 strikes.

Lieberman Defends Waterboarding: It’s ‘Not Like Putting Burning Coals On People’s Bodies’

Yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) “reluctantly acknowledged” that he doesn’t believe waterboarding is torture. According to the Connecticut Post, Lieberman downplayed the severity of the waterboarding because it doesn’t inflict permanent physical damage:

In the worst case scenario — when there is an imminent threat of a nuclear attack on American soil — Lieberman said that the president should be able to certify the use of waterboarding on a detainee suspected of knowing vital details of the plot.

“You want to be able to use emergency tech to try to get the information out of that person,” Lieberman said. […]

“It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological,” Lieberman said.

Lieberman appears to be mimicking his close friend Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) pandering to the right wing. Like Lieberman, McCain voted against banning waterboarding this week, even though he had previously called the technique “very exquisite torture.”

Until recently, Lieberman had also raised objections to the Bush administration’s interrogation practices:

– In 2006, Lieberman said that “the most effective way to get information from a suspect is persistent, long-term questioning. ‘If terrorists are tried and convicted of committing a terrorist act, they should be subject to the death penalty,’ he said.” [AP, 9/18/06]

– As recently as December, Lieberman said, “Obviously, waterboarding is a rough, to put it mildly, technique.” He added that he hadn’t “resolved absolutely” whether waterboarding should be allowed to “gather information that would stop an imminent terrorist attack.” [CNS News, 12/12/07]

To be classified as torture, a procedure does not have to inflict permanent physical damage. In fact, psychological torture can be worse. Former Navy airman Richard E. Mezo was subjected to “water torture” and concluded, “Pulling out my fingernails or even cutting off a finger would have been preferable. At least if someone had attacked my hands, I would have had to simply tolerate pain. But drowning is another matter.”

Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink

"I am proud to be a member of the American Psychological Association, proud for what APA has stood for in these troubling times, and deeply grateful to the Association for supporting me and my colleagues in our quest to ensure that all in our custody are treated with human decency and respect."
— Larry C. James,
Colonel, United States Army, June 23, 2007

"This is my second tour at Gitmo, Cuba. I was also the first psychologist at Abu Ghraib. I'm going to repeat what I said earlier. If we remove psychologists from these facilities, people are going to die. If we remove psychologists from these facilities, people are going to get hurt."
— Larry C. James,
Colonel, United States Army, June 23, 2007
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Sounds good Colonel James. Great sound bytes. Good enough to convince thousands of psychologists that you're the real thing, as American as Stealth bombers and pre-emptive war. Who would possibly think that psychologists in the military would engage in torture after listening to you? Good enough that you became the poster child for the American Psychological Association as they pulled out all stops in their attempts to defeat those few psychologists opposed to torture, inhuman conditions and the disappearance of habeas corpus. They brought you all the way from Guantanamo for their song and dance show. Not even most psychologists, those who are supposed to understand human behavior, saw through your charade, as you convinced them that their professional association really IS on the side of truth and goodness.

The APA used you to introduce a different resolution against torture for the second year in a row, in an attempt to deflect the dissenters and detractors. APA's use of resolutions as a means to stop torture have proven to be simply a sleight of hand to appease the multitudes and the media, but actually signifies nothing.

Perhaps you'll repeat history, Colonel James. In 2006, Surgeon General Kevin Kiley was used by APA leaders to offer the 2006 "Resolution on Torture." Remember him? He lost his job a few months after presenting THAT resolution, another military officer who was willing to overlook the inhumane treatment of people that were considered to have no value.

But you blew it this week, Colonel. One might say you fell out of role, and the truth became evident. Though you are in charge of the team of psychologists that assists interrogators at Guantanamo, when the Associated Press reported last week on the just-revealed Camp 7 at Guantanamo where detainees from CIA secret detention facilities are kept, including the detainees who HAVE been water-boarded, including Abu Zubaydah who endured water-boarding with two psychologists present, you stated you just don't want to know about it.

"I learned a long, long time ago, if I'm going to be successful in the intel community, I'm meticulously -- in a very, very dedicated way -- going to stay in my lane," he said. "So if I don't have a specific need to know about something, I don't want to know about it. I don't ask about it."

You, the military psychologist, who spoke so piously of how much you cared to protect detainees at Gitmo, who so scrupulously defended your character as patriotically humane - didn't you just sell out the fate of those detainees for the advancement of your career?

You commanded the Guantanamo Behavioral Science Consultation Teams from January 2003 to mid-May 2003, during a time when the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo amounted to torture.

Under your command and supervision, psychologists from the military's Survival, Evasion Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program were instructed to apply their expertise in abusive interrogation techniques to the interrogations of detainees in Guantanamo, according to a report from the Office of the Inspector General.

According to the Standard Operating Procedure manual at the time that you were the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo, all incoming detainees were to be held in isolation for the first 30 days "to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process" and were not entitled to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.

So while you and the American Psychological Association continue to assert that military psychologists are necessary at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other detention sites - to build rapport, to "protect" the detainees, to stop other military personnel from harming and killing the detainees - you're telling reporters that the secret to your success is to look the other way. What else could it mean when you say, "if I'm going to be successful in the intel community . . . I'm meticulously . . . going to stay in my lane . . . I don't want to know?"

The fact is, for you and our professional organization, it's all about keeping your job. You toe the military line for your paycheck. And the APA toes the military line to curry the favor of the Department of Defense and the current administration for contracts. All the rest is window dressing, such as the APA's gratuitous letter to Attorney General Mukasey this week. The letter is a lobbyist's masterpiece, suggesting that waterboarding is legal torture in one paragraph and then asking the AG to please hurry up and render a legal ruling in the next.

But as you seem not to be motivated by considerations of ethics, Colonel James, perhaps the potential for life in prison might have more impact. At the Nuremberg Trials, it was held that merely following orders will not absolve you from criminal liability. In that rare moment of truthiness, you told us that your guilty knowledge may pose inconveniences for you: "[I]f I don't have a specific need to know about something, I don't want to know about it. I don't ask about it."