Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions

Latif v. Obama: Redaction Riddle Resolved: The Jurist

2012-01-14T23:37:00.000-08:00

Latif v. Obama: Redaction Riddle Resolved

JURIST Guest Columnists Mark Denbeaux, Nick Stratton and Lauren Winchester of Seton Hall University School of Law say the right to a meaningful habeas corpus proceeding by Guantanamo detainees has been complicated by a recent decision making it more difficult for detainees to challenge the evidence against them...

With the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision in Latif v. Obamaon October 14, 2011, the right to a meaningful habeas corpus proceeding established inBoumediene v. Bush is now a nullity. By solving the puzzle caused by the voluminous redactions in the 112 page opinion, understanding prior habeas case law, and pondering evidentiary standards, it became apparent how flimsy the record was upon which this crucially important decision rests. A habeas petition can now be denied when the government relies on a single document — an interrogation report — compiled in what the dissent describes as "the fog of war." In addition, after Latif, district court judges are required to view reports by interrogators containing translated material as accurate, shifting the burden to the detainee to prove inaccuracy. Subject to this high burden and with limited resources, the detainee will be left challenging the credibility of the subject of the interrogation — himself. Further, through muddled vocabulary and misapplied hypotheticals, the majority hides the fact that the presumption's application to Latif's interrogation report will prevent him from challenging the only evidence against him. The effect of the presumption on all detainees who are recorded as having given incriminating statements in their interrogations is the creation of a Catch-22.

How to Overturn a District Court Judge Who Did Not Clearly Err

Since the outset of habeas proceedings, district court judges have assessed the reliability of intelligence documents against claims of mistranslation and lack of corroboration. The DC Circuit has upheld a number of these findings (Barhoumi v. Obama, Al Alwi v. Obama, Khan v. Obama), and even overturned one reliability finding (Bensayah v. Obama). Dissenting Judge David Tatel, however, noted that Latif contains a feature not present in the others: the government lost because the district court found the dispositive government report to be unreliable.

Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif is a Yemeni citizen who was seized by Pakistani authorities and held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since January 2002. In his July 21, 2010 decision, Judge Kennedy granted Latif's habeas petition, concluding that the government failed to demonstrate Latif's detention is lawful because it primarily relied on a document that was not sufficiently reliable, the document had no corroboration, and Latif's alternative story to explain his travel was at least corroborated by medical records. Instead of reviewing Judge Kennedy's thorough findings of fact for clear error, the DC Circuit reviewed de novo his decision not to give the government document a presumption of accuracy. In so doing, the DC Circuit avoided ruling on the merits of Judge Kennedy's determination that the report was unreliable. The majority disguises the fact that it could not overturn Judge Kennedy on the merits by creating a new, and confusing, rule of law.

The Meaning of the Presumption and its Practical Application in the Guantanamo Context

The DC Circuit's mandated use of the presumption of regularity in intelligence reports is a covert attempt to circumvent the intent of Boumediene. According to the majority, the presumption presumes the interrogator accurately recorded and compiled the report, though it does not presume the information from the third party source is true. In Boumediene, the Supreme Court stated several reasons why Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) fell short of the procedural protections of habeas proceedings. One reason was that the CSRTs accorded a presumption of validity to government evidence. Although the presumption applied by the DC Circuit is that of regularity (and sometimes accuracy), since there is no practical way for a detainee to rebut the presumption in the context of a report of his own interrogation (see paragraphs below), what was just a presumption of accuracy is, for all intents and purposes, a presumption of validity. Thus, Latif renders Article III habeas proceedings as limited as the flawed CSRT process.

To illuminate how the presumption works, the majority utilizes a hypothetical that does not properly apply to Latif's case. The hypothetical depicts a government intelligence officer taking the statement of a third party informant. The majority would have us presume that the officer accurately wrote down what the third party informant said, though not presuming the informant's statement was itself true. This seems to make sense until you apply it to the facts of Latif. A fair and thorough reading of the opinion suggests that the document and information being redacted is a report from an interrogation of Latif that contains opponent-party admissions. The interrogation likely involved an interrogator, a translator, and Latif. Thus, the third party informant in the majority's hypothetical is Latif himself.

The likelihood that this intelligence document is an interrogation report with admissions is confirmed by the fact that the Latif opinion redacts part of the un-redacted Al-Bihani opinion. The Al-Bihani opinion discusses how statements in interrogations are treated as opponent-party admissions and that translation does not affect their status as an admission, despite technically rendering the statements as hearsay. The incriminating statements at issue likely have something to do with Latif's travels and reasons for being at certain locations at certain times based on the district court's finding that his alternative story was plausible.

Applying the presumption of accuracy to the interrogation report, the document upon which the government's entire case turns, the district court will have to deny Latif's petition. If the presumption is applied, the report is an accurate account of what the detainee said through a translator. Therefore, under Al-Bihani, we have an admission from a party-opponent in an accurate government document that does not lose its status as an admission even though a translator was used. This means the trier of fact is weighing an accurate account of an admission against the detainee's word and any other evidence he presents. The accuracy of the report (and therefore the accuracy of the recording of this admission) will not be questioned by the trier of fact unless and until the detainee presents at least a preponderance of the evidence rebutting the accuracy. Practically speaking, the detainee will not have any evidence beyond his own word to rebut this presumption of accuracy. Therefore, the trier of fact will likely be weighing an admission (usually weighed very heavily) against whatever evidence the detainee may be able to produce.

Contrast the result if the presumption is not applied. The accuracy of the report is automatically in question, and the government must prove it is accurate. The detainee can give his account, and the trier of fact will balance what is before him to determine whether or not the report is an accurate account of the interrogation. By affording the detainee the opportunity to challenge the accuracy (and making the government prove the accuracy) at this lower standard, the trier of fact will necessarily view and scrutinize more evidence and make a determination based on the whole picture. If the report's accuracy is challenged, the admission is challenged, and the trier of fact does not have to afford the admission so much weight. Potential errors in interrogation reports would likely be brought up in all detainees' habeas cases, so the presumption would likely never apply to these types of government documents; however, this only requires the government to corroborate its reports and supply enough evidence so it does not have to rely solely on one report.

Even in an everyday situation where information and evidence is much more readily available, a court may choose not to apply such a presumption. Consider a car accident where an officer comes on scene and one party only speaks Spanish, while the officer does not. Fortunately, another person on the scene speaks fluent Spanish and agrees to facilitate a conversation between the officer and the party. The officer's report of the conversation includes an admission from the party that he did not slow down when the light turned yellow even though he probably could have stopped. Leaving hearsay issues aside (hearsay is automatically allowed into evidence in all Guantanamo habeas cases) would the court automatically presume the accuracy of the report in this situation, or would the court consider using its discretion to not apply the presumption, and balance all of the factors and evidence available?

The Catch-22

Applying the presumption of accuracy, Latif is faced with a Catch-22. If the report is presumed accurate, then his only option is to attack the reliability of the non-government source, himself. Under the presumption of accuracy, Latif must show by at least by a preponderance of the evidence, that the interrogator did not accurately record or collect the information in the interrogation report. In order to do so, his attorneys would need to present evidence that, for practical purposes, is unavailable to them because there is little likelihood that the government will allow the attorneys to interview the interrogator and translator, and the existence (or continued existence) of a tape of the interrogation is highly doubtful. Instead, the sole evidence presented will be the detainee's own testimony that he did not say what is in the report, and in doing so he puts his own credibility on the line. Unable to rebut the presumption, Latif will need to argue that the underlying truth of the report is in question. However, the underlying truth goes to Latif's own admissions and statements. In order to attack his admission, Latif must argue either that he himself was not credible at the time (thus undermining his current credibility) or that other circumstances, such as torture or coercion, led to his admission (which the federal courts have been loath to acknowledge or consider in habeas proceedings).

If a document is presumed to be accurately recorded, all statements within the document are presumed to have been said. Assuming Latif cannot rebut the accuracy, the only argument he has is to say that what he is reported to have said is false in substance. He can no longer argue that he did not say those words; instead he must prove the words he said were lies. The presumption requires that Latif call himself a liar for saying something he did not say, because he cannot adjudicate the fact that he never uttered the words. And this conundrum does not just apply to Latif; all detainees have interrogation reports, and many detainees will face this problem. The majority glosses over the issue by discussing "non-government sources" rather than the reality that detainees, in order to prove their testimony is credible enough to rebut the presumption, must prove they were incredible in the first instance.

