"A growing feeling here that death is the road out of Guantanamo"

"What would you do if your brother or uncle was kidnapped, sold, and beaten in a prison for 11 years without charge?"

So says the question prominently posted at a Facebook site ("Free Fayiz and Fawzi") dedicated to the two remaining Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo, 36-year-old Fayiz Al-Kandari and 35-year-old Fawzi Al-Odah. Both men have been in Guantanamo for over ten years. Neither of them have ever been charged in any court with any wrongdoing. Both men were doing charitable work in Afghanistan when they were caught up in the chaos after 9/11 and the subsequent U.S. attack there.

Both men are on a hunger strike, reportedly along with many others at Guantanamo. Both have endured harsh interrogation and torture during their years in U.S. custody.

Air Force JAG, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, military attorney for Fayiz, has been in Guantanamo for the past week or so, and has seen first hand the effects of the hunger strike on his client. Wingard, who understandably is quite concerned for his clients, told The Dissenter al Kandari has lost "substantial weight," over 23 pounds in the last three to four weeks, or since the hunger strike began. He said Fayiz is now down to 120 pounds, and Fawzi weighs 123.

March 4, Kevin Gosztola explained in The Dissenter the details surrounding the current hunger strike at Guantanamo, the biggest in years.

The news of the hunger strike has hit the mainstream media, as exemplified by this report in The Atlantic. According to a story by Carol Rosenberg in the Miami Herald, military authorities state six of 166 prisoners are on hunger strike currently. Five are being force-fed. DoD spokespeople deny any widespread strike.

According to a March 5 article by Reuters, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez reports "the Obama administration showed no sign of reversing its position and allowing him access to terrorism suspects in long-term detention at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp." In this, the Obama administration follows the policy of its predecessor, George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, Rosenberg in a new story yesterday describes a previously unreported incident of a non-lethal shooting of a detainee last January.

As a March 4 letter from Center for Constitutional Rights and numerous Guantanamo detainee attorneys to Rear Admiral John W. Smith, Jr., Commander, Joint Task Force Guantánamo and Gitmo's Staff Judge Advocate Captain Thomas J. Welsh states, the hunger strike began after prison authorities began confiscating detainees’ personal items, restricting exercise, and "searching the men’s Qur’ans in ways that constitute desecration according to their religious beliefs." The letter also charges "guards have been disrespectful during prayer times."

DoD denies any Qur'ans have been treated disrespectfully, or for that matter, any differently than they have been for years.

"Stress, Fear, and Despair"

Besides the alleged search of Qur'ans by guards, according to one entry at the Facebook page for Al-Kandari and Al-Odah, guards -- whether under orders or not -- were up to other shenanigans as well: "In response to the hunger strike, soldiers opened containers of food so the smell could fill the prison. The prisoners were then asked if they wanted one or two servings of food. The response with a big smile: 'Do you really think the smell of your food is stronger than our religion?'"

The CCR letter noted, "The practices occurring today threaten to turn back the clock to the worst moments of Guantánamo’s history, and return the prison to conditions that caused great suffering to our clients and were condemned by the public at large. If prior experience serves as any guide, the current practices risk dire consequences and will only invite outside scrutiny."

The letter detailed "reports of men coughing up blood, being hospitalized, losing consciousness, becoming weak and fatigued, and being moved to Camp V for observation. Detainees have also expressed feeling increased stress, fear, and despair."

Wingard told The Dissenter, "A larger issue is that there is a growing feeling here that death is the road out of GTMO."

Certainly Wingard is cognizant of the fate of another hunger striking detainee, Adnan Latif, who was found dead in his cell last September. Latif's death was quite mysterious, and the government has ruled it a "suicide" by drug overdose, complicated by pneumonia. However, Latif was "medically cleared" and returned to his cell less than 48 hours before he died. No authority has yet explained how he could have hidden drugs in a facility under constant surveillance and as a prisoner privy to numerous searches.

Wingard continued:

The last releases of any size occurred under the Bush administration. I think the prisoners correctly note that less than 20 will ever get trials. For those without evidence, President Obama in March of 2011 announced many will be indefinitely detained without ever having stepped into a courtroom.

For my Kuwaitis its especially bitter since the Kuwait has demanded the return of its sons, built a rehabilitation center at the behest of the Bush administration, currently hosts 13k US troops in Kuwait and purchases billions in military from the US. Certainly if Kuwait is not getting it two remaining sons Fayiz al Kandari and Fawzi al Ohda, then what country will?

Another pointed entry at the Free Fayiz and Fawzi Facebook page quotes Wingard: "Fayiz and Fawzi are on a hunger strike with other prisoners. I request a Kuwaiti delegation to immediately visit Guantánamo Bay. It is not enough to have secret delegations between two allies."

