Majority of Bagram prison detainees to be released

By GottaLaff

Liveblogging Thom Hartmann:

The U.S. military says the vast majority of the 700 detainees from Bagram Air Force Base, arrested in Afghanistan, in prison... of the 700, the vast majority will be released.

Why? U.S. Military brigadier general Mark Martins says because they're fighting more for money than ideology.

In Afghanistan, where we are spending a whole lot of money, the Taliban pays people $5 a day (big money there), so why don't we just give them $5 a day (asks Thom)? Let them be one of the world's primary sources of raw materials for pharmaceuticals. One gallon of gasoline is enough to pay an Afghan to plant trees for 4 months.

This is huge, he says.

We'll let these prisoners out because so few (10-20%) are fighting for ideology, because their family members or friends were killed by U.S. forces, or resent the occupation. They're not defending Islam, they're defending their families, their homes. No country likes to be colonized.

WE threw off the colonizers.

Time for us to wake up. The solution doesn't have to be expensive or difficult.

ACLU sues Defense, State Dep't., DoJ, CIA for files on Bagram prisoners

By GottaLaff

Go get 'em, ACLU!

After months of asking politely and being refused, the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the U.S. Departments of Defense, State and Justice, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, to obtain files on prisoners in U.S. custody at the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan.

"There is growing concern that Bagram has become the new Guantánamo – except with hundreds more prisoners, held indefinitely in reportedly harsher conditions, with no access to lawyers or courts," said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, in a media advisory. "Yet the public is still in the dark when it comes to basic facts such as whom our military is holding there, for how long and on what grounds, and the rules that govern their detention, release and treatment. As long as the Bagram prison is shrouded in secrecy, there is no way to know the truth or begin to address the problems that may exist."

Sound familiar? It should (see bottom of post). I write about this nearly every day. Why? Because, as we say about the Rushpublics, repetition, repetition, repetition works. We need to pay attention to these injustices and not let up until we see real change.

But unlike the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay -- the US naval base in Cuba where over 200 "war on terror" detainees are still held -- the Bagram inmates have had no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants."

President Barack Obama's administration argued in a filing with the US Court of Appeals in Washington that terror suspects at Bagram should not be allowed to challenge their decision in US courts, a right the Supreme Court has granted to Guantanamo detainees.

US District Judge John Bates ruled in April that foreign prisoners held at Bagram should also be provided that right, enshrined in the writ of habeas corpus. [...]

"When prisoners are in American custody and under American control, no matter the location, our values and commitment to the rule of law are at stake," said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, in an April press release. "Now that President Obama has taken the positive step of ordering Guantánamo shut down, it is critical that we don't permit ‘other Gitmos' to continue elsewhere."

It's time for President Obama to take positive leaps, not steps. From what I've been hearing from reliable sources, DoJ isn't doing the Gitmo prisoners any favors, either.

****

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.

Bagram: The sham of closing Guantanamo

By GottaLaff

I can't possibly summarize Glenn Greenwald's piece and still do it justice. Please, go read it for yourself.

And for those who are new here:

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.

Detainees Were Also Murdered At Bagram in Afghanistan

By GottaLaff

By now, you pretty much know I'm all about exposing the ongoing mistreatment of prisoners at Gitmo, Bagram, and elsewhere. And speaking of Bagram...

...Jason Leopold posted this today:

A new report documenting the torture of more than two-dozen former prisoners held at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2008 comes several months after a bipartisan congressional committee linked the murder of two detainees held at the same prison facility to policies enacted by George W. Bush and ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The April report released by the Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of prisoners held in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan concluded that a combination of various torture techniques coupled with a series of brutal beatings administered by military interrogators caused the deaths of the two prisoners in December 2002. [...]

According to the Armed Services Committee report, another detainee identified as Habibulllah was killed two days after Rumsfeld authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques against prisoners in Afghanistan. Dilawar was murdered six days after Habibullah was killed. The report labeled their deaths homicides. [...]

In fact, as the New York Times reported in May 2005, when Dilawar was murdered, “most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.”

Does that last part sound familiar? It would if you've been reading my series about Fayiz al-Kandari.

The U.S. Military never produced any evidence to prove that either Habibullah or Dilawar had connections to the Taliban or al-Qaeda. The detainees interviewed by the BBC during a two-month investigation said they were also apprehended and indefinitely imprisoned at Bagram on suspicion of being members of the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

The details of the murders of Dilawar and Habibullah at the hands of military interrogators have been previously reported. But the Senate report included new information about the behind-the-scenes meetings that took place between high-level Pentagon officials in the months before their deaths where “enhanced interrogation” policies implemented at Bagram were discussed.

Those policies were also directly responsible for the torture of some of the prisoners who were interviewed by the BBC.

Previous reports, including one from the Army’s criminal investigative unit, pinned Dilawar and Habibullah’s murder on rogue soldiers and on-the-ground military officials but have never linked the murders directly to the interrogation policies enacted by the Bush administration.

