The New Wonderland

"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
- Barack Obama

"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is--'Be what you would seem to be'--or if you'd like it put more simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"

- Alice in Wonderland (Chapter 9)

ACLU: Obama Administration Reverses Promise To Release Torture Photos

Obama Breaks Major Campaign Promise as Military Commissions Resume, Says Amnesty International

Greenwald: Obama's kinder, gentler military commissions

Obama mulls 'indefinite detention' of terror suspects

Death in Libya, betrayal in the west

Obama supporters up in arms once again simply cannot claim that they weren't warned. They just refused to pay attention when it really mattered.
 

'Guantanamo judge refuses Obama's request for delay'

That's the Reuters headline and here's the story which is sure to stir up controversy:

MIAMI (Reuters) - The chief judge for the Guantanamo war crimes court on Thursday refused President Barack Obama's request to delay court proceedings against a prisoner charged with plotting an attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Hours after taking office last week, Obama ordered Guantanamo prosecutors to seek 120-day delays in all pending cases in order to give his new administration time to decide whether to scrap the trials.

But the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said tribunal rules give the judges sole authority to delay cases and that postponing proceedings against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri was not reasonable and "does not serve the interest of justice."

Nashiri is charged with conspiring with al Qaeda to send an explosives-laden boat into the side of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors and Nashiri would face execution if convicted. His arraignment was set for early February.

I, along with many others, bought last week's headline that Obama had suspended all military tribunals for 120 days so that second paragraph made me take a look at the actual executive order because that story states that the administration had simply asked prosecutors to seek those delays - in which case that judge may well be within his rights. So which version is true?

Relevant sections:

(4) Determination of Other Disposition. With respect to any individuals currently detained at Guantánamo whose disposition is not achieved under paragraphs (2) or (3) of this subsection, the Review shall select lawful means, consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice, for the disposition of such individuals. The appropriate authorities shall promptly implement such dispositions.

...

Sec. 7. Military Commissions. The Secretary of Defense shall immediately take steps sufficient to ensure that during the pendency of the Review described in section 4 of this order, no charges are sworn, or referred to a military commission under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the Rules for Military Commissions, and that all proceedings of such military commissions to which charges have been referred but in which no judgment has been rendered, and all proceedings pending in the United States Court of Military Commission Review, are halted.

"Halted" seems definitive but this isn't exactly that clear cut.

"We are consulting with the Pentagon and the Department of Justice to explore our options in that case," [WH spokespuppet] Gibbs said.

The Office of Military Commissions, which manages the prosecutions, may have to temporarily drop charges against al-Nashiri to comply with the presidential order, said Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for that agency.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell discounted that possibility but said that no proceedings against al-Nashiri would be going forward.

"The bottom line is, we all work for the president of the United States in this chain of command," Morrell said. "And he has signed an executive order that has made it abundantly clear that until these reviews are done, all of this is on hiatus."

Stay tuned.
 

Documentary: The U.S. vs Omar Khadr

This past week, CBC's Doc Zone presented the documentary, The U.S. vs Omar Khadr. It will rerun tonite at 10 pm ET but you can watch it in its entirety here as well.

It makes for painful and frustrating viewing because Khadr's case has been so badly handled - from the fact that he's a child soldier who shouldn't be prosecuted in the first place, to allegations of torture, evidence that just doesn't add up and a Canadian government that refuses to repatriate him.

You can check out the Doc Zone's site (linked above) for links to the relevant documents and history.

Although both US presidential candidates have promised to close Gitmo, the fact that some countries don't want to repatriate their citizens being held there creates a major stumbling block since too many Americans are unwilling to see these detainees housed on American soil where they may also acquire some actual legal rights denied to them now while they're imprisoned in a foreign land.

There's no doubt that the Bush/Cheney "military tribunal" experiment has failed and that their administration's disregard for human rights has been abominable. That, more than the failure of the economy which has put US militarism and torture on the back burner, should be enough to make sure that the Republicans and any complicit Democrats who supported such overt, inhumane fascism are thrown out of office.

(Total run time: approximately 44 minutes in 5 parts - no commercials.)