Another attorney for Fayiz, Adel Abdul Hadi said, "I blame the Government of Kuwait for not taking genuine steps to have the boys released. The unanimous recommendations of the Kuwait parliament ratified in 2012, condemning GTMO and demanding the return of the boys have been ignored by the government."

The "last Egyptian detained" at Guantanamo

The hunger strikers are not the only detainees whose lives are reportedly in danger. Fifty-five year old Tariq al-Sawah, "the last Egyptian detained in the US Guantanamo Bay facility," is in very poor and "deteriorating" health, "morbidly obese."

According to a June 3 story in the Egyptian Independent, Sawah's "military-appointed lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Sean Gleason, has said three former Guantanamo commanders have provided letters indicating that he 'is not a threat and recommending he should be released'.... Beset with respiratory and heart complications, he is 'at significant risk' of death, according to a doctor. Authorities have refused him appropriate treatment, according to his doctor and lawyers, and continue to withhold his medical records."

In May 2011, another middle-aged obese detainee, Awal Gul, collapsed and died of a heart attack at Guantanamo. Questions have arisen about his death recently, as Jason Leopold at Truthout reports.


One could also ask how it is in such a controlled environment as Guantanamo that a prisoner could become "morbidly obese," having reportedly doubled his weight while imprisoned.


ICRC Rebukes Obama on Detainee Review

Along with Obama's March 2011 announcement of holding detainees indefinitely, the President also issued and executive order regarding a new review process for detainees held at Guantanamo. Obama said, referring to detainees that he indicated "in effect, remain at war with the United States," "We must have a thorough process of periodic review, so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified."

But according to an article late last year at the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration has failed in the past two years to institute any "process of periodic review." Article authors Julian E. Barnes and Evan Perez wrote, “The Obama administration has failed to re-evaluate the threat posed by dozens of prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, putting it at increasing odds with political allies who are angry with the president’s lack of action on the US terrorism-detention system.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recently raised the issue of the lack of a review process "senior US officials at recent meetings in the US and in Geneva." According to Barnes and Perez, the ICRC "also has acknowledged its concerns publicly, a rare rebuke from an agency that usually works under strict neutrality and in confidence.”

As Andy Worthington pointed out in an article on February 28, "an unnamed senior official added, 'The detainees likely to be held long-term without trial pose a significant risk, and the threat they pose isn’t likely to have diminished since the initial review by the administration, meaning the delay in beginning the reviews hasn’t been consequential.'"

Worthington commented, "That is particularly disgraceful, because it indicates an acceptance, within the administration, of information that is fundamentally unreliable."

In fact, the Obama administration has shown that it has zero interest in administering justice for detainees at Guantanamo. It has publicly justified the indefinite detention of prisoners on hearsay evidence. It retired its Guantanamo special envoy, Daniel Fried, and then announced it had no intention to replace him. It continues to pursue deeply flawed military commissions trials, the laughing stock of the world, where even the judge in charge doesn't know who is in control of his courtroom, as the sudden suspension of audio feed to the press proved some weeks ago.

Disturbingly, last month, according to a report by Josh Wirtshafter at The Public Record, "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two of his co-defendants, had returned to their cells after yesterday’s session to find their attorney-client mail ransacked— and much of it seized."

Detainee's Father: "this is illegal and against human rights"

A few months before the crackdown on prisoners at Guantanamo and the subsequent hunger strike, Fayiz told Al Jazeera what it was like for him at the U.S.-based Cuban prison camp: "I pray, I read the Qur’an, I work out two hours every day, and I socialize with other prisoners. Because of the insignificant medical care in Guantanamo Bay, I cannot afford being ill. I am already plagued with serious medical conditions such as permanent damage in my cervical spine. Therefore, I regularly practice physical exercise to boost my immune system and to prevent the onset of any disease. The International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] has done a poor job in effectively helping the prisoners. For example, the ICRC provides each prisoner with a phone call to their parents once every six to eight weeks instead of once every four weeks."

Fawzi’s father, Khalid Al-Odah, is the head of the Kuwaiti Family Committee, an organization formed by relatives of the detainees to advocate for their just treatment under the U.S. judicial system. The elder Al-Odah is a former member of the Kuwaiti Air Force, who trained with American servicemen in the United States and flew missions with them as an ally in the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

Last April, Khalid spoke about his son and Fayiz to Kuwati Times:

"We want the detainees back to be judged here. We fulfilled all the conditions and demands set by the US administration. We prepared the rehabilitation center for them to stay in when they return. We also agreed to apply security measures and observation on them, like the travel ban and other conditions, yet we didn’t notice any positive act from the US government... In fact, during Bush’s regime most detainees were released, but now only a few were released and they were even sent to a third nation and not their home country. Obama only talks much, but he is not practically helpful....

