He said he was going to close it, but....
"Guantanamo gears up for 1st trial under Obama; Detainee accused in soldier’s death" by Mike Melia, Associated Press / August 9, 2010
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — American military officers were flying to Guantanamo Bay from bases around the world yesterday to serve as jurors for war crimes suspects as the offshore tribunal system gears up for one of its busiest weeks under President Obama.
(The proposition is so bizarre when the whole power structure is the biggest war crimes machine around -- and they are going to judge others who are nothing more than innocent patsies for propaganda purposes)
The Pentagon is holding military commissions sessions this week for two detainees: a young Canadian going on trial for the slaying of a US soldier in Afghanistan, and an aide to Osama bin Laden who is to be sentenced after pleading guilty in a deal with prosecutors.
The tribunal system that ground to a halt after Obama took office is coming alive with lawyers, human rights observers, and more than 30 journalists who are here at the US Navy base in southeastern Cuba to attend today’s proceedings.
Obama has introduced some changes designed to extend more legal protections to detainees, but the tribunals’ long-term future remains cloudy as the president struggles to fulfill a pledge to close the prison altogether.
The trial for Omar Khadr, the Toronto-born son of an alleged Al Qaeda financier, is expected to begin tomorrow following pretrial hearings. It will be the first trial under Obama and only the third at Guantanamo, where the system that former president George W. Bush established for prosecuting terror suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has faced repeated legal setbacks and challenges.
*********
In the other case, a military panel will begin deliberations as early as today on a sentence for Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, a Sudanese detainee who pleaded guilty last month to one count each of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.
Qosi was accused of acting as accountant, paymaster, supply chief, and cook for Al Qaeda during the 1990s when the terror network was centered in Sudan and Afghanistan. He allegedly worked later as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden....
Both detainees have been held at Guantanamo since 2002.
--more--"
Related:
"Although solitary confinement has long been a tool of prison discipline, the use of solitary became increasingly common in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, many legal and medical specialists have argued that inmates in isolation for long periods suffer from higher suicide rates, increased depression, decreased brain function, and hallucinations."
Where could such things take place?
And down the memory hole we go.
Don't worry. I'm sure all the problems are fixed and they will all get fair trials.
"War crimes trial to decide fate of young Guantanamo inmate; Rights activists call defendant a ‘child soldier’" by Peter Finn, Washington Post / August 13, 2010
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — The first war crimes trial of the Obama administration, which began yesterday with brief opening arguments, will force a panel of seven military jurors, four male and three female officers, to confront two fundamental questions in the coming weeks of testimony:
Did a 15-year-old Canadian, during a bloody encounter with US troops in southern Afghanistan, throw a grenade that killed a US Special Forces medic? And if he is found guilty of murder, what punishment, if any, is appropriate for a teenage offender who was in the grip of a fanatical father?
Omar Khadr, now 23 and the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was found shot and almost mortally wounded in the rubble of an Al Qaeda compound in southern Afghanistan July 27, 2002. Military prosecutors allege that, following a 4-hour firefight in which thousands of rounds were fired and the complex was bombarded by numerous fighter jets and attack helicopters, Khadr tossed a grenade that injured Sergeant Christopher Speer, 28. The father of two clung to life for eight days before dying; his widow, Tabitha, is expected to attend some of the proceedings.
The decision to kick-start President Obama’s commissions with the Khadr case has drawn international scorn from UN officials and human rights activists, who argue Khadr is a child soldier who should be offered a program of rehabilitation, not a trial where he could be sentenced to life in prison if he is found guilty.
Related: Juvenile’s sentence on trial in Ohio
Indeed, within some parts of the Obama administration, there is quiet dismay over the prosecution. But all efforts to resolve the case through a plea agreement have failed, and the Canadian government, alone among Western governments, has shown no interest in getting one of its citizens out of Guantanamo.
**********
Prosecutors allege that Khadr admitted with some pride to Speer’s killing in a series of self-incriminating statements at Bagram Air Base and the military detention center here.
Was that before or after the torture, and he hasn't seen "American Sniper."
Defense lawyers claimed the confessions were first obtained through threats of death and rape, and argued all of his statements should be suppressed.
I can believe that after the Senate Torture Report.
But Judge Patrick Parrish, an Army colonel, was not persuaded and admitted them, along with a videotape found at the compound that appears to show Khadr among a group of men who were building and planting makeshift bombs.
Somehow that video was saved, yup.
“ ‘I am a terrorist trained by Al Qaeda’ Those are his words,’’ said prosecutor Jeff Groharing as he walked around a model of the compound that was placed in front of the jury yesterday. “This trial is about holding an Al Qaeda terrorist responsible for his actions. . . . He grew up in a family of radical Islamists. Omar Khadr learned that ideology.’’
Was he trained in Nevada, and the ideology is akin to rabid Zionist zettlers, too.
Khadr’s military lawyer challenged every detail of the prosecution’s narrative. Army Lieutenant Colonel Jon Jackson told the jury that Khadr was blinded in one eye during the battle and was dragged bleeding into an alley by the three other men with him. Jackson said that two of those men were killed from the air, and that the third man threw the grenade before he was fatally shot by a special forces soldier who also shot Khadr twice in the back....
Jackson also indicated in his opening statement that he would attack Khadr’s incriminating statements, describing them as the fruit of interrogations in which Khadr was terrorized and told what to say.
