Tag Archives: habeas corpus

A Guantanamo Profile: Prisoner 707

25 Aug

Noor (standing, right) with his cousin and brother-in-law Mahmud Ali Hamed and Hamed's children in 1982, when Noor was about fifteen.

A man is born in the 1960s, but in the wrong place. His life is untouched by modernity, and in fact the people who live where he lives — mostly nomads or goatherds or subsistence farmers — carry on as they have for a thousand years. Compared even with the people in this arid Sudanese borderland west of the Red Sea, he is poor.

He is illiterate, can’t even tell you when he was born, and after his parents die when he is a child, he doesn’t think to ask why. It’s simple: People don’t live long, and then they die.

The movements of his life are dictated by elemental concerns — what to eat, where to sleep. He collects what he finds and trades what he can — sticks, cardboard, tattered robes, tires. And when your abiding interests are so basic, you likely don’t have time for something so luxurious as a personal history or self-regard. He makes no claims for himself, possesses nothing resembling the Western notion of ambition.

He has no conception of the outside world — knows little of Europe, has barely heard of America, doesn’t have the frame of reference even to conceive of a signal bouncing off a star and sending a picture or someone’s voice around the world.

By the standards of the late twentieth century, or of any century, really, he is one of the unlucky men. Maybe God will provide something a little better in heaven, inshallah. And then something most unexpected happens. Improbably, the unlucky man encounters the United States of America and becomes subject to the full might of the mightiest, most consequential power the world has ever known. His life will be changed forever, to be sure. But what one could never have imagined is that the man — not much more than a peasant in rags, after all — would become the very essence of what our mighty country fears the most. What one could never have imagined is that the peasant in rags would change the United States as much as the United States changed him.

Today, nine years after he arrived on the island, Noor Uthman Muhammed is a whiff of a man. His orange prison jumpsuit hangs on his slight body. His cell is new. After years of solitary and near-solitary confinement, Noor was transferred to Camp 4, where the prisoners lived communally. He was respected in the camp for his seriousness and deep faith. “You must be patient,” he would often tell other prisoners. “Being here is divine destiny. God tests humans in their lives to know their faith and patience.”   Read the rest of this entry »

 

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Posted by aseerun on August 25, 2011 in News Items

 

Tags: Forced Plea, Guantanamo, habeas corpus, illegal detention, Noor Uthman Mohammed, plea, Prisoner 707, solitary confinement, Sudanese, torture

‘Circuit Court’: Calling you a terrorist doesn’t hurt anybody.

26 Jul

The Circuit Court negligently dismisses the claim that the “enemy combatant” label stigmatizes and leaves former detainees vulnerable to punitive measures by foreign countries.

The D.C. Circuit Court, in a ruling affecting more than 100 non-citizens formerly detained by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, decided that they have no legal claim they can pursue in federal courts to undo their U.S. designation as enemies.

In a decision that affects the global legal status of more than 100 former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the D.C. Circuit Court ruled on Friday that they have no legal claim they can continue to pursue in U.S. courts to challenge the military’s designation of them as enemies of the U.S. — a label that may amount to identifying each of them as a terrorist.  The three-judge panel rejected the ex-detainees’ argument that the finding that they are an “enemy combatant” limits their freedom to pursue their lives in foreign lands or in the world community.  The injuries they claim, the court concluded, either cannot be remedied by a U.S. court, or are based too much on speculation.

