David Remes on the Tragic Death of Adnan Latif: What is the Military Trying to Hide?

The following is posted by permission. It was written by David Remes, an attorney for the late Adnan Farhad Abdul Latif.

The Tragic Death of Adnan Latif: What is the Military Trying to Hide?

by David Remes

A few weeks ago, as Truthout first reported, the US military began saying that my client Adnan Latif, a Yemeni at Guantanamo, who died in his cell on September 8, committed suicide by overdosing on medication he smuggled into his cell. On Saturday, December 15, the military further stated that acute pneumonia was a contributing factor in Adnan's death. The government's theory doesn't stand up. It leaves urgent questions unanswered.

Extraordinary scrutiny

By way of background, my unclassified notes indicate that Adnan's tragic saga unfolded between August 8 and September 8.

The tragic saga began when Adnan was in Camp 6, a medium security facility, where detainees are allowed to socialize and have other privileges. On August 8, Adnan was moved from Camp 6 to the psych ward, and from there to the camp hospital. On Friday, September 7, though suffering from acute pneumonia, Adnan was moved from the camp hospital to Camp 5, a maximum security facility. There, he was put in the "punishment" cellblock, in the cell where he was found "motionless and unresponsive" the next day.

Though he was slight in build, and his weight fluctuated between 100 and 120 pounds, Adnan could be difficult to control. Guards asked other detainees how to manage him. As many as six guards "escorted" him from place to place. He was searched repeatedly wherever he went. He was monitored in his cell day and night by an overhead dome camera. Instead of the usual solid steel door (0:50-0:60), Adnan's cell door may have been toughened glass (0:40-0:45), designed for constant observation of "vulnerable prisoners."

Adnan's exit from Camp 6 illustrates this scrutiny-on-steroids. As he was about to be moved to the psych ward, Adnan asked to go back to his cell to change clothes. The guards would not allow it and instead sent another detainee to fetch the clothes. The guards watched Adnan change in the hallway. This scrutiny alone prevented Adnan from smuggling anything out of Camp 6.

Important Questions

Given these barriers, designed just for him, is it plausible that Adnan smuggled medication into his cell, much less kept and used it? Or did the military, perhaps, plant medication in his cell to facilitate his suicide? (Other detainees have reported such apparent suicide prompts.) Did Adnan actually commit suicide, or was he forced to take the medication? Was he tricked? Did he even die of overmedication?

What medications was Adnan administered? In what doses and on what schedule? How were the medications administered—By injection? Orally? If orally, how were they administered—As pills? Capsules? Liquids? Solutions? Where were the medications administered—in Adnan's cell? The hallway? A dispensary? Somewhere else?

This past Saturday, September 15, the military disclosed, out of the blue, that acute pneumonia was a contributing factor in Adnan's death. Why did the military wait to disclose that information? The military continues to withhold the other information in the autopsy report. Why the selective disclosure? And how could the military have discharged from the hospital a man with acute pneumonia?

Also on Saturday, the military announced that it had repatriated Adnan's remains to Yemen. Until then, the military held the remains at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Why did the military hold onto Adnan's remains in the first place? Why did it repatriate them now? Did the military let Adnan's body decompose to a point that an independent autopsy cannot be performed?

A Cover-Up?

The autopsy report undoubtedly answers many of these questions. Yet the military will not release the report.

Why is the military stonewalling? What is the military trying to hide?

On Sunday, the family buried Adnan's remains.

Rahmato Allah Aleih

رحمة الله عليه

This article was also published at Truthout and Firedoglake

Gov't Story on Gitmo "Suicide" Debunked, Letter from Detainee Says Detainee Feared Harm

Jason Leopold and I published an article today that seriously undermines the narrative put forward by the government that the latest Guantanamo detainee to die, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, did so by suicide, supposedly hoarding medications and overdosing. As the article makes clear, the procedures and rules at Guantanamo, which amount to extremely pervasive and constant surveillance of prisoners, with multiple searches per day, and carefully monitored medication administration makes hoarding of meds extremely unlikely.

