Find good additional links on the Post site regarding today's hearings. Excerpt:
The Bush administration's top lawyer encountered stiff resistance at the Supreme Court yesterday, as he urged the justices to side with President Bush in the first test of the executive branch's power to identify and imprison enemies in the war on terrorism.
Facing the court in oral arguments over the detention of al Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson dramatically reminded the court that "the United States is at war," that more than 10,000 troops are in Afghanistan, and that the country faces an "extraordinary threat."
But several justices asked questions that implied they doubted Olson's assertion that Bush, as commander in chief, may hold the suspects for interrogation at the base in Cuba as long as he deems necessary, without judicial oversight
washingtonpost.com
High Court Hears Detention Cases
Policy on Terror Suspects Challenged
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A03
The Bush administration's top lawyer encountered stiff resistance at the Supreme Court yesterday, as he urged the justices to side with President Bush in the first test of the executive branch's power to identify and imprison enemies in the war on terrorism.
Facing the court in oral arguments over the detention of al Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson dramatically reminded the court that "the United States is at war," that more than 10,000 troops are in Afghanistan, and that the country faces an "extraordinary threat."
But several justices asked questions that implied they doubted Olson's assertion that Bush, as commander in chief, may hold the suspects for interrogation at the base in Cuba as long as he deems necessary, without judicial oversight.
"It seems rather contrary to an idea of a Constitution with three branches that the executive would be free to do whatever they want -- whatever they want without a check," Justice Stephen G. Breyer said.
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy, moderate conservatives whose votes often decide close cases, questioned the administration's reading of the 1950 precedent on which it based its case.
Yesterday's hearing focused on two consolidated cases: Rasul v. Bush, No. 03-334, and al Odah v. Rumsfeld, No. 03-343, which were brought by family members of 16 British, Australian and Kuwaiti citizens currently or formerly held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. The detainees were not charged with crimes or permitted direct contact with lawyers, and attorneys for their families call the prison a U.S.-created "lawless enclave."
Guantanamo houses about 600 detainees from more than two dozen countries and has turned into a major international issue. Human rights groups and foreign governments have taken the Bush administration to task for refusing to grant detainees legal process or declare them prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
The administration has said that the naval base is still formally a part of Cuba, and thus outside U.S. court jurisdiction. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to members of an irregular force, the administration says -- but it has promised that the detainees' treatment will be consistent with the accord.
In response to diplomatic pressure and military determinations that some detainees are no longer dangerous, the Bush administration has released 146 in the past two years, including the two British citizens involved in this case, though 12 of those released are in custody in their home countries. The administration has named six detainees for trial before a military tribunal.
But although the court's eventual ruling could have broad impact on the U.S. image abroad, the issue before the court is relatively narrow. The question is whether the Guantanamo detainees have a right to ask a federal court to order the president to give them a hearing -- not whether the courts must do so.
Even if the Supreme Court sides with them in this case, the detainees would face a long bout of litigation before winning release or major changes in their confinement.
Acknowledging the strong public interest in the case, the court, which bars live radio and television coverage, permitted the release of an audio recording of the one-hour argument after it concluded.
What the court's worldwide audience heard was an intense discussion, with justices often interrupting one another to get in their questions. Inside the courtroom, the justices could be seen leaning forward, listening intently to the lawyers' answers.
The Bush administration won the case in the lower courts, so it was already something of a setback for the administration that the Supreme Court required it to defend its policies again.
If Olson sought to set the tone by invoking the continuing threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Justice John Paul Stevens seemed equally determined to thwart him.
As soon as Olson mentioned the war, Stevens -- a decorated veteran of the Pacific Theater in World War II -- interjected, asking whether Olson would make the same arguments if the war were over. When Olson conceded that he would, Stevens countered: "So the existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue."
Olson then moved on to his main contention: that the Guantanamo prison is outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1950 that foreign prisoners held outside the United States in connection with a war are not covered by a federal law that entitles prisoners to challenge illegal detention by suing for a writ of habeas corpus, he noted. And, he added, since the 1903 lease that granted the United States "complete jurisdiction and control" at Guantanamo kept "ultimate sovereignty" for Cuba, the prison there is outside the United States.
But several justices questioned Olson's reading of the 1950 precedent, known as Johnson v. Eisentrager. They implied that the case was limited to its different facts: The prisoners then were tried and convicted of war crimes, whereas today's Guantanamo detainees have not been.
O'Connor noted that the court in 1950 had said "they have had a trial under the military tribunal and they have no rights that could be granted at the end of the day, and no mention of the habeas statute."
Later, Kennedy implied that Olson had contradicted his own argument when he said that U.S. citizens held at Guantanamo might have a right to sue for habeas corpus but noncitizens would not.
"If the citizen can say that he is a prisoner held under the authority of the United States in Guantanamo, why couldn't a noncitizen say the same thing?" Kennedy asked.
Olson replied that the court had appeared to recognize "more protection for citizens" in Johnson v. Eisentrager.
But Kennedy also pressed retired federal judge John J. Gibbons, who was arguing for the detainees, to define the limits in his argument, asking whether he would be willing to give court access even to combatants at the time of their capture on the battlefield. Gibbons struggled to answer, ultimately conceding that "habeas corpus . . . has never run to the battlefield."
For most of the rest of the hearing, the court seemed divided along its usual left-right lines. The four more liberal justices -- Breyer, Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- asked questions that suggested strong doubts about the Bush administration's claims, and two of the most conservative justices, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, seemed more supportive. Justice Clarence Thomas, as is his custom, remained silent.
A decision in the cases is expected by July.
New York Times, Op/Ed David Cole
WASHINGTON — Today the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether the United States government can detain foreign nationals held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as "enemy combatants" without charge and without hearings. Next week the court will hear arguments in similar cases involving American citizens. Many consider the detention of citizens to be more dubious legally. But from a constitutional standpoint, citizenship should not matter.
April 20, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
America's Prisoners, American Rights
By DAVID COLE
WASHINGTON — Today the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether the United States government can detain foreign nationals held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as "enemy combatants" without charge and without hearings. Next week the court will hear arguments in similar cases involving American citizens. Many consider the detention of citizens to be more dubious legally. But from a constitutional standpoint, citizenship should not matter.
All three branches of government have treated citizenship as a central issue. The Bush administration says that it can hold the foreign detainees, most of whom were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, without any legal limitations because they are noncitizens held outside American borders. As such, it argues, they have no constitutional rights and no standing in American courts to challenge their detentions.
Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court seemed to adopt a similar view when it upheld the indefinite detentions of a German woman and a Hungarian man at Ellis Island on the basis of secret evidence that they could neither see nor confront. Because they were foreigners who had not been admitted to the United States, the court said, whatever process Congress had provided them was due process. For its part, Congress in 1971 barred executive detention without explicit statutory authorization — but applied the prohibition only to citizens.
These suggestions that noncitizens have less right to be free than citizens are ill advised. Some provisions of the Constitution do explicitly limit their protections to United States citizens — the right to vote and the right to run for Congress or president, for example. The Bill of Rights, however, does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens. It extends its protections in universal language, to "persons," "people" or "the accused." The framers considered these rights to be God-given natural rights, and God didn't give them only to persons holding American passports.
The human-rights revolution of the last 50 years has similarly identified fundamental rights like the right not to be arbitrarily detained as extending to all regardless of nationality. Human-rights treaties ground these guarantees in "human dignity," and Americans have no monopoly on that.
