Another day, another detainee sues, alleging torture

Attorneys representing Binyam Mohammed, held without charge at Guantanamo since 2002 and accused of being a suspected al Qaeda co-conspirator, have filed suit against the British government. The suit charges that the British government would violate its own foreign policy by permitting a former resident to face war crimes trial here with evidence allegedly obtained via torture.

Pentagon officials have not yet charged Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohammed, 29, with war crimes. In the last, aborted U.S. effort to stage military commissions, he was accused of planning to explode a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in New York City.

The suit seeks to extract from the British government any secret intelligence that the two war on terror allies may have exchanged in the case in a bid to prove any trial would be tainted by torture.

Pakistani security forces arrested Mohammed at the Karachi airport in April 2002. From there, his lawyers claim, he disappeared into a secret network of U.S. supported prisons -- including 18 months in Morocco between 2002 and 2004.

There, according to an affidavit his London lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, he confessed under torture to crimes he never committed.

''The torture included shackling, being suspended from walls and ceilings, brutal beatings and being cut all over his body with a scalpel, including his genitals,'' according to the 21-page petition filed Tuesday at the British High Court of Justice.

"Unsurprisingly, the claimant co-operated to avoid further torture.''

The squatter occupying the oval insists, of course, that the United States does not engage in torture. We use enhanced interrogation techniques, but those are not torture...(Yes, this is definite hair splitting, but what are you? A commie terrorist lover? Nine-Eleven changed everything!)

Under the laws regulating military commissions, evidence obtained via coercion might be admissible, if the judge hearing the case deems it necessary, but evidence gathered by using torture is not, because torture violates United States and international law. The responsibility for determining where that line lays will be up to each individual judge hearing cases once the tribunals get underway.

Tribunals like the ones the Bush administration has set up have not been used by this country since the end of WW II, and other nations, including our closest ally Britain, have called the commissions "kangaroo courts." Last year, the Brits specifically requested the release of Mohammed from captivity in Guantanamo, but their subject remains confined. Now, his attorneys are convinced that he will finally be charged as the Pentagon prosecutor revisits old cases that were earlier halted by the Supreme Court.

A funny thing happened on the way to the tribunal

The show-trials the Bushies have been in a lather about getting 9/11 trials underway and timing for maximum electoral impact have been dealt another setback. Two months after the announcement was made that the show trials would be tied to the upcoming election tribunals would get underway, not a single detainee has seen a military defense attorney.

The delay in getting lawyers to those detainees, which largely grew out of a struggle within the Pentagon over legal resources, is indicative of the confounding obstacles facing this latest effort to expedite the military tribunals.

Since fall, when charges had been lodged against just three detainees, military officials have charged 12 more terrorism suspects. Yet there is a growing consensus among lawyers inside and outside the military that few of those cases are likely to actually come to trial before the end of the Bush administration.

“Speed is going to be very, very difficult to accomplish here,” said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a military law expert at George Washington University. “They may be overconfident that if they just push ahead, all the ducks will end up in a row. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The road to a trial is difficult in some cases partly because they involve potential death penalties and claims of torture by interrogators, issues that raise thorny legal questions that could take months or longer to sort out. But even comparatively simple cases without capital penalty issues are proceeding slowly.

In addition, just as the Pentagon is pushing to try cases in part to show the viability of the tribunal system, some civil liberties groups and defense lawyers are working to slow the pace, partly to keep the system from gaining legitimacy by eliciting testimony against terrorism suspects that could inflame Americans. They say they plan a dizzying array of challenges to try to prevent any significant number of what they call political trials.

They are particularly focused on the Sept. 11 case, which for more than six years has been expected to be the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s military commission system.

“The government can be assured that this will not be a quick show trial,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Not if we can help it.”

The A.C.L.U. and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers announced a plan last week to provide experienced defense lawyers for some detainees.

The impasse over access to attorneys arises from a long-running dispute over legal resources and the allocation thereof by the Pentagon. Military prosecutors have access to the entire scope of the U.S. intelligence gathering apparatus, while military defenders are not so well resourced. Col. Steven David, the chief military defense lawyer for the prison at Guantánamo Bay complained in a recent interview that he has neither attorneys nor support staff in adequate numbers. even though prosecutors still greatly outnumber defense attorneys, and until a few defenders were added in recent days, they were outnumbered >2:1

But Colonel David has complaints that go beyond staffing. There is no precedent for dealing with detainees who make claims that they were tortured. Lacking precedents and clear rules, he said, “there are issues within issues within issues.”

Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann impatiently dismissed those concerns. “You have to get the train moving so you can get to a destination,” he said. “And the train hadn’t been moving.” He remains determined to move the ball forward. He waved off concerns, saying that trials in any system could be subject to delays, and added that he had told military prosecutors and court officials not to get distracted as problems cropped up.

A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented one of the detainees, was more circumspect. J. Wells Dixon, speaking about the six men charged with capitol offenses in relation to the attacks of September 11, said that the cases are so complex that the defense teams will need months to prepare. “There is no possibility,” Mr. Dixon said, “that these cases are going to proceed to trial any time soon.”

Now, before some foam-flecked lunatic accuses me of being soft on terrorism, I am not. I have dealt with the looming specter of terrorism my entire life. I was an Air Force wife in the 80's for cryin' out loud! I am totally in favor of effectively curtailing terrorists by treating them like the thugs and criminals they are, and locking their asses up in prison. And retaining the moral high ground where Justice is concerned. Like we used to, back when we actually fought terrorism, before Commander Codpiece went off half-cocked and started making new terrorists instead of catching the existing ones - like bin Laden, who is still at large, almost six years after the attacks of September 11.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Yeah, I'm probably going to shock some people when I say this, but this is the direct result of a failed strategy. This is what happens when you don't kill terrorists on the battlefield where you engage them. I'm not saying don't give them any quarter. I'm saying that the policy of "paying bounties" for warm bodies that were brought to the Americans in Afghanistan has burned us in the ass--a lot of those people had to be released.