Sign the statement! Who cares if it's true?
Jackson described Khadr as the obedient if not browbeaten son of his father, Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian native who took his family to Pakistan and Afghanistan when Omar was 10.
The family lived for a time in Osama bin Laden’s compound, and in 2002, Khadr’s father sent the boy back into Afghanistan. Khadr’s father and brother would ultimately die in a gun battle with Pakistani forces.
“Omar Khadr was there because of his father,’’ Jackson said. “He was there because Ahmed Khadr hated his enemies more than he loved his son. . . . Omar Khadr is not a war criminal.’’
Khadr, now a strapping and bearded man who has spent one-third of his life at Guantanamo, has been smiling and engaged in front of the jury, a sharp contrast with his dour demeanor during pretrial hearings, when he threatened to boycott the trial.
On drugs?
--more--"
And the verdict?
Other cases they are trying:
Guantanamo prisoner again ejected from hearing
"New delay hits 9/11 case at Guantanamo" by Ben Fox, Associated Press December 20, 2013
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — A military judge on Thursday ordered a mental competency evaluation for a Guantanamo prisoner charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks who has repeatedly disrupted pretrial proceedings in recent days, freezing preparations for a trial that has already been plagued by delays.
Ramzi Binalshibh, a 41-year-old from Yemen, has been held at Guantanamo since September 2006, when he and his four codefendants were brought to the base from secret CIA prisons overseas, where they were subjected to a US government interrogation program that included tactics such as sleep deprivation and waterboarding that his lawyers say amounted to torture....
And now he has a "psychiatric disorder."
--more--"
You have to throw it all out due to torture, even if it were real and not some massive cover story garbage.
Related: Interrogation tapes of key terror figure found
The disclosure adds a new wrinkle to the public understanding of the documentation of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. The destruction of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation and confinement of senior Al Qaeda figures at CIA secret prisons around the world is the subject of a criminal probe.
They found another video to back up that bull?
Pfffft!
"Judge permits US trial of 1st Guantanamo detainee; Man accused in bombings at 2 embassies" by Larry Neumeister, Associated Press / July 14, 2010
NEW YORK — The first Guantanamo Bay detainee set to be prosecuted in a civilian court was cleared for trial yesterday by a judge who said lengthy interrogation and detention were not grounds for dismissal because they served compelling national security interests.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was interrogated for two years in a secret CIA site for important intelligence information, US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote in a decision that rejected defense requests to toss out the indictment on the grounds that Ghailani was denied a speedy trial.
“No one denies that the agency’s purpose was to protect the United States from attack,’’ Kaplan wrote, noting that the government was not proposing to use any evidence — with one possible exception — gained from Ghailani’s interrogation....
The ruling was not surprising — federal judges regularly have sided with prosecutors in terrorism cases — but the decision was made on the same day that a three-judge federal appeals panel in Washington reversed a judge’s ruling that Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohammed Al-Adahi should be released.
Pakistani authorities captured Adahi in 2001. In 2004 at Guantanamo Bay, a tribunal determined that the evidence showed he was part of Al Qaeda.
The appeals court agreed with the tribunal’s conclusion, noting he had twice met with Osama bin Laden and had attended Al Qaeda’s Al Farouq training camp, where many of the Sept. 11 terrorists trained.
If you buy that official narrative and version that is hogwash (with all due respect to hogwash), that is.
--more--"
Related:
Judge Bars Major Witness From Terrorism Trial
Ex-Guantanamo detainee acquitted of most charges
Feds chose torture over trial for detainee
Judge upholds conviction in bombing of US embassies
In a case that nearly unraveled when the defendant was convicted on just one of more than 280 counts.
Guantanamo Detainee Ahmed Ghailani Gets Life Sentence For Embassy Plot
They only have a picture of him as a kid?
Release of Guantanamo detainee is overturned
The “circumstantial evidence is damning,’’ they say.
Guantanamo detainee loses bid to have US release information to the public
"Guantanamo Bay detainee pleads guilty to war crimes; Hopes to limit term to 15 years in bombing plot" by Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press February 21, 2014
FORT MEADE, Md. — A Guantanamo Bay prisoner pleaded guilty Thursday to war crime charges in a pretrial deal aimed at limiting his sentence to 15 years for helping plan the suicide bombing of an oil tanker off Yemen in 2002 that killed a crewman and wounded a dozen others.
The deal was widely expected to give him time to testify against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who also faces terrorism charges in the tanker bombing and for allegedly orchestrating the 2000 Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 sailors and wounded 37.
Related: The USS Cole bombing against the backdrop of Israeli "Black Propaganda" Operations
Did you also know that Israel did 9/11?
A military judge accepted the plea deal and found Ahmed al-Darbi of Saudi Arabia guilty of the five charges against him, including terrorism, attacking civilians, and hazarding a vessel for complicity in the Al Qaeda attack on the French-flagged MV Limburg. Under the deal, the sentence could be capped if he cooperates with authorities.
Darbi is a relative by marriage to one of the Sept. 11 hijackers who crashed a plane into the Pentagon.
There is much debate about what crashed into the Pentagon that day.
He has been at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since August 2002; the attack actually occurred two months later.
But prosecutors said he was an Al Qaeda operative who attended the group’s training camps and helped arrange the bombing by, among other things, buying small boats intended to be used to attack the tanker.