Adel Fattouh Butcher

The ruling was a narrow one: the Circuit Court did not rule on the Obama Administration’s more sweeping claim that the right to challenge the consequences that follow from a government’s former action toward an individual does not apply at all to those who are no longer in custody at Guantanamo — the military’s most visible site for holding individuals suspected of links to terrorism.  Even assuming that the so-called “collateral consequences doctrine” applies to those who once were detainees, the panel found, the challengers before the court could not prove that they would suffer such consequences or, if they might, that a U.S. habeas court could provide a remedy. Read the rest of this entry »

 

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Posted by aseerun on July 26, 2011 in News Items

 

Tags: Adel Fattouh Butcher, Adel Hamad, Circuit Court, detainees, enemy combatant, Guantanamo, habeas corpus, Moath Hamza Ahmed al Alwi, Nazul Gul, Supreme Court

Brothers Abducted by PAK Forces, awaiting rendition

17 Jul

Defence of Human Rights condemns with full force the illegal arrests and detentions of two Pakistani brothers of Egyptian decent.  The sons of Mohammad Abdul Raheem Alsharqawi, (an electrical engineer of Egyptian origin who took Pakistani nationality in 1992 and made Pakistan his adopted homeland) were abuducted in May of this year by Pakistani forces.

Abdullah Alsharqawi, a 23 year old a student of electronic engineering at Air University Islamabad, was abruptly abducted from his hostel in F-8 markaz, Islamabad, on the 24th of May, 2011. His younger brother, 17 year old Ibraheem Alsharqawi, a 10th class student at Indus Valley School Attock, was kidnapped on the 29th of May, 2011 from the local market in his native city of Attock.

It has been two months since the abduction of Abdullah, who remains missing and whose whereabouts are not known. There are strong indications that the two brothers, as well as two more siblings and another youth by the name of Bilal, were sought by the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) who initially filed a FIR (First Investigation Report) to pursue action against the young men on account of being foreigners. Read the rest of this entry »

 

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Posted by aseerun on July 17, 2011 in News Items

 

Tags: Abdullah Alsharqawi, abuse, Cageprisoners, Defence of Human Rights, extra judicial detention, FIA, habeas corpus, Ibraheem Alsharqawi, incommunicado, Mohammad Abdul Raheem Alsharqawi, Pakistan, rendition, Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, torture

My Brother Faces a Lifetime of Solitary Confinement on a Spurious Terror Conviction

15 Jul

By Mariam Abu-Ali

May 2010

My brother, Ahmed Abu Ali, has spent the past five years in solitary confinement, under 23-hour lockdown, in a

Above Ground View

7×12 cell. He has one recreational hour in which he must get strip-searched if he wishes to leave his cell. He gets one unscheduled telephone call a month to his family, and receives the newspaper by the time news becomes history. If I send him a letter wishing him a happy birthday, he gets it 60 days later. When I visit him, once a year, I speak to him from behind a glass window. He is literally in a dungeon, over 20 meters beneath the ground.

Ahmed is not in a foreign prison, nor is he in Guantánamo; he is in a super maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

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Posted by aseerun on July 15, 2011 in Collateral Damage

 

Tags: Ahmed Abu Ali, Fahad Hashmi, Florence, habeas corpus, rendition, SAMs, Saudi Arabia, Sixth Amendment, torture

Frank Lindh: My lost boy John Walker Lindh

10 Jul

In 1998, aged 17, my son John Walker Lindh travelled to Yemen to study Islam and learn Arabic. In April 2001 he went to Afghanistan. Then 9/11 happened. He was captured by US troops, tortured, and jailed for 20 years, an innocent victim of America’s ‘war on terror’

Suliman al-Faris Abu Suliman al-Irlandi

John Phillip Walker Lindh, my son, was raised a Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam when he was 16 years old. He has an older brother and a younger sister. John is scholarly and devout, devoted to his family, and blessed with a powerful intellect, a curious mind, and a wry sense of humour.

Labelled by the American government as “Detainee 001″ in the “war on terror”, John occupies a prison cell in Terre Haute, Indiana. He has been a prisoner of the American government since 1 December 2001, less than three months after the terror attacks of 9/11.

John is entirely innocent of any involvement in the terror attacks, or any allegiance to terrorism. That is not disputed by the American government. Indeed, all accusations of terrorism against John were dropped by the government in a plea bargain, which in turn was approved by the US district court in which the case was brought.