The consequence of the DC Circuit's decision in Latif is an opinion that singlehandedly destroyed the Great Writ for Guantanamo detainees. The Latif decision, and effective repeal of Boumediene, rests on a single interrogation report, translated and uncorroborated, now required to be viewed through a blurry lens of forced legitimacy. In the end, however, there is no legitimacy in a system that creates insurmountable hurdles to the ultimate goal — discerning the truth and ruling upon it.
Professor Denbeaux is the Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research, which is best known for its dissemination of the internationally recognized series of reports on the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp. The Guantánamo report series is primarily produced by Seton Hall Law students of all levels. Nick Stratton and Lauren Winchester are research fellows for the Center.

Suggested citation: Mark Denbeaux, Nick Stratton & Lauren Winchester Latif v. Obama: Redaction Riddle Resolved, JURIST - Forum, Jan. 14, 2012, http://jurist.org/forum/2012/01/denbeaux-stratton-winchester.php.

This article was prepared for publication by Ben Klaber, a senior editor for JURIST's academic commentary service. Please direct any questions or comments to him at academiccommentary@jurist.org

A Tired Obsession With Military Detention Plagues American Politics – OpEd

2012-01-07T23:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.eurasiareview.com/07012012-a-tired-obsession-with-military-detention-plagues-american-politics-oped/

By Andy Worthington

Please read the article at the link above.

Detainee Legal Mail to Be Reviewed

2011-12-29T06:03:00.000-08:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204632204577126791984789450.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Yet another slam against the most basic of rights, attorney-client privilege. What the government does to detainees, it will do to citizens as well. Recall the passage of NDAA recently, which allows detention of American citizens without trial. -ed.

By JESS BRAVIN

The prison commander at Guantanamo Bay issued new rules allowing prison staff to examine mail between military-commission defendants and their lawyers, renewing a dispute with defense attorneys who say communications with their clients should remain confidential.

In a 21-page memorandum signed Tuesday, Rear Adm. David Woods said that teams—which include Defense Department attorneys and intelligence and law-enforcement personnel—assigned to review attorney-client correspondence for "physical contraband" such as paper clips could also seize and keep written materials if they "appear to violate" restrictions.

Will We Turn the UN Charter Into a Scrap of Paper?

2011-12-25T22:56:00.000-08:00

By Howard Meyer

March 2003

http://historynewsservice.org/2003/03/will-we-turn-the-u-n-charter-into-a-scrap-of-paper/

“Just for a scrap of paper Great Britain [is] going to war,” Germany’s chancellor, Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg complained as the First World War began. The “scrap of paper” was the treaty that Germany disregarded when it invaded Belgium.

Because of such dismissal of international agreements, the esteem that Germany had enjoyed until then among neutral nations quickly changed to hostility and fear. Britain and France exploited the “scrap of paper” remark in the United States, where there then was respect for international treaties, which the 1787 Constitution had elevated to the “supreme Law of the Land.”

Today we must ask, is the United States about to treat the Charter of the United Nations as a scrap of paper? We would be doing so if, without the authority of the U.N. Security Council, the administration were to launch American armed forces against Iraq.

Please read the rest of the article here.

See Doonesbury on Leaving Iraq here. -ed

Signing Statement on the Budget Bill

2011-12-25T20:48:00.000-08:00

Please read the post at the link below, Wells C. Bennett's excellent Lawfare Blog. Congress is once again passing bills prohibiting the government from using Federal funds to transfer Guantanamo detainees to the US or other countries. Obama objects.

Congress's insistence on passing these bills is canny. It takes 2/3s of the Senate to override a law, and you know that that will not happen anytime soon. -ed

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/12/4567/

Text from the President's Signing Statement:

I have previously announced that it is the policy of my Administration, and in the interests of promoting transparency in Government, to indicate when a bill presented for Presidential signature includes provisions that are subject to well-founded constitutional objections. The Department of Justice has advised that a small number of provisions of H.R. 2055 raise constitutional concerns.

In this bill, the Congress has once again included provisions that would bar the use of appropriated funds for transfers of Guantanamo detainees into the United States (section 8119 of Division A), as well as transfers to the custody or effective control of foreign countries unless specified conditions are met (section 8120 of Division A). These provisions are similar to others found in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. My Administration has repeatedly communicated my objections to these provisions, including my view that they could, under certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles. In approving this bill, I reiterate the objections my Administration has raised regarding these provisions, my intent to interpret and apply them in a manner that avoids constitutional conflicts, and the promise that my Administration will continue to work towards their repeal.

Christmas Thoughts for Omar Khadr, Still Held at Guantánamo

2011-12-25T20:44:00.000-08:00

Please read the article on our worthy Andy Worthington's website.

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/12/25/christmas-thoughts-for-omar-khadr-still-held-at-guantanamo/

It is also featured on the Eurasia Review site.

http://www.eurasiareview.com/25122011-christmas-thoughts-for-omar-khadr-still-held-at-guantanamo-oped/

A Chilling Dismissal

2011-12-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

Judge dismisses ex-captive's damage suit

Likely an innocent man, Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak Al Janko was held for 7 years in Guantánamo. The judge's holding in this case should give anyone pause regardless of political orientation. First, the judge calls Janko's captivity mere collateral damage from a "war." A partisan group in Afghanistan had supported groups such as Al Qaeda. Afghanistan certainly hadn't declared war on the United States. The Declaration of War on Afghanistan, illegitimate as it was, has denied this man eight years of his life, and likely health problems that will shorten his life expectancy. His family's wellbeing has certainly suffered in his absence. That's a lot of damage. Federal Judge Richard Leon says, well, too bad so sad.

Janko's is a sorrowful tale. First he was captured and tortured by Al Qaeda, whose operatives accused him of being an American spy, then he was held at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2009.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/24/2560370/judge-dismisses-ex-guantanamo.html#storylink=cpy

"War, by its very nature, victimizes many of those caught in its wake. Innocent civilians are invariably killed, and sometimes even mistakenly imprisoned. Our legal system was never designed to provide a remedy in our Courts for these inevitable tragedies, especially in a conflict like this where terrorists cunningly morph into their surroundings."- Federal Judge Richard Leon.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/24/2560370/judge-dismisses-ex-guantanamo.html

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012: US Senate Removes Key Civil Liberties Protections from US Citizens

2011-12-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

S.1867 passed on December 1, 2011, will live in infamy.

I popped off about it right away. US Senate Votes to Repeal Key Civil Liberties Act.

As did many other people who saw the same terrible things I did in this bill.

As of December 6, 2011, President Obama renewed his threat to veto the bill. Not because it was too broad, no. Rather, the veto threat comes because it did not give the Chief Executive enough discretion.

This came from a correspondent.
The movie "The Siege" is based on what can happen when the Posse Comitatus Act is overruled by the president.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133952/
it was made in 1998 and does a pretty good job of forecasting today's events.

Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/742169/senate_approves_indefinite_military_detention_of_us_citizens_in_america/

The bill emerged from the Senate Armed services Committee without a hearing on the military detention provisions.

How convenient for the hawks!

Boumediene Resources 2011

2011-12-06T00:49:00.003-08:00

Omar v. McHugh

http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20FCO%2020110621232.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR

High Court Declines Three Gitmo Detainee Appeals

2011-12-04T00:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/04/04/35502.htm

April 2011

[snip] posted by Olivia LaRosa

(CN) - The Supreme Court on Monday rejected petitions from three Guantanamo Bay detainees who say that they have been afforded only toothless attempts for habeas review of their cases. It deferred its answer on a fourth case. The three rejected appeals stem from the detentions of Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al Odah, Ghaleb Nassar Al-Bihani and Adham Mohammed Ali Awad, who each lost their appeals in the D.C. Circuit. In addition to ensuring that the detainees in question stay at Guantanamo, the mostly conservative D.C. Circuit judges have not ordered the release of any other detainee.

Scorched Earth begins at Gitmo

2011-12-04T00:06:00.000-08:00

Yeah yeah, they get steaks at Guantanamo.

An article in opposition to the Geneva Conventions; read their talking points for later reference!

Scorched Earth begins at Gitmo

Posted by Olivia LaRosa
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/42716

Uthman Resources 2011

2011-12-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Uthman-Cert-petition-as-filed-09.23.11.pdf

LAWFARE

By Benjamin Wittes

[snip]

Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, a Guantanamo habeas petitioner, has filed a cert petition, asking the Supreme Court to review the D.C. Circuit’s March decision in his case. The cert petition presents two questions for review:

1. Whether the Authorization of Use of Military Force, Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001) (‘‘AUMF”), authorizes the President to detain, indefinitely and possibly for the rest of his life, an individual who was not shown to have fought for al Qaeda, trained to fight for al Qaeda, or received or executed orders from al Qaeda, and was not claimed to have provided material support to al Qaeda.

2. Whether the AUMF, as applied by the court of appeals for the D.C. Circuit, violates the command of Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 768 (2008), that “[t]he habeas court . . . [will] . . . conduct a meaningful review of . . . the Executive’s power to detain” an individual, and violates the Suspension Clause, U.S. CONST. art. I, § 9, cl. 2.