‘‘Mr. al-Darbi was not present . . . did not actually physically take part in the attack, but he is guilty’’ of the crimes under US law because he aided those who did, the presiding judge, Air Force Colonel Mark L. Allred, said as he repeatedly explained the law to Darbi. Speaking to Darbi through an interpreter, Allred said he could not accept the guilty pleas until he was sure the accused completely understood them. The judge spent close to two hours going over the case — charge by charge — and questioning Darbi on them.
Flanked by his civilian and military lawyers, the 39-year-old Darbi wore a white dress shirt and a tie and repeatedly answered ‘‘yes, your honor,’’ sometimes in English and sometimes in Arabic, to signify his understanding to Allred.
‘‘Do you understand that you are legally responsible for these actions?’’ Allred asked.
‘‘Yes,’’ Darbi said.
Allred said Darbi’s sentencing would not be held for 3½ half years.
If he complies with his part of the deal, his sentence could be limited to 15 years, minus the 3½ years that he will remain at Guantanamo Bay until sentencing proceedings.
Why? Been there over 10 already!
‘‘Following sentencing . . . it is possible Mr. al-Darbi will be repatriated to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to serve the remainder of his sentence to confinement in a Saudi Arabian prison,’’ chief prosecutor Mark Martins said.
Allred said the plea deal also means Darbi waived his rights to a trial and an appeal, that he will not sue the United States on his capture, prosecution, and confinement, and that he will drop pending lawsuits.
The ruling Thursday gives Darbi at least a little more certainty about his future, said his civilian lawyer, Ramzi Kassem.
The arraignment was held in Cuba but was viewed by some journalists via closed circuit at Fort Meade military base near Baltimore.
--more--"
"Detainee contends US tortured him; Says punishment doubled for hunger strikers" by By Mohamed OsmanAssociated Press December 20, 2013
KHARTOUM, Sudan — One of two Sudanese Guantanamo detainees who arrived home Thursday after release from the US-run facility in Cuba said his jailers had ‘‘systematically tortured’’ him, with punishment ‘‘doubled’’ for those who attempted hunger strikes.
Ibrahim Idris made his remarks in a news conference in Khartoum, hours after arriving in a US military plane along with Noor Othman Mohammed.
Mohammed pleaded guilty in February 2011 to terrorism offenses in a plea deal that spared him the possibility of a life sentence. He was sentenced to 14 years, and all but 34 months were suspended.
Idris is mentally ill and has spent much of his 11 years at Guantanamo in psychiatric treatment.
Was it the torture, and I guess you can't believe him.
A federal judge ordered his release after the United States dropped its opposition in October.
Frail and speaking weakly, Idris said, ‘‘we have been subjected to meticulous, daily torture,’’ adding that those who tried to hold a hunger strike were ‘‘double tortured . . . on an isolated island, surrounded by weapons.’’
See: Dinner at Guantánamo
‘‘We were helpless,’’ he said. The second freed inmate, Mohammed, was unable to attend the conference because he was convalescing in the hospital, Idris said.
He commended the Sudanese government and civil society organizations for working to secure the two’s release.
The head of rights group Sudanese Civil Aid, Mustafa Abdul-Mukaram, vowed that his group will continue to press for ‘‘due rights’’ of Sudanese detained in Guantanamo, and demand a US apology for the imprisonment.
Good luck with that. Lucky they released you.
He accused the United States of holding the prisoners for years based on false information.
He added that some of the former detainees had pleaded guilty through unfair settlements to secure their release.
Hunger strikes have been employed by men held at Guantanamo since shortly after the prison opened in January 2002. The United States has long disclosed how many are refusing to eat and whether they meet military guidelines to be force fed.
Spokesman at the facility said earlier this month that the US military will no longer disclose to the media and public whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike, eliminating what had long been an unofficial barometer of conditions at the secretive military outpost.
This from the transparent presidency, blah, blah.
Human rights groups, lawyers and the media had long used the number of hunger strikers as a measure of discontent in the prison. A mass protest over conditions this year peaked in July at 106 prisoners.
Of those still held in the facility, only a handful of prisoners are currently facing charges, including five men accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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Just be glad they didn't send you elsewhere:
"Life harsh in secretive terror prisons; Federal prisons hold many more than Guantanamo" by Scott Shane, New York Times December 11, 2011
WASHINGTON - It is the other Guantanamo, an archipelago of federal prisons that stretches across the country, hidden away on back roads. Today, it houses far more men convicted in terrorism cases than the shrunken population of the prison in Cuba that has generated so much debate.
Meanwhile, an aggressive prosecution strategy aimed at prevention as much as punishment has sent away scores of people convicted in terrorism cases.
They serve long sentences, often in restrictive, Muslim-majority units, under intense monitoring by prison officers. Their world is spare, unforgiving, and sometimes surreal.
**********
In recent weeks, Congress has reignited an old debate, with some arguing that only military justice is appropriate for terrorist suspects. But military tribunals have proven excruciatingly slow and imprisonment at Guantanamo hugely costly - $800,000 per inmate a year, compared with $25,000 in federal prison.
The criminal justice system, meanwhile, has absorbed the surge of terrorism cases since 2001 without calamity and without the international criticism that Guantanamo has attracted for holding prisoners without trial.
By contrast with the record at Guantanamo, where the Defense Department says that about 25 percent of those released are known or suspected of subsequently joining militant groups, it appears extraordinarily rare for the federal prison inmates with past terrorist ties to plot violence after their release.
