Guest blogged by Winter Patriot
Important words from P. Sabin Willett, from the Washington Post, Monday, November 14, 2005; A21. Emphasis added.
Detainees Deserve Court Trials
As I listened, I wished the senators could meet my client Adel.
Adel is innocent. I don’t mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.
Willett’s account of his client, Adel, appears to confirm a disquieting story, one of many which have appeared briefly and which would have been flushed down the memory hole if not for a few intrepid souls who have refused to let such stories disappear.
From the AP: Detainees Say They Were Sold
Bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000, the detainees testified during military tribunals, according to transcripts the U.S. government gave The Associated Press to comply with a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
A former CIA intelligence officer who helped lead the search for Osama bin Laden told AP the accounts sounded legitimate because U.S. allies regularly got money to help catch Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. Gary Schroen said he took a suitcase of $3 million in cash into Afghanistan himself to help supply and win over warlords to fight for U.S. Special Forces.
…
[One] prisoner said he was on his way to Germany in 2001 when he was captured and sold for “a briefcase full of money” then flown to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo.
“They knew Americans were looking for Arabs, so they captured Arabs and sold them — just like someone catches a fish and sells it,” he said. The detainee said he was seized by “mafia” operatives somewhere in Europe and sold to Americans because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time — an Arab in a foreign country.
The Pentagon got taken, indeed. But so did Adel and many others like him. I suggest you read the entire article.
But I digress.
Here’s Willett again, from Monday’s WaPo:
…
The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus in an ancient right; it predates our own Constitution by centuries. If a handful of corrupt politicians can take away habeas corpus, they can take away anything!
Willett draws an apt parallel and reaches a logical conclusion:
The world has never doubted the judgment at Nuremberg. But no one will trust the work of these secret tribunals.
This is not a left-vs-right issue. The true conservatives among us are possibly more upset than the liberals. As Handy Fuse points out at Simply Appalling, the most eloquent and impassioned support of habeas corpus may be coming from the right. Handy quotes [and emphasizes] Paul Craig Roberts, a conservative of impeccable credentials, formerly of the Reagan administration:
Habeas corpus is essential to political opposition and the rise and maintenance of democracy. Without habeas corpus, a government can simply detain its opponents. Nothing is more conducive to one party rule than the suspension of habeas corpus.
It is heartbreaking to watch the Republican Party overthrow the very foundation of democracy in the name of democracy. The name of Lindsey O. Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina, the sponsor of this evil legislation, will go down in infamy in the book of tyrants.
Handy Fuse then remarks:
Echoes of a long-ago post from a nearly frozen blog:
It’s nice to see I’m not the only one thinking this way. Those who have been trying to divide us may be in for a surprise.
But I digress.
Here’s a parting comment from Handy Fuse:
* Joe Lieberman, Connecticut
* Kent Conrad, North Dakota
* Mary Landrieu, Louisiana
* Ben Nelson, Nebraska
* Ron Wyden, Oregon
These people are so overdue their retirement.
And here’s a final word from P. Sabin Willett:
I’m back in Cuba today, maybe for the last time. Come down and join me. Sen. Graham, Sen. Kyl — come meet the sleepy-eyed young man with the shy smile and the gentle manner. Afterward, as you look up at the bright stars over Cuba, remembering what you’ve seen in Camp Echo, see whether the word “terrorist” comes quite so readily to your lips. See whether the urge to abolish judicial review rests easy on your mind, or whether your heart begins to ache, as mine does, for the country I thought I knew.
Look, the "detainees" should be freed cause they are innocent. They are all innocent. It was the 43 regime who started this terror-he is creating the terror. 9/11 was merely a result of 43 peoples sinister business dealings. We know our rogue CIA and Isreal and germany and Canada and 43 knew the attacks were coming-HELLLLLOOOOO anybody home?
Raw Story has an article (link here) which points out that only 2% of detainees in Iraq are convicted.
And I would argue that it is easier to convict in Iraq (they don’t have juries) than here.
The same must be close for detainees elsewhere.
The courts have ordered the government to file charges or let the imprisoned go. The government stalls, appeals, moans and groans about the "activist judges" who call them on the carpet.