“Our lawyer there is still working on the case, but there is no result yet. The American government won’t allow a fair trial for them, and this is illegal and against human rights. We are also dealing and meeting with different NGOs and international organizations to help us in this injustice. We need support from the public, as the Kuwaiti government is not active."

It's been nearly a year since Fawzi's father spoke out. How long must this man wait to see his son?

Fawsi wrote to his father in 2002, while held by the Americans, "I will be established as innocent soon, and then I will return back to you..."

Meanwhile, Fayiz's attorney posted the following in a February 2013 Facebook entry: "We promised Fayiz we would not forget his brother, [British resident interned without charge at Guantanamo] Shaker Aamer. Fayiz would say, 'Shaker has four children, get him home first.' Then with humor he would add, 'don't think I don't want to go home' with a big smile."

Crossposted at The Dissenter/FDL

ICRC Confirms Existence of Second Secret Prison at Bagram, BBC Reports Torture

Originally posted at Firedoglake/The Seminal

Hilary Andersson at BBC has been following the Bagram prison story closely. Today, she reports that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed the existence of a second prison site at Bagram. The presence of a second site has long been suspected, a prison the Afghans call Tor Prison, or the "Black" Prison.

The US military says the main prison, now called the Detention Facility in Parwan, is the only detention facility on the base.

However, it has said it will look into the abuse allegations made to the BBC.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that since August 2009 US authorities have been notifying it of names of detained people in a separate structure at Bagram.

Obama Tortures, Too

Last month, BBC reported on conditions at the main Parwan facility. The scenes as described were right out of the iconography of Guantanamo. Prisoners in handcuffs and leg shackles, "moved around in wheelchairs" with blackout goggles and headphones "to block out all sound." This was the treatment for a prison population that even the U.S. military admits is far and away not made up of serious terrorists. Meanwhile, the number held at Bagram has swelled to approximately 800 prisoners.

But we don’t know how many are in the other, "the Black Hole." We don’t know because the U.S. still insists that no second prison exists. Prisoners held at Tor, according to investigations by BBC, are tossed into cold concrete cells, where the light is kept on 24 hours. Noise machines fill their cells with constant sound, and prisoners are sleep deprived as a matter of policy, with each cell monitored by a camera, so the authorities will know when someone is falling asleep and come to wake them.

Prisoners are beaten and abused. According to BBC’s article last month, one prisoner was "made to dance to music by American soldiers every time he wanted to use the toilet."

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times reported late last year on conditions at the black-site prison, believed to be run by U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Each of these reports noted that prisoners were subjected to abuse. One prisoner, a 42-year-old farmer named Hamidullah told the New York Times about his stay in the Tor prison, June through October 2009:

I can’t remember the number of days I spent there because it’s hard to tell days from nights in the black jail, but I think every day they came twice to ask questions.

They took me to their own room to ask the questions. They beat up other people in the black jail, but not me. But the problem was that they didn’t let me sleep. There was shouting noise so you couldn’t sleep….

The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place. It is a place where everybody is afraid. In the black jail, they can do anything to detainees.

Together with the BBC investigation and the ICRC confirmation, we can see that the military is lying through their teeth when they claim there is no second Bagram facility, or that no abuse takes place at Bagram. (For more on Bagram and the issue of indefinite detention, see this recent diary by Jim White.)

The presence of sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, brutality, isolation and the like at the U.S. prison complex has not been a matter of protest among U.S. progressives, many of whom still support the administration of President Barack Obama. Many liberals have been in denial over the poor record of President Obama on the issue of torture and detention policies. The President began his administration with a big series of presidential orders that supposedly ended the Bush administration’s policy of torturing prisoners, and shut down the CIA’s black site prsons.

But as we know now, not all the black site prisons were shut down. Nor was the torture ended. Whether it’s beatings and forced-feedings at Guantanamo, or the kinds of torture described at Bagram, it’s obvious that torture has not been rooted out of U.S. military-intelligence operations. In fact, by way of the Obama administration’s recent approval of the Bush-era Army Field Manual on interrogations, with its infamous Appendix M, which allows for much of the kind of torture practiced at Bagram, the White House has institutionalized a level of torture that was introduced by the previous administration, but which has been studied and devised over the last fifty or sixty years.

Furthermore, in a June 2009 Air Force document reported on last July, it was noted that the personnel responsible for some of the torture program deriving from the SERE schools were still allowed "psychological oversight of battlefield interrogation and detention." Are SERE psychologists involved in the Special Operations at torture at Tor and Parwan? Given the close relationship between SERE’s parent group, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, and JSOC, I think there’s a high possibility of just such involvement.