(h/t reader ghostcatbce)

Related:

Amnesty likens Canadian held in Ethiopia to Khadr case
CAMPUS: Students protest for Khadr's release
Lawyers call for Omar Khadr's repatriation to Canada
 

Torture Investigations and Gitmo Developments

Last week, the US house judiciary began hearings into the evolution of the Bush administration's decision-making related to the approval of torture ("enhanced interrogation methods"). David Rivkin, a former Reagan justice department official, testified that the idea of prosecuting anyone involved in crafting the policies was "madness" while fellow panelist, law professor and head of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohn, reminded the committee that if the US fails to appropriately investigate and prosecute these war crimes (which Bush has already admitted to), there are more than a few countries waiting in the wings to act on those prosecutions. She also laid out the legal case under current US laws and treaties.

Phillipe Sands, who also testified before the committee and who recently authored the book Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values said he's already been contacted by officials in other, unnamed countries who plan to use the contents of his book to further their investigations that could well lead to those criminal indictments Rivkin thinks are "madness".

Sands' book, which I have yet to read, follows the case of the so-called "20th hijacker", Mohammed al-Qahtani, whose case interestingly enough was dropped on Monday. Coincidence? Probably not.

The attorney said he could not comment on the reasons for the dismissal until discussing the case with lawyers for the other five defendants. Officials previously said al-Qahtani had been subjected to a harsh interrogation authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
[...]
Critics of the tribunals have faulted a rule that allows judges to decide whether to allow evidence that may have been obtained with "coercion." U.S. authorities have acknowledged that Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding by CIA interrogators and that al-Qahtani was treated harshly at Guantanamo.

Al-Qahtani last fall recanted a confession he said he made after he was tortured and humiliated at Guantanamo.

The alleged torture, which he detailed in a written statement, included being beaten, restrained for long periods in uncomfortable positions, threatened with dogs, exposed to loud music and freezing temperatures and stripped nude in front of female personnel.

And that's just one blow of at least 3 that I know of that the farcical military tribunals process has suffered during the past week alone.

In the continuing saga of Canadian child soldier, Omar Khadr, Liberal senator Romeo Dallaire on Tuesday, in the harshest terms uttered to the Conservative minority government yet due to its unwillingness to bring Khadr home, had this to say:

“The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties, in order to say that you're doing it to protect yourself and you are going against those rights and conventions, you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all,” he said.

That prompted a heated exchange with Conservative MP Jason Kenney, who asked Mr. Dallaire if what he meant was that Canada's failure to act to protect Mr. Khadr was equivalent to recent al-Qaeda atrocities in Iraq.

“Is it your testimony that al-Qaeda strapping up a 14-year-old girl with Down's Syndrome and sending her into a pet market to be remotely detonated is the moral equivalent to Canada's not making extraordinary political efforts for a transfer of Omar Khadr to this country?” he asked. “Is that your position?”

Dallaire was adamant.

“If you want a black and white, and I'm only too prepared to give it to you, Absolutely,” he said. “You're either with the law or not with the law. You're either guilty or you're not.”

Khadr alleges he's been tortured by US officials and his lawyers find it suspicious that some of his records are now missing:

GUANTANAMO BAY–The Pentagon disputes claims that political pressure prematurely halted an investigation into the alleged abuse of Omar Khadr when he was detained in Afghanistan.

Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon said army investigators did not substantiate the allegations of harsh interrogations at the U.S. base in Bagram.

Following a court hearing Thursday at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Khadr's military lawyer accused the government of a cover-up since the investigation appeared to stop in October 2006 – the same month U.S. President George W. Bush signed the military law under which Khadr is charged.

During that hearing, the judge also threatened to suspend Khadr's trial because the US government was withholding documents related to his Gitmo imprisonment.

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

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

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

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

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

It almost looks like the so-called military tribunals system is falling apart.

On top of that, in the Hamdan case:

(CNN) -- A military judge's ruling that a Pentagon lawyer improperly pressured prosecutors could hurt efforts to try top al Qaeda suspects held at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, a defense lawyer said Monday.

The ruling called allegations that Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions, exerted improper influence on the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan "troubling" and ordered Hartmann to stay out of the prisoner's prosecution.