When one considers the specific right at issue in the enemy combatant cases — the right not to be locked up without a fair process — there is also no good reason to differentiate between citizens and foreigners. From the prisoner's standpoint, every human being has the same interest in not being locked up erroneously or arbitrarily. And from the government's perspective, the security interest in detaining terrorists is the same whether they are citizens or not.
Every person deprived of his liberty under the authority of the United States government should have a right to due process. What process is due may differ depending on the circumstances of detention — whether on the battlefield or far from it. But the nationality of the detainee ought not affect the calculus.
Finally, there is also good practical reason not to distinguish between the basic rights of citizens and foreign nationals. While the federal government has often introduced security initiatives by singling out foreigners, it has just as often sought to extend those tactics to citizens later. The suppression of subversive speech, for example, and race-based detention began as anti-alien measures. But they did not end there.
It used to take years to extend these tactics to American citizens. But things are speeding up. Today the Bush administration will defend its treatment of the Guantánamo detainees on the grounds that they are foreigners who do not deserve American legal protections. Next week, it will argue that it has just as much latitude to detain American citizens. The slippery slope has never been more slick.
David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown, is the author of "Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism."
Starting today, the Supreme Court will begin to consider whether the executive branch, in the name of fighting terror, can restrict civil liberties. The court will hear arguments in three cases concerning detainees -- including two U.S. citizens -- held by the U.S. government indefinitely, without charge, and without access to counsel. The court's decisions, due by June 30, will define the scope of presidential authority in the war on terror and establish the balance of power between the executive and the judiciary in matters of national security.
April 20, 2004
Balancing Act
Starting today, the Supreme Court will begin to consider whether the executive branch, in the name of fighting terror, can restrict civil liberties. The court will hear arguments in three cases concerning detainees -- including two U.S. citizens -- held by the U.S. government indefinitely, without charge, and without access to counsel. The court's decisions, due by June 30, will define the scope of presidential authority in the war on terror and establish the balance of power between the executive and the judiciary in matters of national security.
The cases involve two types of captives in the war on terrorism: foreigners who were caught on a battlefield abroad and held without charge for more than two years at Guantanamo Bay; and two U.S. citizens who are being confined indefinitely in a military brig in Charleston, S.C. The administration labels all of the captives "enemy combatants" and justifies their treatment on grounds of national security.
The first case, to be heard today, involves the early 600 men in custody at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay without being charged or having access to lawyers or a legal process. The families of 12 Kuwaiti and two Australian prisoners are trying to challenge the legality of the detentions in U.S. courts. The legal question at issue is whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction to consider the challenges to the detentions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that federal judges have no power to hear the claims because the men are being detained outside the USA. Lawyers for the men claim that the precedent used by the D.C. court is invalid and that the U.S. exercised effective sovereignty over Guantanamo.
The other two cases involve Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, two U.S. citizens held indefinitely in a military brig in South Carolina. Both cases will be argued on April 28. Padilla is suspected of plotting with al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb," and was captured at O’Hare airport in Chicago in May 2002. Here the question is whether the president has the authority to designate a U.S. citizen who was arrested on American soil as an "enemy combatant," and to hold him without access to a lawyer or the courts. Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, where government lawyers say he was fighting with the Taliban. The question in his case is whether the president can order a U.S. citizen detained indefinitely without giving him access to lawyers or a hearing, based on a battlefield capture.
It's a sign of the power the Court that the administration has loosened it’s hold on the detainees since the Supremes agreed to hear the cases. Some 75 terrorism suspects, including three juveniles, have been released since mid-November, and the Pentagon announced that the circumstances of each Guantanamo detainee will get an annual review, helping to blunt criticism that prisoners are being held in total legal limbo. In addition, Padilla and Hamdi have both been allowed to speak with lawyers.
The administration defends it’s classification of the detainees as necessary in time of war. Indeed, most of the administration's arguments depend upon the court's accepting that a state of war is an accurate description of the U.S. government's campaign against terrorism. In its brief for the Hamdi case, the administration argues, "In our constitutional system, the responsibility for waging war is committed to the political branches."
In all three cases, the administration's lawyers suggest that in this national climate of fear over terrorism, national security warrants that executive authority take precedence over judicial, and leaves no room for "second-guessing" or "micromanaging". Ultimately, the administration argues, these are matters of military, not civilian, concern.
But many-- not least the detainees -- take exception to the government’s explanation for the curtailment of their liberties. Besides those directly involved in the suits, several other parties have filed briefs in defense of the detainees, including civil rights and civil liberties organizations, the libertarian Cato Institute, and the British parliament on behalf of the British subjects held at Guantanamo.
The gist of the argument of these groups is two-fold. First, that because the government, in not allowing courts to review enemy combatant status, is violating the right of "habeas corpus," the "right to judicial protection against lawless incarceration by executive authorities." Second, that the administration’s actions violate the obligations of international law.
Bush is not the first president to suspend civil liberties in the name of national security. FDR authorized the wartime detention of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent, which the justices upheld in 1944 in Korematsu v. United States. Later, the U.S. issued a formal apology to those interned. But as the America Civil Liberties Union's legal director, Steven R. Shapiro told the Boston Globe, "Too often in the past, claims of executive power have been allowed to trump the Constitution. History has judged those decisions harshly."
Bush may be (or likes to see himself as) a war president, but he also needs to abide by the laws. The Christian Science Monitor:
"After Sept. 11, Congress gave President Bush the authority to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against terrorists, leaving it up to him to decide who is a terrorist. That authority lies in the Constitution's Article II, giving the commander in chief the power to conduct armed conflict. But the Supreme Court cannot easily overturn a tradition that goes back to 14th-century English law in which the state must assure a judge that it has given due process to a detained person. To do so would be to demolish a key plank of the Bill of Rights."
The New York Times condemns the administration’s actions:
"Legal arguments aside, the Guantánamo policies are a tragic mistake. They are being followed closely abroad, where they are greatly harming America's reputation for fairness. And — as a group of retired American military officers argue in a friend-of-the-court brief — they will come back to haunt us when Americans are taken captive."
- Deborah Ziff
Please read this for background.
WASHINGTON -- At a National Press Club "Newsmaker" luncheon today, Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, charged that Bush Administration policies in a post-9/11 world jeopardize the freedom of all Americans. U.S. government detentions of enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, violate America's most basic notions of fundamental fairness, he said.
"Hundreds of people called enemy combatants by the U.S. government languish in legal limbo at Guantánamo Bay," Romero said. "With no access to the courts, or legal counsel, these policies are fundamentally lawless and trespass on our most deeply held values of fairness and basic due process."
ACLU's Romero Calls Government's Policies on Guantánamo 'Fundamentally Lawless'
U.S. Veterans and Families of Guantánamo Detainees
Join Romero in Briefing After Newsmaker Address
WASHINGTON -- At a National Press Club "Newsmaker" luncheon today, Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, charged that Bush Administration policies in a post-9/11 world jeopardize the freedom of all Americans. U.S. government detentions of enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, violate America's most basic notions of fundamental fairness, he said.
"Hundreds of people called enemy combatants by the U.S. government languish in legal limbo at Guantánamo Bay," Romero said. "With no access to the courts, or legal counsel, these policies are fundamentally lawless and trespass on our most deeply held values of fairness and basic due process."