Posted below is a fair use snippet from the beginning of the article, but readers are strongly encouraged to click through and read the entire story itself. It is an extremely sad story of a man repeatedly tortured over his 10+ years at Guantanamo (and new details of this appear in the story). But it is also extremely sad to think we live in a country where the citizens allow their politicians and military to pursue such crimes without accountability.

Latif Letter About Guantanamo Speaks From the Grave: "I Am Being Pushed Toward Death Every Moment"

By Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout, December 10, 2012

Explosive claims in a letter to his lawyers reveal a Gitmo detainee's fears about his captors' intentions, well in advance of his mysterious death. Meanwhile, the investigation into his apparent suicide centers on the protocols meant to prevent it. 

More than two years before he was found dead in his cell at Guantanamo Bay, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif reported that the people who oversaw his every move were facilitating his demise.

In a letter sent to his attorneys on May 28, 2010, the Yemeni detainee claimed he was given "contraband" items, such as a spoon and a "big pair of scissors ... by the person responsible for Camp 5," where uncooperative prisoners are sent.

"I am being pushed toward death every moment," Latif wrote to human rights attorneys David Remes and Marc Falkoff. The communication was written in Arabic and translated into English by a translator Remes has worked with for nearly a decade.

"The way they deal with me proves to me that they want to get rid of me, but in a way that they cannot be accused of causing it," Latif wrote.

On September 8, Latif was found "motionless and unresponsive" by guards in a cell in the very same Camp 5 cellblock he had cited in his letter. Two months later, the military produced a report that said he committed suicide.

The mystery surrounding the death of the eldest son of a Yemeni merchant who, by all accounts, did not belong at the offshore prison for suspected terrorists, is underscored by the almost prophetic nature of this singular letter.

The question that likely will never be answered is whether it is a true representation of his experiences, the paranoid creation of an unstable mind or the cunning fabrications of an angry man, captured and sold into bondage by post-9/11 bounty hunters.

That answer may have died with Latif, but there is a measure of corroboration for at least some of his claims, and more questions have been raised as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) continue to probe the circumstances surrounding his death.

Click here to read the entire story

Gitmo Detainee Death Mystery Deepens with News of Drug Overdose

Charlie Savage at the New York Times reports that "several people briefed on a Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry" into the death of Guantanamo detainee Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, who was found unresponsive in his cell last September, have revealed that the prisoner "died from an overdose of psychiatric medication."

As Savage notes, the military autopsy has reportedly declared Latif died a suicide. Accordingly, investigators are said to be following up a scenario wherein the Yemeni detainee, recently moved from the psychiatric ward to a disciplinary solitary unit at Camp 5, hoarded medications somehow, and used them to overdose last September 8.

To date, we do not know what kinds of medications were involved, except they were "psychiatric" in nature. Nor do we know how many different medications were supposedly involved. While the Times article implies investigators are looking at pills, as explained below, Latif also received forceable injections of drugs at various times.

Jason Leopold broke the story labeling Latif's death a suicide in a November 26 article at Truthout. The autopsy report itself has not been publicly released, and has been the subject of wrangling between U.S. and Yemen authorities, a dispute that has left the former Guantanamo's body in limbo (allegedly frozen) at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Cause of Death vs. Manner of Death

While the government is pushing a suicide scenario, the facts of the case are, as Savage describes them, "murky." The NYT reporter cites alternate scenarios for a drug overdose put forward by one of Latif's civilian attorneys.

David Remes, a lawyer who represented Mr. Latif in a habeas corpus lawsuit, said there was reason to be suspicious about how his client was overmedicated, voicing skepticism that he could have hoarded his daily dosages without detection. He noted that Mr. Latif was under “intense scrutiny” — including regular monitoring by guards and cameras....