Defense attorney Charles Swift said the ruling is likely to stall the pending case against Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard, and complicate the prosecutions of other al Qaeda figures before the military courts set up by the Bush administration.

"It would seem that they need to go back to Square 1 wherever the HVD [high-value detainee] charges are concerned or risk the fact that they may be so tainted from the start that they will never survive," said Swift.

With Bushco in its last throes and so desperate to get a big conviction of someone - anyone - before they finally leave the White House they've so severely soiled and in order to boost McCain's bid for the presidency, the next few months will be crucial. But it seems their legal house of cards is finally crumbling to the point where the fates of the remaining Gitmo prisoners may be suspended indefinitely or at least until te next president is chosen.

Are the Gitmo judges finally fighting back against the political pressure or have they concluded that to be involved in a faux, extra-legal process might also mean complicity in war crimes? At this point, while they still operate under the thumb of the Bush administration, it's impossible to know.

One thing is certain though. It's absolutely unacceptable for the remaining presidential candidates to simply parrot the Bush line "the US does not torture" especially when the CIA continues to operate all over the world under the public radar. Torture is a subject they don't seem to want to touch except in terms of useless platitudes. That's not enough.

As was also stated during last week's committee hearings there is also a case that can be made against the lawyers involved in drafting the now infamous torture memos since they could end up being charged with complicity to violate the US and international laws against torture.

On June 26th, Cheney's chief of staff is supposed to appear before the committee after being subpoenaed to do so but Cheney is citing "executive privilege" to stop that from happening. You'd think that if what they did was all legal, they'd have nothing to hide.

Also scheduled to testify in the future are John Yoo, John Ashcroft and Douglas Feith. As far as I know, former Pentagon lawyer (and new corporate counsel to Chevron), William Haynes, whose political interference at Gitmo is now legend has not yet been called. Philippe Sands urged the committee to get his testimony as well since he is a vital piece in the torture policy puzzle.

When this all comes down - and it will, if not in the US but in some other country - the potential number of defendants and the ensuing spectacle may well rival that of the Nuremberg trials in scope but there will always be suspicion when anyone in power tries to ensure the American public and the world that "the US does not torture". And so there should be.


Related:

Bill Moyers' May 9th interview of Phillipe Sands

C-SPAN video of the house judiciary committee hearing

Center for Constitutional Rights Supports National Lawyers Guild Call for Dismissal and Prosecution of John Yoo

The Cult of the Presidency - a look at the evolution of the imperial presidency. The question for this year's presidential candidates is: just how much of that power are they willing to give up so they'll once again be accountable to the people? No one has answered that one sufficiently yet and in the face of the war crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration, it is perhaps the most critical question of all.

Update:

Accused September 11 planners set for court on June 5

Is Bushco hoping for executions just in time for the November elections? Or will the judge involved derail the cases, especially the one against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, on grounds that torture was used to coerce their confessions? Stay tuned.
 
 

The Continuing Imprisonment of Omar Khadr

This is an absolute disgrace:

OTTAWA – A Guantanamo judge has dismissed an argument that Omar Khadr was a child soldier when he was captured in Afghanistan and so in need of protection, not prosecution. The ruling clears the way for the Toronto detainee’s trial.

U.S. Army Col. Peter Brownback’s ruling today, which upholds the Pentagon’s position that there is no minimum age for prosecution for war crimes, comes on the heels of an appearance by Khadr’s U.S. military lawyer before Canadian legislators.

That flies in the face of international law and basic morality and despite domestic and international pressure, Canada's Conservative government absolutely refuses to act until all legal proceedings and appeals have been exhausted with their useless foreign affairs minister, Maxime Bernier, towing the party line by stating that they're not concerned because he's "being well-treated".

That's not the point and we have no way of knowing if that's actually true, especially since Khadr's lawyers claim that he has been tortured and mistreated to the point where his psychological and physical well-being is at serious risk:

Mr. Edney said that when he saw Mr. Khadr recently, his client was so mentally debilitated that he wanted nothing more than crayons and some paper to colour on. Contrary to federal government assurances that Mr. Khadr is doing just fine, Mr. Edney said, his client is actually "ill and going blind. He needs all sorts of help."

