It seems like just yesterday that I was talking about Andy Worthington’s “Guantánamo Habeas Week.” Well, as of today he can update his Guantánamo Habeas Scorecard, because the same judge who denied the habeas petition for Yasin Ismail last week, Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. of the U.S. District Court, Washington, DC, approved the petition for a different prisoner, Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, primarily because the evidence against him had been produced by torture. (See quote from the decision below.) The two tortured “witnesses” against Uthman were presumed al-Qaida members, also held at Guantanamo, Sharqwi Abdu Ali Al-Hajj and Sanad Yislam Ali Al Kazimi.
This brings the scorecard to 35 of 48 habeas cases from Guantanamo decided against the government. I don’t know how many of them were due to tortured evidence. One would be too many, but it is far, far more than one. The U.S. released a cascade of evil when it decided it would torture whomever they could get their hands on, all to create a false narrative of fear, of a “homeland” under increasing attack by waves and waves of jihadists, armed with fictional “dirty bombs” and visions of heavenly virgins.
US Republicans, in an effort to avoid a public civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, are turning up the heat on Attorney General Eric Holder. Why?
First, for those who need a primer on their “War on Terror” ancient history, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks,” according to the 9/11 Commission Report sanctioned by the Bush administration.
Mohammed, accused of orchestrating a number of high-profile attacks, including the grisly decapitation murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was charged in February 2008 with war crimes by a US military tribunal and will be summarily executed if found guilty. But there is just one problem with all of this: not even the CIA is unanimous in the belief that KSM is their man.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, and the author of “See No Evil”, told Time magazine back in 2007 that “the Administration [of George W. Bush] is trying to blame KSM for Al-Qaeda terrorism, leading us to believe we’ve caught the master terrorist and that Al-Qaeda, and especially the ever-elusive bin Laden, is no longer a threat to the US.”
Baer went on to say that “there is a major flaw in that marketing strategy.”
“On the face of it, KSM – as he is known inside the government – comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It’s also clear he is making things up. I’m told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl’s execution but was in fact not the person who killed him,” Baer writes.
This story belongs in the same folder as the following announcements made in the last 2 weeks:
The documents obtained by the ACLU (page 26), which have the signature’s of Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Ashcroft telling the 9/11 Commission Chairs that they can’t interview the 9/11 detainees due to National Security.
In a federal court filing, Justice backed away from the Bush administration’s statements that Zubaydah was the No. 2 or No. 3 official in al-Qaeda who had helped plan the 9/11 attacks, as well as even earlier claims from the Clinton administration that he was directly involved in planning the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.
The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.
Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.
General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly (Nor Cal Edit) gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.
A summary of news relating to 9/11/01 - For the week of March 29 through April 4, 2010. (Last week is here)
In the last couple of weeks the official version of the 9/11 attacks has continued to disintegrate. From the ACLU documents revealing that the 9/11 Commission had certain lines that it should not cross as ordered by Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Ashcroft to a Judge ordering the freedom of a Guantanamo detainee who has been held for 10 years without proper evidence to convict or hold him at all.
This week the case against one of the highest ranking detainee’s held in Guantanamo Bay for crimes relating to 9/11 has almost been completely withdrawn. His name is Abu Zubaydah, and Jason Leopold at Truthout had this to report:
In a federal court filing, Justice backed away from the Bush administration’s statements that Zubaydah was the No. 2 or No. 3 official in al-Qaeda who had helped plan the 9/11 attacks, as well as even earlier claims from the Clinton administration that he was directly involved in planning the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa.
For the first time, the government officially admitted that Zubaydah did not have “any direct role in or advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” and was neither a “member” of al-Qaeda nor “formally” identified with the terrorist organization.
Apparently this guy was waterboarded at least 80 times. Is this the National Security that people are paying for with their tax-dollars?
Ed Asner, famous actor and President of the Screen Actors Guild, also a prominent supporter of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, had a commercial hit New York television sets this week. The ad ran on New York 1, for a couple of slots and had great footage of World Trade Center #7 and discussed the peer-reviewed thermite paper. See the Ed Asner ad right here.
Also don’t forget what the ACLU revealed last week: Tenet, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld told the 9/11 Commission that they (Commission Members) could not cross “certain lines” of investigation, namely the interviews with detainees like the one in the story below….and above.
Editor’s Note: As of 4:51 pm PST Thursday, April 1, 2010, this story was updated to include additional information from the court document undercutting the government’s case and is now a complete writethru.
The Justice Department has quietly recanted nearly every major claim the Bush administration made about Abu Zubaydah, the alleged al-Qaeda leader who was the first suspected terrorist subjected to the torture of waterboarding and other White House-approved “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
In a federal court filing, Justice backed away from the Bush administration’s statements that Zubaydah was the No. 2 or No. 3 official in al-Qaeda who had helped plan the 9/11 attacks, as well as even earlier claims from the Clinton administration that he was directly involved in planning the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa.
The US government’s retreat underscores yet another problem with President George W. Bush’s use of torture. Besides its illegality and immorality, torture can be applied to suspected terrorists who have been falsely identified and who thus don’t possess the expected information, which can lead frustrated interrogators to escalate the torture until the subject provides something, whether true or not.
A group of more than 200 family members of 9/11 victims has released an emotional new web video imploring the Obama administration to remain true to its plans to try terrorist suspects in civilian court.