Immediately following the Newsmaker speech, the ACLU held a press briefing with several families of men detained at Guantánamo. The families are from Great Britain, France and Germany. Also present at the briefing and sharing ACLU's concerns that the government's policies are violating U.S. and international laws were Michael T. McPhearson, a Persian Gulf War veteran, and Ellen Barfield, an Army veteran who is currently Vice-President of Veterans for Peace.
"As a former combat veteran I am deeply concerned that the U.S. government's policies at Guantánamo will place our troops currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan into harm's way," McPhearson said. "If the U.S. fails to honor and uphold its legal obligations under the Geneva Conventions that declare specific legal protections for prisoners of war, what is to stop other nations from mistreating our servicemenbers who may be captured in the future?"
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that detainees may be held indefinitely, even if eventually charged and acquitted. Indeed, he has also said that if the government determines that any individual is a continuing threat, detainees may be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. More than 600 people from 44 countries, including teenagers, are being held by the U.S. at Guantánamo.
The ACLU is part of a broad-based coalition that filed a friend-of-the-court brief before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees.
Romero spoke about the recent legal complaint saying that "this isn't about serving terrorists with legal papers, as President Bush said. This is about serving people not charged with justice, demonstrating conduct, procedures and principles befitting one of the great democracies in the world."
The brief calls for a review of the legality of the government's detention of these prisoners and argues that under the terms of the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights they cannot be detained indefinitely at Guantanamo without some review of their legal status. Arguments on Guantanamo procedures are scheduled for arguments before the Supreme Court on April 20th. In a related matter, the Supreme Court is scheduled on April 28th to review the President's authority to designate an American citizen an enemy combatant and detain him indefinitely. The Court is expected to render decisions on both legal matters by the end of the term in June.
Romero took the helm of the ACLU in September 2001, a week before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Recognizing the risks to America's freedoms with the passage of the Patriot Act, he has led the organization in a nationwide initiative asserting that America can be both safe and free. Romero, an attorney with a history of public-interest activism, also presided over the most successful membership drive in the ACLU's 82-year history. In his first year, 75,000 individuals became card-carrying members of the organization for the first time, with membership now exceeding 400,000.
The ACLU has also published a new report that details how a series of policy directives by the Bush Administration has created a "parallel" system of justice in America - a system that fails to provide the safeguards necessary to ensure due process: http://www.aclu.org/conductunbecoming
A news release about the Guantánamo case is online at: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=14705&c=206
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Three British prisoners released last week from Guantanamo Bay have revealed the full extent of British government involvement in the American detention camp condemned by law lords and the Court of Appeal as a 'legal black hole'.
Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal, the so-called 'Tipton Three', speaking for the first time since their release at a secret location in southern England, have disclosed to The Observer the fullest picture yet of life inside the camp on Cuba where America continues to hold 650 detainees.
After more than 200 interrogation sessions each, with the CIA, FBI, Defence Intelligence Agency, MI5 and MI6, America has been forced to admit its claims that the three were terrorists who supported al-Qaeda had no foundation.
PLUS the full Observer interview 'How We Survived Jail Hell'
Revealed: the full story of the Guantanamo Britons
The Observer's David Rose hears the Tipton Three give a harrowing account of their captivity in Cuba
Sunday March 14, 2004
The Observer
Three British prisoners released last week from Guantanamo Bay have revealed the full extent of British government involvement in the American detention camp condemned by law lords and the Court of Appeal as a 'legal black hole'.
Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal, the so-called 'Tipton Three', speaking for the first time since their release at a secret location in southern England, have disclosed to The Observer the fullest picture yet of life inside the camp on Cuba where America continues to hold 650 detainees.
After more than 200 interrogation sessions each, with the CIA, FBI, Defence Intelligence Agency, MI5 and MI6, America has been forced to admit its claims that the three were terrorists who supported al-Qaeda had no foundation.
But fearful of reprisals - the extreme right wing BNP has a stronghold in their hometown of Tipton in the West Midlands, and their families have warned them they may not be safe back at home - they all declined to be photographed, and are choosing a new location in which to rebuild their lives.
During an extraordinary 12-hour interview with The Observer last Friday, two days after their release from Paddington Green police station where they were held after being flown home from Cuba, the three men revealed that they were interrogated by MI5 almost immediately after first arriving at Guantanamo Bay - in the cases of Iqbal and Rasul, on 15 January 2002, and in Ahmed's case three weeks later.
The British Government has repeatedly claimed it has been trying to use diplomatic pressure to introduce more legal process at Guantanamo, including an opportunity for detainees to show that imprisonment is unjustified.
But the picture painted by the three released prisoners is of a Security Service which saw them as mere 'interrogation fodder', and questioned them repeatedly throughout their 26-month stay.
Among other disclosures, the three men revealed:
· How early in their ordeal they survived a massacre perpetrated by Afghanistan's Northern Alliance troops who herded hundreds of prisoners into lorry containers and locked them in, so that people started to suffocate. Iqbal described how only 20 of 300 prisoners in each container lived, and then only because someone made holes in its side with a machine gun - an action which killed yet more prisoners;
· The existence of a secret super-maximum security facility outside the main part of Guantanamo's Camp Delta known as Camp Echo, where prisoners are held in tiny cells in solitary confinement 24-hours a day, with a military police officer permanently stationed outside each cell door. The handful of inmates of Camp Echo include two of the four remaining British detainees, Moazzem Begg and Feroz Abbasi, and the Australian, David Hicks;
· That they endured three months of solitary confinement in Camp Delta's isolation block last summer after they were wrongly identified by the Americans as having been pictured in a video tape of a meeting in Afghanistan between Osama bin Laden and the leader of the 11 September hijackers Mohamed Atta. Ignoring their protests that they were in Britain at the time, the Americans interrogated them so relentlessly that eventually all three falsely confessed. They were finally saved - at least on this occasion - by MI5, which came up with documentary evidence to show they had not left the UK;
· That their first interrogations by British investigators - from both MI5 and the SAS - took place in December 2001 and January 2002 when they were still being held at a detention camp in Afghanistan. Guns were held to their heads during their questioning in Afghanistan by American soldiers, and physical abuse and beatings were rife. At this point, after weeks of near starvation as prisoners of the Northern Alliance, all three men were close to death.
The Court of Appeal criticised the absence of any legal due process at Guantanamo as a 'legal black hole' in a case brought on behalf of Abbasi last year, while the laws lord, Lord Steyn, has described the camp in a speech as a 'monstrous failure of justice'.
In public, the British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has spoken of his constant pressure on America to improve both physical and legal conditions, urging them not to deny terror suspects a fair trial.
But the released prisoners told The Observer how MI5 interrogators, in sessions lasting many hours, tried repeatedly to extract information they did not have about Islamic groups in Britain and their supposed links with al-Qaeda.
Ahmed described an interrogation session which took place before he left Afghanistan by an officer of MI5 and another official who said he was from the Foreign Office: 'All the time I was kneeling with a guy standing on the backs of my legs and another holding a gun to my head.
'The MI5 says: "I'm from the UK, I'm from MI5, I've got some questions for you," he told me: "We've got your name, we've got your passport, we know you've been funded by an extremist group and we know you've been to this mosque in Birmingham. We've got photos of you."' In fact, none of these claims was true.
The three men said that as far as they could see, there were few if any genuine terrorists at Guantanamo Bay: perhaps at worst, a few mullahs who had been loyal to the Taliban.