The secrecy involved in these so-called tribunals also ought to be enough cause for concern as the Bush administration keeps changing the rules:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration assured the Supreme Court last December that Guantanamo Bay prisoners who felt they were unfairly being detained could have their cases thoroughly reviewed by a federal appeals court. Now, it's not so clear.

When the first case arrived at the appeals court, the Justice Department told the judges they could look at the evidence but should act on the assumption that the military made the right decisions at Guantanamo Bay.

That assertion led to a testy exchange recently between Appellate Judge Merrick B. Garland and Justice Department attorney Gregory Katsas. Garland wanted an explanation for the contradiction. Katsas said there was no contradiction at all.

The exchange underscores the challenge facing the administration: It doesn't want judges overseeing terrorism cases, but it can't eliminate them from the process without first getting their approval.

Normally, a prisoner who believes he's being unfairly detained can ask the courts to free him. It's a right known as habeas corpus that dates back to the 1300s and was written into the Constitution.

But the administration says that right does not exist for Guantanamo detainees. For years, administration officials have tried to limit judges' role in hearing detainees' cases and twice the administration has been set back by the Supreme Court.
[...]
The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the new detainee law. In doing so, it might spell out what role the appeals court is supposed to play.

It may sound like a mere argument about words — a semantics debate between "preponderance" and "deferential" — but the outcome will help determine how much oversight courts have over what happens at Guantanamo Bay.

The legal quagmire has gone on for years while the Gitmo prisoners are held in a hellish limbo while being presumed guilty.

Meanwhile:

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, April 28 -- The Defense Department's former chief prosecutor for terrorism cases appeared Monday at the controversial U.S. detention facility here to argue on behalf of a terrorism suspect [Salim Ahmed Hamdan], that the military justice system has been corrupted by politics and inappropriate influence from senior Pentagon officials.

Sitting just feet from the courtroom table where he had once planned to make cases against military detainees, Air Force Col. Morris Davis instead took the witness stand to declare under oath that he felt undue pressure to hurry cases along so that the Bush administration could claim before political elections that the system was working.

Davis told Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, who presided over the hearing, that top Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, made it clear to him that charging some of the highest-profile detainees before elections this year could have "strategic political value."

Davis said he wants to wait until the cases -- and the military commissions system -- have a more solid legal footing. He also said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy.

"He said, 'We can't have acquittals,' " Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. " 'We've been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.' "

Does anybody, including our foreign affairs minister, need any more evidence that the entire military tribunals process is just a political farce created by an imperialist administration bent on justifying to the public that its 'war on terror' is supposedly succeeding at the expense of defendants whose fates are predetermined?

Several other countries have long ago repatriated their citizens who were interred at the Gitmo gulag, yet Canada's government - holding on to its Bush poodle status even though he will soon be a distant memory (good riddance) - continues to try to boost the political image of the Republicans by using Omar Khadr as a political pawn. If only there was a way to hold this government criminally responsible for abandoning the one Canadian citizen left rotting in Gitmo.

The situation is simple: Canada's Conservatives are complicit in the prosecution and mistreatment of a child soldier and there is absolutely no defence for that.
 

The Khadr Case: Did the US military manufacture evidence?

Here's the latest in the long, dark saga of Omar Khadr:

A military commander "retroactively altered" a report of a gunbattle in Afghanistan in 2002 to redirect blame for a U.S. soldier's death to Omar Khadr, Khadr's defence lawyer alleged Thursday.

Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler made the allegation during a pretrial hearing Thursday for the 21-year-old Canadian citizen at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Kuebler alleged that in August 2002, one day after the gunbattle involving Khadr, a U.S. on-site commander identified only as "Colonel W" wrote a report on the attack.

In the report, the commander said a U.S. soldier killed a man identified as the suspect in the slaying of Speer, said Kuebler.

However, the report was revised months later, under the same date, to say a U.S. fighter had only "engaged" the assailant, according to Kuebler, who said the later version was presented to him by prosecutors as an "updated" document.

"What we have is, as I said at the outset, is this manufactured story about Omar's participation in the event, or this myth about Omar's participation in the event, which appears to have been manufactured at some point during his detention," Kuebler said.

"And then you have government records, official government records, being retroactively altered to be consistent with that manufactured story."