Mr. Remes, who has not seen the autopsy report, suggested that Mr. Latif instead may have negligently been given too many pills that day, which the lawyer doubted, or that the authorities might have deliberately given him access to too much medication hoping he would kill himself.

Intentional suicidal overdose, accidental overdose, and facilitated suicide aka murder are not the only possibilities. But before proceeding with that discussion, one should be clear that the revelation that Latif died of a drug overdose only refers to the cause of death, which moreover would have had to have been drug-related cardiac or respiratory arrest. But the manner of death speaks to what agency or circumstances brought about the cause of death, in this case, the drug overdose.

Broadly speaking, the manner of death had to have been either accidental, or intentional -- with intent attributed to the victim (suicide) or to the intent of others (murder). There are nuances between these. For instance, an accident in a medical setting could have been due to negligence or even malpractice. The idea of facilitated suicide -- a scenario I previously floated in relation to the death of another Guantanamo purported suicide, that of Mohammed Salih Al Hanashi -- combines malicious intent by others with suicidal intent by a prisoner.

Of course, one possibility is that Latif was murdered outright, e.g. that someone came into his cell and forced him to take drugs, or that drugs were placed in his food, or forcibly injected. One problem with the long period that elasped with Latif's body probably not adequately preserved is that now for evidence of any struggle we will have to rely singly upon the military's autopsy report.

The idea of the military covertly administering drugs is not that outrageous. Recently, it was revealed that DoD had put drugs into the food of David Hicks, an Australian detainee released in 2007, before he was brought before a hearing at the U.S.-run Cuban prison camp.

Another possible mode of death might have been via what has come to be called accidental death via "polypharmacy." As critics of psychiatric practice have noted, drugs are often prescribed in too great a number, with some drugs prescribed to deal with side effects of other drugs, until the total number of drugs prescribed becomes dangerous, and the interaction between drugs prescribed unpredictable.

The Department of Defense has been criticized for just this kind of practice, as described in this February 2011 Psychology Today article by Dr. Allen Frances, "psychiatry professor emeritus and former chairman of psychiatry, Duke University who chaired the DSM-IV Task Force revision."

"Individual psychotropic drugs can have serious side effects -- in excessive combination they sometimes threaten respiratory and cardiac function in a potentially lethal way," Frances wrote. "And the whole is even more dangerous than the sum of its parts since the medications can interact to increase each other's blood levels. Prescription drugs are overtaking illegal drugs as the primary cause of accidental overdose and death."

Were Injections of "Chemical Restraints" Involved in Latif's "Overdose"?

In an October 18 story by Jason Leopold on the abuse Latif suffered at Guantanamo, Leopold reported on numerous instances of forcibly drugging of Latif by camp medical authorities. This drugging apparently included forced injections of "sedatives." The exact nature of the drugs are unknown, but an Inspector General report on use of "mind-altering" drugs on detainees "for purposes of interrogation," released via my FOIA request and analyzed by both Leopold and myself, noted that detainees at times were administered "chemical restraints."

I have made multiple requests to DoD officials to ask what drugs were used as chemical restraints. To date, no one from DoD has replied to my queries.

One of the few drugs mentioned in the IG report was Haldol, which was administered as an injection to  Guantanamo detainee Adel al-Nusairi (referred to as IG-02 in the report). According to the IG, haldol is a powerful antipsychotic medication, whose side effects include lethargy, tremors, anxiety, mood changes and "an inability to remain motionless," among other disturbing effects.

The government has used haldol injections in other detention settings as well, most notoriously by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for purposes of deportation of immigrants. A May 13, 2008 article in the Washington Post described the dangers of using the drug:

In September, the Food and Drug Administration issued an alert citing "a number of case reports of sudden death" and other reports of dangerous changes in heart rhythm. It is, important, the FDA warned, to inject Haldol only into muscles, not veins, and to avoid doses that are too high.