A summary of news relating to 9/11/01 - For the week of March 22 through March 28, 2010. (Last week is here)
To many the week’s biggest news might have been the documents obtained by the ACLU, detailing many things including the words of John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, and George Tenent to the 9/11 Commission Chairmen to “not cross” a certain line of investigation. According to the specific document (or page 26 in the original PDF of documents at ACLU) :
There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross — the line separating the Commission’s proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government’s ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks. The Commission staffs proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line.
Of course that is only a small piece of the withholdings by officials regarding 9/11, but many can use this in specific discussions of the whitewash known as the 9/11 Commission Report and its improper investigation to skeptics.
Another tape allegedly from Bin Laden made headlines across the U.S.. However none of the headlines from the mainstream “corp-press” mentioned the fact that Bin Laden has been reported dead by many media outlets:
Bullshit. I want to “call” out all their cards. I want to see who is locked up, where they are locked up, and for how long. How much of this is real, and how much of it comes from the mouths of senior intelligence officials declining to be named, spouting talking points to a severly mono-controlled media? KSM for example was declared dead in 2002, apparently even the FBI was there. Yet we hear about KSM in Guantanamo for the last 6 years, being tortured numerous times daily. To what extent is psychological warfare waged, and on whom? – NorCalTruth
by Stephen Webster source: Raw Story March 23, 2010
A (alledged) terror war prisoner, once considered of such high value by the Bush administration that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered he be tortured, has taken his first step toward freedom thanks to a federal district court judge, who ordered the government to free him after nearly 10 years of imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay.
Though 39-year-old Mohamedou Slahi, an alleged 9/11 conspirator, won his habeas corpus appeal before U.S. District Judge James Robertson on Monday, he likely does not know it yet. That’s because the judge’s decision was classified, according to published reports.
“After the [9/11] attacks, he was fingered by a senior al Qaeda operative for helping assemble the so-called Hamburg cell, which included the hijacker who piloted United 175 into the South Tower,” The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007.
After being captured and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, he was repeatedly subjected to torture by his American captors, with Rumsfeld himself ordering “special” interrogation tactics be set aside for Slahi.
Robert Gibbs was on MSNBC recently and spoke about alleged 9/11 hijacker Kalid Sheikh Mohammed. No matter where the trial is held, “he is likely to be executed” Gibbs said. Unfortunately, legal concepts like ”innocent until proven guilty” are a far cry from even our highest officials minds.
Gibbs was echoing comments from many on both sides of the political aisle. From Glenn Beck to Bill O’Reilly, President Obama and President Bush, everyone wants to “rid the world of the evil-doers’.” Kalid Sheikh Mohammed was allegedly arrested in Pakistan on March 1st, 2003.
The 2005 Bradbury memo revealed the waterboarding routine for KSM in 2003; he was waterboarded 183 times in one month alone. Whatever happened in the four years between his alleged arrest in Pakistan and alleged confession at Guantanamo, the information he did or did not provide has not:
When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.
Late in the evening on June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.
As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guantánamo to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion.
As a WASHINGTON — Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.
While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he would miss the Jan. 22 deadline for closing the prison that he set shortly after taking office, the administration appeared to take a major step forward last week when he directed subordinates to move “as expeditiously as possible” to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center, a nearly vacant maximum-security Illinois prison, and to retrofit it to receive Guantánamo detainees.
We are fighting illegal preemptive wars against three countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The resulting wars have caused well over 1,000,000 casualties. Preemptive war is illegal according to the Nuremberg Charter, and the United Nations charter. These wars are destabilizing the entire Middle East, and causing anti-American sentiment throughout the world.
In America, the Constitution is being forgotten with the passage of bills like the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act. Americans are forced to wonder if their conversations are being monitored through the use of illegal wiretapping. The freedom of the press, and the right to peacefully assemble is being discarded.
Executive Power within the United States is being expanded to the point of near-dictatorship, and accountability for the actions of the Executive, and other members of Government is non-existent.
A constant state of fear is the norm.
Billions upon billions are being spent on the previously mentioned wars, and things that are needed for the people are being forgotten about.
Soldiers are dying, are being subjected to multiple tours of duty, are being exposed to depleted uranium and chemical weapons, are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, are committing suicide at an astounding rate, are being fed propaganda in order to murder innocents, and are having their families destroyed.
On August 21, District Court Judge Gladys Kessler granted the habeas corpus petition of Mohammed al-Adahi, a Yemeni prisoner in Guantánamo who was 39 years old when he was seized on a bus in Pakistan. I described the broad outline of al-Adahi’s story in my book The Guantánamo Files as follows:
Married with two children, al-Adahi had never left the Yemen until August 2001, when he took a vacation from the oil company where he had worked for 21 years to accompany his sister to meet her husband…. As he told his tribunal, “In Muslim society, a woman does not travel by herself.” After flying to Karachi, they traveled to Kandahar, where his brother-in-law was living. Al-Adahi stayed in Afghanistan for a month, “to ease his sister’s transition to life in Afghanistan,” and then made his way back to Pakistan, where he was arrested by soldiers while traveling on a bus. “They were capturing everybody with Arabic features,” he said. “I gave them my passport and that shows that I’m an Arab. They said, ‘why don’t you follow us, we need you at the Center.’ From that point on they brought us over here.”
Posted by Brian 