What do they have to loose if they have a good case? Why can’t they think up charges? Why can’t they prove those they have imprisoned and tortured have done something wrong?
Why do they run from a court hearing? What do they have to fear?
Trusting the verdict is one thing. Trusting the accusation, without review, is quite another.
For an administration who’s only forte is its ablility to lie through its teeth with a straight face, it is important for us to ask, first, if we can trust their claims of "these people are the worst of the worst" (detainees). Says who? And what evidence backs that up? Niger and Yellowcake?
It is beyond question, that the words of the administration are not trustworthy any more. For us to allow them to claim the fates of foreign nationals on their whim, simply because they ‘say so’, doesn’t remotely smak of justice by any stretch of the imagination.
In particular, the Un-Patriot Act, allow the occupant of the Oval Office to claim someone an enemy combatant and strip them of their Constitutionally guaranteed right to trial by jury? Doesn’t anyone find this a bit unnerving.
The thought that a vengeful, vindictive, possibly drunk, former cocaine user, draft dodging, patholgical liar has the power to condemn you or I on a whim is rather Un-Patriotic. In fact it’s Un-American.
As you know, the record at trial is the most important thing … even if there’s reviewing court, if the record is flawed, incomplete, or (shudder) claimed to be classified, how meaningful is the review. The Senate has done little today …
Liberal are always working for terrorists rights while trying to ensure the most innocent of all people, unborn children, are able to be killed by teenagers with the greatest of ease.
trolls are always trying to change the subject.
get off the Atkins diet #6. you’ll feel better soon
Someone is picked up, not because he is a terrorist, but because he MIGHT have information about someone else who MIGHT be a terrorist (or might or might not want to be, but isn’t). That person is held incommunicado, indefinitely, without access to American courts, even though Americans are holding him.
And a United States Senator, without evidence, calls this person a terrorist. Lovely.
why thank you. you’re lovely too. xoxoxo
It would be nice if there was some way to turn the tables and start "picking up" some NeoConvicts and sending them to "black" prisons where they can rot without legal counsel or Habeas Corpus. Maybe then they’d understand and appreciate more fully it’s value.
Outlaws are outside of the law and recognize they receive no protection from it. These Bushistas don’t seem to remember that.
Fortunately, we on the side of law and order prefer to be protected and to that end we won’t abuse the situation by breaking laws. Unfortunately that means the Bushistas have to be taken down through other slower political machinations (read the public opinion polls).
Castro – you seem sure that anyone suspected of being a terrorist is in fact a terrorist. Habeas corpus, evidence, the right to a defence mean nothing to you. Power is what you worship. Might makes right is your guiding light. You can’t survive in such a world.
Please, just try to imagine someone with more political power than you making you disappear into a hell hole never to be seen or heard from again. It is happening everyday to innocent people, and undoubtedly some guilty ones too. Guilt or no guilt it is not right, it is not American, it is not smart, it is not moral and it WILL NOT BE TOLERATED much longer.
You might want to stay out of dark tunnels castro, because that’s where you come from and apparently that’s where your heart lies. Habeus Corpus must be enforced and left alone right where it is, and everyone knows damn well why.
Beware of what you preach lest it comes back to take you instead….
Doug E.
Off topic:
Some Apparently Tortured Detainees Found
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer
2 HOURS AGO
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s prime minister said Tuesday that 173 Iraqi detainees _ malnourished and showing signs of torture _ were found at an Interior Ministry basement lockup seized by U.S. forces in Baghdad. The discovery appeared to validate Sunni complaints of abuse by the Shiite-controlled ministry.
The revelation about the mostly Sunni Arab detainees by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was deeply embarrassing to the government as critics in the United States and Britain question the U.S. strategy for building democracy in a land wracked by insurgency, terrorism and sectarian tension.
"I was informed that there were 173 detainees held at an Interior Ministry prison and they appear to be malnourished," al-Jaafari said of Sunday’s raid at a detention center in the fashionable Jadriyah district. "There is also some talk that they were subjected to some kind of torture."
One detainee had been crippled by polio and others suffered "different wounds," the deputy interior minister, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, said without elaboration
again off topic, but same story:
"Some Iraqis are having their heads opened with drills, then their bodies are thrown in the streets," al-Mutlaq said. "This shows that the United States should stop these acts since it is the force that occupies Iraq."