The petition presents a direct, frontal attack on the manner in which the D.C. Circuit assesses whether a detainee is “part of” an enemy group. Its principal reason for granting the writ begins as follows:

Latif Resources 2011

2011-12-03T23:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/11/thoughts-on-latif-4-a-fuller-analysis/

LAWFARE

Benjamin Wittes

Posted by Olivia LaRosa

Any serious effort to analyze this case must be cautious. While I have strong feelings about the decision, they are tentative ones. The number and scope of redactions in critical places is simpy too high to make confident assertions about the merits of the opinion. I am relatively certain that I agree with Judge Tatel. But as I said in an earlier post, this judgment may be influenced to some degree by the fact that Judge Tatel–either intentionally or by luck–did a far better job than did Judge Brown in writing his opinion in such a manner that the government’s redactions would not dismember it. The result is that his argument reads more cohesively–though there are, to be sure, still many pages that are impossible to parse.

Here is my best effort to unpack the dispute:

Judge Brown, writing for herself and Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, declares that Judge Kennedy’s opinion has “three errors [that] require us to vacate that decision.

First, the court failed to accord an official government record a presumption of regularity.

Second, the district court failed to determine Latif’s credibility even though the court relied on his declaration to discredit the Government’s key evidence. See Al-Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102, 1110 (D.C. Cir. 2010).

Third, the court’s unduly atomized approach to the evidence is one we have rejected. . . . We remand so the district court can evaluate Latif’s credibility as needed in light of the totality of the evidence, including newly available evidence.” (Judge Henderson also writes separately to say that she would not bother with a remand but would reverse Judge Kennedy outright.)

War Court Website Leaves Out Key Details

2011-12-03T23:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?storyid=%7B6846d0e5-197e-4521-842f-a383cdab316a%7D

Kindly go to their site to read this important story. For starters, they forgot to include Boumediene. ~Olivia LaRosa

The legal implications of the al-Awlaki assassination

2011-12-03T23:34:00.000-08:00

By Tom Carter - World Socialist News Network
10 October 2011

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/awla-o10.shtml

Posted by Olivia LaRosa

In September 30, 2011, the Obama administration, through its military and intelligence apparatus, assassinated US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the legal implications of the assertion by the Obama administration of the power to assassinate US citizens anywhere in the world.
From the standpoint of US and international law as it has developed historically, the killing of al-Awlaki is entirely illegal. Extrajudicial executions violate nearly every fundamental democratic legal protection.

At the request of the Obama administration, a lawsuit filed on al-Awlaki’s behalf was thrown out of US courts in September of last year on the basis of authoritarian precepts far exceeding any precedent in the country’s history. The decision in that case, left undisturbed, clears the way for the extrajudicial liquidation of opponents of the US government and, ultimately, for presidential dictatorship.

Background

Anwar bin Nasser bin Abdulla al-Awlaki was born on April 21, 1971 in Las Cruces, New Mexico in the US. He maintained dual citizenship in the US and Yemen.

Conflicting accounts are given of al-Awlaki’s personal and political history. On the one hand, the US government alleges that he was a “senior recruiter for Al Qaeda” who was “directly involved” in various violent acts over the past two decades, including the Fort Hood shootings, the attempted Christmas Day “underwear bombing,” and others.

On the other hand, Al-Awlaki presented himself as an unaffiliated religious scholar who, while advocating “jihad against the West,” claimed never to have participated in or advocated terrorism. Ultimately, no allegation against al-Awlaki was ever tested or proven in court.

Wrestling with rights; Everyone deserves right to fair trial

2011-12-03T23:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.alligator.org/opinion/editorials/article_0cd8bf80-1b19-11e1-904b-001cc4c03286.html

Posted by Olivia LaRosa

On Tuesday, Republican Sens. John McCain, Ariz., and Rand Paul, Ky., went head to head about an amendment to a proposed defense authorization bill.
The amendment in question would potentially deny a civilian trial to American citizens who have been suspected of terrorism.
According to The Hill, McCain argued that any "individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat."
But how does denying a citizen of the U.S. the constitutional right to a civilian trial help to ensure that a threat does not continue?
In fact, the U.S. Constitution guarantees that anyone, citizen or not, has the right to a civilian trial. This was correctly interpreted by the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush in 2008, ruling that the writ of habeas corpus applies to Guantanamo Bay detainees.
From a philosophical standpoint, it would be unjust to deny rights to non-U.S. citizens. The Bill of Rights is based on the idea of natural rights, which apply to every human based upon their nature.
To deny noncitizens the rights in the Bill of Rights would be to deny the existence of natural rights altogether. Instead, rights would not come from man's nature but from the government where that person lived. This would make rights arbitrary and subject to the whim of the politicians in power.

Susan Collins spreads central myth about the Constitution

2011-12-03T23:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/collins_5/singleton/

Posted by D. Lagutaris aka Olivia LaRosa

RE: Boumediene v. Bush

First, the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2008, issued a highly publicized opinion, in Boumediene v. Bush, which, by itself, makes clear how false is the claim that the Constitution applies only to Americans. The Boumediene Court held that it was unconstitutional for the Military Commissions Act to deny habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees,none of whom was an American citizen (indeed, the detainees were all foreign nationals outside of the U.S.). If the Constitution applied only to U.S. citizens, that decision would obviously be impossible. What’s more, although the decision was 5-4, none of the 9 Justices — and, indeed, not even the Bush administration — argued that the Constitution applies only to American citizens. That is such an inane, false, discredited proposition that no responsible person would ever make that claim.

US Senate Votes to Repeal Key 1878 Civil Liberties Act

2011-12-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

Please see the original at http://olivialarosa.com/2011/11/us-senate-votes-to-repeal-key-1878-civil-liberties-act/

Union Army rests while hunting Rebel guerrillas

By Olivia X. LaRosa, olivialarosa.com

November 29, 2011 Oakland CA

My head is spinning. Sixty US Senators just voted for a bill that allows citizens to be detained without due process of law. (1) The military is assigned the authority to manage these US citizens as it pleases, out of the public eye. Likely many of them will end up in private prisons without recourse to any legal remedy.

It kinda feels like a military-industrial-congressional complex coup.

Until now, I always thought that the Supreme Court would overturn such a law based on the precedent of Posse Comitatus Act. Now, I worry.

The Posse Comitatus Act (2) was enabled in June of 1878. It forbids local law enforcement to call on the Army or Air Force to enforce the laws of the land.

The Act was passed after the Tilden/Hayes election compromise, which heralded the end of Reconstruction. Federal Troops had remained stationed in the former Confederacy until 1877. They were withdrawn after Rutherford B. Hayes became President, as part of the Faustian bargain cut to give Hayes the nod.

The Posse Comitatus Act protects states and inhabitants from the possibility of a military coup as well as limiting the imprisonment of political opponents.

Looks like we lost that one, folks.

###

(1)http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/senate-rejects-effort-to-strip-provisions-on-terror-suspects-from-defense-bill/2011/11/29/gIQAIC7V9N_print.html

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

Ten Years of Guantanamo Demands Our Action and Our Outrage

2011-12-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

http://warisacrime.org/content/ten-years-guantanamo-demands-our-action-and-our-outrage

Please read the entire article by Frida Berrigan at WarisaCrime.org, formerly AfterDowningStreet.org at the link above.

I start with all this because I have been thinking about Guantanamo. The notorious and often forgotten gulag is in the news again this week because the Senate voted on Tuesday to retain a provision within the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the military detain terror suspects on U.S. soil and hold them indefinitely without trial. In addition, the measure—which passed in a bipartisan show of fear-mongering and brutality—would close the door to civilian trials for terror suspects and place restrictions on resettling the dozens of men at Guantanamo who have been cleared for release.

Deranged US Senate Votes For Military Detention Of All Terror Suspects And Permanent Guantánamo – OpEd

2011-12-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

Written by: Andy Worthington

December 2, 2011
Yesterday the shameful dinosaurs of the Senate — hopelessly out of touch with reality, for the most part, and haunted by specters of their own making — approved, by 93 votes to 7, the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (PDF), which contains a number of astonishingly alarming provisions — Sections 1031 and 1032, designed to make mandatory the indefinite military detention of terror suspects until the end of hostilities in a “war on terror” that seems to have no end (if they are identified as a member of al-Qaeda or an alleged affiliate, or have planned or carried out an attack on the United States), ending a long and entirely appropriate tradition of trying terror suspects in federal court for their alleged crimes, and Sections 1033 and 1034, which seek to prevent the closure of Guantánamo by imposing onerous restrictions on the release of prisoners, and banning the use of funds to purchase an alternative prison anywhere else. I have previously remarked on these depressing developments in articles in July and October, as they have had a horribly long period of gestation, in which no one with a grip on reality — and admiration for the law — has been able to wipe them out.