Both the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress often cite the threat of homegrown terrorism. But the Bureau of Prisons has proven remarkably resistant to outside scrutiny of the inmates it houses, who might offer a unique window on the problem.
So will thi$:
"The study was sponsored by Business Executives for National Security, a Washington nonprofit that is dedicated to solving national security challenges. Members include executives from a host of major defense, computing, and investment companies, including some with financial interests in government spending on intelligence-gathering. Former Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who oversaw Boston’s response to the Marathon attacks, was part of a group of more than a dozen former officials who released the report in Washington last week. Other members of the panel included Michael Chertoff , the former secretary of homeland security; retired General Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency; and Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counter-terrorism Center. The recommendations have been presented to James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, and the staff of the intelligence and homeland security committees, officials said. Clapper’s spokesman said they are under review. They have also been shared with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis."
It's all $elf-$erving propaganda and bull$hit, folks. Sorry.
“There’s a huge national debate about how dangerous these people are,’’ said Gary LaFree, director of a national terrorism study center at the University of Maryland, who was lead author of the proposal. “I just think, as a citizen, somebody ought to be studying this.’’
The Bureau of Prisons would not make any officials available for an interview with The New York Times, and wardens at three prisons refused to permit a reporter to visit inmates. But e-mails and letters from inmates give a rare, if narrow, look at their hidden world.
Consider the case of Randall Todd Royer, 38, a Missouri-born Muslim convert who goes by Ismail. Before 9/11, he was a young Islamic activist with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society, meeting with members of Congress and visiting the Clinton White House.
He smells like CIA-Duh.
Today he is nearly eight years into a 20-year prison sentence. He pleaded guilty in 2004 to helping several American friends go to a training camp for Lashkar-e-Taiba, an extremist group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. The organization was later designated a terrorist group by the United States - and is blamed for the Mumbai massacre in 2008 - but prosecutors maintained in 2004 that the friends intended to go on to Afghanistan and fight US troops.
Royer had fought briefly with the Bosnian Muslims against their Serbian neighbors in the mid-1990s, when NATO, too, backed the Bosnians. He trained at a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp himself. And in 2001, he was stopped by Virginia police with an assault rifle and ammunition in his car.
But he adamantly denies that he would ever scheme to kill Americans, and there is no evidence that he did so. Before sentencing, he wrote the judge a 30-page letter admitting, “I crossed the line and, in my ignorance and phenomenally poor judgment, broke the law.’’
Federal officials say the government’s zero-tolerance approach to conduct touching on terrorism is an important reason there has been no repeat of Sept. 11.
Yeah, and so is the fact that it was an inside job and false flag. All we have gotten in the interim are pathetic patsy plotters being instigated by the FBI.
Lengthy sentences for marginal offenders have been criticized by some rights advocates as deeply unfair - but they have sent an unmistakable message to young men drawn to the rhetoric of violent jihad.
--more--"
Related:
10 years of Guantanamo
Guantanamo Bay inmates, human rights groups, plan protests to mark 10 years
Camp 5 detainee Shaker Aamer, a Saudi citizen who was formerly a British resident, said that he and other prisoners were “very grateful for this expression of solidarity by Americans with the prisoners at Guantanamo and their families,’’ according to Ramzi Kassem, a professor of law at City University of New York and counsel to some of the Guantanamo detainees."
I'm ashamed of what has been done in my name when I had nothing to do with it.
Btw, did they ever release that British guy?
Not like anyone ever died though, right?
"Justice Dept. to investigate two detainee deaths; Agency closing cases on 100 other prisoners" by Eric Lichtblau and Eric Schmitt, New York Times / July 1, 2011
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department announced yesterday that it is opening a full criminal investigation into the deaths of two terrorism suspects in CIA custody overseas, but it is closing inquiries into the treatment of nearly 100 other detainees over the past decade.
Intelligence officials saw the announcement as a vindication of sorts.
“I welcome the news that the broader inquiries are behind us,’’ Leon E. Panetta, director of the CIA, said in his last day in office before being sworn today as defense secretary. “We are now finally about to close this chapter of our agency’s history.’’
Bury it, as it were.
Still, the renewed attention to the volatile issue of CIA interrogations - after the controversy had all but disappeared from public debate - is sure to set off a range of legal and political issues for the Justice Department, the White House, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The Justice Department has faced years of criticism from the left for inaction on accusations of abuse by CIA interrogators, while defenders of the CIA have warned that any prosecutions would be deeply damaging to the agency.
It will be left to General David H. Petraeus, who was confirmed yesterday as CIA director, to lead the agency through any turmoil from the criminal investigation.
Related: Petraeus Won't be President
The Justice Department did not identify the two detainees at the center of the criminal investigation. But government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing review, said the first case involved the well-publicized death of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in CIA custody in 2003 at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He became publicly known as “the Iceman’’ after his body was photographed packed in ice and wrapped in plastic.
An iconic image if there ever was one.
The second case involves the death of Gul Rahman, a suspected militant who died in 2002 after being shackled to a cold cement wall in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit, the officials said.
Did you see that before.... ??