Federal officials finally greatly reduced use of haldol for sedation of deportees in 2009, after much public criticism and threat of lawsuits. But it is unknown to what degree the drug or others like it are currently used at Guantanamo or other DoD detention settings.

Did Latif receive haldol injections, or any other kind of drug injection (as, for instance, risperidone) in the week or two prior to his death? We shouldn't have to wait years to get an answer to this question. Indeed, this case in particular cries out for a full, independent, public investigation.

Death Threats

The absurdity of conducting a military investigation in this instance is manifest when one considers that in the weeks prior to Latif's death he was threatened with death by one or more Guantanamo guards.

The full story about this was reported by Jason Leopold in his November 26 article, but essentially, as reconstructed via detainee accounts given to David Remes, Latif complained about not getting needed medications sometime in early August. In frustration he reportedly threw a rock at a guard tower, and thereby brought the wrath of the armed guard force down upon him and other detainees.

As Leopold reported it:

"The guards came into Camp 5 with guns, and beat up the detainees," another prisoner recalled. "Other soldiers surrounded the camp. [The Officer in Charge] came and told detainees, 'You are extremists and I'm going to deal with you in a harsh way. You intend to kill our soldiers; we'll do the same thing to you.'"

For whatever reason, Savage did not report this aspect of the story in his article about the drug overdose. One wonders if the New York Times reporter hasn't already decided the case is simply one of suicide, a scenario investigators are reportedly pursuing. Just the other day, the Times editorial board called Latif's death a "suicide."

Savage did not note that investigators were pursuing any other leads. No one is talking, either, about what the surveillance tapes of Latif would show, or whether the evidence in them rules out one theory regarding manner of death or another.

Too Many Suspicious Deaths

The death of Latif, the first purported "suicide" who supposedly did not hang or strangle himself, is nevertheless similar to the other suicides, and none more than that of Mohammed Al Hanashi. Both had made multiple suicide attempts and been at various times on "suicide watch." Both were said to be depressed at the time of their death, although their are contrary reports regarding both that they were not suicidal at the time of their death. Both were under video surveillance. Both were supposed trouble-makers, and both had been hunger strikers.

Then there is the 2007 "suicide" of Abdul Rahman Al Amri, also found in a solitary cell in Camp 5, with his hands tied behind his back. The three "suicides" of May 2006 were also found with hands tied and rags stuffed down their throats. At least one guard witnessed stranger transfers of three prisoners to a possible black site at the Guantanamo base, known as Camp No, as reported in an award-winning 2010 article by Scott Horton at Harpers, and examined further in a special investigation by Seton Hall School of Law.

The latest revelations seriously demand the calling of a special investigation. The Department of Defense, embroiled in numerous scandals over torture, extrajudicial killings, rendition, and corruption, cannot be trusted to run an investigation into these deaths. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, who is in charge of the investigation, along with another investigation run out of Guantanamo's parent command at SOUTHCOM, has been involved over the years in interrogations of detainees and in intelligence operations. To leave the investigation to NCIS and SOUTHCOM is to leave the institutions involved to investigate themselves.

There have been many calls to shut down Guantanamo of late. A Government Accounting Office study released just today, and touted by Democratic Senator and Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Diane Feinstein, has indicated the closure of Guantanamo and transfer of prisoners to U.S. prisons is perfectly feasible. But would justice still come to those many, many prisoners already cleared for release? Or would the closure of Guantanamo spawn many more Guantanamos, or via use of indefinite detention, "Gitmo-ize" the U.S. prison system?

Maybe a real investigation into the death of Latif would help bring about a greater understanding of why Guantanamo is an abomination that must be shut down. If true, then Latif would not have died in vain, an anonymous innocent man ground down and snuffed out by a system so large and inhuman that it seemed no one could control it.