The four sections are connected, as cheerleaders for the mandatory military detention of terror suspects want them to be sent to Guantánamo, and have done, if I recall correctly, at least since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Christmas plane bomber in 2009, was arrested, read his Miranda rights, and interrogated by the FBI. Recently, Abdulmutallab, who told his interrogators all they wanted to know without being held in military custody — and, for that matter, without being tortured, which is what the hardcore cheerleaders for military detention also want — was tried and convicted in a federal court.

Hundreds of other terror suspects have been successfully prosecuted in federal court, throughout the Bush years, and under Obama, but supporters of military custody like to forget this, as it conflicts with their notions, held since the aftermath of 9/11 and the Bush administration’s horrendous flight from the law, that terrorists are warriors. Underpinning it all is the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the founding document of the “war on terror,” passed the week after the 9/11 attacks. This authorizes the President to pursue anyone, anywhere who he thinks was involved in the 9/11 attacks, and it is a dreadfully open-ended excuse for endless war whose repeal I have long encouraged, but which some lawmakers have been itching to renew, even after the death of Osama bin Laden, and the obvious incentives for the winding-down of the ruinous, decade-long “war on terror.”

The fundamental opposition to the provision for the mandatory military custody of terror suspects

Depressingly, when it came to passing the Act, the world was treated to the unedifying spectacle of lawmakers arguing about whether the existing law — the AUMF, plus the Supreme Court’s 2004 ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that it authorizes detention until the end of hostilities — actually applies to Americans, and whether, on that basis, this new legislation does too. Their compromise was that it would authorize whatever already exists, which only made them look rather stupid, frankly. For evidence, check out this comment from Sen. Carl Levin, as mentioned in the New York Times. “We make clear that whatever the law is, it is unaffected by this language in our bill,” he said.

However, one of the even more extraordinary things about the Senate’s custody provisions is not only that they are a mangled, scrambled mess, but also that no one who will be required to obey them wants anything to do with them. The executive branch, the military, the FBI and the CIA — no one asked for this new policy. As Spencer Ackerman noted for Wired:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opposes the maneuver. So does CIA Director David Petraeus, who usually commands deference from senators in both parties. Pretty much every security official has lined up against the Senate detention provisions, from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to FBI Director Robert Mueller, who worry that they’ll get in the way of FBI investigations of domestic terrorists.

Also opposing the bill’s unwanted provisions are Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson, Obama Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, 16 former interrogators and counterterrorism professionals, and 26 retired military leaders who, on Tuesday, urged Senators to support an amendment by Sen. Mark Udall, backed by Sen. Jim Webb, to strip all the troublesome provisions from the legislation (and also see Sen, Udall’s eminently sensible Washington Post op-ed). Despite this, the Udall amendment was defeated by 61 votes to 37 (with 16 Democrats voting against the amendment — see the breakdown of votes here).

In addition, President Obama has threatened to veto the bill, although whether he will remains to be seen. The mandatory military custody provisions, after all, have a get-out clause, as Andrew Cohen noted for the Atlantic a month ago, when he wrote:

Section 1032, to be applied in concert with Section 1031, contains a mandatory detention requirement for anyone “determined” (by the military) to be a member of al-Qaeda or its affiliates. It allows the executive branch, however, to “waive” this requirement by having the “Secretary of Defense … in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence” submit to Congress a written certificate that the waiver is in the “national security interests of the United States.” The executive branch, in other words, would practically have to do a song-and-dance on Capitol Hill to prosecute a terror suspect in civilian court.

Obama, of course, is no great defender of due process, as he had Osama bin Laden killed in a Wild West style and also approved the execution without any kind of charge or trial of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, in Yemen, where he was producing irritating jihadist material in English on the Internet. However, it seems likely that his defense secretary, Leon Panetta, will indeed be forced to jump through hoops if the custody provisions are not removed.

I honesty find it hard to believe that these proposals even made it as far as they did, especially as Sen. Carl Levin was involved in drafting the legislation with the usual deranged suspects — Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Liebermann — plus torture advocate Sen. Kelly Ayote, who attempted to specifically reintroduce torture as official US policy in her own deranged bill, which was recently defeated. Astonishingly, the Senate Armed Services Committee, where this toxic brew was created, conjured it up in secret, which did not go down well with some of the lawmakers’ colleagues. Although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid initially found his spine and spoke up against it, he soon remembered that it is his job to cave in on matters of importance, which he duly did, although others were not so easily swayed.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, as Andrew Rosenthal explained in the New York Times, noted with horror that the provisions were “hashed out behind closed doors without consultation with his committee [he is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee], or the Intelligence Committee, or the Defense Department, the FBI or the intelligence community.” In addition, as Andrew Cohen explained:

Leahy, and California’s Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote Sen. Reid a letter requesting that the controversial provisions be removed from the NDAA. “We concur with the Administration’s view that mandatory military custody is ‘undue and dangerous,’” they wrote, “and that these provisions would ‘severely and recklessly undermine’ our Nation’s counterterrorism efforts.”

The provisions relating to Guantánamo and why they are also important

However, while a host of critics are lined up against the mandatory military custody aspects of the bill, far less attention, unfortunately, has been paid to the provisions preventing the closure of Guantánamo. As Andrew Cohen lamented a month ago, “I think Section 1034 [banning the use of any funds to buy an alternative prison] may be the worst of the lot — a triumph of fear and prejudice over pragmatic solutions. But it doesn’t appear to have raised the hackles of even those senators who are opposed to some of the other provisions. Go figure.”

Go figure, indeed. It may, perhaps, be slightly cynical of me to note that the story of Guantánamo involves foreigners and that Americans only wake up in any kind of numbers when legal monstrosities might apply to American citizens, but there does appear to be some truth in it. If it could be demonstrated that no American could possibly end up in mandatory military custody as a result of the Senate’s mad provisions, I would be prepared to wager that hardly any Americans would bat an eyelid.

As it is, I can only hope that the two sections relating to Guantánamo, and two other sections specifically criticized by the President’s advisors (in which Congress demanded detainee reviews from the executive branch) are subjected to a veto. To make it clear, Section 1033 (which ramps up unjustifiable restrictions already implemented by lawmakers) is entitled, “Requirements for certifications relating to the transfer of detainees at United States Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to foreign countries and other foreign entities,” and it stipulates that no transfer out of Guantánamo will be allowed “if there is a confirmed case of any individual who was detained at [Guantánamo] who was transferred to such foreign country or entity and subsequently engaged in any terrorist activity.”

As noted above, Section 1034 (which repeats previous bans imposed by lawmakers) is entitled, “Prohibition on use of funds to construct or modify facilities in the United States to house detainees transferred from United States Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,” prevents the closure of Guantánamo by stopping the President from buying or modifying an alternative facility elsewhere, and then there are the two other provisions, both new, and both largely unnoticed.

Section 1035, entitled, “Procedures for periodic detention review of individuals detained at United States Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,” requires the Secretary of Defense “to submit a report to Congress for implementing the periodic review process” established in the executive order of March this year, which, outrageously, authorized the indefinite detention without charge or trial — but with periodic reviews — of 46 of the remaining 171 prisoners, on the unacceptable basis that they were too dangerous to be released, but that there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial.

Section 1036, entitled, “Procedures for Status Determinations,” states that, “Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report setting forth the procedures for determining the status of persons detained pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40) for purposes of section 1031″ — meaning that it is supposed to establish, to the satisfaction of Congress, who will be subjected to mandatory military custody.

The response of the President’s Office, in its letter threatening a veto, spells out the administration’s opposition to these sections, and is of interest. The President’s advisors noted:

The certification and waiver, required by section 1033 before a detainee may be transferred from Guantánamo Bay to a foreign country, continue to hinder the Executive branch’s ability to exercise its military, national security, and foreign relations activities. While these provisions may be intended to be somewhat less restrictive than the analogous provisions in current law, they continue to pose unnecessary obstacles, effectively blocking transfers that would advance our national security interests, and would, in certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The Executive branch must have the flexibility to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers.

Section 1034′s ban on the use of funds to construct or modify a detention facility in the United States is an unwise intrusion on the military’s ability to transfer its detainees as operational needs dictate.

Section 1035 conflicts with the consensus-based interagency approach to detainee reviews required under Executive Order No. 13567, which establishes procedures to ensure that periodic review decisions are informed by the most comprehensive information and the considered views of all relevant agencies.

Section 1036, in addition to imposing onerous requirements, conflicts with procedures for detainee reviews in the field that have been developed based on many years of experience by military officers and the Department of Defense.

The President’s advisors concluded:

In short, the matters addressed in these provisions are already well regulated by existing procedures and have traditionally been left to the discretion of the Executive branch.

