Khadr - one step closer to coming home

IN yet another blow to the federal government, a federal court has ordered Ottawa to repatriate Omar Khadr from Gitmo hell.

In his 43-page decision, O'Reilly wrote that the federal government's ongoing refusal to request his repatriation to Canada "offends a principle of fundamental justice and violates Mr. Khadr's rights.

"To mitigate the effect of that violation, Canada must present a request to the United States for Mr. Khadr's repatriation as soon as practicable," the judge wrote.

Khadr's lawyers have argued the Canadian government was complicit in the detainee's alleged torture and mistreatment while in U.S. custody and is obliged under international law to demand his return.

Documents show Khadr's U.S. captors threatened him with rape, kept him isolated and deprived him of sleep. In 2003, Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers travelled to Guantanamo to question Khadr and shared the results of their interrogations with the Americans.

The watchdog over CSIS recently found the spy agency ignored concerns about human rights and Khadr's young age in deciding to interview him.

Khadr's situation parallels that of another child soldier allegedly tortured while being jailed at Gitmo as well. Recently (at least ordered to be) released Mohammed Jawad (who is said to have been 12 when he was detained) is just another example of the US ignoring the convention on the rights of child soldiers.

The fact that our governments have to be forced by the courts to release these detainees shows how much of a mockery any claims to protecting human rights of children made by successive Liberal, Conservative, Democrat and Republican parties have been.
 

Quote du Jour: Omar Khadr's Despair

"I always say that I've never seen anyone who's been so abused and so abandoned by so many who should know better."

CSIS ignored Khadr's human rights: report
 

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.
 

Good News for Omar Khadr

As the Globe and Mail reports, a federal court has ruled that the Canadian government must seek the repatriation of Omar Khadr from the hell of Gitmo immediately.

No more stonewalling.

No more excuses.

No more fearmongering.

No more pushing the idea that he's guilty before he's even had a fair trial.

No more abandoning a child soldier who has allegedly been tortured while in US custody.

It ends now. Today.

Update:

According to the ruling (.pdf file) the judge decided that Khadr's Charter rights under Section 7 had been infringed.

[8] In his affidavit, Mr. Khadr describes various forms of mistreatment both at Bagram and Guantánamo Bay. For purposes of these proceedings, it is unnecessary for me to make any definitive factual findings about the conditions of Mr. Khadr’s imprisonment. However, there are three significant facts that are relevant to this application and on which there is agreement between the parties.

[9] First, on detention, Mr. Khadr was “given no special status as a minor” even though he was only 15 when he was arrested and 16 at the time he was transferred to Guantánamo Bay.

[10] Second, Mr. Khadr had virtually no communication with anyone outside of Guantánamo Bay until November 2004, when he met with legal counsel for the first time.

[11] Third, at Guantánamo Bay, Mr. Khadr was subjected to the so-called “frequent flyer program”, which involved depriving him of rest and sleep by moving him to a new location every three hours over a period of weeks. Canadian officials became aware of this treatment in the spring of 2004 when Mr. Khadr was 17, and proceeded to interrogate him.

The judge then details the history of Khadr's detention including so-called interviews (i.e. interrogations) by CSIS:

[17] By the spring of 2004, then, Canadian officials were knowingly implicated in the imposition of sleep deprivation techniques on Mr. Khadr as a means of making him more willing to provide intelligence. Mr. Khadr was then a 17-year-old minor, who was being detained without legal representation, with no access to his family, and with no Canadian consular assistance.

Let's not forget that these actions happened under both Liberal and Conservative governments.

Khadr and his lawyers have been looking for justice from our government for years on end, constantly coming up against the political concerns of the parties in power.

[23] Mr. Khadr has launched a number of other proceedings in Federal Court. In 2004, he commenced an action for damages and a declaration that his Charter rights had been infringed.

Justice Konrad von Finckenstein granted him an injunction against further interrogations by Canadian officials, but no further action was taken in the proceedings (Khadr v. The Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2005 FC 1076, T-536-04).

[24] Also in 2004, Mr. Khadr applied for judicial review of a decision of the Minister of Foreign Affairs not to seek further consular access to him. Again, there has been no recent action taken on this file (Khadr v. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2004 FC 1145, T-686-04).

It's quite obvious upon reading the ruling that CSIS has a lot to answer for - again - in this case. The judge notes that the sleep deprivation technique used against Khadr was torture, as specified in the CAT (Convention Against Torture) and that CSIS, knowing it had garnered so-called evidence as a result of that torture had no right to hand it over to then be used against him in whatever quasi-judicial proceedings would be invented for Gitmo prisoners.

Additionally, the judge found that the government violated the CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child) on several fronts - including the right not to be tortured.

[63] The CRC imposes on Canada some specific duties in respect of Mr. Khadr. Canada was required to take steps to protect Mr. Khadr from all forms of physical and mental violence, injury, abuse or maltreatment. We know that Canada raised concerns about Mr. Khadr’s treatment, but it also implicitly condoned the imposition of sleep deprivation techniques on him, having carried out interviews knowing that he had been subjected to them.

Our government failed Omar Khadr on a number of levels for far too long.

This ruling is a huge victory for him, his lawyers, his family and Canadian justice.

Update:

Asked about the ruling during Question Period, Harper stated that his government had been following the same policy as the previous government for years. He also said that he would review the ruling to decide if the government would appeal.
 

Protecting Torturers: Pt 2 - Rahm Makes it (More) Official

Rahm Emanuel on ABC's This Week:

GEORGE: Does [President Obama] believe that the officials who devised the policies should be immune from prosecution?