They voiced grave fears for the future of Begg and Abbasi, who are due to face trials by American military commissions, saying that their own experience of the Guantanamo interrogation and intelligence gathering process was 'almost a recipe' for other miscarriages of justice.
Last night, a Foreign Office spokesman said he could not comment on the men's claims to have been interrogated by British officials while they were still in Afghanistan, saying he could not get access to the relevant files.
Whitehall security sources confirmed that MI5 has had regular access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay: 'I can say that the purpose of our being given access to detainees in US custody is to gather information relevant to British national security,' said one source.
A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.
Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.
The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection.
More on Camp X Ray from the Mirror of London
MY HELL IN CAMP X-RAY By Rosa Prince and Gary Jones
A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.
Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.
The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection.
FREEDOM: Jamal yesterday... but he will never forget camp horror
He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time in hand and leg cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin.
Their "cells" were wire cages with concrete floors and open to the elements - giving no privacy or protection from the rats, snakes and scorpions loose around the American base.
He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining blows on them.
Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to make them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of rules brought severe punishment.
Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.
A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left inmates malnourished.
But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees.
Prisoners who had never seen an "unveiled" woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.
The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation.
Jamal said: "I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to be those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who would be taken away.
"I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us - we'll have them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously knew we wouldn't be shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't bother.
"It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block."
Jamal added: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you."
HE was talking from a secret location after being reunited with his family. The website designer, a convert to Islam, had gone to Pakistan in October 2001, a few weeks after September 11, to study Muslim culture.
He accidentally strayed into Afghanistan - believing he was being driven to Turkey - and was arrested as a spy, perhaps because of his British passport. He was held in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and fell into US hands.
Now Jamal bears the scars of Guantanamo. He stoops into a hunch as he walks because the shackles that bound him were too short.
As a punishment, inmates would be confined so tightly they would be forced to lie in a ball for hours. During lengthy interrogation, they would be tethered to a metal ring on the floor.
Jamal said: "Sometimes you would be chained up on the floor with your hands and feet actually bound together. One of my friends told me he was kept like that for 15 hours once.
"Recreation meant your legs were untied and you walked up and down a strip of gravel. In Camp X-Ray you only got five minutes but in Delta you walked for around 15 minutes."
Jamal said victims of the Extreme Reaction Force were paraded in front of cells. "It was a horrible sight and it was a frequent sight."
He said one unit used force-feeding to end a hunger strike by 70 per cent of the 600 inmates. The strike started after a guard deliberately kicked a copy of the Koran.
Rice and beans was the usual diet and the water was "filthy". Jamal added: "In Camp X-Ray it was yellow and in Delta it was black - the colour of Coca-Cola.
"We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage' but they would often turn the water off as punishment.
"They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion.
"The food was terrible as well, up to 10 years out-of-date. They would open a hatch and shove it through a section at a time.
"We had porridge and something they called 'like-milk', which was disgusting and 'like-tea' and a piece of fruit. The fruit had been frozen and pounded with chemicals. An apple might look red but there was waxy white stuff all over it and inside it would be black and brown.
"They would play tricks on people by denying them things - you might be the only person on your block who didn't get any bread. I prided myself on never asking them for anything. I would not beg." Jamal said they were told they had no rights. "They actually said that - 'You have no rights here'. After a while, we stopped asking for human rights - we wanted animal rights. In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog.
"He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they replied, 'That dog is member of the US army'.
"You would be punished for anything - for having six packets of salt in your cell rather than five, for hanging your towel through the cage if it wasn't wet, even for having your spoon and things lined up in the wrong order."
Being forced to use a bucket as a toilet in view of other inmates and guards was particularly embarrassing. Jamal said: "I never got used to it - we would all put our towels and clothes around us.
"But the Military Police up in the tower would see us and would shout to each other.
"We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning and none at all in solitary confinement.
"This was very tough because you are supposed to be clean when you pray.
"Gradually the number of showers rose to three a week. They were always cold.
"You would be chained by two MPs while you were still in the cage before being taken off for what they called 'rec and shower'.
"You could sometimes see the guards tampering with the shower heads to make water squirt all over the inmate's clothes if he had put them up to protect his privacy."
Inmates were issued with "comfort items" - known as CIs - like shampoo, towels, a washcloth and boxer shorts. CIs would be removed as a punishment.
Jamal defiantly refused "treats", such as watching a James Bond film in a room dubbed The Love Shack by inmates.
He added: "Some people were given pizzas, ice-cream and McDonald's, but they didn't offer them to me. I guess they knew bribery would work with some and not with others."
To pass the time, inmates would chat to each other, pray, read the Koran and sing Islamic songs. In Camp X-Ray, they were given Mills and Boon-style romance novels in Arabic, which they refused to read.
Describing medical treatment, Jamal said he knew of 11 men who had legs amputated and two who lost toes and fingers. He was told that the Americans had removed far more tissue than was necessary.
HE added: "The man in the cell next to me had frostbite in two fingers and two toes. He also had it in his big toe, but they didn't treat that for a year by which time they had to cut off much more than was needed.
"All the men who had lost limbs complained they would chop them off high up and not bother to try to save as much as possible."
Jamal added that he didn't have close friends in Guantanamo, saying: "When I did meet the other Brits, we would reminisce about home - particularly the food.
"We were all obsessed with Scottish Highland Shortbread - we wanted some so much.
"One of the Brits told me he was asked why he was a Muslim, because he ought to be praying to the Queen."
Jamal, who is divorced with daughters aged three and eight and a son of five, is convinced his refusal to succumb to mind-games gave him the will to come through.
He said: "It was very, very hard at times, but I tried to think about nothing but survival.
"I kept my thoughts from home as much as possible because it would drive me crazy.
"About a year into my time, I had a dream. A voice said, 'You will here for two years'.
"In my dream I said, 'Two years! You're joking'. But when I woke up, I was calmer because at least that meant I would be getting out one day.
"I was sent to Guantanamo on February 11, 2002 and left on March 9, 2004, so I was there for just over two years, just like the voice in the dream said."
LONDON - A Briton released from the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he was beaten, humiliated and interrogated for up to 12 hours at a time during two years' detention.
In a newspaper interview headlined "My Hell in Camp X-Ray," Jamal al-Harith said guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force "waded into inmates in full riot gear, raining blows on them" as punishment.
The water and food was foul at Guantanamo, and sometimes as punishment, water taps in the cells would be turned off, al-Harith, 37, said in the interview, which was published Friday in the Daily Mirror.
Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Claims Mistreatment
By AUDREY WOODS
The Associated Press
Friday, March 12, 2004; 1:31 AM
LONDON - A Briton released from the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he was beaten, humiliated and interrogated for up to 12 hours at a time during two years' detention.
In a newspaper interview headlined "My Hell in Camp X-Ray," Jamal al-Harith said guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force "waded into inmates in full riot gear, raining blows on them" as punishment.
The water and food was foul at Guantanamo, and sometimes as punishment, water taps in the cells would be turned off, al-Harith, 37, said in the interview, which was published Friday in the Daily Mirror.
The U.S. military repeatedly has denied that Guantanamo prisoners have been mistreated. The U.S. government says the roughly 640 prisoners are at Guantanamo because of suspicions they have links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network.
