Category Archives: Guantanamo

The Daily Telegraph's headline is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it suggests that if you are destitute, regular meals and a few English lessons make prison a lot less awful.

It is heartening to read that children in Camp Iguana, the lower-security camp for juveniles next to Camp Delta, are being treated well. (Here's hoping that this is an accurate report and not Stockholm Syndrome.) It is not heartening to read of kids scooped up off the street and held for a year or more before their parents know if they are dead or alive.

I had a good time at Guantanamo, says inmate: An Afghan boy whose 14-month detention by US authorities as a terrorist suspect in Cuba prompted an outcry from human rights campaigners said yesterday that he enjoyed his time in the camp.

Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, who until last week was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, said that he was treated very well and particularly enjoyed learning to speak English. …

In a first interview with any of the three juveniles held by the US at Guantanamo Bay base, Mohammed said: “They gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons.”

Mohammed, an unemployed Afghan farmer, found the surroundings in Cuba at first baffling. After he settled in, however, he was left to enjoy stimulating school work, good food and prayer.

“At first I was unhappy … For two or three days [after I arrived in Cuba] I was confused but later the Americans were so nice to me. They gave me good food with fruit and water for ablutions and prayer,” he said yesterday in Naw Zad, a remote market town in southern Afghanistan close to his home village and 300 miles south-west of Kabul, the capital.

Continue reading →

The full Supreme Court today endorsed the earlier one-Justice stay of the 9th Circuit's order in Bush v. Gherebi. That means that the detainees will not be informed that the Supreme Court, or anyone, is considering their situation. They can rot in limbo some more.

While it's in no way surprising that the Supreme Court should preserve the status quo pending its decision—indeed it's the only thing it could do given the government's claim of irreparable harm to national security—it is a little surprising that Solicitor General Olson is prepared to sign a brief stating (according to AP) that national security would be damaged by notice that the Supreme Court granted cert.

Communication with the prisoner would “interfere with the military's efforts to obtain intelligence from Gherebi and other Guantanamo detainees related to the ongoing war against terrorism,” Olson wrote in an emergency filing last week.

Seems somewhat implausible that these mid- and low- and very low-level folks have anything of value to say after this long, doesn't it?

Further to my earlier item on Major Michael Mori, a helpful Australian reader sent me a link to the transcripot of the Major's interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Hicks lawyer unimpressed with legal process. Sounds like a real good lawyer to me.

Law from the Center is UCLA law student blog, by a serving Army Captain. It has a very nice post about the amazing gumption shown by USMC Maj. Michael Mori in giving a press conference attacking the procedures being proposed for the Guantanamo Kangaroo courts hearings. (Lest you think that this Kangaroo court reference is unfair, I'll point you to the remark by Lord Steyn, and to Maj. Mori's claim that the tribunal is “created and controlled by those with a vested interest only in convictions” and that “Using the commission process just creates an unfair system that threatens to convict the innocent and provides the guilty a justifiable complaint as to their convictions.”)

I not only agree with everything in the “Law from the Center” post, I'll go one better (otherwise it wouldn't look so centrist, would it?). As I understand it, in the ordinary military law case, the lawyers who represent the defendant are kept in a different chain of command from the judges. This ensures their independence. I am reliably informed that several months ago, at least, the design for the tribunals did not include this independence, but that rather because everyone there is assigned to the Guantanamo base, the defense lawyers were to serve in the same chain of command as— ie effectively subordinate to—some or all of the officers acting as judges.

I don't know if this has changed since my correspondent observed this first-hand. If it hasn't, it's one of those serious structural problems that never gets the attention it deserves.

Meanwhile, I'd love a link to Maj. Mori's brief…

Jenner & Block's full-service U.S. Supreme Court Guantanamo Bay Cases: Brief Resource Center. Spotted via the invaluable SCOTUSBlog

Guantanamo Detainee Attempts Suicide. It's been a long time since suicide attempt number 33, so this slowdown in the pace of attempts is a sign that maybe the conditions are less awful?

Well, maybe. Or maybe not. It could be that the military has just redefined what constitutes a suicide attempt in an effort to mitigate the awful publicity worldwide caused by the detainees' apparent beliefs that they were better off dead. Consider this UK report that appeared on Newsnight, a leading news show, while I was in the UK.

MARSHALL:
But this is not a holiday camp. There are currently 660 prisoners. None has any idea if they will ever be freed. In the 13 months up to August this year, there have been 32 suicide attempts. Since then, there has only been one further attempted suicide recorded. They have, however, introduced a separate category – manipulative self injurious behaviour – SIB. It is applied to individuals deemed to have merely feigned suicide attempts. There have been over 40 SIBs since the summer. This new classification troubles Britain's leading forensic psychiatrist.

DR JAMES MACKEITH
(Maudsley Royal Hospital):
It is impossible to authoritatively assess attempts at self harm in such a way as to justify confidence that a particular self-destructive act is designed to have a manipulative purpose, rather than a self-destructive purpose.

MARSHALL:
It is not a valuable clinical definition, as far as you are concerned.

MACKEITH:
It is a new one on me.

Bottom line: we have no idea what's going on there. (Cf. TalkLeft, noting that while it talks of releasing some unspecified number of detainees sooner or later, the US is also expanding the carrying capacity at Gitmo to almost double what it is now…)