RAHM: Yeah. What he believes is, look, as you saw in that statement he wrote, and I’m just gonna take a step back, we came up with this and worked on this for about four weeks, wrote that statement Wednesday night after he had made his decision and dictated what he wanted to see, and Thursday morning I saw him in the office and he was still editing it. What he believes it that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided, they shouldn’t be prosecuted.

GEORGE: But what about those who devised the policy?

RAHM: Yeah, but those who devised the policy, he believes that they were uh should not be prosecuted either. And it’s not the place that we go — as he said in that letter, and I really recommend that people look at the full statement — not the letter, the statement — in that second [to last] paragraph. This is not a time for retribution. It’s a time for reflection. It is not the time to use our energy and our time in looking back and in a sense of anger and retribution. We have a lot to do to protect America, but what people need to know: This practice and technique, we don’t use anymore. He banned it.

This doesn't surprise me at all but it has come as quite the sideswipe to Obama supporters who believed that he would eventually...sometime...when he wasn't busy...later...get around to actually holding somebody responsible for these horrendous acts.

There's no denying now that Obama's not interested in doing so at all.

The latest reasoning from those starry-eyed supporters (as spied over at Daily Kos? Maybe Obama doesn't want prosecutions but (somehow miraculously) AG Holder will defy him and go ahead with prosecutions anyway.

Obamafiles, meet reality. Justice means never having to say you're guilty.
 

Obama: Failing To Deal With Torture

While I was watching Black Money on Frontline Tuesday nite, one particular part of the Saudi/British government relationship around the BAE scandal stuck out for me. To get the Blair government to drop the investigation into BAE, the Saudis threatened to withdraw their support in the GWOT. It worked.

That tactic sounded very familiar...

The US has threatened to withhold intelligence from the UK if evidence of the alleged torture of a British resident [Binyam Mohamed] held at Guantánamo Bay is made public.

Details of how the “terrorist” detainee was allegedly tortured — and what UK intelligence services knew about it — must remain secret because of the American threats, the High Court ruled yesterday.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said lawyers for the Foreign Secretary had told them that the threat by the US still applied under President Obama. Oppostion [sic] MPs accused the Government of giving in to blackmail.

Plus ca change... These politicians play with peoples' lives every single day. What's a few dead Brits when there are major scandals to cover up?

The US government had previously [under Bush] tried to buy Mohamed's silence with a sham plea bargain that would have forced him to stay silent about his torture. He refused.

Whatever happened to Mr Mohamed is something no US administration - Republican or Democrat - wants revealed to the public. In fact, the latest attempt to quash justice in this matter is even more bold:

Guantanamo Attorneys Face Possible Prison Time for Letter to Obama Detailing Client’s Allegations of Torture

Attorneys Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour could face six months in a US prison because of a letter they sent to President Obama explaining their client’s allegations of torture by US agents. Smith and Ghappour represent Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released after seven years in US custody, where he claims he was repeatedly tortured, first in a secret CIA prison and later at Guantanamo

Tell me if this makes sense to any of you:

AMY GOODMAN: Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President.

Excuse me? As the president, is he not allowed to view classified evidence? Anyone?

AMY GOODMAN: The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

Did his virgin eyes burn when he read the memo title? Is a redacted memo some sort of national security threat? Am I missing something?

And while all of you Obama maniacs are slapping each other on the back since he announced he was going to close down Gitmo (while you weren't busy checking out the latest dress Michelle was wearing), perhaps you can explain to me what right Obama's Pentagon had to fire Canadian Gitmo prisoner Omar Khadr's lawyer last week? That decision was reversed by a military judge on Tuesday but:

Omar Khadr's U.S. military defence lawyer is stuck in limbo after his superiors attempted to remove him from the Canadian's case, an attempt a military judge subsequently shot down.

As a result, Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler is still Mr. Khadr's assigned counsel, but has been shut out of his Washington office while his boss, chief defence counsel Air Force Colonel Peter Masciola, asks a judge to reconsider his decision.

LCdr. Kuebler was fired last Friday following a long-standing feud with Col. Masciola.

LCdr. Kuebler argued that his boss did not have the authority to dismiss him. On Tuesday, Colonel Patrick Parrish, the judge in the Khadr Guantanamo Bay case, agreed, overruling the dismissal.

Kuebler has been a tireless advocate for Khadr and has had to fight the Pentagon every step of the way - a Pentagon that is terrified that evidence of alleged torture in this case as well will come to light.

Can you see a pattern here? So early in the Obama administration? Is there any indication that anything beyond lip service will be paid to these torture allegations? Let's not forget that all through his 2 year campaign while Bush was still in office doing who knows what with suspects' human and civil rights around the world, Obama repeated the zombie-patriot mantra "The US does not torture".

If that was true then and if it's true now, then what is he trying to hide?

Related:

Glenn Greenwald - There are no excuses for ongoing concealment of torture memos

Red Cross says doctors helped CIA "torture"

Ray McGovern - After Torture, Resurrection

CCR - D.C. Circuit Court Decision Refuses to Allow Advance Notice Before a Guantanamo Detainee is Transferred; "The Court held that it could not test the Executive’s promise not to transfer someone to a country where he could be tortured."
 

Hail to Their Chief?

So, it seems I'm failing to be a stereotypically humble and starstruck Canadian by not - as the CBC's Don Newman put it on Wednesday - feeling as excited as an expectant child on what he described as being like Xmas Eve, this nite before Barack Obama's maiden visit to a foreign country - mine.