Al-Harith arrived in Britain Tuesday night on a military flight with four other Britons freed from Guantanamo.
"He has been detained as an innocent person for a period of two years. He has been treated in a cruel, inhumane and degrading manner," his lawyer, Robert Lizar, told reporters.
He was regularly interrogated by FBI and CIA agents, and later Britain's MI5 intelligence agency, the newspaper said.
"They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion," said al-Harith, 37, a convert to Islam. "We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning, and none at all in solitary confinement. This was tough because you are supposed to be clean when you pray."
"The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not nearly as bad as the psychological torture," al-Harith told the paper.
The families of the returnees have said they were mistakenly caught up in the U.S. war on terrorism.
Al-Harith describes a stay in an isolation unit known as an ISO, where those accused of misbehaving were kept in solitary confinement with just a mat and towel.
The newspaper also carried an account of what led to al-Harith's arrest.
The paper said al-Harith went to Pakistan weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to learn about Muslim culture. Al-Harith was in Quetta near the Afghan border when the U.S. bombings against the Taliban began. He paid a driver to take him to Turkey, but was stopped in Afghanistan by an armed gang who accused him of being a spy after they saw his British passport and jailed him, according to the newspaper.
After the Taliban fell, he stayed with the Red Cross in Kandahar arranging to go home but was picked up by the Americans and interrogated. He was finally sent to Guantanamo Bay, the newspaper said.
Al-Harith said he arrived at the U.S. military detention center in Cuba on Feb. 11, 2002.
"I tried not to think about my family for two years because it hurt so much," the paper quoted him as saying. "I tried to contain everything. It was very difficult, but I survived - and I survived well."
The Mirror said al-Harith was divorced and has three children ages 3, 4 and 8.
LONDON, Thursday, March 11 — The police have freed all five Britons flown home from the jail at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, raising questions about why they were held for two years, and on Thursday a lawyer for one of the men denounced their captors.
The men were turned over to British custody on Tuesday, and by late Wednesday, the British police and prosecutors had released all of them without charge.
By BETH GARDINER
Associated Press Writer
NORTHOLT, England (AP)--Police arrested five Britons as they returned to England late Tuesday from more than two years in U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The five were among nine Britons whose captivity at the U.S. military prison had proved a sticking point between the warm allies for more than two years.
The Royal Air Force C17 landed Tuesday night at Northolt Royal Air Force Base west of London. Armored police vans awaited the flight and took the prisoners away.
AP-NY-03-09-04 1500EST
THE PENTAGON unveiled a draft last week of the review process it contemplates for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The document, on which the Defense Department seeks public comment, fleshes out procedures Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld sketched in a recent speech. For those who have been alarmed by the Bush administration's failure since establishing the detention facility to create any serious review mechanism, its move toward a more systematic approach is welcome. Though belated, and announced only under the looming threat of Supreme Court intervention, the proposed process contains positive elements. It also falls short in important respects.
As the battle for public opinion over the issue of the detentions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, heats up, relatives of three of the prisoners there began a tour yesterday of New York and Washington to draw attention to the detainees' situation.
Aymen Sassi, a 21-year-old student from Vénissieux, a suburb of Lyon, France, said in an interview yesterday that his older brother's arrest and detention at the Guantánamo naval base had devastated his family. "My father, his whole world collapsed when he heard the news," Mr. Sassi said through a translator. Mr. Sassi's brother, Nizar, 23, is one of about 650 prisoners held at the base, some for more than two years.
Mr. Sassi said that he did not believe that his brother traveled to the Pakistan-Afghanistan area, where he was arrested, to get involved in the region's politics or fighting. Nizar had just bought a new car and was intending to leave his job with the municipal government to open a restaurant, he said.
Relatives of Prisoners at Guantánamo Bay Tell of Anger and Sadness at Detentions
By NEIL A. LEWIS
As the battle for public opinion over the issue of the detentions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, heats up, relatives of three of the prisoners there began a tour yesterday of New York and Washington to draw attention to the detainees' situation.
Aymen Sassi, a 21-year-old student from Vénissieux, a suburb of Lyon, France, said in an interview yesterday that his older brother's arrest and detention at the Guantánamo naval base had devastated his family. "My father, his whole world collapsed when he heard the news," Mr. Sassi said through a translator. Mr. Sassi's brother, Nizar, 23, is one of about 650 prisoners held at the base, some for more than two years.
Mr. Sassi said that he did not believe that his brother traveled to the Pakistan-Afghanistan area, where he was arrested, to get involved in the region's politics or fighting. Nizar had just bought a new car and was intending to leave his job with the municipal government to open a restaurant, he said.
His brother "was a normal guy who liked to go nightclubbing," Aymen Sassi said, and had spoken of getting married and settling down. He was in the region because he loved to travel and had already spent considerable time moving throughout Europe, he said.
But Nizar Sassi's restlessness was connected to a need to understand his Arabic heritage and Muslim religion, his brother said. He wanted to learn formal Arabic, rather than the Tunisian version his parents spoke, Mr. Sassi said.
The lives of almost all of the prisoners at Guantánamo have received little attention, even as their detention has provoked debate in the United States and abroad about whether there is any proper legal foundation for it. Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which arranged the relatives' visit to the United States, said that in addition to the legal challenges pending in the Supreme Court, "we want to put a face to these people."
The delegation also includes Rabiye Kurnaz, the mother of Murat Kurnaz, a 23-year-old Turkish citizen and German resident; and Azmat Begg, the father of Moazzam Begg, a 36-year-old Briton who has been listed as eligible to face a military tribunal for war crimes.
All three said they were not asserting that their relatives had not committed any crimes. They said they were sad and angry that the detainees had been held for so long without being charged.
The delegation will try to meet with members of Congress in the next few days, Mr. Romero said.
The military brought charges against detainees for the first time last month, accusing two of involvement in war crimes and terrorism. The charges mean that they may soon face a United States military commission, the first such proceedings since the end of World War II.
In recent weeks, Bush administration officials have tried to answer their critics more forcefully. The defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, have said in speeches that the critics have a basic misunderstanding of the situation when they complain of people being held indefinitely without being charged. They say the detentions are justified because the United States is at war, and therefore there is no need to charge enemy fighters to keep them imprisoned.
Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Gonzales have described about a dozen of the detainees as senior operatives of Al Qaeda.
But critics say that many, if not most, of the Guantánamo detainees are guilty of little beyond the bad luck to have been caught up in the chaotic aftermath of war. Most were captured in Pakistan or Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban government.
But even as the United States government moves toward military tribunals, it has released more than 80 detainees to other countries.
Ms. Kurnaz said that the German authorities telephoned her in December 2001 with the news that her son was a prisoner of the Americans. In one letter sent to her through the International Committee of the Red Cross, Murat wrote, "Don't worry, I am fine and I didn't do anything wrong." Although he was gradually becoming more religious than his parents, Ms. Kurnaz said, he had no interest in politics or in any extreme form of Islam.
Mr. Begg, a retired banker from Birmingham, said he did not know what his son might have done in Afghanistan or Pakistan but insisted that he should face a British court, not a military tribunal.
Seven Russian citizens who were being held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have returned to Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry says.
They are now reported to be in a pre-trial detention centre.
The men have been charged with illegally crossing borders, mercenary activity and participating in a criminal group, prosecutors say.
The men, who returned on Saturday, were all detained in Afghanistan, but have not been identified.