Crossposted at Firedoglake

New York Times Decides Guantanamo Detainee Committed Suicide

Crossposted from MyFDL/Firedoglake

Jason Leopold continues to do superb reporting on the mysterious death last September of Guantanamo detainee Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif. Earlier today (11/26), Leopold posted breaking news that a government autopsy report on Latif, not yet officially released, concludes that the 36-year-old prisoner died of suicide.

Leopold sourced the revelation to Yemeni government officials and "a US military investigator close to the case." The Department of Defense has not yet officially stated any cause of death for Latif, who was discovered inert in his cell at Guantanamo's Camp 5 on September 8.

Leopold wrote that a "spokesman for United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), Joint Task Force-Guantanamo's (JTF-GTMO) higher command" told Truthout that DoD would "issue a statement as soon as [Yemen] accepts [Latif's] remains." Just two days after Latif's death, a Guantanamo spokesman told Associated Press, "There is no apparent cause [of death], natural or self-inflicted."

But none of this stopped the New York Times from stating in an editorial yesterday (11/25) calling for Guantanamo's closure that Latif had in fact committed suicide. Coming out of nowhere, such a statement was, frankly, bizarre.

Here's what the Times wrote, some 12 hours before Leopold even posted his story at Truthout, and with no published source anywhere definitively reporting Latif's cause of death as suicide (bold emphasis added):

In September, a member of this stranded group, a Yemeni citizen named Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, killed himself after a federal judge’s ruling ordering his release was unfairly overturned by an appellate court. It was the kind of price a nation pays when it creates prisons like Guantánamo, beyond the reach of law and decency, a tragic reminder of the stain on American justice.

Narratives R Us

There is a lot wrong about the claims in the NYT op-ed, as much as I might agree with the overall thrust of the editorial about shutting down Guantanamo. The Times editors may have thought the latest death of a prisoner at Guantanamo highlighted the crime of keeping Guantanamo open. And they are right about that, but their conclusion -- their narrative of Latif's death -- closes off inquiry into what actually occurred, and in doing that they are not acting as a watchdog upon possible government abuse.

First of all, there is no affirmative statement by the government that Latif's cause of death was suicide. In fact, as Leopold points out in his article, all the earlier statements from DoD led one to believe that suicide was not a cause of death. The only recent article to claim otherwise was by Leopold, and it was not published until many hours after the NYT made their claim.

Secondarily, not only does the New York Times supposedly know how Latif died, they also imply they know why he killed himself, i.e., he "killed himself after a federal judge’s ruling ordering his release was unfairly overturned by an appellate court."

Well, yes, he did die after the appellate court ruling -- nearly eleven months afterward, as the ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia came in October 2011. A subsequent appeal by Latif's attorneys to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected last June, also approximately three months before Latif died.

Since no one reads articles very carefully, and it is enough to spread a particular narrative in mainstream media sources to manufacture a version of Truth, the NYT does its readers a disservice by producing a bogus narrative of the death of Adnan Latif. According to the Times, Latif killed himself, and it was likely because his court case was overturned.

To be fair to the Times, there were stories in the press that speculated upon just such a scenario, as the Reprieve spokesperson in this Alternet article from last September appeared to do. In addition, the Swiss chapter of Amnesty International wrote about the Latif death on November 1, and indicated that the Guantanamo prisoner had died of suicide. ("Le suicide du détenu yéménite Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif en septembre 2012 nous rappelle la cruauté de ce régime de détention qui permet une détention illimitée et illégale.").

But statements by human rights groups are not the same as statements by the editorial board of the New York Times. One wonders what led them to assert that Latif had died from suicide, when no public source, indeed no story in their own paper had reported the same, until Truthout published Leopold's story nearly 12 hours later.

"Questions Remain"

Leopold's story is subheaded, "Questions Remain." Indeed they do.

The Truthout story draws upon eyewitness stories from a number of detainees as reported to human rights attorney David Remes. While Truthout withheld detainees' names to prevent possible retribution by Guantanamo authorities, former British resident Shaker Aamer gave permission for his name to be attached to his own statements about Latif's death.