I suppose the fact that I'm not Christian and don't equate the US president with a jolly, old fat guy in a red suit (whom I gave up believing in as well long ago) might be factors in my lack of enthusiasm for this peculiar analogy. Or, more likely, the fact that Obama's doing what amounts to a fly-by (a 5 hour visit which would have saved copious amounts of money spent on excessive security if he'd just decided to stay on the plane and invited Canada's chosen ones to have their hasty audience with him therein) could be another reason for my inability to fawn excessively while, as the typical Canadian that I am supposed to be, saying I'm sorry for whatever perceived slight or embarrassment that may cause him and his entourage.

If I were to be totally honest about what I actually am feeling about this blessing, this honour being bestowed on my oh so inconsequential albeit natural-resource-rich and soldiers-willing-to-die in-Afghanistan-for-the-so-called-GWOT-filled country, I'd have to say that it's pesky things like this that have soured my changeyhopeyness:

WASHINGTON — Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism,” the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.

In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

And earlier this month, after a British court cited pressure by the United States in declining to release information about the alleged torture of a detainee in American custody, the Obama administration issued a statement thanking the British government “for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information.”

These and other signs suggest that the administration’s changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped or feared — prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies.

So, unless Obama shows up here on Thursday and announces that he's immediately releasing Omar Khadr (WHO WAS A CHILD SOLDIER AND HAS BEEN ROTTING IN GITMO FOR YEARS, MR PRESIDENT) you'll just have to excuse me for not giving a crap about what will surely be a very politically correct and non-threatening to the status quo visit.

That this man - who constantly reminds people that he owes his current status as the first African-American president to people who were much braver than it appears he'll ever be willing to be about human and civil rights - should be greeted as the next great hope for the (rightly crumbling) American empire (and, thusly, Canada and the rest of the world) in a fashion equal to the joy felt by children at Xmas time is utterly inappropriate.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

There will be no cookies and milk left out in my house for him tonite. And, when the morning comes, I certainly won't be chanting that Christ is born! upon news of Obama's arrival.
 

'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
 

New Defence Witness Emerges for Omar Khadr

On the 7th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and a very long 6 years after a then 15 year old Omar Khadr was picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan, a new witness who could help his case has emerged.

The good news:

There's "yet another witness who wrote another report saying there were multiple people alive" when Mr. Khadr, then only 15, is alleged to have thrown the grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier, Mr. Khadr's lawyer, Lieutenant-Commander William Kuebler, told the court.

Military prosecutors say that Mr. Khadr, although badly wounded from gunshots, was the only fighter alive at the end of the July 27, 2002, firefight and thus was the only one capable of tossing the grenade that killed Sergeant Christopher Speer, 28, a Special Forces soldier and medic.

But other accounts cast doubt, suggesting Mr. Khadr may have been too gravely wounded to throw anything, while still others suggest several fighters were still alive, meaning someone else could have thrown the deadly grenade.

The account of the agent - identified as Jim Taylor - could shed new light. Cdr. Kuebler accused the government of deliberately hiding evidence that could clear Mr. Khadr. "If it would be helpful, it does not get disclosed," he said.

The bad news:

Mr. Taylor's role remains shrouded in deliberate and apparently classified mystery. He may have been a civilian translator, a drug-enforcement officer, an armed Central Intelligence agent or working for the State Department or any one of myriad branches of the U.S. government and travelling with U.S. military forces in the spring and summer of 2002.

Cdr. Kuebler asked the military judge, Colonel Patrick Parrish, to order Mr. Taylor be made available for the defence to interview as a possible witness. "He was present at the firefight," Cdr. Kuebler told the court, explaining that prosecutors disclosed the existence of Mr. Taylor's after-action report of the fire fight but not its potentially case-changing contents. "His employer has denied" access, Cdr. Kuebler said. Outside the court, he said he wasn't allowed to disclose the name of the agency for which Mr. Taylor works.

"We are fighting the government's efforts to conceal and hide," he said at a news conference after the proceedings ended yesterday.

Khadr's lawyers have been fighting those efforts since day 1, our Conservative government doesn't give a damn, and the military tribunal system is a legal black hole. Both McCain and Obama favour closing Gitmo. Will they follow through or is that yet another empty promise? And what will they do with the Gitmo prisoners then? Justice demands an end to this insanity.
 

The Canadian Gov't Knew Khadr Was Tortured

While they were busy down south talking about Barack Obama's nuts, the big news in Canada on Thursday was the release of secret documents (.pdf file) related to interrogations of child soldier Omar Khadr who has been incarcerated in Gitmo for 5 years and who has, through his lawyers, previously alleged torture.

Now there's proof, not only of one of the US military's methods, but of the fact that this Conservative government knew about it and continued to maintain that Khadr has been well-treated.

From an April 20, 2004 memo:

6. In an effort to make him more amenable and willing to talk,[___] has placed Umar on the -frequent flyer program: for the three weeks before Mr [___~s] visit, Umar has not been permitted more than three hours in anyone location. At three hours intervals he is moved to another cell block, thus denying him uninterrupted'sleep and a continued change of neighbours. He will soon be placed in isolation for up to three weeks and then he will be interviewed again. [___] stated that they (the Army) has a "big file" on Umar and were not really looking for much now.

Our illustrious prime minister Bush lap dog, pulled out his number one response to anything his Conservatives are blamed for ie. "the Liberals knew it/did it too!" (this time, that's true) and then attempted to assure the public that government lawyers were "monitoring those legal processes" (what "legal" processes??) so they don't have to actually care about a pesky annoyance like a fellow Canadian citizen's human rights.

Government lawyers "monitoring" the process. No doubt from the same school of thought as Gonzales and Yoo who both turned out to be torture-loving assholes who couldn't wait to shred the Geneva Conventions.

I sense a lawsuit in Steve's future.