Prosecutors, who did not contest Kuebler's account in court, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Absolutely unconscionable.

And not only that:

U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO, Cuba -- The likelihood the United States subjected Omar Khadr to harsh interrogations some would call torture increased Thursday after it emerged one of his early interrogators had been court-martialled for abusing prisoners and had also been involved in an interrogation of a detainee who died.

Legal arguments before the U.S. war crimes commission in Guantanamo Bay indicated Sgt. Joshua Claus of military intelligence participated in many, maybe all, of the interrogations of the Canadian terror suspect after U.S. forces delivered him to the Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan in July 2002.

A U.S. army investigation into the deaths of two other Bagram detainees in late 2002 describes a litany of coercive techniques he allegedly used to interrogate one of the men.
[...]
Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler said Sgt. Claus "didn't just participate in numerous interrogations of Omar, according to (prosecutor Major Jeffrey Groharing), he did virtually all of them.

Just how much more does Khadr have to endure before this Bush-sockpuppet Canadian government finally demands his release?

Related:

Yemeni describes CIA secret jails
 

Bombshell: Did Cheney's Office Leak the Khadr Video?

That's what Omar Khadr's defence lawyers want to know.

According to the Globe & Mail:

Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler said he is trying to find out how a highly secret video showing Mr. Khadr in Afghanistan was leaked to the U.S. news program 60 Minutes. The video appears to show Mr. Khadr building a bomb.

The news program aired the footage last November.

Lt.-Cmdr Kuebler, Mr. Khadr's top U.S. military lawyer, said he met with Colonel Morris Davis, the previous top prosecutor of military commissions – the body that is expected to try Mr. Khadr in Guantanamo Bay later this year – last week.

At the meeting, Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler asked the Colonel where he thought the leak may have come from. In response, Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler said, Col. Davis offered the opinion that the Vice-President's office may have been involved.

Col. Davis resigned as chief prosecutor in October of last year, saying political pressure was interfering with his job.

Khadr's lawyers claim that if the leak did come from Cheney's office, it is evidence that Khadr is being held as a political prisoner.

Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler said the prosecution had wanted to play the tape in court – in view of the media – late last year, but the request was denied by a judge. A few weeks later, 60 Minutes had the report.

So, who gave it to 60 Minutes and why?

Colonel Morris Davis is certainly no friend of Omar Khadr's. And in 2006, he had this to say about Khadr's lawyers as the chief prosecutor:

In a rare appearance before the international media, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis called sympathetic portrayals of Khadr by defence lawyers "nauseating" and suggested the 19-year-old has fabricated claims of torture at the hands of his American interrogators.

"We'll see evidence when we get into the courtroom of the smiling face of Omar Khadr as he builds bombs to kill Americans," Col. Davis said on the eve of a planned pre-trial hearing here for Khadr before a special U.S. military commission.

"It isn't a great leap to figure out why we are holding him accountable."

In December, 2007 however, he wrote this op-ed in the LA Times in which he outlined his reasons for his resignation - a litany of all things wrong with the so-called military tribunals process including the use of evidence obtained by torture.

It's highly doubtful that someone of his rank would throw out a flagrant allegation of the possible involvement of someone in Cheney's office without some inkling that it might be true. We'll have to wait to see if he debunks Kuebler's account of what was said at their meeting first. If not, where there's smoke, there may be fire once again in the vice president's cocoon.

Related:

60 Minutes - "Omar Khadr: The Youngest Terrorist?"
 

Tales of a Gitmo Whistleblower

The New York Times tells the tale of Colonel Stephen E. Abraham's assignment at Gitmo and the disillusionment he has about the military tribunal processes as a result.

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Stephen E. Abraham’s assignment to the Pentagon unit that runs the hearings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, seemed a perfect fit.

A lawyer in civilian life, he had been decorated for counterespionage and counterterrorism work during 22 years as a reserve Army intelligence officer in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. His posting, just as the Guantánamo hearings were accelerating in 2004, gave him a close-up view of the government’s detention policies.

It also turned him into one of the Bush administration’s most unlikely adversaries.