Beginning in 2002, Justice Department lawyers wrote a series of then-secret legal opinions authorizing intelligence officers to use increasingly harsh interrogation methods such as sleep deprivation, slapping, and waterboarding on dozens of terrorism suspects in an effort to elicit information about Al Qaeda.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. stressed in his statement yesterday that any intelligence officials who acted “in good faith’’ within the scope of the Justice Department’s legal guidance at the time would not face prosecution.
And that excuses all. I know I robbed the bank, judge, but it was in "good faith."
*********
In a nod to the tensions surrounding the issue, Holder was careful to emphasize the “incredibly important service to our nation’’ that intelligence officials provide.
They have all the dirt on him, too.
Civil rights leaders said that they were disappointed that Holder had not set a broader target for the current investigation by looking at the legality of the interrogation policies approved by senior lawyers and intelligence officials.
“With the approval of the Bush administration’s most senior officials, the CIA operated an interrogation program that subjected prisoners to unimaginable cruelty and violated both international and domestic law,’’ said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Then it should go to the Hague, right?
But Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, who leads the House Intelligence Committee, said the Justice Department’s decision to close the book on all but two of the remaining cases “has finally substantially lifted an undeserved cloud of doubt and suspicion from all of our intelligence professionals.’’
President Obama signaled soon after his inauguration in January 2009 that he was reluctant to re-examine some of the most controversial counterterrorism tactics of the Bush administration, including the treatment of prisoners and the use of harsh interrogation tactics....
So his administration used 'em, too, as the war criminals of the Bush regime walked.
--more--"
Related:
Rumsfeld must face torture suit, appeals court says
Appeals court says Gitmo suicide suit not allowed
Ex-Guantanamo prosecutor’s suit tossed
US torture victim’s family loses case to sue Palestinian Authority
How would that look here in AmeriKa, huh?
What one does notice is AmeriKan torture gets a lot more coverage than Israeli torture of Palestinians in my Zionist War Pre$$.
Europe’s rights chief questions help given to US
If governments have been 'deeply complicit’ in torture, and “crimes have been carefully and deliberately covered up,’’ since 2011, then they are all war criminal governments.
See: Polish Prisons No Joke
Neither is this:
Poland nudged to investigate acts in CIA prison
"Ex-Polish leader denies knowledge of CIA site" Associated Press / September 9, 2010
WARSAW — A former Polish president who was in office during the time the CIA is suspected of running a secret prison in his country says he has no knowledge of the facility or of harsh interrogation techniques allegedly used against terror suspects there.
Aleksander Kwasniewski’s comments followed a an Associated Press report that a suspect in the USS Cole bombing, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was subjected to harsh treatment in a secret prison in Poland in late 2002 and early 2003.
The AP learned from several former intelligence officials and a review by the CIA’s inspector general that a CIA officer revved a power drill near Nashiri’s head and threatened him with an unloaded handgun.
Kwasniewski, Poland’s president from 1995 to 2005, denied knowledge of such a “black site,’’ but also said he does not know the full extent of CIA operations on Polish soil....
Kwasniewski strongly defended Poland’s support of the US fight against terrorism and reiterated that the CIA used Poland as a base where flights would take off and land after the Sept. 11 attacks....
“US planes landed in Poland, and many activities took place in connection to that, but it was fully under US responsibility,’’ he said.
Polish prosecutors are investigating the extent of Poland’s involvement in the US system of secret prisons around the world where detainees were questioned and subjected to harsh methods, including the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding.
The newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported last month that prosecutors are considering war crimes charges against Kwasniewski and two other officials for allegedly allowing harsh methods to be used in Poland.
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Fast forward four years:
"Poland’s ex-leaders say they agreed to CIA site, not torture" by Monika Scislowska, Associated Press December 11, 2014
WARSAW — After years of denials, two former Polish leaders acknowledged Wednesday that they had allowed a secret CIA prison to operate on their territory, but they insisted that they never authorized the harsh treatment or torture of its inmates.
You still collaborated in it.
Former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski, 60, and former prime minister Leszek Miller, 68, spoke to journalists in Warsaw after a US Senate report condemning CIA practices at secret prisons was released Tuesday in Washington.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report did not identify the host countries.
‘‘The US side asked the Polish side to find a quiet site where it could conduct activity that would allow it to effectively obtain information from persons who had declared a readiness to cooperate with the US side,’’ Kwasniewski said. ‘‘We gave our consent to that.’’ He said Poland demanded that people who would be held in the country should be treated humanely as prisoners of war, according to their rights.
So the screams couldn't be heard.
Despite the repeated Polish denials, the Associated Press had published stories on the prison in the northeastern town of Stare Kiejkuty, citing former CIA officials who said it operated from December 2002 until autumn 2003.
Human rights groups believe about eight terror suspects were held in Poland, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
After he was waterboarded 183 times and his children were tortured in front of him.
Kwasniewski was in power from 1995 to 2005, but, like Miller and other left-wing government leaders of the time, he denied the site’s existence until now.
And how can one ever again believe in the Polish government?
In an effort to justify the sudden acknowledgment, Kwasniewski said later in a TV interview that he had been previously bound to keep state secrets.
PFFFFFFT!
Kwasniewski also said the prison, which he referred to as a ‘‘site,’’ was part of ‘‘deepened’’ intelligence cooperation with the United States in the fight against terrorism after 9/11.
And that justifies any atrocity!
He said he only learned that detainees had been tortured there from leaks to the press starting in 2006.
What kind of leader doesn't know what is happening in his area, region, or nation?