Anyway, we already knew that Steve and his band of blood-sucking misfits wouldn't lift a finger to help Omar Khadr and that they were complicit in whatever goes on with him in Gitmo. I've written about that several times. My level of outrage about this case has definitely not diminished and won't any time soon. What we need here is the rest of the damn public to DEMAND he be brought home. Enough is enough. There's more to being a Canadian that complaining about gas prices and the weather.

There was also another statement in those documents that caught my eye as I read through them. The fact that the US military is incredibly incompetent when it comes to understanding Muslims has been well-documented for years but who knew that our government was just as culturally and socially retarded?

Here's a statement from one of Khadr's interrogation summaries in the memo signed by "R. Scott Heatherington, Director, Foreign Intelligence Division" written on Department of Foreign Affairs letterhead about Jim Gould's 2004 visit with Khadr:

Aside: After Mr Gould terminated the interview· he and two of the monitors continued to watch Umar via the CATV system. After half an hour and despite the restraints imposed by the shackles, Umar stood up as best he could and began to strike 'body-building' poses in the mirror on the wall (the latter is a one-way mirror. but the interior curtain had never been pulled back, so he may have assumed he was not being watched). Vanity among the young is not restricted to the Christian world!

And, apparently, stupidity isn't restricted to the Pentagon.

Mr Heatherington then goes on to write:

Certainly Urnar did not appear to have been affected by three weeks on the "frequent flyer" program. He did not yawn or indicate in any way that he was tired throughout the two hour interview. It seems likely that the natural resilience of a well-fed and healthy seventeen-year old are keeping him going.

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now.

Hey, I wonder if Mr Heatherington would like to demonstrate just exactly how non-threatening sleep deprivation is. Maybe he has a 17 year old son who'd be willing to volunteer for a demonstration? Just feed him a Big Mac™ and have at it. We'll wait. (Jerk.)

Obviously, Heatherington's ignorance knows no bounds as he then writes (without seeming to notice how this contradicts what he just assumed):

16. Finally, as an amateur observer of the human condition, Mr Gould would describe Umar as a thoroughly "screwed Up" young man. All those persons who have been in positions of authority over him have abused him and his trust, for their own purposes. In this group can be included his parents and grand-parents. his associates in Afghanistan and fellow detainees in Camp Delta and the US military, I think that [___] was probably correct when he said that Umar has probably established pseudo-parents in the Camp and they probably aren't doing him any good. Before he is returned to Canada (if this were to be a possibility) some thought should be given to 'managing this process' and the social service agencies should play' a major role. . .

17. He does, however, have some feelings.

Oh, but Steve says he's fine and Heatherington thinks that as long as he's flexing his muscles everything's dandy. Case closed. I suppose the added bonus that he has "feelings" is further proof of what a normal life it is that he's been leading in a prison camp for all of these years.

Are you kidding me?

Apparently, the fact that DVDs are set to be released showing these interrogations of Mr Khadr has prompted some ass-covering:

A federal government official who dispatched an envoy to Guantanamo Bay to visit al-Qaeda suspect Omar Khadr says his department lost an early bid to keep the teenager out of the controversial U.S. prison camp.

In an interview, Gar Pardy, the now retired head of consular programs for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, said that in 2002-03 “we were fighting for Omar [Khadr],” whom he regarded as too young for Guantanamo.

“I wanted to use his age as the largest club we had to beat up the Americans on,” Mr. Pardy said. But he added that Canadian initiatives to protect the prisoner's rights got lost among departments and officials with competing priorities.

I'm sorry - but how the fuck does that even happen?

"Hey. The yanks picked up a 15 year old Canadian kid in Afghanistan who was seriously wounded in a firefight and they're hauling him off to Gitmo."

"File that one somewhere for now. The president of [insert obscure country's name here] is coming for a visit next year and we need to be prepared."

"No problem."

He was a child.

“We were opposed to the transfer; we wanted him back here,” said Mr. Pardy, who added that in September of 2002 DFAIT sent a diplomatic note to Washington urging that the then-teenager be kept out of Guantanamo Bay. “Our approach was we were going to try to leave him in Afghanistan.”

The bid failed. Mr. Khadr was soon sent to Cuba and the fallback plan, according to Mr. Pardy, was to figure out a way to get a Canadian envoy to “see Omar, touch him, talk to him a bit.”

How human of you. As if.

“The practice described to the Canadian official in March, 2004, was, in my view, a breach of international human-rights law,” ruled Judge Mosley in a decision released earlier this spring. “…Canada became implicated in the violation when the DFAIT officials were provided with the redacted information and chose to proceed with the interview.”

Foreign Affairs officials bristle at the stark language of the series of rulings. Mr. Pardy, who retired in late 2003, contends the judges may be missing the point.

“What we were concerned with was what kind of medical treatment he was getting in Guantanamo,” he said. And ultimately, the blame for what goes on in Guantanamo Bay, he says, rests with the government that created it.

“For the longest time, neither Congress nor the judicial system played their appropriate role under the Constitution,” he said. “They were all saluting the executive.”

And you, sir, and everyone who went along with letting Khadr rot in Gitmo while you knew he was being tortured were busy licking that executives' nuts (if you really want to talk about nuts). You still are.

May you all be forever haunted.
 

US Supreme Court: Gitmo Prisoners Have Habeus Corpus Rights

This is a major victory for the prisoners and yet another slap in the face from the court to the Bush administration.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
[...]
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
[...]
It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some of whom have been held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison, classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The ruling could resurrect many detainee lawsuits that federal judges put on hold pending the outcome of the high court case. The decision sent judges, law clerks and court administrators scrambling to read Kennedy's 70-page opinion and figure out how to proceed. Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth said he would call a special meeting of federal judges to address how to handle the cases.

