Boumediene Wins Again!
BREAKING NEWS of the Gitmo variety. From Reuters:
Five of six Algerians must be released after nearly seven years of captivity at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled from the bench after holding the first hearings under a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that gave Guantanamo prisoners the legal right to challenge their continued confinement.
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to close the prison camp after he takes office in January. Meanwhile, U.S. judges in Washington are moving ahead with case-by-case reviews of detainee legal challenges.
Now the best part of this story is that one of the five Leon ordered released is Lakhdar Boumediene. Boumediene has kicked George Bush and the criminal cabal that has assisted him in committing war crimes and illegal, immoral detentions so many times that you would think the Bushies are rented mules.
Sadly, however, the Bushies are jackasses, not rented mules, and they are still in office. What that would appear to portend is that that means Boumediene, and the other four Leon has ordered released, will likely stay detained pending appeals. The precedent was set not long ago on the Uighurs case.
January 20, 2009 cannot come soon enough for us and for those we have wronged.
UPDATE: Here is the press release issued by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR):
Following Judge Richard J. Leon’s decision today in U.S. District Court ordering the release of five of the six Boumediene habeas defendants, Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vincent Warren released the following statement:
This decision illustrates once again that the arbitrary detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has been and continues to be unlawful.
Even in a courtroom that was largely closed to the public and the press, and with the detainees allowed only limited access to the proceedings by telephone, the court could find no reason to hold these men. This decision makes it clear once again that even with presumptions in its favor, the government cannot muster the barest evidence in support of its arbitrary detentions. For seven years, the Bush administration sought to avoid the courts because it had no evidence and sought instead to create a lawless prison.
We must note that justice here, however, comes seven years too late. The restoration of habeas corpus is a great achievement, and what is necessary now is for the government to give up this fatally flawed system, rescind the ‘enemy combatant’ labels slapped on recklessly by combatant status review tribunals and return the men at Guantanamo to their home countries or, for those needing resettlement or asylum, to a safe third country.
We hope a new administration makes restoring the lives of hundreds of men at Guantanamo who have never been charged with any crime or tried in a court of law a top priority. Guantanamo Bay is a failure by every measure and must be closed immediately.
Justice!
Wow. Can we declare the “war” “over” on 1.20.09 and release these “pows” or whatever they are?
Awesome!
I do like the sound of this…
I’m gonna run right out, buy me an old Borax wagon and see if I can get a good price on these mules to haul the wagon. Fill it full o’ rocks and tour the US.
Death Valley Days, at one time hosted by none other than Ronnie RayGunz.
Gotta use Barnacle as lead mule. Good name for a mule, no?
Mules are neuter. Bushies are not. Pity. Their spawn will rise another day, just like cockroaches.
Thanks, bmaz. Gosh, you get to bring glad tidings two posts in a row. Congratulations!
We could kill two birds with one stone if we give each inmate a Free GM SUV of their choice, purchased using 700 billion fund.
Hot damn bmaz, today is shaping up to be a great day! Thanks for the news…
w00t for Boumediene!
very good news!
Detained pending completion of their appeals from this district court ruling, or until after January 20th. I think that’s absolutely right.
Bush’s greatest war was a soundbite war. He never willingly admitted a fact or uttered a truth he did not want published against him, regardless of the inane contortions he and his spokespeople came up with as alternatives. By the same reasoning, he will not release these or other prisoners while in office; he will lay it and its “consequences” on his successor. (He will, of course, have his list of pardons. I wonder how many will be secret?)
Obviously, “release” creates its own problems. Prisoners not found guilty of a crime by an open, reasonable process deserve freedom. But brutalized prisoners may be psychotic, from our own doing, and will have trouble adjusting. That’s a problem the US government created; it should pay to fix it. The solutions may be assisted living; relocation to willing, more culturally receptive countries; cash compensation and apologies, etc. Obama’s team ought to be dreaming up what those “etc’s” are right now.
you haven’t mentioned another risk to release. if these people were not terrorists then they might be now. i believe if you kick a dog over a period of time they will turn mean. we are screwed no matter what.
My comment above @ 43 is not mean to crassly forgeting the victims, but rather, emphasize the depth of inhumanity individuals have fallen while waging a war under the guise of patriotism.
I think that for closure’s sake (the “closure” — aka revenge — that conservative self-appointed victims’ rights advocate love to take), Boumediene and the other Gitmo victims ought to have first dibs on the rock wagon Southern Dragon mentions, and use it to go after the homes of prominent PNAC members.