--more--"
Related(?):
"Thousands of supporters of a conservative opposition party in Poland marched on Saturday to protest the results of recent local elections, which party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski says were falsified (AP)."
Also see: Chinese Torture
That where the U.S. made them disappear to after Poland?
"High court rejects plea from Uighurs" Associated Press / April 19, 2011
WASHINGTON — The five remaining Chinese Muslims being held at Guantanamo Bay lost their latest bid yesterday to get the Supreme Court to hear their case.
The justices turned away a plea from the five detainees, who have been held at the US naval base in Cuba for nearly nine years.
The detainees had previously declined an offer to be resettled in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, where six other Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, have gone to live. It is not clear why the five refused to go to Palau, or to a second, unidentified country that the Obama administration has said was willing to take them....
The United States has agreed for years that the Uighurs are not enemy combatants. China wants the Uighurs sent home, but they argue — and the administration agrees — that they could be tortured if they are sent to China.
You mean after the U.S. torture?
In other action yesterday, the court rejected an appeal in a murder-for-hire plot after the star prosecution witness forged documents used at trial and lied about his military background....
No valor there.
--more--"
"US sends 6 Guantanamo prisoners to Uruguay; Transfer largest since ‘09 and 1st to South America" by Charlie Savage, New York Times December 08, 2014
WASHINGTON — The United States transferred six detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison to Uruguay this weekend, the Defense Department announced Sunday. It was the largest single group of inmates to depart the wartime prison in Cuba since 2009, and the first detainees to be resettled in South America.
The transfers were made amid a renewed push by President Obama to close the prison.
The six men — four Syrians, a Tunisian, and a Palestinian — were detained as suspected militants with ties to Al Qaeda in 2002 but were never charged. They have long been cleared for release by an interagency task force but could not be sent home.
The administration has struggled to find countries willing to take detainees who are no longer considered to pose a threat. President José Mujica of Uruguay agreed this year to accept the six as a humanitarian gesture, but outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel had delayed in signing off on the arrangement.
Another reason Hagel was dumped I'm sure.
Hagel’s slow pace in approving proposed transfers of low-level detainees contributed to larger tensions with the White House before his resignation under pressure last month.
The departure of the six men reduces Guantanamo’s inmate population to 136, of whom 67 are on the list of those approved for transfer if security conditions can be met. Most on the transfer list are Yemenis.
Among the six detainees was a Syrian man who has been on a prolonged hunger strike to protest his indefinite detention without trial, and who has brought a high-profile lawsuit to challenge the military’s procedures for force-feeding him. His release may make most of that case moot.
Why?
Although Obama vowed in 2013 to revive his efforts to close the prison, the military had transferred just one low-level detainee in the first 10 months of this year. That transfer occurred in March.
But the bureaucratic logjam appears to be clearing: Since November, it has transferred 13 more. There have now been 30 transfers under Hagel’s watch as defense secretary; by comparison, only four were transferred under his predecessor, Leon Panetta, who ran the Pentagon from July 2011 to February 2013.
Still, even if the military were to transfer all the other detainees recommended for such a move, some 69 detainees would remain. They are either facing charges before a military commission or deemed untriable but too dangerous to release.
How dare the U.S. criticize others for such things!?
The Obama administration hopes that if it can shrink the inmate population to two digits, Congress will revoke a law that bars the transfer of detainees into the United States. It would be far cheaper for taxpayers to house the inmates on domestic soil, and the White House argues that closing Guantanamo would eliminate a propaganda symbol for terrorists to use against the country.
As if there is nothing wrong with torture other than the bad image that comes with it!
But Republican lawmakers remain hostile to that plan. They argue that housing wartime prisoners on domestic soil would increase the risk of terrorist attacks inside the United States.
Then all the spying, all the rest, worthle$$.
Each of the six detainees remained at Guantanamo because they come from home countries with troubled security conditions. The Uruguay deal was ready to go in March, but Hagel waited until July to notify Congress that he was approving the deal.
The next month, when the United States sent a plane to Guantanamo to bring the men out, Mujica balked, preferring to avoid the media spectacle of their arrival in the middle of an election campaign to choose his successor.
Then, Uruguay’s presidential election went into a runoff, which was held Nov. 30. During the delay, administration officials insisted that the transfers would take place eventually.
Cliff Sloan, the State Department envoy who negotiates detainee transfers, expressed gratitude to Mujica in a statement. Several other South American countries, including Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, motivated by news of the Uruguay deal, had opened talks about potentially taking in some low-level detainees as well, but were watching to see what would happen.
Sloan noted that “this transfer is a major milestone in our efforts to close the facility.”
Mujica, a former urban guerrilla who spent 14 years in prison in Uruguay, including more than a decade in solitary confinement, expressed critical views of Guantanamo in a televised interview over the weekend, saying some of the detentions represented a “miserable injustice.’’
Mujica also emphasized that Uruguay would not place restrictions on the mobility of the six men, saying that their arrival with refugee status meant that “the first day they want to leave, they can go.”
One Syrian transferred Sunday is Jihad Ahmed Mujstafa Diyab, who had been held for 12 years without a trial. He is the plaintiff in a suit challenging the military’s procedures for dealing with hunger strikes, which include strapping detainees into a restraint chair and inserting tubes into their noses, through which liquid nutritional supplement is poured.
Or they sometimes did it at the other end.