And here's Scalia's version of judicial "wisdom":

Scalia said the nation is "at war with radical Islamists" and that the court's decision "will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Shorter Scalia: FEAR blah blah blah FEAR blah blah blah.

And the article also reminds us of how the Republicans have subverted the constitution every chance they got:

The court has ruled twice previously that people held at Guantanamo without charges can go into civilian courts to ask that the government justify their continued detention. Each time, the administration and Congress, then controlled by Republicans, changed the law to try to close the courthouse doors to the detainees.

They won't get away with that this time around.

The disposition of Omar Khadr's trial will likely be affected by this decision as well and the fact that we've now learned that notes about his detention were destroyed and that the judge handling his case was most likely dismissed because he ruled against US government lawyers should be more than enough for our Conservative government to stop stonewalling on bringing him home. It should be but since they don't even care that he was a child soldier when he was picked up - the first to be charged with war crimes - I'm sure we'll just keep getting the same "let the legal process play out" talking point in response to these developments. Like it was ever a legitimate legal process to begin with.
 

This Week in Gitmo & Torture

Oh, shed a tear for Robert Gates who woefully laments that the Bush administration just can't shut down Gitmo. It's "stuck", you see, because some countries either refuse to repatriate their prisoners or are willing to but might set them free. The fact that Bushco created a hellish legal limbo by asserting that the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War does not apply to the so-called Gitmo "unlawful enemy combatants" has brought the Pentagon to where it is now which is, as one of my favourite bloggers Marisacat would put it: is one huge "congealing fuckball".

Come to think of it, has anyone asked Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton how they will go about fulfilling their promises to close Gitmo considering these prisoners are basically men without a country now?

Meanwhile, a defiant Afghan prisoner became the 6th to boycott the sham military tribunal system this week:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — An Afghan detainee was dragged from his cell to his first pretrial hearing at Guantanamo on Wednesday, then refused to participate, telling the judge he felt "helpless."

Mohammed Kamin joined a growing detainee boycott of the war-crimes trials at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base in southeast Cuba. The military judge, Air Force Col. W. Thomas Cumbie, said Kamin tried to bite and spit on a guard on the way to the courtroom.

Wouldn't you? The fact is that Kamin is helpless. These are nothing but show trials.

And, shouldn't this fact be a matter of huge concern to the American public?

The U.S. military says it plans to prosecute roughly 80 of the 270 men imprisoned at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to terrorism, the Taliban or al-Qaida.

What of the rest of them? Detained indefinitely without charge? Is there anyone, besides the staunchest, delusional, neocon bedwetters out there who still thinks what's going on in Gitmo is anything near humane?

I'm sorry. I forgot that the US public is too wrapped up in election fever right now while it tries to survive the war-created recession and ridiculous gas prices to pay attention to a little thing like the human rights of people its government has shipped off to some prison in Cuba to rot forever. And protesting and impeachment are just so passé. The Dems are so busy, after all. (Apparently, it's taking years for them to actually find their collective spine. Don't hold your breath. It's probably somewhere underneath that table that Pelosi took impeachment off of before the last election.)

And yet there are still those who believe the Democrats will actually do something quickly about what's happening there (just wait until they win the White House back...next year...maybe...they say) and are quite happy to natter on about superdelegates and Michigan and Florida - as if that's all going to mean anything in the scheme of things considering the torture, death, and destruction this administration has brought to the world. All of the candidates crow "the US does not torture" as if it's true and these people are America's next best hope? And their supporters actually let them get away with saying that without challenging it?

Just how many Americans even heard about this testimony this week?

Bremen, Germany - In a landmark congression-al hearing Tuesday, former Guantánamo detainee Murat Kurnaz described abuses he said he endured while in US custody – among them electric shock, simulated drowning, and days spent chained by his arms to the ceiling of an airplane hangar.

Lawmakers were also provided with recently declassified reports, which show that US and German intelligence agencies had determined as early as 2002 that Mr. Kurnaz had no known links to terrorism. Still, he was held for four more years.

And the Pentagon's reaction to the torture allegations:

Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, refused to comment on his treatment, but said in a written statement, "The abuses Mr. Kurnaz alleges are not only unsubstantiated and implausible, they are simply outlandish."

Implausible? Outlandish? They were policy at the time, sir. Your president has even admitted that. There are memos that prove it. Maybe you should talk to the FBI:

Does this sound familiar? Muslim men are stripped in front of female guards and sexually humiliated. A prisoner is made to wear a dog’s collar and leash, another is hooded with women’s underwear. Others are shackled in stress positions for hours, held in isolation for months, and threatened with attack dogs.

You might think we are talking about that one cell block in Abu Ghraib, where President Bush wants the world to believe a few rogue soldiers dreamed up a sadistic nightmare. These atrocities were committed in the interrogation centers in American military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And they were not revealed by Red Cross officials, human rights activists, Democrats in Congress or others the administration writes off as soft-on-terror.

They were described in a painful report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, based on the accounts of hundreds of F.B.I. agents who saw American interrogators repeatedly mistreat prisoners in ways that the agents considered violations of American law and the Geneva Conventions. According to the report, some of the agents began keeping a “war crimes file” — until they were ordered to stop.

These were not random acts. It is clear from the inspector general’s report that this was organized behavior by both civilian and military interrogators following the specific orders of top officials.

[and on the article goes...]