They were handed over after lengthy talks between Washington and Moscow.
"The decision to transfer or release a detainee is based on many factors, including whether the detainee is of further intelligence value to the United States and whether he poses a threat to the United States," the Pentagon said.
The Russian prosecutor's office has said the detainees include residents of Russia's Muslim-majority republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, the city of Chelyabinsk in western Siberia, and the Caucasus region.
US tribunals
Pentagon officials had hinted that they were in discussions with other governments, including Russia's.
According to these officials, the United States has been holding talks over dozens of detainees.
This is further confirmation that we are now in a more fluid period with the detainees, says the BBC's Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs.
The first two detainees have been charged and the Pentagon is gearing up for its first military tribunals.
It is also saying there will be further transfers and releases, but that others among the 650 or so prisoners could be held indefinitely.
However, no more transfers are imminent, officials say.
And while London and Washington announced an agreement on the handover of five Britons nearly two weeks ago, there is no word of them actually moving.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The system created by the United States for trials by military tribunal of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay is fundamentally unfair and hopelessly antiquated, military lawyers assigned to represent these prisoners said on Wednesday.
"We are concerned with virtually every aspect of the military commission process and the impact that will have on our client's chances to get a fair trial," Navy Lt. Cdr. Philip Sundel told Reuters.
Sundel and Army Maj. Mark Bridges were assigned by the Pentagon on Feb. 6 to represent Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States turned over a Danish national who was imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the government of Denmark, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, and the Danes planned to set him free.
"He's going to Denmark as a free man," said Lene Balleby, a spokeswoman at the Danish Embassy in Washington.
The Pentagon did not give his name, but Danish media have identified him as Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, imprisoned in February 2001 after being captured in Afghanistan.
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- Relatives of a Sudanese man accused by the U.S. military of being an al-Qaida accountant and bodyguard to Osama bin Laden said they had not heard from the suspect since 1996 and were shocked to learn he was detained at Guantanamo Bay, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The younger brother of Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi told the independent Al-Sahafa daily newspaper that al Qosi's family learned he would face a U.S. military tribunal through a report on the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera.
The only one who recognized al Qosi on television was his father, who said he would know him "even if his eyes were closed," the paper reported.
"When his father heard about his news on TV, he hugged the TV and cried. We all cried," the suspect's younger brother, Abdallah, was quoted as saying.
Arrest Shocks Guantanamo Prisoner's Family
By Associated Press
February 25, 2004, 10:27 AM EST
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- Relatives of a Sudanese man accused by the U.S. military of being an al-Qaida accountant and bodyguard to Osama bin Laden said they had not heard from the suspect since 1996 and were shocked to learn he was detained at Guantanamo Bay, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The younger brother of Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi told the independent Al-Sahafa daily newspaper that al Qosi's family learned he would face a U.S. military tribunal through a report on the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera.
The only one who recognized al Qosi on television was his father, who said he would know him "even if his eyes were closed," the paper reported.
"When his father heard about his news on TV, he hugged the TV and cried. We all cried," the suspect's younger brother, Abdallah, was quoted as saying.
On Wednesday, family and friends refused to talk to reporters, fearing their comments could harm al Qosi before the tribunal.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon charged al Qosi and Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul, of Yemen -- who are among more than 600 terror suspects held at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- with war crimes conspiracy.
The Pentagon said al Bahlul was a propagandist for bin Laden.
The men allegedly trained at al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, but the Pentagon's list of charges does not mention either man carrying out or planning any terrorist attack.
The two suspects will face the first U.S. military tribunal since World War II and could face maximum sentences of life in prison if convicted.
Al Qosi, born in 1960 in Atbara, 215 miles north of Khartoum, was "calm and aloof," his family told Al-Sahafa.
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
The U.S. government announced today that it is mounting its first prosecution of enemy prisoners since the aftermath of World War II, charging two detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison who were alleged bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, before a military tribunal with conspiracy to commit war crimes.
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan was an al Qaeda propagandist who produced videos glorifying the terrorist network's attack on the destroyer U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000, and who on Sept. 11, 2001, was given the job of arranging a satellite hookup to Afghanistan so bin Laden could watch news coverage of the event, according to a U.S. military charging document released today.
Al Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen was a key al Qaeda accountant and weapons smuggler dating back to the late 1990s, and as a bin Laden bodyguard wore an explosives-laden suicide belt to thwart assassination attempts on the Saudi millionaire, according to a charging document filed against Bahlul.
The Australian government appears to have given up on efforts to bring the country's two detainees at a US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back to Australia to stand trial.
John Howard, prime minister, rejected opposition calls to make local anti-terrorism laws retrospective to enable Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks to be brought to Australia for trial.
Australia trial for Guantanamo suspects ruled out
By Virginia Marsh in Sydney
Published: February 22 2004 21:09 | Last Updated: February 22 2004 21:09
The Australian government appears to have given up on efforts to bring the country's two detainees at a US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back to Australia to stand trial.
John Howard, prime minister, rejected opposition calls to make local anti-terrorism laws retrospective to enable Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks to be brought to Australia for trial.
Mr Howard, who was a lawyer before entering politics, said it was sometimes fair to use retrospective laws to close tax loopholes but not for criminal cases.
"It is fundamentally wrong to make a criminal law retrospective," the prime minister said.
"Those people will not be brought back to Australia unless, of course, they are acquitted."
Mark Latham, the Labor leader, on Friday said that Australia should consider making retrospective legal changes if that would help ensure the two men could be brought home for trial.
However, he appeared to back down on Saturday after his shadow justice minister raised some concerns.
Mr Latham's remarks were prompted by Britain's success in securing the release of detainees at Guantanamo.
Mr Hicks, who has been held in solitary confinement for much of his internment, has been selected as one of the first Guantanamo prisoners to face the military commission.
He was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and has yet to be charged.
The US military lawyer selected by the Pentagon to represent the 28-year-old from Adelaide urged Canberra to reconsider.
"I hope it is not too late for the government to re-evaluate the military commission process in light of the position the British government has taken," Michael Mori told ABC. "Hicks should only be tried in the commission process for international crimes and they should be just as applicable back in Australia."
The US and its allies, which included Australia, captured several hundred alleged terrorists and former Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
About 700 were taken to the US base at Cuba by the Americans but Washington also sanctioned the release of some prisoners to countries such as Turkey.
Human rights groups say this has allowed them to be tortured and forced to reveal information about al-Qaeda.
A lawyer for three Britons held at Guantanamo Bay has accused the British and US governments of releasing only those whose cases threatened to create bad publicity.
Gareth Peirce represents two detainees who are to be freed from the army base in Cuba, as well as Moazzam Begg, 36, one of the four who must stay.
Ms Peirce told BBC Radio 4's Today programme politicians had chosen to send home detainees whose cases had reached the US Supreme Court, where a defeat could be damaging for President George Bush.
Lawyer angry at Cuba releases
A lawyer for three Britons held at Guantanamo Bay has accused the British and US governments of releasing only those whose cases threatened to create bad publicity.
Gareth Peirce represents two detainees who are to be freed from the army base in Cuba, as well as Moazzam Begg, 36, one of the four who must stay.
Ms Peirce told BBC Radio 4's Today programme politicians had chosen to send home detainees whose cases had reached the US Supreme Court, where a defeat could be damaging for President George Bush.
She said: "We have a real concern that a deal has been struck.