Broadly speaking, the detention provisions in this bill micromanage the work of our experienced counterterrorism professionals, including our military commanders, intelligence professionals, seasoned counterterrorism prosecutors, or other operatives in the field. These professionals have successfully led a Government-wide effort to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents over two consecutive Administrations. The Administration believes strongly that it would be a mistake for Congress to overrule or limit the tactical flexibility of our Nation’s counterterrorism professionals.

This is not quite the end of the road for the NDAA, as it must now be consolidated with the version previously passed by the House of Representatives, which I wrote about here and here. However, it is almost certain that the President will soon be required to make clear what he thinks.

If Obama is wavering, as is his habit, I would suggest that he takes note of the fact that the election season is nearly upon us, and that, as we approach that frenzy of hype and hyperbole, he needs do something to make his progressive supporters remember why they might want to vote for him, rather than just hoping — or presuming — that they will not vote against him. In short, the President needs to veto this bill, and stand up for US justice, and the still-pressing need to close Guantánamo, rather than doing as he has so often on national security issues, and caving in to pressure.

About the author:
Andy Worthington

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to his RSS feed (he can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see his definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate his work, feel free to make a donation.

Bush, Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes

2011-11-24T00:41:00.000-08:00

Bush, Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes

23 Nov 2011 A War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia has found former US President [sic] George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of war crimes for their roles in the Iraq war, Press TV reports. The five-panel Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against humanity by leading the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a Press TV correspondent reported on Tuesday. The Malaysian tribunal judges ruled that the decision to wage war against Iraq by the two former heads of government was a flagrant abuse of law and an act of aggression that led to large-scale massacres of the Iraqi people.

Alfermedi Cert Petition 11-10-2011

2011-11-10T22:14:00.000-08:00

from Lawfareblog.com http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/11/almerfedi-cert-petition/

By Ritika Singh

(item 2 shifts the burden of proof from the government to the detainee. –ed.)

Contains links to the oral argument summary, April 11, government’s reply brief, the petitioner’s brief, and the government’s opening brief.

The abstract follows below.

Almerfedi Cert Petition

by Ritika Singh

Hussain Salem Mohammed Almerfedi, a Guantanamo habeas petitioner, has filed a cert petition that presents the following questions:

1. Whether the Authorization for Use of Military Force, Pub. L. No. 107-40, § 2(a), 115 Stat. 224 (2001) (“AUMF’), orBoumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008), permits detention on the basis of three facts that are themselves not incriminating.
2. Whether the AUMF or Boumediene authorizes a standard of proof under which, if the government puts forward somecredible evidence justifying the detainee’s detention, the detainee, to prevail, must rebut government’s evidence.
3. Whether the Court of Appeals’ manifest unwillingness to allow Guantanamo detainees to prevail in their habeas corpus cases calls for the exercise of this Court’s supervisory power.

For our readers who’d like to get a complete overview of the case, here are Ben’s thoughts on the D.C. Circuit opinion from June 10, the oral argument summary from April 11, the government’s reply brief, the petitioner’s brief, and the government’s opening brief.

D. Lagutaris, ed.

Guantánamo: the most expensive prison on earth (ever)

2011-11-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

The cost to house a captive at Guantánamo Bay is $800,000 per year, far in excess of other federal or state lockups.
Miami Herald; Tuesday, November 8, 2011
by Carol Rosenberg crosenberg@miamiherald.com
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/08/2493042/guantanamo-bay-the-most-expensive.html#ixzz1dBHgHzbx
Olivia LaRosa, relayer/reframer
Also at Hypatia of California, Olivia’s and Deb’s Blog
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Guards get combat pay, just like troops in Afghanistan, without the risk of being blown up. Some commanders get to bring their families to this war-on-terror deployment. And each captive gets $38.45 worth of food a day.
The Pentagon detention center that started out in January 2002 as a collection of crude open-air cells guarded by Marines in a muddy tent city is today arguably the most expensive prison on earth, costing taxpayers $800,000 annually for each of the 171 captives by Obama administration reckoning.
That’s more than 30 times the cost of keeping a captive on U.S. soil.
It’s still funded as an open-ended battlefield necessity, although the last prisoner arrived in March 2008. But it functions more like a gated community in an American suburb than a forward-operating base in one of Afghanistan’s violent provinces.
Congress, charged now with cutting $1.5 trillion from the budget by Christmas, provided $139 million to operate the center last year, and has made every effort to keep it open — even as a former deputy commander of the detention center calls it “expensive” and “inefficient.”
“It’s a slow-motion Berlin Airlift — that’s been going on for 10 years,” says retired Army Brig. Gen. Greg Zanetti, a West Point graduate who in 2008 was deputy commander at the detention center.
Both its location and temporary nature drive up costs, says Zanetti. While there, he wrote a secret study that compared the operation to Alcatraz, noting that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had closed it in 1963 because it was too expensive.
At Guantánamo, everything comes in by barge or aircraft “from paper clips to bulldozers,” Zanetti says, as well as the revolving guard force. Also, more recently, a massage chair for stressed-out prison camp staff.
Zanetti, now a Seattle-based money manager, was a financial advisor in civilian life before his New Mexico National Guard unit’s call-up to Guantánamo. He has never disputed that America needed the detention center after 9/11 but argues that today it deserves a cost-benefit analysis.
“What complicates the overall command further is you have the lawyers, interrogators and guards all operating under separate budgets and command structures,” he said. “It’s like combining the corporate cultures and budgets of Goldman, Apple and Coke. Business schools would have a field day dissecting the structure of Guantánamo.”
An examination of the expenses shows that now, with no strategy for meeting President Barack Obama’s Jan. 22, 2009 closure order, the military is preparing for the prison’s next decade. Spending is not just aimed at upgrades for the captive population, most in medium security confinement, but also for the revolving staff of 1,850 troops, linguists, intelligence analysts, federal agents and contract laborers.
Commanders are contracting for a new round of capitol improvements, including $2 million worth of new computer equipment to grow storage space under a fast-track, noncompetitive contract with Dell recently posted on a government website. And that doesn’t include the un-networked laptops the prison provides captives taking a life skills class that includes a resume writing lesson, in case anyone gets to go home.
Meantime, the guard force commander is getting a new 3,000-3,500 square foot headquarters at the prison camps for what is predicted to cost less than $750,000, below the amount that needs Congress’ sign-off.
End of Page One of Five-continue to Page Two at the Miami Herald site.
Another method of access: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/08/2493042/guantanamo-bay-the-most-expensive.html#ixzz1dBIiQTvm

Guantanamo is an evolutionary experiment - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

2011-03-30T18:27:00.000-07:00

Guantanamo is an evolutionary experiment - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

US Senate Moving to Block Obama from transporting Guantanamo detainees INSTEAD OF VOTING TO HELP 911 RESPONDERS

2010-12-14T21:19:00.000-08:00

The United States of America has simply gone right down the loo. The Republicans know that most Americans think that they are lying scum. Yet they lie their way into office with promises of -morality and care for the common smallbusiness-person who are just folk.

Wall Street Journal: Senate plans block on Guantanamo transfers.

Today, the Senate failed to pass a bill to help 911 first responders. Do you know why? Because Republicans failed us again. They are holding lives hostage in order to insure that the already obscenely rich can continue to get obscenely richer. They are also busy scoring points with the most paranoid in their party by this Guantanamo grandstand tactic, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.

They will not allow a tax cut to expire at what appears to be the beginning of another Great Depression. Corporations used to provide 50% of all Federal government revenues in the 1950s. Now, their percentage of contribution is nominally around 5%. Yet, they want more blood. The Republicans are the easiest tools, but Democrats are not so far behind nowadays, eh?

The 6 Most Shocking Cases of Police Stun-Gun Abuse

2010-12-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

Do you know whether your cops have tasers? My local PD, who hasn't much to do but deal with drunkards and the homeless, has tasers. I live in a safe, secure beach town in Northern California.

Do you know if your cops have been trained in their use? This is a human rights abuse and torture, perpetrated on you and me. ~Deb

http://www.alternet.org/story/149115/the_6_most_shocking_cases_of_police_stun-gun_abuse?page=entire

Some of the most egregious examples of taser abuse by police around the country, illustrating why the willy-nilly increase of taser use is terrible for citizens.
December 7, 2010 |

Do you know whether your cops have tasers? Do you know if they have been trained in their use? This is a human rights abuse and torture, perpetrated on you and me. ~Deb

Take a police force that’s notorious for its use of excessive force, add a massive arsenal of tasers, put those weapons in the hands of low-level patrol officers, and what do you get?