We’ll give ‘em Wrist Rockets.
And call it the Rock PNAC Tour.
There you go!
George Bush MUST face the same standards we held the Germans to at Nuremburg although I would settle for the Hague.
Until that time no justice no peace period
Let’s not forget a certain Mr. Addingtons role in all this.
CNBC now reporting that Pelosi put kaibosh on senate deal to loan to auto industry.
wtf?
A bit earlier, cnbc reported that senate announced a bipartisan deal for auto industry loan, reportedly coming from a reorientation of the $25 billion retooling pool. Meaning they caved into Paulson. Now it seems that Pelosi sez no to that.
I heard the Suicide Blonde talking about that at the WH briefing this am.
Post has been updated with the text of the CCR press release on this ruling:
Thanks, B!
Now Harwood saying congress talking about coming back in Dec to talk about auto industry loan.
They certainly should. They don’t need to be taking a vacation while people are scared for their jobs.
Sorry to go OT, bmaz-
Senate puts together an auto loan deal –
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27824057/
It seems to be off. See my 16 & 19.
Woooo. Bigtime Paulson trashing happening on cnbc.
can they defy the judge for their remaining time in office?
They’ve defied the courts for the last 8 years, what’s another 60 days or so.
Sure. Appeals. Just like the Uighurs.
Thanks bmaz. I love that metaphor: kicked liked a rented mule.
OT
Blue Texan is upstairs at the Mothership!
NRA To Nutters: Obama Will Take Your Guns Away If Saxby Chambliss Loses Runoff
Blue Texan has a new post on the front page of FDL: NRA To Nutters: Obama Will Take Your Guns Away If Saxby Chambliss Loses Runoff
Algerians, eh?
The actor who played “Osama” was said to be an Algerian, specifically, an “Algerian Actor.”
As stated by the same individual who revealed the truth to me:
I think the Judge has an obligation, should any stays be approved like they were in the Uighurs case, to order immediate change of conditions for these men whether they are getting out tomorrow or January or any time in between.
The following is from Human Rights Watch, Locked Up Alone and details the treatment of one of the Bosnian-Algerians. More has been written at Slate and elsewhere about him, Saber Lahmar.
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/62183/section/5
http://www.boston.com/news/glo…..uantanamo/
http://www.slate.com/id/2138480/
and my own,
http://humanityagainstcrimes.b…..-week.html
I’m not asking for much, just don’t lose sight of the fact that even if he gets released in January, from now to January the least they could do is shut the lights out at night in his cell, and allow him to see his fellow defendants, or maybe call the son he’s never seen or spoken to. Phone privileges, lights out, human company. If that’s just a technicality to some, it means the difference between sanity and madness to this guy.
As I recall, some senators worked against a Republican majority during the drafting of MCA to leave the seam Boumediene accessed successfully, though I would have to review my sparse notes. Some of the Binyam declarations made it clear Algeria remains a difficult place to which to be repatriated. This past week, if memory serves well, one exGitmoite was sentenced to about a decade more in jail after repatriation. I think some of the 711 conspirators in Iberia had been in the media with observations and likely fates depicted much as Binyam’s narrative. Also this past week once again Gitmo lost a central show trial person by retirement of the presiding judge, I believe. I think the current administration persists in seeking a frontierJustice solution for some of the obvious defendants; and, further, it is my impression BO’s organization has announced its favoring a civilian replacement for the Gitmo tribunals. As I recall, the north African former French colony held an election which the military abrogated when it became clear a theocratic party had won, and the condition of electoral politics remained the same after that. UCB and NYU interested departments had projects resulting in a study published this month examining some of the anthropocentric factors in the Gitmoization of military justice. I think a lot of people internationally have been examining the options for processing Gitmoites after the current administration’s end; clearly wanting a variety of sanctions in place to discourage international actors from doing things like 911 and 711. It has remained of interest that Scotus has managed to avoid the political fray, save for a few noteworthy affirmations supportive of the modern Geneva guarantees and the international norms of substrate habeas due process.
Denniston is reporting Leon has recommended one individual in the group remain in custody but that the others be freed forthwith, evidently, by prearrangement, to Bosnia where they already were expatriates. Scotusblog so far provides no links, though Lile is saying Leon is preparing his own post on the court site for clarification of his ruling, as well.