They do now.

The report says, “The use of stress positions and sleep deprivation combined with other mistreatment at the hands of Bagram personnel, caused or were direct contributing factors in the two homicides.”

The report makes clear it was Rumsfeld’s interrogation directives and a Feb. 7, 2002 action memorandum signed by Bush suspending the Geneva Conventions for al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners that “opened the door” to the systematic abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The committee traced the murder of Dilawar and Habibullah’s to interrogation policies at Bagram that were first proposed by Pentagon officials in October 2001, just days after the U.S. launched an attack against the Taliban government.

Sleep well, BushCo. And let's hope that the ObamAdministration releases any and all innocents, like Fayiz, as quickly as is humanly possible.

"Extreme Repression Force"-- Spain's probe: Gitmo abuse devastating

By GottaLaff

UPDATE: Please Reddit this post, and don't forget to follow the link at the end to read more. It's mandatory that we stay informed, and get the media to pick up on this. Thanks! Love, Laffy

UPDATE #2: I bumped this up. We need to get this around. Again, please Reddit, Tweet the media. This cannot be ignored. It's horrendous, and it's being done in our name.

If this article doesn't justify an investigation BushCo and others, then I don't know what will. Here's a sick little teaser:

The 'Black Shirts' of Guantanamo routinely terrorize prisoners, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles, and 'dousing' them with chemicals. [...]

Omar Deghayes (whose torture began long before he reached Guantánamo, and intensified upon his arrival):

He also described seeing U.S. guards sodomize an African prisoner and alleged guards "forced petrol and benzene up the anuses of the prisoners."

"The camp looked like the Nazi camps that I saw in films."

Had enough? Too bad. Horrifying, twisted, cruel, wrong, illegal, and it all belongs to us:

According to journalist Jeremy Scahill — best known for his investigations of mercenary firm Blackwater (now Xe) — an ongoing Spanish investigation is painting a devastating picture of the brutality exercised by the US military over detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

The investigation focuses in particular on a squad whose standard procedure is to crush even minimal resistance or uncooperativeness by Guantanamo prisoners with a maximum degree of violence. “The force is officially known as the the Immediate Reaction Force or Emergency Reaction Force,” Scahill writes, “but inside the walls of Guantánamo, it is known to the prisoners as the Extreme Repression Force.”

[...] Scahill draws the pieces together, the extent of the deliberate burtality and dehumanization becomes agonizingly apparent.

The IRF teams’ official guidelines indicate that they should use only the minimum amount of force necessary on unruly detainees and should never use force as a method of punishment. However, witnesses tell a very different story. Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, describes the IRF as “Black Shirts” and Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented 50 Guantanamo prisoners, calls them simply “goons.”

It appears that the teams were even directed to create pretexts for brutality where none existed in order to make sure that all the prisoners were fully intimidated.

According to legal expert Scott Horton, the extrajudicial actions of these teams — which include beating prisoners, using attack dogs, rubbing pepper spray directly in their eyes, and leaving them hog-tied and in excruciating pain for hours — were “fully approved” by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in consultation with the Justice Department.

[...] Stafford Smith does say that “there is photographic evidence.”

Witnesses now state that the abuses have not only continued since Barack Obama became president and called for the closing of Guantanamo but may have actually intensified.

Here's the insane part:

“The sad fact is that the best chance for justice for the victims of U.S. torture may well be an ocean away in Madrid, Spain,” Scahill concludes.

Please make yourself read the rest of the very gory details here. Then explain why we shouldn't prosecute.

Did the CIA lie to the Red Cross? And about those criticisms of President Obama's policies...

By GottaLaff

Is this obstruction of justice? That's what the Washington Independent is asking:

[T]hat’s what Jane Mayer told Alternet’s Liliana Segura: the Defense Department actually hid prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross when the humanitarian group first visited the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in 2002.

“That’s an overt act; lying to the Red Cross, hiding prisoners from them,” Mayer said.

Here is an excerpt from Segura's interview that delves further into the lies:

LS: Is there anything in the report in particular that has struck you that you didn't know before?

JM: One of the things that caught my eye last night was that it's clear that the CIA -- and I think you'd have to guess the Department of Defense -- lied to the Red Cross. They told the Red Cross when it visited Guantanamo [in 2002] that it had seen all of the detainees. But what the report says is that some of the detainees -- some of the high-value detainees -- realized when they were finally sent to Guantanamo in 2006 that they'd been there before. They were there. And yet the Red Cross was not allowed to see them. The Red Cross was told they'd seen everybody.

So the CIA and DOD lied to the Red Cross. There were some hidden prisoners in Guantanamo. That's an overt act; lying to the Red Cross, hiding prisoners from them.

And here is some interesting analysis about the Obama administration's policies:

LS: Does this mean that the CIA black sites have been dismantled? Also, what about renditions? Isn't Obama keeping open the possibility of keeping Clinton-era style rendition in place?