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Posted by aseerun on July 10, 2011 in News Items

 

Tags: Afghanistan, American Taliban, Camp Rhino, CIA, Dave Tyson, FBI, frank lindh, habeas corpus, john walker lindh, lindh, Luke Harding, Mike Spann, plea, presumption of innocence, Qala-i-Jangi, Red Cross, Robert Pelton, Taliban, terrorism enhancement, torture

Patterns of Undoing: Guantanamo detainees see legal progress reversed

07 Jul

Peter Finn and Del Quentin Wilber, Washington Post

June 24 

Guantanamo detainees have lost a series of court battles over the past 18 months as appellate judges in Washington have repeatedly sided with government lawyers and against suspected militants seeking to win their freedom.The U.S. Court of Appeals has not affirmed a single decision ordering the release of a detainee, nor has it reversed any decision that favored government lawyers. The Justice Department even won a case this month in which it had little expectation of victory.

A 2008 Supreme Court ruling allowing those held at Guantanamo Bay to challenge their detention was followed by an initial round of district court rulings that ordered the release of dozens of suspected militants after the government’s evidence was found wanting.

But the more-recent appeals court decisions, which have drawn little attention, have scuttled that trend as circuit judges have displayed more skepticism about the stories of detainees. That has meant an easing of pressure on the Obama administration to resettle or repatriate the men.“I doubt any of my colleagues will vote to grant a petition if he or she believes that it is somewhat likely that the petitioner is an al-Qaeda adherent or an active supporter,” Judge Laurence H. Silberman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals, wrote in April.

The appeals court has not only reversed judgments against the government but also compelled the lower courts to assess evidence in a manner that is much more sympathetic to government arguments. In one ruling, the appellate judges said that lower courts should consider that “two unreliable pieces of information may corroborate each other.”

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Posted by aseerun on July 7, 2011 in News Items

 

Tags: Department of Justice, DOJ, Ghaleb Nassar al-Bihani, Guantanamo, habeas corpus, Hussain Salem Mohammed Almerfedi, US Court of Appeals, Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman

Federal judge overturns release of Guantanamo detainee

21 Jun

June 11, 2011

Hussein Salem Mohammed Almerfedi

A judge for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday overturned the release of Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Hussein Salem Mohammed Almerfedi. After his capture in 2001 and detention at Guantanamo Bay, Almerfedi filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus which was granted by a lower court. The government had argued that Almerfedi was a supporter of al Qaeda because of his travels toPakistan that indicated strong ties to the group. However, the court concluded that the government had not met its burden to show by a preponderance of the evidence that Almerfedi was part of al Qaeda. On the contrary, the appeals court took a holistic approach and agreed that the government had met its burden of proof by a preponderance of evidence that Almerfedi was, in fact, part of al Qaeda:

First, Almerfedi acknowledges that he stayed for two and a half months at Jama’at Tablighi, an Islamic missionary organization that is a Terrorist Support Entity “closely aligned” with al Qaeda. … [Second] if we add Almerfedi’s travel route, which is quite at odds with his professed desire to travel to Europe (and brought him closer to the Afghan border where al Qaeda was fighting), and also that he had at least $2,000 of unexplained cash on his person when captured … the government’s case that Almerfedi is an al Qaeda facilitator is on firmer ground. … We conclude that all three facts,when considered together, are adequate to carry the government’s burden of deploying credible evidence that the habeas petitioner meets the enemy-combatant criteria.

The court relied heavily on the notion that circumstantial evidence is often sufficient enough to keep a prisoner detained.

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Posted by aseerun on June 21, 2011 in News Items

 

Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, BVS, detention, Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad al Odah, Guantanamo, habeas corpus, Hussein Salem Mohammed Almerfedi, IntLawGrrls, Iran, Musa'ab Omar al-Madhwani, US Court of Appeals, Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman

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