And what did the White House do about those warnings from the FBI? It ignored them, as expected. And we're not talking about low-level staffers here. We're talking about officials like John Ashcroft and Condoleezza Rice. They knew what was happening and did nothing. So, excuse me for wanting to scream when I see some Pentagon hack feign outrage about a man's torture allegations by sticking his head up his ass while mumbling "the US does not torture". Only an inhumane fool in the deepest denial believes that. Apparently, there are still far too many people in the United States who also fit into that category or who simply don't care anymore as they wait, wait, wait for the next presidential daddy (or mommy) to fix everything. Guess who else is waiting? All of those unseen prisoners who don't have a voice. Just how much longer should they be expected to wait?
 

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.
 

Banned from Gitmo: Lord of the Rings

Is it Gollum's fault?:

[Omar] Khadr’s military lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, told reporters here yesterday that hundreds of pages of documents had been taken from Khadr, hindering his efforts to have the Toronto detainee help him prepare his case.

Khadr had not been allowed to keep the documents in his cell but was able to have the guards bring them to him in the past. When he asked for the documents earlier this week the guards brought him an empty box.

The public affairs office of the Joint Task Force – the military unit responsible for operations at the prison – issued a statement today saying the documents had been returned to Khadr.

“During his last visit with counsel, Khadr’s legal materials were combined/mixed with a variety of other items, to include a copy of the script to Lord of the Rings, various pictures and a variety of internet articles,” the statement read.

“The Lord of the Rings screenplay has been returned to Kuebler as a violation of the prohibition against providing detainees materials that are not directly related to his representation of his client.”

“The issue would not have arisen had counsel not provided materials to the detainee that were not related to the defense of his military case.”

One of Khadr’s defence lawyers had given him the movie script during a prior visit.

“He wants nothing more in life than to see Lord of the Rings,” Kuebler told reporters after coming to the base’s media centre for an impromptu news conference.

Can they possibly be more ridiculous? They've imprisoned child soldier Omar Khadr since 2002 without a proper trial in one of the most repressive environments known and yet they would deny him the slighest bit of entertainment in the form of a movie script and dominoes? What are they so afraid of?
 

Defending Omar Khadr

The US military may have unwittingly tripped itself up on Wednesday by offering these proclamations about a video they discovered allegedly containing boys recruited by al Qaeda in Iraq.

Here are some quotes from their news conference:

The insurgent group “wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis,” said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, an American spokesman, at a briefing about the group’s use of women and children.

Military officials say they believe that the tapes are used during sessions with children in “the process of indoctrination and training that starts early to ensure they grow up to become future terrorists when they become of age,” he said.

If I was one of Omar Khadr's lawyers, I'd definitely grab onto those words along with these spoken by Major General Geoffrey Miller (torture-loving asshole that he is) back in 2003, referring to other juveniles held in Gitmo at the time:

Miller recommended that the Defense Department send them home because he had determined that they had been "kidnapped into terrorism," posed a low risk, and had no further intelligence to provide.

Saying that children are being indoctrinated or that they've been "kidnapped into terrorism" runs contrary to what government lawyers have claimed in their case against Omar Khadr as he languishes in Gitmo. To the contrary, they are more than willing to refuse to see Khadr as one of those indoctrinated children and are attempting to hold him responsible for crimes allegedly committed when he was a child soldier - just as the boys al Qaeda has recruited in Iraq would be labeled.

The US military and the Bush administration can't have it both ways. They release videos like this to point out how ruthless al Qaeda supposedly is towards children while trying to prosecute the one child soldier (that we know of) that they have in custody.

On top of that, new evidence in Khadr's case shows just how dishonest the US military has been in its zeal to prosecute him as they try to pile on even more charges against him:

The document inadvertently handed out to the media in a military courtroom here on Monday shows that, according to the U.S. witness who was closest to the action, there was one other fighter alive inside an Afghan compound during a 2002 gun battle when a grenade was lobbed at U.S. troops entering the compound, killing Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer. It had long been assumed that Mr. Khadr was the only person alive inside the compound at the time, and thus must have thrown the grenade. Sgt. Speer's killing is the basis of the murder charge against the Canadian.
[...]
The revelation that one other person was alive inside the compound when the grenade was lobbed cast doubt on whether Mr. Khadr was the only person who could have thrown the grenade. No U.S. personnel actually saw him toss it. The witness quoted in the document also says he saw two men dead under the rubble and debris when he entered the compound. Since the two men may well have been killed by the air strikes, they could have fired on the two Afghan soldiers.

And, check out this this stunningly arrogant piece of US propaganda:

U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO, CUBA - The chief military prosecutor in the Omar Khadr case says the fact the Canadian terror suspect survived after a U.S. operative shot him twice is a testament to the "way America fights."

That's right: Khadr should be grateful that he's in Gitmo because some "U.S. operative" couldn't shoot straight. Anyone who believes he was actually spared as some sort of twisted show of compassion is a fool.

Frankly, this is just infuriating and shows just how completely convoluted the US military spin has been in this case:

"What does it show that he is alive today?" Morris told Canwest News Service Wednesday. "It shows how America fights; that we instantly go to the aid of somebody who is out of combat, as we did there.

"But for the instant vigilant response of our military and medical personnel he would not have lived."

He was shot - twice - in the back. The reason he was treated is because the "operative" didn't manage to kill him. Does anybody think he was somehow aiming at Khadr's toes to save him from death?

The Bush administration takes pride in the fact that it will be the first country to try a child soldier.

The longer this goes on, the worse it gets. I don't give a damn about "America's reputation" in all of this. That was soiled years ago, and rightly so. What I do care about however is justice - a concept totally foreign to this sham military tribunal system.
 

Random News & Views Roundup

- Did you know that Pakistan tested a medium range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead just a few days ago? If, like me, you wonder why this happened now - in the midst of political chaos in that country - you'll find this Asia Times piece quite interesting.