Saleh al-Mutlaq
"In order to search for one terrorist, they detain hundreds of innocent people and torture them brutally," Sunni politician Abdul-Hamid said.
Jo #13,#14
I don’t think you are off topic. We are talking about detainees and rights of detainees. To be detained is to be held against one’s will.
What american jurisprudence is based on, in large measure, is the thinking of people who have been detained by government wrongfully.
Our heritage is from our forefathers who experienced being detained for political, religious, and power mongering reasons.
They sought to build a home for free people who would be protected from bad government. They called the home The United States of America.
And it was a place where government cannot detain without first asking the people, a grand jury, for an indictment in felony type matters.
Or on lesser matters, without filing official public charges, and having evidence to back it up. Then the detainee has a right to bail or bond. And thereafter to have lawyers, to confront witnesses, and other due process considerations before an impartial adjudicator.
The system puts requirements on the government when it seeks to detain people.
Why? Because history is an indictment of government. Why? Because government is an exercise of power.
Those in government are soaked in power and "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". In other words the greater the power the greater the corruptive influence of that power.
That is the nature of political power in our world, on our planet everywhere.
So our forefathers tried to protect us against the toxins in power by framing a government designed to limit the amount of power any individual is exposed to.
Checks and balances.
I like to think of it not as pitting branches of government against each other, but instead, of giving each branch power to heal the other branches.
The courts can tell the congress or the admin when it is overdosing, the congress can tell the courts and admin certain things, and same with the administrative branch.
The attempt of the current admin has been to remove restraints our good forefathers set up for the administrative branch, and as a result the admin has been overcome with corruption.
They were very, very unwise to go against the sages and oracles we like to call our forefathers.
Call To Arms 6 or 7
CNN asked for email concerning the question of torture. Here is my post to them:
"You asked the question Should the US torture detainees?
That you would ask this question, to me, reveals that you are in bed with (’embedded’) the forces at work to kill our democracy with ‘a thousand cuts’. A slow death to democracy.
You have not covered the GAO report that shows that voting machines used in the last two or so elections can be hacked and corrupted by elementary students (link here).
The report is not an internet conspiracy theory. Instead it is a matter of fact report by a government agency composed of americans and is bi-partisan.
Should we torture? Torture who? Torture the american democracy with tired stories as democracy dies?
As elections are stolen one after the other while the MSM partakes of lurid lust with its partners in covering up the big crimes?
The answer is not only NO, it is HELL NO!!!
Stop supporting torture of democracy in all its forms. Or suffer the fate of newspapers … fading into the obscurity of being irrelevant to what we call news."
If you want to tell them what you too think, the email address is:
headlinenews@cnn.com
Isn’t Communist China the second largest holder of U.S. debt…propping up a dysfunctional govt. Bet Bush will be welcomed by thousands there this week. By the slave labor that makes those trinkets you buy at WALMART medium right.
Yes Molly #17 — here are some facts:
Budget.Senate.Gov pdf report – September 2004
Top 10 Countries Holding Our National Debt
Japan – $696 Billion
China – $167 Billion
UK – $130 Billion
“Caribbean Banking Centers” – $91 Billion
S. Korea – $62 Billion
Taiwan – $58 Billion
Hong Kong – $50 Billion
Germany – $49 Billion
Switzerland – $48 Billion
OPEC – 44 Billion
**Source: Dept. of Treasury – As of July 2004**
Info gleaned from the pdf file linked above:
In fact, since President Bush took office in Jan. 2001, total foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury debt have risen to $1.81 trillion (from $1.01 trillion) and increase of 79%. As a result, the share of U.S. Treasury debt held by foreigners has risen to 42% from 30% over that same time period.
The growing federal debt is also leading to a dramatic increase in federal interest payments. These interest payments either divert scarce resources from national priorities such as education and healthcare, or lead to future tax increases.
When Bush took office, interest payments on the fed. debt were expected to cost $622 BILLION over the 10-yr. period 2002-2011. If the tax cuts are made permanent & bush’s defense buildup is adopted & the AMT is reformed, & we have ongoing war costs — federal interest payments are expected to cost $2.4 trillion over that same time period – this is a $1.8 trillion – a WHOPPING 300% increase.