CUT and PASTE this link into your browser--it's a DoD .pdf file that Blogger wants to eat--

www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/detaineesFOIArelease15May2006.pdf

Notice anything? A hell of a lot of these guys come from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, based on what they told their captors. How accurate is any of this? Who knows? But every one of these has a name. We already know we've made huge mistakes and had to let completely innocent people go--so much for transparency. I challenge you to look at the names on that report. If they're terrorists guilty of crimes, try them and carry out sentence. If they're not, let them go.

It kind of changes things when you can see their names, though, doesn't it?

Army Judge at Guantanamo serves the administration a large helping of rebuke

Army Judge Colonel Peter Brownback dealt a series of setbacks to the Bush administration and their penchant for show trials on Friday. In successive orders, he made plain that the Pentagon must be more forthcoming and reveal information to the defense team for Omar Khadr, 21, a Canadian citizen who was detained in Afghanistan, accused of throwing the grenade that killed an American soldier during a firefight when he was 15.

Because of his age, his attorneys have argued that he should not be treated as a terrorist, but instead as a child soldier. Khadr was raised in a Canadian family that took him to Afghanistan as a child, and at his father's insistence, he trained at a paramilitary camp operated by al Qaeda.

Colonel Brownback ordered prosecutors to turn over to Khadr's attorneys the names of all American personnel who had any role in interrogating their client, as well as access to all handwritten notes made both in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. He also ordered a commander expected to testify for the prosecution to be available for questioning by the defense team as they prepare for trial.

He also pushed back the trial date from May 5, to allow for additional hearings on admissibility of evidence and to allow the defense time to incorporate the information made available by Friday's orders into their case. No new trial date was set.

It was a huge victory for the attorneys trying to defend Omar Khadr against charges of murder and material support of terrorism.

Pentagon prosecutors had argued before Brownback -- with Khadr watching at the defense table -- that they had already searched available records and interviewed potential witnesses, and had found nothing more to provide in the discovery phase to defense lawyers.

Brownback was not persuaded and had already on Thursday sent prosecutors back to search U.S. State Department communications with Canada, battlefield dispatches and messages around the time of the 2007 firefight and other records.

''We can't try the case until we get the discovery done,'' the judge said. ``So if I have to come down here every week, I'll do it, what the heck.''

Brownback's rulings followed were handed down the day after Khadr's U.S. Navy defense attorney, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, accused a military commander of altering a battlefield report to imply guilt on the part of his client.

The first account, written by an officer present and on the scene, identified only as "LtC W" said that the grenade thrower had been killed in the engagement. Khadr was the only survivor among the insurgent fighters, and he was shot twice. About a week after the skirmish, the soldier wounded by the grenade died at a hospital in Germany from his wounds. After the soldier died, a new version of the battlefield report was written, in which the wording was changed to say only that the grenade thrower was "engaged" - which allowed for blame to be assigned to the only survivor. Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler had obtained the two differing versions of the firefight during pre-trial discovery.

Brownback finished off his rulings by, over the objections of the officer in question, ordering him to submit to pre-trial questioning by April 4. ''The commission finds that the taking and preserving of testimony by LTC W is in the interest of justice,'' Brownback wrote.

The information was handed off to the waiting press as business ended for the day on Friday. I guess that makes this the news dump, huh?

Political Prosecutions: they are not just for the DoJ any more!

The Pentagon has their own version of using prosecutions to influence elections.

It was so bad, so obvious, and so odious that Air Force Col. Morris Davis resigned in protest. He was pressured to bring prosecutions against high-profile detainees in advance of the 2008 elections, whether they were ready or not, rather than prosecute cases that were more solid, and ready to proceed.

Davis abruptly resigned after complaining that his authority in prosecutions was being usurped. He argued that Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, a new legal adviser to the convening authority for military commissions, should remain a neutral and independent party and should leave prosecuting cases to prosecutors.

In his complaint, Davis alleged that Hartmann inappropriately requested detailed information on pending cases, defined the sequence in which cases would be brought forward and expressed an intent to personally conduct pretrial negotiations with defendants' attorneys.

A Pentagon review found that Hartmann did not attempt to coerce Davis's team but advised that he should "diligently avoid aligning himself with the prosecutorial function so that he can objectively and independently provide cogent legal advice" to the convening authority -- the official in charge of supervising the commissions.

J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Hartmann was not available for comment.

These bastards have politicized absolutely everything, to a disgusting, sickening degree. They have brought charges against people for the sin of working for a Democratic state government. They have engaged in caging to suppress the votes of African-American members of the military. They have spied on Americans, trashed 800 years of common law by suspending Habeas Corpus, they have engaged in torture and they have dismissed the Geneva Conventions as "quaint."

And now, they have stooped to political prosecutions of terror suspects.

Through their perfidy, their mendacity, their craven disregard for the rule of law, they have put the very Republic at peril.

I am honestly terrified, not of Islamists, but of my own government. I have serious doubts about the ability of the nation to withstand another fifteen months of these bastards. What the hell, Nancy? If this isn't enough to put impeachment back on the table, you are as despicable, feckless and loathsome as they are, and you deserve the same fate.