- And, while you're at the Asia Times, check out this article by Tom Englehardt: Bombs away over Iraq: Who cares?. It's an eye-opening look at the increased use of air power in Iraq and the tens of thousands of pounds of bombs being dropped.

- Speaking of bombs: U.S. Says It Accidentally Killed 9 Iraqi Civilians (again) and Editor & Publisher takes on the claim that mentally disabled women (which the Times of London has labeled "Down's Syndrome Bombers") were used as suicide bombers in the latest Baghdad market attack.

- Omar Khadr's lawyers are back in the so-called "court" at Gitmo on Monday:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A U.S. military tribunal will hear arguments Monday on whether it has the right to try Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured as a 15-year-old while fighting against American forces in Afghanistan in 2002.

Lawyers for Khadr, now 21, argue in a challenge on the hearings' agenda that the judge would be the first in western history to preside over a trial for alleged war crimes committed by a child.
[...]
Khadr's trial is scheduled for May and is on track to be the first for a detainee at the U.S. naval base in southeast Cuba, where the Pentagon's efforts to hold the first war-crimes trials since the Second World War era have been stalled by legal setbacks.

A Pentagon spokesman, navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said that Khadr's age may be considered during the sentencing phase if he is convicted - but it does not affect the trial.

While the deck is stacked against Khadr, pressure from international human rights group is mounting - urging Canada's heartless government to do the right thing. This weekend, UNICEF released a statement in support of Khadr's rights as well.

If in contact with a justice system, persons under 18 at the time of the alleged offense must be treated in accordance with international juvenile justice standards which provide them with special protection.

- The IAEA's Mohammed ElBaradei reports that Iran is cooperating with his agency's inquiry into Iran's nuclear facilities and that his report will be released later this month. The clock is ticking. Will Bush start one more war before he leaves office? Could the fact that Iran is without internet access right now be related? Here's more on that.

- Finally, this news in Afghanistan is reportedly causing strains between the Brits and Karzai: Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan
 

Canada Places the US and Israel on Torture Watch List

Yes, I'm talking about Canada's Conservative government.

Via Reuters:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's foreign ministry has put the United States and Israel on a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured and also classifies some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture, according to a document obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

The revelation is likely to embarrass the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel. Both nations denied they allowed torture in their jails.

The document -- part of a training course on torture awareness given to diplomats -- mentions the U.S. jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man [Omar Khadr] is being held.
[...]
"The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government," he [Foreign Affairs minister Bernier] said.

The government mistakenly provided the document to Amnesty International Canada as part of a court case the rights organization has launched against Ottawa over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.

Well, this is bound to be interesting...
 

The Joints Chiefs Chairman Thinks Gitmo Should be Closed

And just what is his main concern?

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The chief of the U.S. military [Admiral Mike Mullen] said Sunday he favors closing the prison here as soon as possible because he believes negative publicity worldwide about treatment of terrorist suspects has been "pretty damaging" to the image of the United States.

I just happened to watch the documentary The Road to Guantanamo on Sunday afternoon about the experiences of three young British men now known as 'The Tipton Three' who, due to circumstances beyond their control, ended up in Gitmo falsely accused of being al Qaeda 'terrorists'. They were eventually freed, having never been charged with anything but having endured the brutal interrogation regime the US military now infamously employs at Gitmo and elsewhere in its military gulags.

So, when I see a statement from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs stating that he wants to shut down Gitmo because it has damaged America's precious image, I can't help but ask why he didn't express any concern about the irreparable damage it's down to peoples' lives. There is no humanity to be found in the Bush administration. None.

On Friday:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US court Friday turned down a claim by four British former detainees that they were tortured at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, saying accused officials acted as part of their jobs.
[...]
Without addressing the details of the alleged treatment, the judge said the officials could not be made individually responsible for it under the terms of the suit brought against them, since they were doing their jobs.

"While the plaintiffs challenge the methods the defendants used to perform their duties, the plaintiffs do not allege that the defendants acted as rogue officials or employees who implemented a policy of torture for reasons unrelated to the gathering of intelligence," the ruling said.

They were just doing their jobs. Where have we heard that before?

...under the Nuremberg Principles, "defense of superior orders" is not a defense for war crimes, although it might influence a sentencing authority to lessen the penalty.

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

The United States military adjusted the Uniform Code of Military Justice after World War II. They included a rule nullifying this defense, essentially stating that American military personnel are allowed to refuse unlawful orders.

But now, they don't even have to refuse illegal orders because the US judicial system allows them to get away with that defence unless they're acting as 'rogue' agents and CIA agents were granted immunity for torture with the passage of the Military Commissions Act (which Mr Anti-torture, John McCain, voted for). In which moral universe does this even make sense?

If the Joint Chiefs chairman is so damn concerned about his country's image, maybe he'd better take a good look at the people surrounding him in Washington and start questioning how it managed to get so bad. He can start with someone like the current Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell:

"You can do waterboarding lots of ways ... I assume you can get to the point that a person is actually drowning," McConnell said in the New Yorker article, which paraphrased him as agreeing that this would certainly be torture.

You just know there's a qualification coming after that statement though ...and here it is:

McConnell said he could not be more specific because "if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."

No doubt. If McConnell acknowledged the US was actually torturing people, someone, like his buddy Michael Mukasey at the justice department who can't even bring himself to admit waterboarding really is torture, just might have to do something about it. And that's exactly why every single lawsuit filed against the Bush administration on torture issues has either been explained away like the one I noted above or has simply been dismissed on grounds of 'national security' which has just become a coded phrase the Bush administration uses to cover up its war crimes.

If the US is so proud of its 'legal' interrogation techniques, why did the CIA destroy videotapes of those practices in 2005?