A question hangs heavily over the U.S. political scene: how long will denial exist among liberals and progressives over the persistence of an aggressive military policy and the concomitant crimes against humanity that come with it? How long will the supporters of Barack Obama maintain their studied indifference to the crimes against humanity done in their name? The shine is off this new president, and underneath it all we can discern the same old game of lies covering for crimes. Enough is enough.

Obama & Holder Trash Nuremberg Principles (updated)

A dark, dark day for America.

"They were only following orders." This is the opinion of Eric Holder, as offered in his statement today, describing the decision to release four Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel memos. (The memos have just been posted, and link is here.)

And so the United States government, 64 years after the end of World War II, adopts the infamous slogan of "Befehl ist Befehl" (literally "orders are orders"), otherwise known as the Nuremberg Defense.

Furthermore, Holder pledges the U.S. government will defend any CIA torturers before any tribunal, domestic or international, pay any fines, and make every effort to assert "any available immunities and other defenses".

"It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," Holder said.

No matter how you try to spin it. No matter how enraged you are at my making a comparison to of U.S. governmental leaders to Nazi war criminals, there is no getting around it. Torturers are absolved by this administration. And the way they did was by using the defense made popular by the Nazis at their war crimes trials, and thoroughly rejected by the United States at that time.

In taking this position formally, the Obama administration has discarded the principles enumerated in the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, where Articles 7 and 8 state (emphasis added):

Article 7. The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment.

Article 8. The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires.

"Mitigation of punishment" sounds a hell of a lot different than what Holder is proposing, which is an all-out defense of those who claim who were "only following orders" (quotes for irony, not Holder's). Perhaps Holder should consider this statement, from the Nuremberg IMT's Trial of the Major War Criminals:

Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.

Or both Holder and Obama can consider what the U.S., as a High Contracting Party, or signatory, to the Geneva Conventions says about the duty to prosecute war crimes, such as torture (emphasis added):

“Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case.

Geneva III POWs, art. 129, Geneva IV Civilians, art. 146; see also 18 USC 2441(c)(1).

Evidence of the crimes committed by CIA officers, agents and/or contractors in perpetuating torture are documented in a number of sources, but none as authoritative as the recent report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on CIA abuse and torture of "high-value detainees" in its custody. The failure to seek prosecutions of war criminals, and now by formal pronouncement, puts high officials of the U.S. government in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Additionally, and no less outrageously, when Eric Holder or Barack Obama tell you the U.S. government does not condone torture, they do not tell you the truth. The government maintains a classic form of torture within the current Army Field Manual, combining partial sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, harsh use of fear and dread, all while instilling a sense of hopelessness in prisoners, which is the same sort of psychological torture perfected by the Stalinists of various countries, and advocated in the CIA's own counter-intelligence interrogation manual from the early 1960s, known as the KUBARK Manual.

Those who are so inclined may wish to watch this concluding section of the famous film, "Judgement at Nuremberg." The quote that follows is from Spencer Tracy's speech. As you watch, consider how far subservience to the military and intelligence agencies has acted as an acid to undermine all that this nation once believed and fought for.

The principle of criminal law in every civilized society as this in common: any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime, is guilty....

Before the people of the world let it now be noted in our decision that this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

UPDATE

The release of the memos by OLC justifying torture are up for anyone to view. The link is at the top of the diary. I've looked at the Aug. 1, 2002 memo from Jay Bybee (and any helpers) to John Rizzo at CIA. It's an extraordinary document, and everyone should take a look.

It authorizes the use of ten abusive interrogation techniques: attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap (insult slap), cramped confinement, wall standing (should be called slamming), stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box (!), and the waterboard.

The connections between SERE techniques and use CIA operational use of same is made clear throughout, as is the collaboration with medical professionals and SERE military psychologists. Notably, Bybee claims the OLC decision was vetted with interrogation experts, SERE experts, and "outside psychologists". One wonders who the latter were, and I would like to see the American Psychological Association ask for an immediate investigation of who these "outside psychologists" were.

Throughout the document there are blacked-out sections, mostly those that obviously relate to names and identities. But not entirely, as there are whole paragraphs blocked out in sections that evidently go into more details than DoJ wished to release.

As you read these documents and their bogus claims of authority to torture, imagine you are one of the interrogators getting these orders (place insects in a confinement box! waterboard!). And remember, finally, that the CIA and/or military used torture prior to the authoring of these memos (also see this link), so Holder's "they were only following orders" defense is pure BS from top to bottom.

Also posted at Daily Kos