Aamer, who is the subject of a major campaign to secure his release from the U.S. prison camp, told Remes that, among other things, Latif had been on hunger strike just before he died. He had been moved into Camp 5 only two days before he was found dead.

While readers should turn to Jason's article to read his complete story, it is worth noting the barebones of the revelations here, as it's unlikely you'll get them in the mainstream media any time soon.

According to Aamer and other detainees, Latif had gotten into an argument with guards in early August, after they failed to pass on a request from Latif about not getting his medications. Latif reportedly threw a rock at a guard tower and broke one of the spotlights.

Leopold's story explains what happened next:

The incident took place during Ramadan and resulted in dozens of soldiers being called into the rec area, some of who rolled up in Hummers, fired their weapons into the ground and threatened to kill Latif, according to several prisoners who were present.

"The guards came into Camp 5 with guns, and beat up the detainees," another prisoner recalled. "Other soldiers surrounded the camp. [The Officer in Charge] came and told detainees, 'You are extremists and I'm going to deal with you in a harsh way. You intend to kill our soldiers; we'll do the same thing to you.'"

While the New York Times pushes a narrative that links Latif's death to judicial decisions that happened many months before, I'd suggest that you don't have to be a fan of the mystery genre to know that if someone is threatened with being killed and then ends up dead in mysterious circumstances only a few weeks later, you've got something that needs investigation. But such investigation should not come from the same institution whose personnel made the death threats.

In fact, the seven alleged suicides at Guantanamo, and nine deaths overall since 2002, call out for an independent investigation. (I'd note that I also revealed evidence in a government document that there were earlier deaths of detainees at Guantanamo in early 2002. These, too, should be investigated.)

As reported in my Truthout story on two earlier Guantanamo "suicides," that of Abdul Rahman Al Amri in May 2007 and Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi in June 2009, like Latif both men died in Camp 5. The circumstances of their deaths were also strange. Al Amri was discovered with his hands tied behind his back. Al Hanashi's ligature (the means whereby he supposedly strangled himself) was never provided to autopsy doctors. It took years to get the autopsy reports on these prisoners, and the NCIS investigations have never been released.

In January, 2010, Scott Horton published a lengthy exposé at Harpers that seriously questioned the government's narrative about the deaths of three detainees on June 9, 2006. Like Al Amri, these detainees were also found with their hands tied behind their backs. They had cloth rags stuck down their throats in what UC Davis researcher Almerindo Ojeda has speculated could have been a form of "dryboarding." Yet the government still claims these deaths were suicide, and much of the mainstream media has defended the government's position.

The New York Times should be calling for an independent investigation into the death of Adnan Latif and the other supposed Guantanamo "suicides," and not constructing a dubious, unsourced narrative that discourages further inquiry.

On Torture and Forcible Deportations from Guantanamo

Every once in a while, a commenter at one of my articles at Firedoglake writes a comment that deserves wider recognition, and longer shelf-life, because it deepens coverage of the story or adds something special and important for the reader's consideration. That's the case with powwow's comment from my Firedoglake story the other day on the Obama administration's forcible deportation ("refoulement"), against all international law and precedent, of Algerian national and Guantanamo detainee Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed (reposted here at Invictus).

It was the Obama's second such unlawful deportation from Guantanamo in the last six months. While human rights groups took notice and protested, the story dropped into the black hole of current American indifference to the torture story. I'd add that FDL commenter, ondelette, at the same story also added a great link to the ICRC document, Transfers of detainees: legal framework, non-refoulement and contemporary challenges (PDF), where, as she explains, the document shows "how the doctrine came to be, and where it occurs in the laws of war as opposed to Human Rights Law (which is important in this case)."

Powwow's comment:

Well, it inexplicably took six months, but the other shoe has indeed dropped, just where the Supreme Court cleared the way for it to fall...