If you guessed “an awful mess of civil rights abuses and safety concerns,” then, unfortunately, you’re correct. A new report from the City of Chicago Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates police misconduct cases in the city, has found that incidences of taser use by Chicago police officers increased by nearly 350% over the past year in the wake of the department’s decision to more than double its taser arsenal in the name of “increasing officer safety” and “defusing trouble.”

Here are the numbers: In March, the department decided to increase its supply of tasers from 280 to 660 and began putting them in every patrol officer’s squad car. (Previously, only sergeants and field training officers were allowed to carry tasers.) As a direct result, Chicago officers used tasers a whopping 683 times in the 12-month period ending September 30, compared to 197 times in 2009 and 163 in 2008.

The problem with the increase is that tasers are far too often used inappropriately – on innocent citizens and minors, for instance – and they’ve been proven to be unsafe, causing dozens of heart problems and even deaths. To make matters worse, Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority has said it will no longer investigate every case of police taser use, arguing that the growing caseload is overwhelming the short-staffed office. Instead, it will only investigate taser use “if allegations of misconduct are made, serious injury or death resulted, or a minor or senior citizen was targeted.”

Chicago’s unchecked use of tasers is setting a dangerous example for the rest of the country to follow, as it opens the door to rampant abuses of power. There are myriad stories of taser-happy police officers wreaking havoc on people’s lives that should give us pause on that matter. Below are some of the most egregious examples of taser abuse by police in Chicago and elsewhere in the country, illustrating why the willy-nilly increase of taser use is terrible for citizens.

1. Man having diabetic seizure tasered 11 times: In April 2009, Prospero Lassi suffered a diabetes-induced seizure at his home in the Chicago suburb of LaGrange Park. Lassi’s roommate called 911, and both EMTs and police responded. When the EMTs asked police officers to help move Lassi, who had been unable to move his body, one of Lassi’s arms flailed uncontrollably, striking one of the officers. According to Lassi, he was then tasered an incredible 11 times, for nearly a minute, as he lay immobilized. The attack was so severe that Lassi was hospitalized for five days and out of work for three months due to the injuries he sustained that day.

2. Officers taser 14-year-old boy, sending him into cardiac arrest: In February 2005, Chicago police were called on a young teenager living in a state group home who was reportedly acting out. According to Cook County Public Guardian Robert Harris, the boy had calmed down and was sitting on a couch when the police arrived. Nevertheless, officers said the boy lunged at them, so they tasered him, sending him into cardiac arrest.

3. Officers repeatedly taser, threaten to sodomize foster children: Elsewhere in Illinois, at the Southern Thirty Adolescent Center in Mt. Vernon, two officers lashed out unprovoked at several foster youth in July 2008, repeatedly using a taser on them. One of the officers also threatened to sodomize a young man, causing the boy to soil himself. Both the county sheriff and the Illinois State Police determined that the officers had done nothing wrong. A lawsuit brought against the officers was settled for $750,000.

4. Mentally ill man falls to his death after being tasered: In September 2008, police were called on a “naked and apparently emotionally disturbed” man who was yelling and swinging a light fixture from a Brooklyn window ledge. Rather than try to get the man down safely, an officer shot him with a taser, and the man fell to his death. As a tragic coda to the story, the lieutenant who ordered that the man be tasered took his own life shortly thereafter.

5. Bipolar man killed by taser for running down street naked: In another case of police inappropriately deploying tasers to subdue mentally ill individuals, a bipolar man in Arizona was tasered in June 2009 when he was found running down the street naked during a manic episode. After the unarmed man plead with officers not to shoot, they did anyway, twice, ultimately killing him. Even worse, neither of the officers at the scene bothered to check if the man was still breathing after the attack.

6. 10-year-old child tasered at day care: A young child at Tender Teddies Day Care in Martinsville, Indiana, who was “kicking and screaming” was, absurdly, tasered by police officers “to prevent [him] from hurting other children, staff members and himself.” The two responding officers were investigated for using excessive force.

These are, of course, just a few examples that point to a much larger problem of taser abuse by police. Until it’s proved that the weapons are truly non-lethal – and that police can use them responsibly – we should push back against efforts like Chicago’s to get more tasers into more officer’s hands.

Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to "Pharmacologic Waterboarding"

2010-12-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

EXCLUSIVE: Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to "Pharmacologic Waterboarding"

Wednesday 01 December 2010
by: Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

The Defense Department forced all "war on terror" detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called "pharmacologic waterboarding."

The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not.

The revelation, which has not been previously reported, was buried in documents publicly released by the Defense Department (DoD) two years ago as part of the government's investigation into the June 2006 deaths of three Guantanamo detainees.

Army Staff Sgt. Joe Hickman, who was stationed at Guantanamo at the time of the suicides in 2006, and has presented evidence that demonstrates the three detainees could not have died by hanging themselves, noticed in the detainees' medical files that they were given mefloquine. Hickman has been investigating the circumstances behind the detainees' deaths for nearly four years.

Interviews with mefloquine and malaria experts and a review of peer-reviewed journals and government documents show there were no preexisting cases where mefloquine was ever prescribed for mass presumptive treatment of malaria.

All detainees arriving at Guantanamo in January 2002 were first given a treatment dosage of 1,250 mg of mefloquine, before laboratory tests were conducted to determine if they actually had the disease, according to a section of the DoD documents entitled "Standard Inprocessing Orders For Detainees." The 1,250 mg dosage is what would be given if the detainees actually had malaria. That dosage is five times higher than the prophylactic dose given to individauls to prevent the disease.

Maj. Remington Nevin, an Army public health physician, who formerly worked at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center and has written extensively about mefloquine, said in an interview the use of mefloquine "in this manner ... is, at best, an egregious malpractice."

The government has exposed detainees "to unacceptably high risks of potentially severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including seizures, intense vertigo, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, aggression, panic, anxiety, severe insomnia, and thoughts of suicide," said Nevin, who was not speaking in an official capacity, but offering opinions as a board-certified, preventive medicine physician. "These side effects could be as severe as those intended through the application of 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'"

Mefloquine is also known by its brand name Lariam. It was researched by the US Army in the 1970s and licensed by the Food and Drug Administration in 1989. Since its introduction, it has been directly linked to serious adverse effects, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, confusion, hallucinations, bizarre dreams, nausea, vomiting, sores and homicidal and suicidal thoughts. It belongs to a class of drugs known as quinolines, which were part of a 1956 human experiment study to investigate "toxic cerebral states," as part of the CIA's MKULTRA mind-control program.

The Army tapped the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) to develop mefloquine and it was later licensed to the Swiss pharmaceutical company F. Hoffman-La Roche. The first human trials of mefloquine were conducted in the mid-1970s on prisoners, who were deliberately inoculated with malaria at Stateville Correctional prison near Joliet, Illinois, the site of controversial antimalarial experimentation in the early 1940s.

The drug was administered to Guantanamo detainees without regard for their medical or psychological history, despite its considerable risk of exacerbating pre-existing conditions. Mefloquine is also known to have serious side effects among individuals under treatment for depression or other serious mental health disorders, which numerous detainees were said to have been treated for, according to their attorneys and published reports.

In 2002, when the prison was established and mefloquine first administered, there were dozens of suicide attempts at Guantanamo. That same year, the DoD stopped reporting attempted suicides.

By February 2002, there were at least 459 detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo. In March of that year, according to the book "Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay: A Memoir of a Citizen Warrior" by Montgomery Granger, "the situation" at the prison began "deteriorating rapidly."

"There is more and more psychosis becoming evident in detainees ...," wrote Granger, an Army Reserve major and medic who was stationed at Guantanamo in 2002. "We already have probably a dozen or so detainees who are psychiatric cases. The number is growing."

"Presumptively Treating" Malaria

Though malaria is nonexistent in Cuba, DoD spokeswoman Maj. Tanya Bradsher told Truthout that the US government was concerned that the disease would be reintroduced into the country as detainees were transferred to the prison facility in January 2002.

A "decision was made," Bradsher said in an email, to "presumptively treat each arriving Guantanamo detainee for malaria to prevent the possibility of having mosquito-borne [sic] spread from an infected individual to uninfected individuals in the Guantanamo population, the guard force, the population at the Naval base or the broader Cuban population."

But Granger wrote in his book that a Navy entomologist was present at Guantanamo in January and February 2002 and during that time only identified insects that were nuisances and did not identify any insects that were carriers of a disease, such as malaria.

Nevertheless, Bradsher said the "mefloquine dosage [given to detainees] was entirely for public health purposes ... and not for any other purpose" and "is completely appropriate."

"The risks and benefits to the health of the detainees were central considerations," she added.

But a September 13, 2002, DoD memo governing the operational use of mefloquine said, "Malaria is not a threat in Guantanamo Bay." Indeed, there have only been two to three reported cases of malaria at Guantanamo.

The DoD memo, signed by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs William Winkenwerder, was sent to then-Rep. John McHugh, the Republican chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Military Personnel. McHugh is now Secretary of the Army.