In October, a US District Court judge ruled that the military must make public videotapes of Diyab undergoing that procedure, in response to a petition by The New York Times and 15 other news organizations. The Obama administration has appealed that order, saying the release of the videos could inflame attacks against US troops abroad.
Why? They already know what has been done to them. That move is to keep this information from the American people because they would see what monsters are our rulers.
Under statutory transfer restrictions enacted by Congress, the secretary of defense must tell lawmakers at least 30 days before a transfer that the secretary has determined the release would be safe enough.
Hagel approved a flurry of transfers in late 2013, but in 2014 the process ground to a halt as he did not move on the Uruguay deal, nor on a proposal to repatriate four low-level Afghans and make other arrangements in the pipeline.
His reluctance to sign off on these agreements contributed to a deterioration in his relations with the White House. In May, Hagel said in an interview that he was in no hurry to approve deals. “I owe that to the American people, to ensure that any decision I make is, in my mind, responsible,” he said.
Later that month, Hagel did transfer five high-level Taliban detainees to Qatar in an exchange for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, America’s only living prisoner of war from the conflict in Afghanistan. The deal angered lawmakers because Hagel did not follow the 30-day advance-notice law in that instance; the administration said that waiting 30 days after the deal for Bergdahl’s release was struck would have endangered his life.
At least the VA has been fixed.
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Related: Mass. lawyers celebrate clients’ release from Guantanamo
"Vatican presses US on Guantanamo inmate treatment" Associated Press December 16, 2014
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican asked the United States on Monday to find an ‘‘adequate humanitarian solution’’ for prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, a reflection of vocal concern by Pope Francis that prisoners be treated with dignity and not be subject to inhumane treatment.
Even the pooper-pumping Vatican is condemning it.
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, made the request during a Vatican meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said the two sides discussed the US commitment to closing the facility. He said Parolin expressed the Holy See’s desire that ‘‘favorable attention be paid to finding adequate humanitarian solutions for current inmates.’’
Pope Francis has spoken forcefully about the need to protect prisoners’ rights and dignity, and has dedicated much time as archbishop of Buenos Aires and as pope to ministering to inmates. Just this past weekend, he sent a letter of Christmas greetings to inmates at a prison, urging them to use their time in detention for personal and spiritual growth.
Without citing the United States by name, Francis has also harshly criticized extraordinary renditions, which the CIA used after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to take terror suspects to third countries for interrogation, and often torture.
He has also denounced life prison terms as a ‘‘hidden death penalty,’’ and said putting inmates in isolation was a form of ‘‘physical and psychological torture.’’
Looks like propaganda, yeah.
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"Obama speeding up efforts to shut Guantanamo center" by Missy Ryan and Adam Goldman, Washington Post December 25, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is accelerating its efforts to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center, preparing to move dozens of inmates out of the prison in coming months in a step forward for President Obama’s redoubled attempt to achieve a core national security objective before he leaves office.
US officials, describing administration plans to significantly reduce the Guantanamo population over the next six months, said they are in talks with a wide range of countries that they hope will accept all 64 detainees now approved for transfer.
Obama has already spoken to fellow heads of state in an effort to arrange transfers, the officials said, one sign of the increased personal role they expect he will take as he inches closer to shuttering Guantanamo.
“He does not want to leave this to his successor,” Paul Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy for shutting down Guantanamo, said in an interview.
After a virtual halt to detainee transfers in 2011 to 2013, officials hope to whittle the prison’s population down from 132 to the mid-120s by the middle of next month. That is roughly half the number of detainees housed at the military complex in Cuba when Obama took office in 2009.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has approved the transfer of five detainees to a host country by the end of 2014, officials said, bringing the total number of transfers this year to 28. An additional five or six prisoners are expected to be moved in the first weeks of January.
Obama remains a long way from achieving his goal of closing Guantanamo and could yet be forced to threaten executive action if he cannot overcome congressional opposition to moving or releasing detainees.
He could do that right now as commander-in-chief and it would all be constitutional; he just doest want the political fallout.
But officials are optimistic that they can make significant progress in pressing other countries to accept transfers.
They are betting in particular on leaders in Latin America, who they hope will follow the lead of Uruguay, which welcomed six Guantanamo detainees earlier this month. They are also hoping that Obama’s decision to upend US policy on Cuba and recent Vatican calls to close the prison will be incentives to potential host nations.
At the same time, officials must still find a way to resolve the fate of detainees from Yemen, who make up the largest share of the remaining detainees and who are unlikely to be sent home any time soon as a consequence of US concerns about militant activity in their home country.
“We’ve been able to break the log-jam,” said Clifford Sloan, who later this month will step down from his position as Lewis’s counterpart at the State Department. “There’s a very clear path ahead for significant progress and ultimate closure of the facility.”
He was Kerry's pick for the job.
The accelerated effort to close Guantanamo is at the center of a larger effort to wind down a war-time detainee system that began in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Also this month, the US military shut down the Parwan detention facility in Afghanistan, which held a small number of prisoners on a military base near Kabul. Parwan was a final vestige of what was once a massive US military operation to capture, process and house around 30,000 prisoners in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Related: US closes Afghan detention center, hands over prisoners
US sends 4 Afghans home from Guantanamo
Also see: US hands over Pakistani detainees
The action underlines the improving relations between the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
If officials can find a home for all 64 detainees who are now cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo, they will then tackle the even harder task of dealing with the remaining prisoners. Ten detainees, including five accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks, are at some stage of a military trial process. Almost 60 more are slated to undergo an official review that may result in some being deemed eligible for transfer. But officials expect that others — perhaps over a dozen — will remain in legal limbo forever, considered too dangerous for release but ineligible for trial due to insufficient or problematic evidence.