"The return of a number, of whom I represent two, is very convenient in order to leave others behind who are creating less pressure.
DETAINEES BEING RELEASED
Shafiq Rasul, 24, of Tipton, West Midlands
Asif Iqbal, 20, of Tipton
Ruhal Ahmed, 21, of Tipton
Jamal Udeen, 35, from Manchester
Tarek Dergoul, 24, from east London
BRITISH MEN STILL BEING HELD
Moazzam Begg, 36, from Birmingham
Feroz Abbasi, 23, from south London
Martin Mubanga, 29, from north London
Richard Belmar, 23, from London
The officer said they were now seen as "low risk", and the UK government had said it did not regard them as a threat to national security.
Nine Britons have been among about 650 terror suspects held at the United States base on Cuba for two years without trial.
Most are believed to have been arrested in Pakistan or Afghanistan as suspected al-Qaeda or Taleban fighters.
Peter Clarke, head of anti-terrorism at Scotland Yard, said the police had a responsibility to investigate circumstances that had led to the suspects' detention.
'Case for treason'
The five men being released are: Shafiq Rasul, of Tipton, West Midlands; Asif Iqbal, of Tipton; Ruhal Ahmed, of Tipton; Jamal Udeen, from Manchester, and Tarek Dergoul, from east London.
They do not include Feroz Abbasi or Mr Begg, who face potential trials before a military tribunal in the US, according to the authorities there.
Shadow home secretary David Davis said: "If they fought against coalition troops on the battlefield, they should also be charged and tried in the UK.
"In addition, I think there may be a case for treason."
WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 — The United States will soon release five of the nine British citizens detained at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, British and American officials said today.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the five would be released "in the next few weeks." He said the five would face questioning under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000 upon their return but would be "treated fairly and properly."
Discussions on the four others were continuing, Mr. Straw said, but he insisted that they be tried "in accordance with international standards or returned to the U.K.," The Associated Press reported from London.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday announced the creation of an administrative panel that will annually review the cases of detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to ensure that none is held "any longer than is absolutely necessary."
But Rumsfeld, in a speech to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, defended the government's practice of holding detainees indefinitely without charges, saying they "are enemy combatants and terrorists who are being detained for acts of war against our country. And that is why different rules have to apply."
WASHINGTON — A Spanish national being held by the U.S. government at the prison for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay (search), Cuba, has been transferred into the custody of the Spanish government, the Department of Defense (search) said today.
Senior leadership at the DOD and other senior government officials determined that the detainee no longer required detention in the U.S.
The detainee, whose identity was not released, is the fourth transfer or release from the prison, which has held hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda (search) and Taliban (search) fighters since the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Last month, three teenage boys were released from Guantanamo and sent back to their home countries. The Pentagon said it was determined they no longer posed a threat to the United States.
Transfer or release of detainees can be based on many factors, including whether an individual would pose a threat to the United States, if an individual is of further intelligence value and whether an individual is going to be tried by the U.S. government for any crimes.
DOD officials said they expected there will likely be further transfers or releases of detainees.
Agha and his dorm mates were separated from the adult detainees and given special treatment as youngsters.
The most difficult aspect of his confinement, Agha said, was being out of contact with his family and worrying about them, partly because he was the oldest son and his father depended on him to help support the family.
When he first reached Guantanamo, he said, he asked a literate prisoner to write home on his behalf. After he learned to write in Pashto a little bit, he said, he wrote several letters and gave them to Red Cross delegates, who he said visited every one or two months.
"I always asked them when I would be released, and they always told me soon, God willing," Agha said.
But last week, after Agha was reunited with his father, he learned that most of the letters, addressed to relatives in Naw Zad, never reached his family in their village. For nearly one year, they knew nothing of his whereabouts.
An Afghan Boy's Life in U.S. Custody
Cuban Camp Was Welcome Change After Harsh Regime at Bagram
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 12, 2004; Page A01
NAW ZAD, Afghanistan, Feb. 11 -- Ismail Agha was a slight, illiterate village boy of 13 when his family last saw him 14 months ago. When he reappeared last week, he was three inches taller, his voice had deepened, his chin had sprouted a black beard and he had learned to read, write and do basic math.
Agha's transformation occurred mostly in a place called Camp Iguana, a seaside compound within the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he and two other Afghan teenagers suspected of belonging to the Taliban militia were confined for more than 12 months, until their release Jan. 29.
The long-term detention of minors at Guantanamo, where about 650 people suspected of having links to Islamic terrorists are held, has drawn criticism from human rights groups. But Agha, who spoke with a foreign journalist Wednesday in this remote town in the southern province of Helmand, described his experience as closer to a tropical boarding school than a prison.
"Me go to Cuba, speak English now," he said with a proud grin as he sat in the police station in Naw Zad, a muddy three-block market center surrounded by bright green poppy fields and almond orchards in pink spring bloom. Agha's native village, Durabin, is a poor farming community in the mountains that is a five hours' walk from the nearest road leading into Naw Zad.
Transplanted to a modern U.S. military base half a world away, the shy village youth said he saw the ocean for the first time, played soccer, slept in an air-conditioned room and showered twice a day after growing up in a village without plumbing or electricity. "We could even turn the lights on and off when we wanted," he said, lapsing quickly into his native Pashto.
Agha's time in Guantanamo was in sharp contrast to the harrowing month and a half he spent at Bagram air base, near the capital, Kabul, where he was held and interrogated by U.S. soldiers. Agha said he was never beaten but was subjected to pressures that coincide with what the U.S. military refers to as "extreme duress."
"It was a very bad place. Whenever I started to fall asleep, they would kick on my door and yell at me to wake up," he said. "When they were trying to get me to confess, they made me stand partway, with my knees bent, for one or two hours. Sometimes I couldn't bear it any more and I fell down, but they made me stand that way some more."
Agha said he was repeatedly asked whether he was with the Taliban or other Islamic groups, and repeatedly answered no. He said he was arrested by mistake while looking for construction work with a friend at an Afghan military camp in the town of Greshk, in central Helmand province. He said Afghan soldiers beat him and then turned him over to U.S. troops, who flew him by helicopter to Bagram.
"They say you truth tell me, you are Talib. I say me no Talib. They not believe me," he said, speaking in English, then switching back into Pashto.
"I was a boy in my village when the Taliban were the government, and I didn't know anything about them," he added. "The Americans said my friend confessed to being a Talib. I don't know if he was, but we met when we were looking for work. I had nothing to tell them, and I don't think they ever got any benefit from me."
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan have refused to disclose the names or numbers of Afghan detainees held at Bagram at any time, and they have never allowed public access to the detention facilities there, except for visits by delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
After more than a month at Bagram, Agha said, he was warned that if he did not confess he would be sent to a terrible and distant place called Guantanamo. Shortly after that, he said, he was put on a plane with other prisoners, chained by the wrists and ankles, with a hood placed over his head.
"It was hard to breathe, but I didn't complain because I didn't hear any of the others complaining," he said. "I don't know how long the flight was, but when they flew me back home the other day, I did not have a hood on and I counted the time. It was 23 hours."
Once he arrived at Guantanamo, Agha said, he was astonished by the change.
There were no more questions and no more threats, only school and exercise and Muslim prayers and dorm life with two other young Afghans he had never met before. He said both were from Paktia province, one his age and one a little younger, and that he knew them only as Asadullah and Naqibullah.