Thanks John
I am alot more concerned about the Americans who have particpated in the caging of these POWs and, day after day, continued to destroy the humanity of others and themselves by “doing their duty”. These are the dogs who will be blending back into our communities. Doctors like Stephen Miles, who study and work with Torture victims, must be allowed to help our government set these criminal wrongs as right as possible and train our citizen warriors against this depravity.
Bush and Cheney, American elites who will move into gated communities should be sent behind Quantanamo gates.
If you’re advocating treatment for the soldiers who have participated, you should know that people who treat torture victims do not treat those who have tortured. It’s an unwritten act of faith they keep with their victim patients and it would destroy a trust that is needed for their treatment.
ondelette, it was while I was reading your report @ 38 that I had thoughts very like Palli’s. Usually, I am reserving my anger for the guys ‘way up the chain, but it is impossible to read descriptions like your quote @ 38 and not think of the guys who are right there, the jailers, the foot soldiers — how can anyone watch that done to someone, day after day after day?
And I understand why those who treat the victims of torture would make such a pact with them — but you’ve now got me thinking about a lot of other very troubled minds as well.
Such a long string of victories in fairly conservative U.S. courts, and yet still we are facing very powerful people who refuse to move, who keep stonewalling, and who are definitely going to be keeping up the paranoia talk after Obama is sworn in.
I don’t know skdadl. I know someone who did something in Iraq and came back not okay. We think it may have been something like this, some of the things he said to some of his friends. He won’t talk about it except to say sleeping is a problem. He didn’t feel comfortable here, so he went back to Iraq.
Of course not, two entirely different realities! The “doctors” who are participating in the activity of torture are not medical personnnel I’d want providing medical services to anyone without undergoing considerable rehabilitation themselves. My statements presume that this era of conventionalized torture will end; that soldiers who have taken their job to mean “do what they are told to do” and soldiers (including medical servicemen and women) who have monitored torture and soldiers who enjoyed participating in torture, will be once again civilians living amongst us.
Frankly, I am completely selfish in my concern: torturers have their demons to live with and I want to protect me and mine from them.
But as a daughter of a POW, I learned from him some of the reality of the human crime of the torturer. Certain instances of revenge from individual POWs to their captors taught him things he didn’t want to know. Torture is a crime that keeps on hurting…everyone. When Abu Gharib broke he was enraged and disheartened for the American culture.
Now that I am off my selfish jag-
Thinking about this whole issue with a wide-open mind. There has to be a new way of thinking in the military.
Shock and Awe is over. The occupying forces in Iraq should be peacekeeping soldiers. The young men and women (usually falsely) recruited into our ground forces should be learning and practising useful skills: new languages, construction trades, agriculture & irrigation, community organizing, etc. Some soldiers find their own way to these activities but the real occupation purpose is fear and intimidation. Most soldiers are unconnected to the any sense of place, (not even the barracks,) bored and scared. That’s how the common soldier becomes a torturer or a murderer.
Boot camp should be more than endurance and propaganda and building unquestioning loyalty to command. Soldiers should have more than a manual with a few pages about what is and isn’t torture, their moral character has to built up so they viserally understand what torture is.
Oh hell. What am I talking about…it’s a don’t ask don’t tell military. There is no hope without people of goodwill and goodwill has been re-defined.
Ondelette, I don’t know how we are going to right all these wrongs…one at a time, with tears and nightmares in the evening
The times they are a-changin’…Thanks Bmaz!! Great news.
Coupla things
A) Bench ruling – wow.
B) Leon earlier adopted a definition of “enemy combatants” that is pretty darn broad, based on the hugely broad Dept of Def 2004 definitions and their MCA codificiations.
So even under those standards, he made a BENCH RULING on the Algerians. He seems to have at least implicitly endorsed the defense contentions that these men were kidnapped and tortured bc of the unsubstantiated claims made by an in-law enemy of one of them who was trying to profer up something to get released from jail himself, and once it became clear that was the case, then the facts were “classified” and buried so that the war crimes and non-war, everyday crimes attached to their situations could stay covered up and buried with them.
38 – Sometimes you wonder if, for some of their most egregious cases (and Erachiddi comes to mind there as well) if there has been a deliberate decision to do everything possible to drive their mistakes out of their mind, as permanently as possible, so that they won’t be able to give reliable testimony.
I suppose you saw where Siddiqui has been ruled mentally unfit for trial.