Tellingly, too, right after the Supreme Court granted the DOJ a last-minute month-long extension of time in which to file its response to Farhi bin Mohammed’s attempted challenge of the U.S. government’s handling of his imprisonment and then-pending release after more than eight years of his unlawful detention by two U.S. presidents. [What's the hurry, eh, Supreme Court? Must be some more corporate favors you can do instead, in the carefree interim...]

Thank you so much for covering this, Jeff. I was hoping that you’d be on the case, and you didn’t disappoint. Your evidence of Congressional complicity in these acts is key to understanding where responsibility for them lies.

…the Pentagon presented “evidence” from unreliable informers to frame Mr. Mohammed as a supporter of Al Qaeda. Presumably, Judge Kessler was unimpressed by this evidence. - Jeff

“Unreliable informers” such as, primarily, the tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed, about whose “evidence” Judge Gladys Kessler minced few words, stating in her November, 2009 habeas decision ordering the release of Farhi bin Mohammed (a release order which the Obama administration did not appeal, but failed to honor until more than a year later, and then only by forcing the detainee to move to Algeria against his will):

In October of 2008, the Government dropped allegations that [witness against bin Mohammed] Binyam Mohamed was involved in any bomb plot.
[...]
In the criminal context, confessions or testimony procured by torture are excluded under the Due Process Clause [of the Fifth Amendment] because such admissions would run contrary to “fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions.”
[...]
First, Binyam Mohamed’s lengthy and brutal experience in detention weighs heavily with the Court.
[...]
The difference, of course, is that Binyam Mohamed’s trauma lasted for two long years. During that time, he was physically and psychologically tortured. His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one foreign prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in various plots to imperil Americans. The Government does not dispute this evidence.
[...]
In this case, even though the identity of the individual interrogators changed (from nameless Pakistanis, to Moroccans, to Americans, and to Special Agent [censored]), there is no question that throughout his ordeal Binyam Mohamed was being held at the behest of the United States. Captors changed the sites of his detention, and frequently changed his location within each detention facility. He was shuttled from country to country, and interrogated and beaten without having access to counsel until arriving at Guantanamo Bay, after being re-interrogated by Special Agent [censored]. See JE 72 (declaration of Binyam Mohamed’s attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, stating that he did not meet with client until May of 2005)
[...]
In Bagram, he [Binyam Mohamed] wrote that he trained with three Algerians. JE 73 at 1902. When he arrived at Guantanamo Bay and, according to his subsequent statements, met Petitioner [Farhi bin Mohammed] for the first time, he then reported that one of those unnamed Algerians was in fact Petitioner. JE 27 at 2; JE 36 at 5. Given the factors discussed above, the court cannot credit this confession as voluntary. The earlier abuse had indeed “dominated the mind” of Binyam Mohamed to such a degree that his later statements to interrogators are unreliable.
[...]
Without Binyam Mohamed’s statements implicating Petitioner in training, the Government’s evidence supporting this allegation is severely weakened.

A glimmer of genuine U.S. justice for Farhi bin Mohammed. And then…

After the granting of his habeas petition, [bin Mohammed] fought a repatriation to Algeria, for the reasons stated earlier, and Judge Kessler granted that request. - Jeff

To her enormous credit, Judge Gladys Kessler took heed of Farhi bin Mohammed’s plea not to be further renditioned by the U.S. government, this time from eight years in a Guantanamo lock-up to a native country he’d voluntarily left behind him more than twenty years earlier for fear of his safety.

It was Kessler’s honorable concerns about the fate of this unjustly-held prisoner, which the United States Department of Justice headed by Eric Holder quickly appealed, and D.C. Circuit Appellate Judges Thomas Griffith, Brett Kavanaugh and (mostly) David Tatel in response quickly spurned, while hiding behind secret court filings, soon followed by Justices Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia & Thomas, who immediately concurred in telling the district court judge: Take a flying leap, Judge Kessler. No, you won’t test the State Department’s “boilerplate” representations about the future of Petitioner in Algeria, because we won’t let you. The predictable result, six unexplained months later, was this week’s rendition to Algeria, by the U.S. government, of Farhi bin Mohammed, the Convention Against Torture be damned.