A Senate staff member told Truthout the Senate Armed Services Committee was never briefed about malaria concerns at Guantanamo nor was the committee made aware of "any issue related to the use of mefloquine or any other anti-malarial drug" related to "the treatment of detainees."

When questions were raised at a February 19, 2002 meeting of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB) about what measures the military was taking to address malaria concerns at Guantanamo, Navy Capt. Alan J. Lund did not disclose that mefloquine was being administered to detainees as a form of presumptive treatment.

Yund said the military gave detainees a different anti-malarial drug known as primaquine and noted that "informed consent" was "absolutely practiced" prior to administering drugs to detainees, an assertion that contradicts claims made by numerous prisoners who said they were forced to take drugs even if they protested. Yund did not return calls for comment.

Bradsher declined to respond to a follow-up question about who made the decision to presumptively treat detainees with mefloquine.

An April 16, 2002, meeting of the Interagency Working Group for Antimalarial Chemotherapy, which DoD, along with other federal government agencies, is a part of, was specifically dedicated to investigating mefloquine's use and the drug's side effects. The group concluded that study designs on mefloquine up to that point were flawed or biased and criticized DoD medical policy for disregarding scientific fact and basing itself more on "sensational or best marketed information."

The Working Group called for additional research, and warned, "other treatment regimes should be carefully considered before mefloquine is used at the doses required for treatment."

Still, despite the red flags that pointed to mefloquine as a high-risk drug, the DoD's mefloquine program proceeded.

In fact, a June 2004 set of guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says mefloquine should only be used when other standard drugs were not available, as it "is associated with a higher rate of severe neuropsychiatric reactions when used at treatment doses."

According to the CDC, "'presumptive treatment' without the benefit of laboratory confirmation should be reserved for extreme circumstances (strong clinical suspicion, severe disease, impossibility of obtaining prompt laboratory confirmation)."

A CDC spokesman refused to comment about the "presumptive treatment" of malaria at Guantanamo and referred questions to the DoD.

Nevin said, if "mass presumptive treatment has been given consistently, many dozens of detainees, possibly hundreds, would almost certainly have suffered such disabling adverse events."

"It appears that for years, senior Defense health leaders have condoned the medically indefensible practice of using high doses of mefloquine ostensibly for mass presumptive treatment of malaria among detainees from the Middle East and Asia lacking any evidence of disease," Nevin said. "This is a use for which there is no precedent in the medical literature and which is specifically discouraged among refugees by malaria experts at the Centers for Disease Control."

Even proponents of limited mefloquine usage are seriously questioning the logic behind the DoD's actions. Professor James McCarthy, chair of the Infectious Diseases Division of the Queensland Institute of Medicine in Australia, who is an advocate of the safe use of mefloquine under proper safeguards, and takes it himself when traveling, told Truthout he was unaware of the use of mefloquine for mass presumptive treatment as described by the DoD, but could imagine it under certain circumstances.

However, when informed that lab tests were available and the detainees were screened for the blood product G6PD, used to determine the suitability of certain antimalarial drugs, McCarthy found the DoD's use of mefloquine at Guantanamo difficult to understand and "hard to support on pure clinical grounds as an antimalarial."

Treatment, Torture or an Experiment?

Another striking point about the DoD's decision to presumptively treat mostly Muslim detainees with mefloquine beginning in 2002 is that it is the exact opposite of how the DoD responded to malaria concerns among the Haitian refugees who were held at Guantanamo a decade earlier.

Between 1991 and 1992, more than 14,000 Haitian refugees were held in temporary camps set up at Guantanamo. A large number of Haitian refugees - 235 during a four-month period - were diagnosed with malaria. But instead of presumptively treating the refugee population at Guantanamo, the DoD conducted laboratory tests first and only the individuals who were found to be malaria carriers were administered chloroquine.

Another example of how the DoD approached malaria treatment differently for other subjects is in the case of Army Rangers who returned from malarial areas of Afghanistan between June and September 2002 and were infected with the disease at an attack rate of 52.4 cases per 1,000 soldiers.

However, the Rangers did not receive mass presumptive treatment of mefloquine. They were given other standard drugs after laboratory tests, according to documents obtained by Truthout.

Nevin said the DoD's treatment of Haitian refugees represented "a situation that arguably presented a much higher risk of disease and secondary transmission, but one which US medical experts stated at the time could be safely managed through more conservative and focused measures."

Why did the government use the "conservative and focused" approach in treating Haitian refugees and the Army rangers, but then revert to presumptive mefloquine treatment in the case of the Guantanamo detainees, who - a month after the prison facility opened in January 2002 - were stripped of their protections under the Geneva Conventions?

According to Sean Camoni, a Seton Hall University law school research fellow, "there is no legitimate medical purpose for treating malaria in this way" and the drug's severe side effects may actually have been the DoD's intended impact in calling for the drug's usage.

Camoni and several other Seton Hall law school students have been working on a report about mefloquine use on Guantanamo detainees. Their work was conducted independently of Truthout's investigation.

A copy of the Seton Hall report, "Drug Abuse? An Exploration of the Government's Use of Mefloquine at Guantanamo," says mefloquine's extreme side effects may have violated a provision in the antitorture statute related to the use of "mind altering substances or other procedures" that "profoundly disrupts the senses or the personality."

Legal memos prepared in August 2002 by former DoD attorneys Jay Bybee and John Yoo for the CIA's torture program permitted the use of drugs for interrogations. The authority was also contained in a legal memo Yoo prepared for the DoD less than a year later after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld convened a working group to address "policy considerations with respect to the choice of interrogation techniques."

In September, Truthout reported that the DoD's inspector general (IG) conducted an investigation into allegations that detainees in custody of the US military were drugged. The IG's report, which remains classified, was completed a year ago and was shared with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for the Armed Services Committee, told Truthout at the time that the IG report did not substantiate allegations of drugging of prisoners for the "purposes of interrogation."

The medical files for detainee 693 released in 2008 shows that, two weeks after he first started taking mefloquine in June 2002, he was interviewed by Guantanamo medical personnel and reported he was suffering from nightmares, hallucinations, anxiety auditory and visual hallucinations, anxiety, sleep loss and suicidal thoughts.

The detainee said he had previously been treated for anxiety and had a family history of mental illness. He was diagnosed with adjustment disorder, according to the DoD documents. Guantanamo medical staff who interviewed the detainee did not state that he may have been experiencing mefloquine-related side effects in an evaluation of his condition.

Mark Denbeaux, the director of the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research, who conducted an independent investigation into the 2006 deaths of the three Guantanamo detainees, said in an interview "almost every remaining question here would be solved if the [detainees'] full medical records were released."

The government has refused to release Guantanamo detainees' medical records, citing privacy concerns in some cases, and assertions that they are "protected" or "classified" in other instances. The few medical records that have been released have been heavily redacted.

"A crucial issue is dosage" Denbeaux said. "Giving detainees toxic doses of mefloquine has mind-altering consequences that may be permanent. Without access to medical records, which the government refuses to release, the use of mefloquine in this manner appears to be grotesque malpractice at best, if not human experimentation or 'enhanced interrogation.' The question is where are the doctors who approved this practice and where are the medical records?"

Bradsher did not respond to questions about whether the government kept data about the adverse effects mefloquine had on detainees.

An absolute prohibition against experiments on prisoners of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions, but President George W. Bush stripped war on terror detainees of those protections. Some of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" also had an experimental quality.

At the same time detainees were given high doses of mefloquine, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz issued a directive changing the rules on human subject protections for DoD experiments, allowing for a waiver of informed consent when necessary for developing a "medical product" for the armed services. Bush also granted unprecedented authority to the secretary of Health and Human Services to classify information as secret.

Briefings on Side Effects

As the DoD was administering mefloquine to Guantanamo prisoners, senior Pentagon officials were being briefed about the drug's dangerous side effects. During one such briefing, questions arose about what steps the military was taking to address malaria concerns among detainees sent to Guantanamo.

Internal documents from Roche, obtained by UPI in 2002, indicated that the pharmaceutical company had been tracking suicidal reactions to Lariam going back to the early 1990s.

In September 2002, Roche sent a letter to physicians and pharmacists stating that the company changed its warning labels for mefloquine.

Roche further said in one of two new warning paragraphs that some of the symptoms associated with mefloquine use included suicidal thoughts and suicide and also "may cause psychiatric symptoms in a number of patients, ranging from anxiety, paranoia, and depression to hallucination and psychotic behavior," which "have been reported to continue long after mefloquine has been stopped."

Military Struggles

Cmdr. William Manofsky, who is retired from the US Navy and currently on disability due to post-traumatic stress disorder and side effects from mefloquine, said those are some of the symptoms he initially suffered from after taking the drug for several months beginning in November 2002 after he was deployed to the Middle East to work on two Naval projects.