Increasingly, Obama is making a fiscal argument for shutting the prison, which costs $400 to $500 million a year to operate. Keeping the lights on at Guantanamo becomes even more costly on a per-detainee basis as the prison population falls.
“It is contrary to our values and it is wildly expensive,” Obama told CNN over the weekend.
But Obama faces significant obstacles to closing the prison, including deep congressional opposition and turnover among Obama’s top detainee officials. Both Sloan and J. Alan Liotta, a senior Pentagon official on detainee policy, are stepping down around the end of the year.
There has also been friction between the White House and Pentagon over the pace of detainee transfers.
Administration officials see glimmers of hope in Congress despite lawmakers’ longstanding ban on moving prisoners to the United States for trial or detention.
They hope that Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has expressed some support for closing the prison, will build momentum as he takes leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee next year.
See: McCain rejects role for torture
But James Inhofe, currently the committee’s top Republican, cautioned that political fault lines on Guantanamo may remain unchanged.
“Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate — they’re not real excited about lining up with him on these things that he’s doing,” Inhofe said. “I don’t think he’ll get by with it.”
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Maybe they will line up with a woman:
"Complaints challenge orders limiting female guards at Gitmo" Associated Press January 27, 2015
FORT MEADE, Md. — Some female guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison have filed equal-opportunity complaints challenging court orders barring them from jobs that would require touching detainees while escorting them to hearings and attorney-client meetings, a military judge said Monday.
The two complaints, which were filed with the Defense Department’s Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity, complicate a dispute that stems from the detainees’ assertion that their Muslim faith prohibits physical contact with females who are not their wives or relatives.
Yeah, those Muslims are such a problem.
Some defense lawyers have argued that the government recently added women to the escort teams to humiliate the men and disrupt their ability to defend themselves.
Prosecutors have argued that barring women from escort duty would amount to gender discrimination. The complaints were revealed by Navy Captain J. Kirk Waits.
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Related:
"The commander of a top-secret Guantanamo prison housing unit testified Wednesday that two court orders barring female guards from jobs requiring physical contact with certain Muslim detainees could jeopardize the safety of his operation by limiting his staffing options."
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Okay, who left the girlie mag lying around?!
Seriously, readers, how could that have gotten there?
Talk about a stupid psyop, that's one of the all-time worst!
Maybe we could just give the place back to Cuba?
"US refuses Cuba demand for base at Guantanamo" by Bradley Klapper and Emily Swanson, Associated Press February 05, 2015
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday ruled out handing over the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, rejecting a central demand of President Raul Castro of Cuba for restoring normal relations between the two countries.
Roberta Jacobson, the top US diplomat for Latin America, also said the United States would continue transmitting radio and television broadcasts into Cuba that are opposed by Castro’s government.
While Guantanamo and the broadcasts are irritants, Washington believes neither is likely to stand in the way of US and Cuban embassies being re-established after a half-century interruption. The United States is hoping to clinch an agreement with Cuba on embassies in the coming months.
Jacobson’s testimony before a largely hostile House Foreign Affairs Committee came as an Associated Press-GfK poll found broad support in the United States for warmer ties with Cuba.
Look at how quickly the conversation has changed.
Forty-five percent of those surveyed supported full diplomatic relations between the Cold War foes, with only 15 percent opposing. Sixty percent backed the end of the US economic embargo of Cuba, with 35 percent for its continuation.
But the views expressed at Wednesday’s hearing were different. Senior Republicans and Democrats took turns excoriating President Obama for negotiating in secret a December spy swap that also included promises from him and Castro to turn a new page in the US-Cuban relationship.
Once again, I see biparti$an$hip.
Castro last week laid out his long-term objectives for the rapprochement. They include the United States returning the Guantanamo base and prison, lifting the embargo, and compensating his country for damages. The United States established the naval base in 1903; Cuba’s communist government has sought its return since coming to power in 1959.
Good luck getting any of that.
‘‘The issue of Guantanamo is not on the table in these conversations,’’ Jacobson told lawmakers. Cuba has raised the issue, she said, but ‘‘we are not interested in discussing that.’’
******************
The United States most immediate goal is embassies.
From which to spy from and use as a base for terrorism.
Cuba’s most pressing demand is an end to banking restrictions, many of which are linked to its US designation as a ‘‘state sponsor of terrorism.’’ The Obama administration is likely to lift Cuba from that list in the next months.
The AP-GfK poll found self-identified Democrats overwhelmingly in favor of restoring embassies and eliminating the US embargo, which Obama has eased but only Congress can revoke.
Among Republicans, the blocs are closer. Thirty-four percent want diplomatic relations, with 30 percent opposed. Forty-nine percent want the embargo lifted, with 50 percent believing it should stay....
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Also see: Fidel Castro photographs quash death rumors
Photos cited by ma$$ media no longer convince me of anything.
Kerry, cohorts discuss Cuba, regional issues
It is to discuss issues facing North America and the formation of a North American Union, and never you mind the snow piles in the midst of record heat and global warming.