This is how Judge Gladys Kessler conscientiously expressed her concerns last year, on June 10, 2010, in response to bin Mohammed’s plea not to be sent to Algeria:

On June 1, 2010, Petitioner [Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed] filed an Emergency Motion to Compel Compliance With This Court’s [Habeas Release] Order of November 19, 2009 and For TRO [Temporary Restraining Order] and Injunction Against Transfer of Petitioner to Algeria. The matter is now fully briefed.

In its Opposition to the Motion, the Government relies heavily on the representations made in three declarations, one of which was submitted ex parte so that Petitioner has not had an opportunity to read it, of Daniel Fried, the Special Envoy for the Closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. Two of those declarations appear to be boilerplate statements which have been filed in a number of the Government’s Oppositions to Motions (including Petitioner’s) filed before Judge Thomas F. Hogan of this Court, for an injunction against the transfer of certain petitioners held at Guantanamo Bay to other countries, including Algeria.1 Moreover, both of those two declarations are relatively old in that one was filed on July 9, 2009, and the second was filed on November 25, 2009. Obviously, the first two declarations are more than six months old. The classified ex parte declaration was filed much more recently.

Petitioner [bin Mohammed] has voiced great fear about being transferred to Algeria. He has not lived in Algeria for more than 20 years, and has no ties to that country. Because he has been designated an “enemy combatant,” he greatly fears retribution by the Algerian authorities and that he will be formally charged under the Algerian Penal Code, tortured, convicted, and very possibly executed by the Algerian Government. He has claimed that he will be caught between the Algerian government, which will brand him as an international terrorist, and armed domestic terrorists, who oppose the existing government, often pressure individuals to join their ranks, and retaliate violently when such individuals refuse. Petitioner has made clear that he would rather suffer continued confinement in Guantanamo Bay than be placed in the control of the Algerian government.

These allegations are of great concern. It is essential that the representations of the United States Government that it has received assurances from the Algerian Government that any Guantanamo Bay prisoner who is transferred to that country will receive “humane treatment and treatment in accordance with the international obligations of the foreign government accepting transfer” be tested. November 25, 2009 Decl. of Special Envoy Fried at ¶ 6. Given the centrality of those representations and assurances to the future of Petitioner and possibly to his very life, this Court has an obligation to ensure that there is real substance behind the conclusory phrases contained in Special Envoy Fried’s declarations.

Unlike his D.C. District colleague Judge Kessler, Judge Reggie Walton shamefully (if secretly) did not heed a similar plea at about the same time from fellow Algerian and Guantanamo detainee Abdul Naji.

Naji, who quickly thereafter received the same treatment from the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court as bin Mohammed, was thus, as Jeff reported at the time, the first forcible rendition out of Guantanamo by the Obama administration, six months ago, in July, 2010 (not in 2002, as Jeff inadvertently wrote above in this post), without benefit of any habeas corpus order on the merits of his case. Last summer, as reported by Josh Gerstein, this was the reaction of David Remes, attorney for both men, to the forcible transfer of Naji to Algeria – a reaction that applies equally today to the D.C. Circuit-contrived, Supreme Court-blessed, Obama administration-effected refoulement this week of Farhi bin Mohammed, an unlawful U.S. prisoner for the last eight years, to Algerian custody:

“It’s tragic, the human dimensions here,” an attorney for Naji, David Remes, said early Saturday. “The court wouldn’t even pause long enough to consider the claims of these men who face torture or death if they return to Algeria. Our only recourse now is diplomatic and political and that’s by no means a sure thing.... We have reason to believe that the military will transfer these men as soon as Sunday or Monday. The Supreme Court has left them to the awful fate that awaits them.”