The boys lived in a house with several rooms: a shared sleeping room and an adjoining room for eating and studying. On one side they could see the ocean, but the other three sides were blocked by high walls and barbed wire, and they never saw or spoke with the adult prisoners.
Each day, Agha said, they were taught English, Pashto and basic math by Afghan American teachers. They were also given copies of the Koran. Each night, four U.S. soldiers took turns sleeping in the second room. On Wednesday, he asked to send greetings to all of them, but said he never learned their names.
In response to criticism about the detention of minors at Guantanamo, U.S. military officials have said age makes no difference in their decisions to confine suspects who may have links to terrorist groups or be able to provide information about them. However, Agha and his dorm mates were separated from the adult detainees and given special treatment as youngsters.
The most difficult aspect of his confinement, Agha said, was being out of contact with his family and worrying about them, partly because he was the oldest son and his father depended on him to help support the family.
When he first reached Guantanamo, he said, he asked a literate prisoner to write home on his behalf. After he learned to write in Pashto a little bit, he said, he wrote several letters and gave them to Red Cross delegates, who he said visited every one or two months.
"I always asked them when I would be released, and they always told me soon, God willing," Agha said.
But last week, after Agha was reunited with his father, he learned that most of the letters, addressed to relatives in Naw Zad, never reached his family in their village. For nearly one year, they knew nothing of his whereabouts.
"I sent my son out to look for construction work, and he just vanished," said Agha's father, Hayatullah, an illiterate farmer of about 60, who was in Naw Zad on business this week and waited for two days with a journalist while a messenger went to fetch Agha from Durabin. "I went to all the work sites in the towns, but no one had seen him. Finally I thought he must be dead."
Then sometime last November, Hayatullah said, he received a letter through the Red Cross in which Agha said he was in good health and staying in a place called Guantanamo. Hayatullah had no idea what that meant, so he made his way to Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, and asked the authorities.
"They told me it was a jail in the United States. I was amazed," said the short, white-bearded man Wednesday as he and his son sat in the Naw Zad police chief's office. "I could not imagine what the Americans wanted with him, but I was glad to know he was alive."
That was the only word the family received until about 10 days ago, when someone from the Red Cross found Hayatullah in Naw Zad and told him Agha would soon arrive at the airport in Kandahar, a large southern city.
Meanwhile, back in Camp Iguana, Agha was informed that he would be leaving shortly for home.
"They gave me a party and said I could have anything I wanted to eat, so I asked for Pepsi and chicken kebob," he said. "They also gave me a letter that said if I was ever arrested again, I would be sent to prison and never let out." Then he and the other two boys were put on a plane, again in shackles but this time without being hooded.
Last week they arrived at Bagram, and Agha was then flown on a Red Cross plane to Kandahar. Red Cross officials in Kabul have declined to discuss the release of Agha or the other two boys, citing a policy of confidentiality and the special issue of their being minors.
"I didn't recognize my son even when he came up and kissed my hand," Hayatullah said. "He was much taller and a little fatter, and he had a beard. Also, he told me he had learned to read." The old man sat up and smiled. "My son got an education in America."
Agha was also proud of his academic progress, but said he planned to go back to farming his family's land and did not expect to continue studying. He said that although he had enjoyed the modern comforts of Guantanamo, "it was still a jail. And when you are home beside your father and mother, it doesn't matter whether your life is hard."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - A U.S. citizen captured during the U.S. war in Afghanistan and detained for more than two years without charges saw a lawyer for the first time on Tuesday in a meeting closely monitored by his military guards.
Frank Dunham, a federal public defender, said he spent about an hour with Yaser Esam Hamdi inside a South Carolina navy base, but could not disclose what his client said since everything Hamdi says is classified.
"I'm not allowed to discuss anything that he said to me. That's one of the rules and conditions for seeing him," Dunham told reporters outside the gate of the Charleston Naval Weapons Station.
U.S. Citizen Caught in Afghanistan Gets Lawyer Visit
CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - A U.S. citizen captured during the U.S. war in Afghanistan and detained for more than two years without charges saw a lawyer for the first time on Tuesday in a meeting closely monitored by his military guards.
Frank Dunham, a federal public defender, said he spent about an hour with Yaser Esam Hamdi inside a South Carolina navy base, but could not disclose what his client said since everything Hamdi says is classified.
"I'm not allowed to discuss anything that he said to me. That's one of the rules and conditions for seeing him," Dunham told reporters outside the gate of the Charleston Naval Weapons Station.
Hamdi, who was born in the United States to Saudi parents and raised in Saudi Arabia, has been designated an "enemy combatant" and held without charge.
The United States has faced heavy criticism from civil rights and legal groups at home and abroad over the detention of hundreds of prisoners, most of them foreigners, without charge and without access to lawyers in its war on terrorism.
Dunham said the meeting with Hamdi, 23, was not a normal client-attorney visit.
"I don't really believe that we saw him today in the way that an attorney sees a client," he said. "There was a Navy commander in the room. There was a television camera on us being monitored by a person outside the room."
"The essence of seeing an attorney I believe is seeing an attorney under circumstances where you know what you say to him is not going to be repeated to anybody. That didn't exist today."
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last month to hear an appeal by Hamdi challenging whether U.S. officials have the power to detain him indefinitely as an enemy combatant.
CAPTURED COMBATANTS
The U.S. government has defended the detention, saying it recognized the "time-honored military practice" of detaining captured combatants in wartime.
Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 in the war to hunt down members of al Qaeda and oust their Taliban protectors following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
He was initially taken to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, where the United States is holding Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners, and moved to the United States when officials discovered he was born in Louisiana.
The Pentagon gave permission for the lawyer's visit two months ago, arranging a date for it last week.
Dunham said he had told Hamdi about his legal case and given him articles and legal briefs on it and his client "now knows that he has a case. He now knows that his case is before the United States Supreme Court."
Dunham said his client showed no signs of abuse, but his situation -- not knowing how long he would be held -- was "pretty tough."
Hamdi seemed a "nice young man, very appreciative of the fact that we had come to visit him," he said.
Dunham said his argument to the Supreme Court would be based on the basic right of a U.S. citizen to due process.
"They can't just take a U.S. citizen and lock them up and keep them there forever, no matter what we suspect the U.S. citizen is involved in, no matter how dangerous we feel that U.S. citizen is."
Hamdi's family has said Hamdi, a college student, was spending the summer in Pakistan helping refugees when he crossed into Afghanistan, was swept up by Taliban fighters and forced to fight in the war.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the Hamdi case in April, with a decision due by the end of June.
The release of the three juveniles brought to 91 the number of detainees removed from the U.S. Navy Base prison since the expanded facility was built there after the attacks. Four of those were returned to Saudi Arabia for continued detention and the others to their home countries to be set free.
"Senior leadership, in consultation with other senior U.S. government officials, determined that the juvenile detainees no longer posed a threat to our nation, that they have no further intelligence value and are not going to be tried by the U.S. government for any crimes," the Pentagon said.
"Age is not a determining factor in detention. We detain enemy combatants who engaged in armed conflict against our forces or provided support to those fighting against us."
Two of the three were captured during raids by U.S. and allied forces on Taliban camps and a third was arrested while trying to obtain weapons to fight American troops, the announcement said.
Although none of the prisoners has been charged, U.S. Defence officials have said that some could soon be charged and tried by military commissions authorised by President George W. Bush.