In March 2003, "I became violently ill during a night live-fire exercise with the [Navy] SEALS," Manofsky said. "I felt like I was air sick. All the flashing lights from the tracers and rockets ... targeting device made me really sick. I threw up for an hour straight before being medevac'd back to the Special Forces compound where I had my first ever panic attack."

For three years, he had to walk with a cane due to a loss of equilibrium. Numerous other accounts like Manofsky's can be found on the web site lariaminfo.org.

In 2008, Dr. Nevin published a study detailing a high prevalence of mental health contraindications to the safe use of mefloquine in soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. Responding in part to concerns raised by the mefloquine-associated suicide of Army Spc. Juan Torres, internal Army presentations confirmed that the drug had been widely misprescribed to soldiers with contraindications, including to many on antidepressants.

A formal policy memo in February 2009 from Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker removed mefloquine as a "first-line" agent, and changed the policy so that mefloquine would not be prescribed to Army personnel unless they had contraindications to the preferred drug, the antibiotic doxycycline. Nor could mefloquine be prescribed to any personnel with a history of traumatic brain injury or mental illness.

By September 2009, the policy was extended throughout the DoD.

New prisoners are no longer arriving at Guantanamo and the prison population has been in decline in recent years as detainees are released or transferred to other countries. Currently, the detainee population at Guantanamo is a reported 174.

But Nevin said the justification the Pentagon offered for using mefloquine to presumptively treat detainees transferred to the prison beginning in 2002 "betrays a profound ignorance of basic principals of tropical medicine and suggests extremely poor, and arguably incompetent, medical oversight that demands further investigation."

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

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Our default is killing terrorists by drone attack. Do you care?

2010-12-02T03:11:00.000-08:00

By David Ignatius
Thursday, December 2, 2010;
Our default is killing terrorists by drone attack. Do you care?

Every war brings its own deformations, but consider this disturbing fact about America's war against al-Qaeda: It has become easier, politically and legally, for the United States to kill suspected terrorists than to capture and interrogate them.

Predator and Reaper drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, have become the weapons of choice against al-Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas of Pakistan. They have also been used in Yemen, and the demand for these efficient tools of war, which target enemies from 10,000 feet, is likely to grow.

The pace of drone attacks on the tribal areas has increased sharply during the Obama presidency, with more assaults in September and October of this year than in all of 2008. At the same time, efforts to capture al-Qaeda suspects have virtually stopped. Indeed, if CIA operatives were to snatch a terrorist tomorrow, the agency wouldn't be sure where it could detain him for interrogation.

Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, frames the puzzle this way: "Have we made detention and interrogation so legally difficult and politically risky that our default option is to kill our adversaries rather than capture and interrogate them?"

It's curious why the American public seems so comfortable with a tactic that arguably is a form of long-range assassination, after the furor about the CIA's use of nonlethal methods known as "enhanced interrogation." When Israel adopted an approach of "targeted killing" against Hamas and other terrorist adversaries, it provoked an extensive debate there and abroad.

"For reasons that defy logic, people are more comfortable with drone attacks" than with killings at close range, says Robert Grenier, a former top CIA counterterrorism officer who now is a consultant with ERG Partners. "It's something that seems so clean and antiseptic, but the moral issues are the same."

Firing a missile from 10,000 feet is certainly a lower risk for the attackers than an assault on the ground. "The U.S. is reluctant to mount such capture-or-kill operations in the tribal areas for the same reason that the Pakistanis are: They fear that an elite team might be surrounded by hundreds of tribesmen," says Grenier.

Though the Pakistani government publicly denounces the drone attacks, it privately condones them. That's in part because the drones provide a military punch that the Pakistani military is unwilling or unable to match with conventional forces. But legal challenges are beginning, as in a $500 million lawsuit planned by a Pakistani man who told reporters this week that two of his relatives had been killed in a drone strike.

The reluctance to chase al-Qaeda on the ground, and perhaps capture its operatives alive, also comes with an intelligence cost. The United States and its allies lose the information that could come from interrogation, along with the cellphones, computers and other communications gear that could be seized in a successful raid. One reason that counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda were so effective in Iraq was that they utilized this cycle of raid, capture, interrogate, analyze, raid again.

The CIA began getting out of the detention business when the infamous "black sites" overseas were closed in 2006. At that time, 14 CIA detainees were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, but since then, only two more have been caught and transferred there; agency officials have been advised that Guantanamo is closed for new business. The only alternatives are Bagram air base in Afghanistan, for al-Qaeda operatives caught in the war zone, or detention and trial in the United States.

Don't misunderstand me: It's not that the Obama administration's limits on detention and interrogation are wrong. They have applied clear guidelines to what had been, before 2006, a murky area. The problem is that these rules, and the wariness of getting into more trouble, have had the perverse effect of encouraging the CIA to adopt a more lethal and less supple policy than before.

U.S. and Pakistani officials support drone attacks because they don't see a good alternative to combat al-Qaeda's operations in the tribal areas. I don't disagree with that view. But this policy needs a clearer foundation in law and public understanding than it has today. Otherwise, when the pendulum swings, the CIA officers who ran these supposedly clandestine missions may be left holding the bag.

So ask yourself: If you don't like the CIA tactics that led to the capture and interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives, do you think it's better to vaporize the militants from 10,000 feet? And if this bothers you, what's the alternative?

davidignatius@washpost.com

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Charly's Washington Post Obituary

2010-07-21T17:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/17/AR2010071702492.html

Charles B. Gittings Jr.; ran Web site dedicated to stopping prisoner abuse

By Richard A. Serrano
Sunday, July 18, 2010

Charles B. Gittings Jr., 57, who for nearly nine years ran a Web site dedicated to stopping prisoner abuse in the war on terrorism, died July 14 at his home in Fort Bragg, Calif. He had cancer.

Although he was not a lawyer, Mr. Gittings had a lifelong interest in military tactics and law that led him to become an invaluable resource to some of the nation's greatest experts in the field.

Not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mr. Gittings created the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, a Web site he ran from his home compiling torture memos, court filings, amicus briefs and other evidence of war crimes.

At the time, Mr. Gittings was divorced and had lost his job as a computer programmer. He decided to put his knowledge to work helping the lawyers represent the detainees.

"I was resolved to do whatever I could to help in this crisis," he said in a recent interview. "You can never prove these things, but I do think I made a difference."

His evidentiary material was often used by lawyers representing detainees to challenge the George W. Bush administration's justification for harsh treatment and lengthy sentences without trial for many of the prisoners captured in the war on terrorism.
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After President Obama took office in January 2009 and failed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, Mr. Gittings turned his attention toward the new administration as well.

"I thought things would get a lot better under Obama," he said in the interview. "But they're still having these illegal kangaroo courts and the so-called military commissions, and they're still doing indefinite detentions without charges. And those are war crimes."

Charles Benjamin Gittings Jr. was born in San Francisco.

Survivors include three children and his parents.

In Memoriam: Charles B. Gittings, Jr.

2010-07-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Charles Benjamin Gittings, Jr. born July 23rd, 1952 passed away in his sleep July 14th, 2010 at the age of 57. He is survived by his mother Mary Jacks Foldenauer of Fort Bragg, CA and his father Charles Benjamin Gittings, Sr. of Spokane, WA. His three children Roger Gittings of Jackson, TX, Audra Gittings Villarreal of Hurst, TX and William Gittings of Hurst, TX.

It was the Charles’ wish to be cremated and buried on the Hanes Family Ranch in Boonville, CA with his cat Lulu. Services have not been planned yet. Announcements are pending.

New Director's Notes on Charly's Passing

2010-07-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends of Charly and the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions:

I learned of Charly's passing via a phone call from a family member a few hours ago. He died in his sleep. I saw him three weeks ago and this was about how he told me he wanted it to be. It's a terrible loss for all of us. I hurt.

I am humbled to now serve as director of the Project upon his passing. For information or input about PEGC, please contact me directly. His mother Mary will not be equipped to deal with these matters.

The Project will fire up again after I sit for the Bar in two weeks. Charly had two words for me about that: "Pass it." I hope I will.

If friends and supporters of the Project wish to send me comments about Charly and the Project, I will publish them here with your permission.

With great sadness,

Deborah Lagutaris, J.D.

Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions

Latif v. Obama: Redaction Riddle Resolved: The Jurist

A Tired Obsession With Military Detention Plagues American Politics – OpEd

Detainee Legal Mail to Be Reviewed

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Charly's Washington Post Obituary

In Memoriam: Charles B. Gittings, Jr.

New Director's Notes on Charly's Passing

By Tom Carter - World Socialist News Network
10 October 2011