Yes, Mary, I saw it. There was a hearing about possibly medicating Aafia Siddiqui to stand trial today, nothing but continue treatment and keep the Dec. 17 court date for the final ruling on fitness to stand trial. What’s encouraging, to me, is this article from AFP,
http://www.google.com/hostedne…..w70ahlJlmA
that Judge Berman has finally said something in public about wanting to know what happened to her from 2003 to 2008. Her lawyer is now saying with some definitiveness that the youngest child is dead.
Her case is how come I got so sensitive to what was happening to the prisoners while the wheels of justice turned.
Sorry, it’s the second child, the girl Maryam, who is believed dead.
41- Gov has an interest in getting them off Gov soil, so if Bosnia is ready to take them, Gov might want to reconsider that appeal and strike while that iron is hot. Let it linger through appeal and end up with any of them actually having a toe hold on US soil to access US soil for trial and we have another el-Masri/Arar round of cases, but this time with Obama and Obama’s AG asserting the state secrets claims to try to bury the cases.
another el-Masri/Arar round of cases, but this time with Obama and Obama’s AG asserting the state secrets claims to try to bury the cases
I’m as un-starry-eyed as they come, but do you really believe that Obama’s AG will/would assert state secrets claims?
Bittersweet victory. Especially if the Algerians’ physical and mental conditions have deteriorated. Like Padilla’s. No amount of money can make up for that. And then there’s the Uighurs who have been effectively made stateless persons.
Well, in some small fairness I suppose, the Uighurs were effectively stateless persons to start with.
54 – thank you for the links and updates Ondelette. I’ve been just a half-assed casual observer compared to someon like you, but I do want to pass along that your efforts are appreciated.
The complete silence as to what they have done with the children, not just her’s, but others, like KSM’s (and his wife who disappeared as well) is chilling in and of itself. Anytime they do something that isn’t depraved, they don’t hesitate to trumpet it around (like the recent Mukasey “standing for the rule of law on wiretaps” nyt piece). From time to time I think, too, about the reference to the “young detainee” who was tortured to death with stress positions and hypothermia, then tossed into an unmarked grave – and you wonder just how “young’ they mean by “young.”
There were some articles awhile back about returning soldiers to a Colorado base being involved in several murders back at home and all of it makes you wonder at how far the damage goes.
It looks like Judge Leon’s ruling and added expressed interests have become part of a blizzard. Judge Hogan also issued an order* to 113 other plaintiffs for new briefings, and DoJ issued a typical recalcitrant* statement. Lile describes JudgeJudithRogers as lead questioner in a Hogan powwow, basically adding coherence to Leon’s direction. This might arrive at some Scotus’ escritoire yet. LD is suggesting much of the material remains to be transcribed. Since Leon did the trial on the record, save the referenced in camera followup, we should see the transcript (how) soon.
___
*See Denniston’s post updated at 4:30 p.m. DC time for the two latter links.
58 – Yes.
For lots of lengthy reasons involving the fact that the alternative is to put the criminality – by often “covert” torturers – into the courts even while DOJ isn’t purusuing criminal prosecutions, and also having to open up files in the litigation that will be problematic for Democrats as well as the Bushies. The fact that Obama was so willing to grant amnesty to telecoms without any requirement for disclosure of the nature, extent, and personnel involved in their criminal acts pretty much highlights how he thinks these matters should be handled. It would be very odd for him to lead the Democrats in capitulation to amnesty and cover up as a Congressman, while doing something different as President.
Um, ditto what Mary said.
It would be very odd for him to lead the Democrats in capitulation to amnesty and cover up as a Congressman, while doing something different as President.
Not necessarily. Two differences spring to mind — the qualitative difference between torture and domestic spying as issues (esp. wrt international impact), and the different circumstances of electoral campaign and being in power elected by a handy margin and with stronger majorities in Congress.
Your comments are always instructive and provoke head-nodding 99% of the time, so on the basis of your track record I should probably dial my expectations even lower.
I’m very glad you all are here to help follow along on these matters as the new regime takes hold.
One thing that bothered me hugely in the NPR and PBS coverage is that they never uttered the name ‘Boumediene’, and didn’t make the connection to the Supreme Court decision or note that these are the very subject of that case.
Ondelette-
I keep jumping over the fact you stated first for me- I never meant the same people to do the different sides of recovery work.
Work with the torture victim is very different but it is only in understanding how deep and lasting the pain of torture- centuries. I believe it becomes part of the cultural core of a tortured people and a torturing people.
Not to mention, of course, that there’s no hint even in the most thorough traditional media coverage of the information ondelette provides of the prisoners’ situations.