In June, Colonel Abraham became the first military insider to criticize publicly the Guantánamo hearings, which determine whether detainees should be held indefinitely as enemy combatants. Just days after detainees’ lawyers submitted an affidavit containing his criticisms, the United States Supreme Court reversed itself and agreed to hear an appeal arguing that the hearings are unjust and that detainees have a right to contest their detentions in federal court.

Some lawyers say Colonel Abraham’s account — of a hearing procedure that he described as deeply flawed and largely a tool for commanders to rubber-stamp decisions they had already made — may have played an important role in the justices’ highly unusual reversal. That decision once again brought the administration face to face with the vexing legal, political and diplomatic questions about the fate of Guantánamo and the roughly 360 men still held there.

“Nobody stood up and said the emperor’s wearing no clothes,” Colonel Abraham said in an interview. “The prevailing attitude was, ‘If they’re in Guantánamo, they’re there for a reason.’ ”
[...]
He expanded on that account in a series of recent conversations at his law office here, offering a detailed portrait of a system that he described as characterized by superficial efforts to gather evidence and frenzied pressure to conduct hundreds of hearings in a few months.

Most detainees, he said, have no realistic way to contest charges often based not on solid information, but on generalizations, incomplete intelligence reports and hints of terrorism ties.

“What disturbed me most was the willingness to use very small fragments of information,” he said, recounting how, over his six-month tour, he grew increasingly uneasy at what he saw.

more...

The article goes on to detail his criticisms while the response from the government is that he's "biased". I suppose anyone who had his access to those sham tribunals and the flaky evidence presented would certainly end up being biased against what is going on there. If they're not, they're just automatons who believe that due process of law ought to be some sort of luxury and that the so-called war on terror gives the boy king and congress the almighty right to hold people indefinitely while they try to make some sort of case against them. That's inhumane.

Abrahams will testify "before a house commitee", according to the NYT, on July 26th. (I'll see if I can find out which one, with the judiciary committee being the most likely). Hopefully, CSPAN will carry it live.

Just as there are overwhelming reasons to impeach Bush et al and to end the Iraq war, the absolute failures of the Gitmo gulag and its distorted measure of "justice" must finally bring its tenure to an end.

Just shut it down.
 

Pentagon Appeals Ruling on Khadr - Mackay Does Nothing

I cannot even begin to tell you how furious I am about Peter Mackay's continual, pathetic pandering to the Bush administration.

Once again, he's thrown Canadian citizen Omar Khadr to the lions.

Via the National Post:

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon on Friday formally appealed a military judge's decision last month to throw out terror charges against Canadian Omar Khadr, a legal move that came as Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay signaled Ottawa's plans to take a hands-off approach to the case.

Plans to? He's been "hands-off" since day one.

MacKay, who was in Washington for meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said he raised questions about Khadr's treatment with his American counterpart, but he also made it clear the Canadian government has no plans to protest U.S. plans to put the 20-year-old terror detainee on trial.

"I don't want to jeopardize any legal proceedings that may take place with respect to Mr. Khadr," MacKay said following meetings with Rice at the State Department.

"This is a process that, because of the nature of these allegations, that hasn't run its course."
[...]
He declined to say whether the Canadian government believed Khadr could receive a fair trial, but said Ottawa has "been given assurances that he will have due process."

But, if you were actually paying attention, Mackay, you'd already know that a judge has ruled that there is no due process to be found in these sham military tribunals. The fact that you accept "assurances" from the criminals in the Bush administration shows how utterly and overwhelmingly incompetent you are at doing your duty to ensure the rights of Canadian citizens are upheld worldwide.

Did your Australian counterparts buy the same types of "assurances" about David Hicks' fate? Absolutely not. And how about the Brits? Have they let their citizens rot in Gitmo while taking Bushco's word that everything was just fine? No. Do I even have to mention the citizens of numerous other countries who have been repatriated to their home countries since Gitmo was established? Perhaps I do since you seem to have a complete lack of knowledge about what your job as foreign affairs minister actually entails. Here's a clue for you: it doesn't include laying down and surrendering just because Condi Rice tells you to.

You need to do Canadian citizens everywhere a favour and resign. You have absolutely no concern about the human rights of our citizens. You make a mockery of our country's values and sense of justice. You are the worst kind of ideological sycophant: an accomplice to another country's criminal actions.