The US government, no matter who is running it once the Bush cabal leaves office, will definitely have a huge uphill battle restoring its image, credibility, and respect in the world. The place to start, however, would seem to be a tacit admission of all of the lives it has ruined through its torture, illegal invasion of Iraq and simplistic and sadistic neocon foreign and domestic policy stances that have amplified what have been longstanding, but often forgiven practices by successive US administrations. And, among the current crop of front runners in the presidential primaries, there is not one - not one - who would willingly stand up on the world stage, pledge to start with that sorely needed honesty and who would then follow through by destroying the culture within the government, intelligence agencies, and the military that has so corrupted the lives of millions around the world. 'Change' ought to be more than an empty campaign promise. And frankly, I don't care much if the US ever regains its exalted reputation in the world - so undeserved for so long - but, for the sake of those Americans who have fought against the military industrial and corporatist/capitalist pariahs for years on end - for those individuals - I do care.

Related: The Center for Constitutional Rights response to Friday's court case.

Amnesty International's Six years of illegal US detentions includes videos of protests held on Friday to mark the 6th anniversary of Gitmo.

Voice of America has more protest coverage.

Andy Worthington: Six Years Of Guantánamo: Enough Is Enough

Those concerned about the continuing imprisonment of child soldier, Omar Khadr, should contact Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs to push for his release because our minority Conservative government (Bush's newest poodle brigade) refuses to act on his behalf.
 

Why is Omar Khadr Still in Gitmo?

The answer to that question is painfully simple: Canada's government refuses to do anything to bring him home.

How can Canadians let that stand while these 2 news stories hit the wires today?

Ten Saudi Guantanamo inmates free:

Ten Guantanamo Bay detainees have been freed and returned home to Saudi Arabia, US and Saudi officials say.

The government in Riyadh will mitigate any risk posed by the former detainees with a programme to integrate them into civilian life, the Pentagon says.

Around 275 people remain at the detention centre in Cuba and the Pentagon says another 60 inmates are now eligible for transfer or release.

The US has returned dozens of Saudi former detainees over the past year.

And, Convicted Guantanamo detainee walks free from jail:

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The only Guantanamo Bay inmate convicted of terrorism offences, Australian David Hicks, was released from prison on Saturday morning after spending over six years behind bars, the majority in solitary confinement.

Hicks, 32, returned to Australia from the U.S. military prison on the island of Cuba in May after pleading guilty to terrorism charges. He left prison in his hometown of Adelaide in south Australia.

Wearing a green polo T-shirt and blue jeans, Hicks walked out of Adelaide's maximum security Yatala prison and was immediately driven away to a secret location in a blue sedan, escorted by police.

In a statement read by his lawyer, Hicks asked for privacy and said he would need time to readjust to society.

"I had hoped to be able to speak to the media but I am just not strong enough at the moment, it's as simple as that," Hicks said through his lawyer David McLeod.

Hicks also said he would need to get medical help for "the consequences of five and a half years at Guantanamo Bay".

He added that he would not speak to the media before March 30, 2008, as stipulated under terms of his release from Guantanamo Bay.

And yet, Omar Khadr continues to rot away in the Gitmo gulag while the Conservative government here asserts he is just too dangerous to bring back to Canada - a claim based on what? A conviction? No. Actual proof of his guilt? No. Hysteria, paranoia and fealty to the Bush administration? Absolutely.

Omar Khadr - imprisoned as a child soldier - the first child soldier facing war crimes charges - a fact that the US government has conveniently ignored when it comes to allowing an appropriate defence for the young man:

...when Khadr’s lawyers appear before military judge Peter Brownback, they will not be able to use the fact he was 15 at the time (and by most legal definitions, a child soldier) in his defence. Brownback has already said he will not allow the defence to raise matters of international law at trial.

For example, the United Nations Optional Protocol on the Rights of the Child, which the U.S. ratified in 2002, says that people under 18 who are enlisted or conscripted into armed conflict are not adults and therefore “are entitled to special protection.” But the protocol will not be allowed into evidence. Nor will Khadr’s lawyers be allowed to describe his upbringing in an al-Qaeda family.

Are we going to let the Bush administration get away with assuming that Omar Khadr is a "high value detainee" - that he possesses some vitally important information after all of these years about what al Qaeda is up to today? Does anyone really buy that besides those who have participated in his torture? And, since Bush has repeatedly said (quite half-heartedly and as a result of massive international pressure) that he wants to close Gitmo, where exactly would Khadr be housed if he was actually found guilty and sentenced? And why isn't he being allowed to mount an effective defence? What is Bushco afraid of? That it might actually lose the case?

The legal hoops Bushco has set up for Khadr's lawyers to jump through during this military tribunal process circus are stunning and an insult to international law and human rights. As more time goes by, this case looks more like a classic case of revenge and guilt by association rather than a search for justice. And there's no way Canadians can count on the Bush administration to move one inch to do anything in favour of Khadr but let's get one thing straight: the minority Conservative government in this country is supposed to work for us - not Bushco. Make more noise. Contact your MP. Bother the Foreign Affairs department. Do something.

There is absolutely no reason for Omar Khadr to spend one more day in Gitmo when other countries like Saudi Arabia, Australia, Yemen and the UK have repatriated their detainees.

What, exactly, are we waiting for?

Related:

Letter in support of repatriating Khadr from Lawyers Against the War

The Canadian Bar Association's call for Khadr's release

Harper gets heat from U.K. on Khadr; British legal experts take government to task for violating international laws protecting children

Khadr's lawyer ordered not to reveal witnesses for prosecution to his client

Military Judge Dashes Hopes that Guantánamo Detainees Have Rights as Prisoners of War