JM: [...] Essentially, they claim it's a return to the pre-9/11 Clinton program, which was ostensibly "rendition to justice." But some sources who were involved in the Clinton years have told me it was a very rough business. The CIA has fought very hard to keep the program going in a modified form. We'll see if they can do it in the transparent, legal and humane way the executive orders require. I have my doubts.

I think that there's a ton still to do here. And some of the early positions they've taken -- defending state secrets and denying, as you say, habeas corpus rights to prisoners held in Bagram -- you know, they're worrisome. I think there's more going on here, though, which people haven't really focused on, which is: there's a real tug-of-war going on about the confirmation process. A number of top appointees who Obama wants to put in to handle some of these issues have not been confirmed. The Republicans in the Senate are really holding up people that Obama needs to make changes for the better.

You've got Harold Koh, who's been nominated to be the top lawyer for the State Department. He's a great defender of human rights. His nomination confirmation is in trouble because the Republicans are talking about trying to block him.

And the same thing is true of Dawn Johnsen, who has been nominated for the head of the Office of Legal Council. And there are a number of other top positions that are open that are really important. The Obama administration doesn't have enough staff to handle what it needs to do.

Meanwhile, it's being hit by wave after wave of litigation, because the human rights community's approach in the Bush years was "we're gonna litigate." So there is case after case breaking and requiring action from the Obama administration, which doesn't have its people in place yet. And I think that's part of the problem. So, I'm cutting them more slack then some critics, because I don't think we're seeing everything they want to do yet.

LS: So is what you're saying that they are buying themselves time, adopting these Bush positions or defending them for the moment?

JM: Well they're definitely buying themselves time on Guantanamo, but they haven't bought themselves very much time. They gave themselves 180 days; they've got three task forces, which took a long time to get up and running. I hear from people who are involved in this that it's a really complicated process.

And on the state-secrets cases -- you know, I don't know whose really making these decisions. But again, on accountability, I think it comes back to Obama himself. And he is spread so thin and so distracted by so many other emergencies right now, I'm not sure that he's really giving it the attention that some of us think it needs.

So that's what I think is going on. I'm not sure that I would impute terrible motives to them at this point. I think it's more disorganization and delay.

This would all go back to my wait-and-see posture. Which is why I'm waiting and seeing. And have good posture.

Like Mayer, I have some doubts, but I feel we still don't know the whole story yet. I remain troubled by what Jonathan Turley and others have opined, but as I keep saying, I'm willing to be patient for awhile longer. It's only been a couple of months, after all. I'm still in simmer mode.

Obama backs Bush on Bagram prisoners

By GottaLaff

This is not helping those of us who are already suffering from crankitude:

The Justice Department told a federal court Friday that it shouldn’t consider legal challenges filed by prisoners being held in Afghanistan by the U.S. military — another example of the Obama administration hewing to one of President Bush’s war-on-terror stances.

In a short legal filing, Justice Department lawyers said they planned to maintain the Bush administration’s claim that the roughly 600 prisoners held in Afghaninstan have no right to contest their detention in the courts. [...]

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that war-on-terror prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have the right to file court petitions because the U.S. has “de facto sovereignty” over the base, located on land leased from Cuba.

However, the Justice Department has argued that prisoners in Afghanistan, held at the Bagram Airbase outside Kabul, lack recourse to the courts because the U.S. does not have similar control over that region. [...]

The opportunity the Obama administration passed up today was created by Judge John Bates on January 22, when he issued an order noting the change in administration and offering the government a chance to “refine” its position in the Afghanistan-related cases.

This is disappointing, to say the least. I'm so ready for this day to be over.

Newly released documents show Defense Department involved with secret prisons

By GottaLaff

President Obama better damn well call for change on this one:

The Department of Defense’s involvement in the CIA’s “ghost” detention program is certain, according to three human rights groups -- Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. They released documents today from the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of State that, they said, prove the existence of secret prisons at Bagram and in Iraq as well as the Department of Defense cooperation with the CIA ghost detention program. They also said the documents show one case where the Defense sought to delay the release of Guantanamo prisoners. [...]

“It is astonishing that the government may have delayed releasing men from Guantánamo in order to avoid bad press,” said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez, who represents many of the men held in Guantánamo and has made 30 trips to the base since 2004. “Proposing to hold men for a month and a half after they were deemed releasable is inexcusable. The Obama administration should avoid repeating this injustice and release the innocent individuals with all due haste.”

This is the first time the Defense Department has provided any documents in response to the 2007 lawsuit based on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests dating back to 2004, the groups said.

Through their lawsuit, the human rights groups seek the disclosure of government documents that relate to secret detention, extraordinary rendition and torture, they said.

Here are links to the documents: 1., 2., 3., 4., 5., 6., 7., 8.

As more information comes out, more evidence of war crimes is revealed, and as a consequence, the odds that there will be prosecutions increases.