Omar Khadr deserves real justice and he will never see that as long as this Conservative government looks the other way while he continues to suffer in the Gitmo gulag. You're complicit in that abomination, Mackay.
 

Sunday Food for Thought: Child Soldiers

Chris Tenove writes for AlterNet:

Meeting Ishmael Beah is a disorienting experience. Here is someone who once competed with other child soldiers to see who could slash the throats of captured prisoners most quickly. Beah won. It's one of many chilling scenes in his book, A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier.

And yet here was Beah when I met him, courteously holding the door of an elevator for me to enter. That was in March, during the Vancouver leg of his book tour. In our conversation, Beah proved to be charming, eloquent and humorous. He was also a publicist's dream: dressed in a hip maroon shirt and blue jeans, with Gap ad good looks and a smile that would make a room full of dental hygienists swoon.

It has been a remarkable year for Beah. His book rides high on bestseller lists. He has graced American talk shows and starred in Bling'd, a VH1 documentary that takes American rappers to the diamond mines of Sierra Leone. Even Jon Stewart has paid tribute.

And about Omar Khadr:

...whether Khadr was a lawful or unlawful combatant, one thing is certain: he was 15 years old when American soldiers captured him. Should a child soldier be tried for war crimes?

U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Layne Morris argues that Khadr should be treated as an adult. For proof, Morris described Khadr's behaviour in the battle in which Khadr allegedly killed an American soldier. (Morris was injured in the same clash.) Trapped in a compound besieged by American troops, Khadr chose not to escape with a group of women. The Americans then bombed the compound, killing most of Khadr's companions. When American ground forces entered, the injured Khadr threw a grenade at them. "Anyone who thinks those are the actions of a child, I can't even take them seriously," Morris told the Canadian Broadcast Company''s show The Current recently.

Had he read Ishmael Beah's book, Morris would know that this is exactly how a child soldier would act. They are fierce fighters and suicidally loyal to superiors -- that is why child soldiers are used. Moreover, international legal convention, psychological research, and common sense all tell us that most youths are easily manipulated and therefore not entirely responsible for their actions. Indeed, David Crane, the former chief prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, said that he would not prosecute child soldiers because they were "as much victims as the people they raped, maimed and mutilated."

Ishmael Beah committed much more heinous acts than those attributed to Omar Khadr. Now Beah is on talk shows and Khadr remains in indefinite incarceration. Were their situations really different? Or is it just that Beah killed Sierra Leonean civilians, while Khadr allegedly killed a single American soldier?

I've had this discussion may times on this blog with people who believe Khadr, first of all, is already guilty without ever being tried and who, secondly, place absolutely no weight on the fact that he was an indoctrinated child soldier. Those who debate these points often then go on to refer to Khadr's sordid family history which, in the context of his alleged behaviour, ought to bring some light and understanding to his circumstances.

Instead, it is used by those who have written him off as a terrorist (having bought into Bush's rhetoric) as being indicative of the supposition that despite his young age he was fully in control of what he was doing and deserves to rot in Gitmo while some Canadians have even loudly proclaimed that he should be stripped of his Canadian citizenship. When asked why, they have no good reason. Perhaps it's that Khadr doesn't exemplify what a Canadian is supposed to be - whatever that is. It's an attitude that dismisses, as Tenove notes, all of the positive and difficult work done with child soldiers around the world.

Is he right in suggesting that it's because Khadr is accused of committing a war crime against an American - a soldier - a westerner - that gives license to this idea that he is forever hopeless and unable to be rehabilitated? That he should not even be allowed to come back to this country - his home? That he doesn't deserve any justice or compassion? Could it be that we devalue the lives of dead African civilians while elevating the life of an American soldier as somehow being more important? How do we judge the value of a human life? And how do we judge those who allegedly decide to end one in a war zone? Who is guilty of murder and who is guilty of self-defence? How were those fatal situations created in the first place? Those are fundamental questions that deserve some serious thought.