Administration Borrows more from Foreign Nations than Previous 42 Presidents Combined
WASHINGTON D.C.- President George W. Bush and the current administration have now borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 U.S. presidents combined.
Throughout the first 224 years (1776-2000) of our nation’s history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In the past four years alone (2001-2005), the Bush Administration has borrowed a staggering $1.05 trillion.
… “No American political leadership has ever willfully and deliberately mortgaged our country to foreign interests in the manner we have witnessed over the past four years,” continued Rep. Tanner. “If this recklessness is not stopped, I truly believe our economic freedom as American citizens is in great jeopardy.”
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From: mimi.holt@yahoo.com
To: mimi_holt@yahoo.com
Subject: The Observer: Scandal of force-fed prisoners
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 05:41:37 +0000 (UTC)
To see this story with its related links on the The Observer site, go
to http://www.observer.co.uk
Scandal of force-fed prisoners
Hunger strikers are tied down and fed through nasal tubes, admits
Guantà¡namo Bay doctor
David Rose
Sunday January 08 2006
The Observer
New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on
hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed
through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to
keep them alive.
They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn
statement by the camp’s chief doctor, seen by The Observer.
‘Experience teaches us’ that such symptoms must be expected ‘whenever
nasogastric tubes are used,’ says the affidavit of Captain John S
Edmondson, commander of Guantánamo’s hospital. The procedure – now
standard practice at Guantánamo – ‘requires that a foreign body be
inserted into the body and, ideally, remain in it.’ But staff always
use a lubricant, and ‘a nasogastric tube is never inserted and moved up
and down. It is inserted down into the stomach slowly and directly, and
it would be impossible to insert the wrong end of the tube.’ Medical
personnel do not insert nasogastric tubes in a manner ‘intentionally
designed to inflict pain.’
It is painful, Edmonson admits. Although ‘non-narcotic pain relievers
such as ibuprofen are usually sufficient, sometimes stronger drugs,’
including opiates such as morphine, have had to be administered.
Thick, 4.8mm diameter tubes tried previously to allow quicker feeding,
so permitting guards to keep prisoners in their cells for more hours
each day, have been abandoned, the affidavit says. The new 3mm tubes are
‘soft and flexible’.
The London solicitors Allen and Overy, who represent some of the hunger
strikers, have lodged a court action to be heard next week in
California, where Edmondson is registered to practise. They are asking for an
order that the state medical ethics board investigate him for
‘unprofessional conduct’ for agreeing to the force-feeding.
Edmonson’s affidavit, in response to a lawsuit on behalf of detainees
on hunger strike since last August, was obtained last week by The
Observer, as a Guantánamo spokesman confirmed that the number of
hunger strikers has almost doubled since Christmas, to 81 of the 550
detainees. Many have been held since the camp opened four years ago this
month, although they not been charged with any crime, nor been allowed to
see any evidence justifying their detention.
This and other Guantánamo lawsuits now face extinction. Last
week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees’ right
to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the
administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so
nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of
their detention and the legality of pending trials by military
commission.
Although some prisoners have had to be tied down while being force-fed,
‘only one patient’ has had to be immobilised with a six-point
restraint, and ‘only one’ passed out. ‘In less than 10 cases have trained
medical personnel had to use four-point restraint in order to achieve
insertion.’ Edmondson claims the actual feeding is voluntary. During Ramadan,
tube-feeding takes place before dawn.
Article 5 of the 1975 World Medical Association Tokyo Declaration,
which US doctors are legally bound to observe through their membership of
the American Medical Association, states that doctors must not undertake
force-feeding under any circumstances. Dr David Nicholl, a consultant
neurologist at Queen Elizabeth’s hospital in Birmingham, is
co-ordinating opposition to the Guantánamo doctors’ actions from the
international medical community. ‘If I were to do what Edmondson describes in
his statement, I would be referred to the General Medical Council and
charged with assault,’ he said.
· Yesterday the new German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the latest
leader to condemn the United States for practices at the prison. In a
magazine interview days before her first visit as premier to the US,
Merkel said Washington should close Guantánamo and find other ways
of dealing with terror suspects.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited