In the last decade, the United States has increasingly become a symbol of hypocrisy as a nation that has violated many international principles that it helped create after 9-11. That record was reinforced this week after the Afghan government (not exactly the paragon of civil liberties) refused to adopt indefinite detention rules pushed by the Obama Administration. Of course, President Obama has continued the indefinite detention of the Bush Administration and the operation of the Guantanamo Bay facility over the objections of civil libertarians. We recently saw the death of a detainee who was found years ago not to be a national security risk and never proven to be guilty of a single crime. Yet, in its effort to create a “new Democracy” in the Afghanistan, the Obama Administration was insisting that it replicate our own indefinite detention rules. In the meantime, a federal court has stayed a prior court order that enjoined the provision on indefinite detention under the Obama Administration’s 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.
A judicial panel ruled that administrative detention runs counter to the country’s laws. Yet the Obama Administration said that unless the country adopted this authoritarian measure, it may not turn over prisoners to Afghan officials. We are still holding more than 600 Afghans.
The death of Adnan Latif, a Yemeni, has become the latest symbol of our abusive policy of detention. As early as 2004, the military determined that he should be released but never told his lawyers until years later. In 2010 a federal court ordered his release. He would never live to see freedom.
Source: Guardian
Dead Gitmo Prisoner Had Been Cleared for Release, Attempted Suicide
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/12/headlines
The U.S. military has identified the Guantánamo Bay prisoner who died over the weekend as Adnan Latif, a Yemeni national who had previously attempted suicide multiple times since his imprisonment a decade ago. Latif was at least the ninth foreign prisoner to die at Guantánamo since the United States began jailing foreigners there in 2002. Latif had remained at Guantánamo despite being cleared for release. Appearing on Democracy Now! in June, the British journalist Andy Worthington discussed Latif’s case.
Andy Worthington: “He’s one of these prisoners who was approved for transfer under President George W. Bush in 2006, at the very latest, possibly earlier than that. He was then—had his release approved by Obama’s task force. He won his habeas corpus petition, as well. But because the judges of the D.C. Circuit Court, you know, a bunch of very right-wing judges, I think that — I think that objectively it’s absolutely fair to say that these people are very right-wing, who have been clamping down on the ability of the lower courts to approve the release of Guantánamo prisoners under any circumstances — you know, they reversed the ruling in Latif’s case, and they relied for that on saying that an intelligence report, which they even said was, you know, was produced in haste under battlefield conditions, should be believed.”
In a letter released in 2009, Latif wrote: “I have seen death so many times. Everything is over. Life is going to hell in my situation. America, what has happened to you?”
Turn them all loose, and get out of that part of the world entirely. That’s what they want. Leave them to their own devices.
Perhaps the Europeans would like to try that again. Other countries want their oil? Okay. Let it happen. Can the Asians secure that part of the world?
Dead After 11 Years of Despair: A Prisoner Who Proved Gitmo Is Immoral
By Conor Friedersdorf
Sep 13 2012
Intelligence experts under Bush and Obama insisted Adnan Latif should be released. America kept him caged anyway.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/dead-after-11-years-of-despair-a-prisoner-who-proved-gitmo-is-immoral/262317/
Excerpt:
If the unjust incarceration of Adnan Latif inspired in conservatives even a fraction of the concern that they had for Scooter Libby; if liberals felt for him a small part of the outrage that they muster on Sandra Fluke’s behalf; if President Bush had been a bit more careful in who he detained, or if President Obama had closed just the portion of Guantanamo Bay holding prisoners cleared by American intelligence agencies for release; if the federal judiciary were slightly less inclined to defer to dubious government claims in habeas cases; or if Congress were less derelict in its duty to preserve and protect the Constitution — if any of those things were true, the Yemeni man might still be alive, and his death, a possible suicide, wouldn’t disgrace us.
But he is dead.
Held for years on end without trial in a cage thousands of miles from home, he endured interrogations, indignities, and depression long enough to be cleared for release. The U.S. government kept him locked up for years longer. Despairing, he died this week, and even in death, his treatment evokes less outrage in Americans than the week’s most controversial tweets.
This despite the fact that there are numerous reasonable doubts about his guilt.
He was captured by Pakistani security forces near the Afghan border in late 2001. On most matters, the average American is disinclined to treat Pakistani security forces as arbiters of truth. Many believe they helped hide Osama bin Laden for years. Yet most Americans presume the guilt of Guantanamo Bay inmates accused of belonging to the Taliban or al-Qaeda in large part because Pakistani sources intimated as much when turning them over. When Latif was turned over, the U.S. was paying the Pakistanis for every Arab “fighter” that they found.
How many bounties were paid for innocents?
The Pakistanis turned over prisoners scores at a time, often after conducting their own interrogations. Information was passed on to the Americans to be included in intake reports. “For the Arabic men in question, the interrogation would have required translation between Arabic and Urdu or Pashto (for the interrogation itself), and then translation from that into English (to go into the CIA report),” Marcy Wheeler explains at Emptywheel, where she’s followed this case. “There are all sorts of reason why you shouldn’t indefinitely detain a man based on such a report!” But information in that intake report got Latif locked away for a decade.
According to the intake report, Latif admitted to fighting with the Taliban. But he denied ever saying so, he insisted he never fought, and his lawyers pointed out other factual inaccuracies in the report persuasively enough that every judge to adjudicate the matter has acknowledged them. He insisted he was traveling to seek treatment for a head injury sustained in an automobile accident. The car accident is corroborated; Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health verifies that he was a charity case, and that they sent him to seek further treatment outside the country; and when he was picked up by the Pakistanis he was in possession of his medical records, a U.S. court eventually found.
Suddenly we’ve skipped ahead many years, but let us not forget that this man spent them incarcerated in solitary or surrounded by al-Qaeda terrorists, unable to contact his family or friends, suffering medically, and without any apparent prospect of challenging his release. Let’s count the years, cognizant of how long they must seem inside an island prison in a foreign land.
2002.
2003.
2004.
2005.
2006.
2007.
In August 2008, Marc Falkoff visited Guantanamo Bay, where he met Latif in an interview cell. He was lying on the floor, weak and emaciated. The attorney would try to secure for the detainee a mattress, a pillow, and his medical records. These small comforts were denied the prisoner. His mental state deteriorated as he did everything he could to protest his extrajudicial incarceration: hunger strikes, smearing himself with feces, throwing urine at guards, more consultations with legal counsel.
Despite his disruptive behavior, he was designated for transfer out of Guantanamo Bay by the Bush Administration. He was still incarcerated there when President Obama took office in January 2009.
Hope! Change! A promise to close Gitmo!
The Obama Administration assembled a task force of career intelligence professionals to assess the inmates at Guantanamo Bay. In order to be cleared for release, an inmate had to be vetted, recommended for transfer, and secure a unanimous vote by all intelligence agencies. Latif met that standard. Two successive administrations had concluded he didn’t belong at Gitmo.
Imagine his mental state in that moment when he was cleared for release by Obama. But they didn’t release him. They kept him locked up instead. “A great many Yemenis remain at Guantanamo not because of any judgment that they individually pose some great menace but because the situation of Yemen itself makes repatriations so difficult; to release detainees there is really to lose any possibility of control over their later activity,” Benjamin Wittes explains at Lawfare, another blog that has covered his case. “Latif and many other Yemenis remained at Guantanamo because the administration determined that it was lawful to hold them and that, if released, some unacceptable percentage of them would do something horrible.”
Elaine M, I’m just trying to drum up work for a forensic shrink I know. He’d love to go to Cuba this time of year.
nick spinelli,
OK, let’s have an intellectually honest discussion. Give us a single reliable source for all released Guantanamo prisoners, that have been confirmed to have killed soldiers and/or civilians, after release.
I saw many lists, all “alleged,” and none of them agreed with each other.
Many trials of U.S.A. citizens have ended in acquittal, after which the released person killed someone. Should the person have been kept in prison, even though acquitted? It’s ridiculous that I need to answer that question: NO.
Anyone that the government arrests deserves a fair trial, not life imprisonment in a dungeon, or torture, or persecution by some military tribunal kangaroo court.
Note the period at the end of the last sentence. No qualifiers, like “unless we’re too cowardly to put them on trial,” as was the case in New York City.
As usual I’ll take the libertarian point of view here although many disagree with it vehemently. Are any of you seriously considering voting for this monster? He has continued or expanded every Bush policy! His public statements are simply panaceas to the masses while his legal objectives are in stark contrast to virtually everything out of his mouth. Where is the outcry from the masses as the Evil Empire slips further down the slope of tyranny? A few bold Libertarians, Mr. Turley I count among them for the most part, everyone else, zzzzzz. Liberals simply want more govt handouts at the expense of everyone else, not to mention both are now war parties as the anti war movement is almost dead.
Here’s a great quote from the LRC blog:
Libertarian: The government’s sole function is the protection of private property. There are very few persons who adhere to this philosophy. A few with this philosophy waste much of their time trying to convince others to believe the same. They won’t succeed.
Conservative: The government needs to be all powerful, and to support our morality and way of life. Nothing is beyond its grasp. Government power is god given through the constitution, the 10 commandments, and biblical scripture. No other proof is necessary. This is the white-man’s burden.
Liberal: The government needs to take from anyone who has more that someone else and make us all equal. We need the government to take care of the young, the old, and middle aged and to promote love between one another. This we know from our heart.
Dredd-
The Muslim cleric kidnapped by the blundering Maxwell Smarts of the CIA was under surveillance by the Italians who were using him to lead them to other members of the terrorist cell. That investigation was, of course, ruined by the heavy-handed James Bond wannabees. To compound the stupidity, they then sent him to a third-world shithole to be tortured- thus rendering him useless as a source of information. By the way, why would we send a prisoner to another country to be tortured when we are so good at it ourselves? It can’t be because we are ashamed of it.
And may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Malisha,
Now you’re talking!
😉
maybe the strings that are getting pulled have threats at the end of them?
Nick S, let’s send a forensic psychiatrist down there. Let’s have him or her administer the MMPI-2-RF to each and every detainee. Hell, throw in a PAI and if there’s budget, a Rorschach test (“This ink blot looks like an Ugly American” would be GUILTY; “This ink blot looks like two non-white women making love on the night of a full moon” would be NOT GUILTY). Let them all be scored. Whoever comes up “sociopath,” keep them; the others, deport them; they have no right to live in Cuba without having applied for immigration! And for anyone who falls right on the line (maybe sociopath maybe not-sociopath), why don’t we give them a trial or something? If they come up sociopath beyond a reasonable doubt, elect them to office; the rest, bomb them with a drone.
Jill!
Thank You for Sharing Your Thoughts.
We’re a Thug Nation now, just look around, shaved heads & goatees seem to be the in thing last decade or so. Looks like the backend of a Baboon to me, but…
Thug Chic.
Paulo, Spot on.
You find them by Following the Money.
Start with the Extractive Industries, good luck in That Jungle, & be Careful, they play for keeps. Go from there. Enough cross correlation, one could home right in.
b.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/thecafe/2012/08/201282413033615140.html “US: Still #1?
Will whoever wins the US election find themselves with the unenviable task of overseeing the decline of the US?” The Cafe, Last Modified: 29 Aug 2012 09:21
anonymously posted 1, September 20, 2012 at 12:58 pm
http://rt.com/news/italian-court-verdict-rendition-547/ “Still guilty: Italy upholds verdict against 23 CIA agents in rendition trial”, Published: 20 September, 2012, 12:37
====================================================
One has to wonder if a trend is beginning:
(Guardian). The feds conflate impunity with exceptionalism, so since our elections do not reach this deep anymore, we can expect more of this it would seem.
We must restore the rule of law. -Jill
Let it stand alone. (And then, repeat it: “We must restore the rule of law.” Peacefully.)
Jill, We could have handled the detainees the way FDR handled the Nazi saboteurs.
bettykath, Please just Google rerleased Gitmo detainees and you will see a long list of those who have killed soldiers and civilains. Let’s @ least have an intellectually honest discussion here.
http://rt.com/news/italian-court-verdict-rendition-547/ “Still guilty: Italy upholds verdict against 23 CIA agents in rendition trial”, Published: 20 September, 2012, 12:37
Mespo,
Paulo has valid points….. I do think that some of these methods are directed to the president whoever it maybe and they just have to suck it up….. The MIC is very strong and capable…..
Which sociopaths Nick? Do you mean the people we have detained in Gitmo? In Bagram? Do you know there have been examinations of the called the worst of the worst. Turns out they aren’t. Most of them weren’t on any battlefield at any time. They were guilty of nothing.
If someone is thought to be guilty, they can have a trial or CBST. If they are found guilty, they can be imprisoned according to US law. We have sentencing guidelines. We even used to have laws of war, no longer in effect.
This depends on people being subject to the rule of law, something we citizens are responsible for restoring. That is my answer. Speak up, any way you can. If you can write, then write, if you can protest, protest, if you can get arrested, get arrested–whatever it takes to peacefully resist, if you can do, do it. We must restore the rule of law.
Our government is Indefinitely detaining people without convicting them of a crime. They aren’t releasing them now, after years of detainment and torture because they think these people will commit a crime? Pre-emptive incarceration for what one might do seems to be the excuse.
Why would these prisoners, once released not just go on with their lives? After so many years, is there a life to go back to? Otoh, why would they not want retribution? They’ve already done the time, why not do the crime? Why not inflict some damage on those who tortured them?
I don’t think we know what those who have been released have done. Any stories will have the stench of propaganda.
Our government has already targeted and taken the lives of its citizens. We have one person maintaining a “kill” list. Why would it not indefinitely detain and torture them? Bradley Manning comes to mind. Why would it not pre-emptively do so based on someone’s conjecture of what YOU might do?