I haven't yet read Beah's book but I hope that people who have such staunchly negative opinions about Omar Khadr's worth as a human being and a Canadian would consider Beah's path:

Beah and the other children find themselves in a village protected by a government-aligned militia. The commander gives the boys a choice: join his forces and help fight the rebels, or continue to wander the countryside in fear of the next attack. Soon the boys are carrying AK-47s and sneaking through the jungle toward their first battle.

'Rambo' revived

In the months that follow, the new recruits are kept high on drugs, whether engaged in combat or watching war movies at base camp. Killing soon becomes a routine, and often a game. As the boys advance on one village, Beah's friend decides to use a tactic he learned from the Rambo movies. He smears himself in dirt and crawls toward the huts. Beah watches as his friend sneaks behind a man, covers his mouth and slices his throat open. (I felt like photocopying this page in the book and mailing it to Sylvester Stallone with the words: "Sly, you must be proud that so many kids look up to you.")

Then, one day, some men from UNICEF arrive and take the youngest child soldiers away to be decommissioned and rehabilitated. Beah is one of them. He was 15 at the time -- the same age as Omar Khadr was when captured. But while Khadr was put in a military prison, Beah was taken to a rehabilitation centre called Benin Home.

The staff at Benin Home are the real heroes of Beah's memoir. In the first weeks the former child soldiers suffer excruciating withdrawal symptoms, and they self-medicate with violence, attacking each other and the centre's staff.

When Beah returned to Sierra Leone last year, he visited Benin Home and thanked the counsellors. "Those people were amazingly strong," Beah told me. "We would do all kinds of things to them and they would come back and help us. Their only goal was to show us that we were trusted and that we could get hold of ourselves. They rekindled our humanity."

And that is the last thing being imprisoned indefinitely at Gitmo is doing for Omar Khadr. It's amazing he's survived there all of these years, especially if his tales of torture are true, while some people would rather sit back in their comfy Canadian armchairs and judge that he ought to be persona non grata - and that includes our own Conservative government officials who are playing faith-based games with the idea that the Bush administration will somehow treat Khadr appropriately. They haven't until now. Why would anyone expect that to change?

The bottom line is this:

He was a child in a war zone.

For some reason, that fact seems to make some people very uncomfortable. And so it should.
 

Charges Against Hamden Dismissed as Well

If Bush and his legal advisers weren't steaming mad earlier today when the charges against Omar Khadr were dismissed, I imagine their heads exploded shortly thereafter.

Via The Guardian:

The Bush administration's plans to bring detainees at Guantánamo Bay to trial were thrown into chaos yesterday when military judges threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15 and dismissed charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden.

In back-to-back arraignments for the Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national, the US military's cases against the alleged al-Qaida figures were dismissed because, the judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction.

As The Guardian notes, the Hamdan case was the one that ended up in the Supreme Court which sent the issue back to congress to fix.

Mr Hamdan last year won a US supreme court challenge that led to the scrapping of the first Guantánamo tribunal system.

Yesterday's [Monday's] rulings also suggest that none of the 385 other detainees at Guantánamo, held for more than five years without charge, can be brought to trial before the tribunals because they too have been designated merely as "enemy combatants", lawyers said yesterday.
[...]
It exposes the hastiness with which Congress moved in October to bring in legislation authorising the tribunals after the supreme court threw out the earlier version.

Now, once again barely a year later, the tribunals have been thrown into legal limbo at their first outing.

Just how many shots does the Bush administration get at going after these detainees? Until they get it right, apparently.

Ms Huskey said that amid the confusion, one thing appeared clear. The detainees, held without charge since 2002, were likely to face further delays before having their day in court. "What it does mean for Omar and all the detainees is that they are going to have a whole new process so that everyone can be charged," she said.

Related:

The wiki version of Hamdan v Rumsfeld
My earlier post about Omar Khadr. (Good discussion and more links in the comments there.)
The New York Times has more about the legal ramifications along with this reaction from the Pentagon:

The White House declined on Monday night to comment on the decisions. Beth G. Kubala, an Army major who is the spokeswoman for the Office of Military Commissions at the Pentagon, said that the day’s ruling demonstrated that the military judges operated independently. But she suggested that the military did not view the double defeat as paralyzing to its prosecutions of war crimes.

“The public should make no assumptions,” Ms. Kubala said, “about the future of military commissions.”