US-Run "Black Jails" in Afghanistan Continue to Violate Human Rights

The New York Times has revealed today that US-run jails in Afghanistan continue to violate international humanitarian conventions by refusing to allow the International Red Cross access to detainees. The jail - and another like it in Iraq - are run by US Special Forces to detain and interrogate high-value detainees. US officials say they have no plans to close the facilities. Detainees can be held for weeks without external contact or without their families knowing if they are alive or dead. The US says it now hands over names of all detainees to the International Red Cross within two weeks of capture, but it does not allow direct contact.

Obviously, such a policy runs in direct contradiction to President Obama's stated policy of improving US detention and interrogation procedures to be in line with international human rights norms. Holding prisoners incommunicado was a highly criticized policy of the Bush Administration, one that many hoped would be overturned. Obama's decision to give his commanders high flexibility on the battlefield is one factor leading to the continuation of the "black jails."

One can only hope that President Obama will see the light and reverse the continuation of Bush Administration abominations. Preventing Red Cross access has no use as an interrogation tool and can only serve to heighten suspicion of American intentions. If the Obama Administration is serious about improving relations with the rest of the world, improving America's image, and making real changes for the better regarding the human rights of those in our detention facilities, then he must allow detainees access to the Red Cross. Absolutely no ifs, ands, or buts, as my grandma used to say. Just do it.

More "Bush Lite" Under Obama

According to today's NY Times, the Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects abroad for interrogation but will monitor to insure they are not tortured, officials said. The article, Rendition of Terror Suspects Will Continue Under Obama, stresses the modifications intended to protect detainees:

"Unlike the Bush administration, they would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused.

'The emphasis will be on insuring that individuals will not face torture if they are sent over overseas,' said one administration official, adding that no detainees will be sent to countries that are known to conduct abusive interrogations."

Thus continues Obama's practice of continuing the distasteful and counterproductive security policies from the Bush era, repackaged for a "kinder and gentler" appearance. Other examples: continuing indefinite detention of detainees, military tribunals, and warrantless domestic wiretapping.

We all understood Obama had a pragmatic streak, but I have yet to see the benefit from these policies. There is a definite difference between pragmatism and recklessness. The Obama Letdown has begun in earnest!

New Gitmo Decision Offers Unusual Insight Into Weakness of Government Evidence

Why does the Obama administration continue to detain foreign nationals for years on end with only the flimsiest of evidence to justify their ongoing detention? Of 31 cases completed since the Supreme Court allowed detainees to challenge their detention in court, 28 were found to be held unlawfully. Of those 28, 19 are still in detention. WTF????

ProPublica reports:

New Gitmo Decision Offers Unusual Insight Into Weakness of Government Evidence:

by Chisun Lee, ProPublica -

A recent federal court decision that yet another Guantanamo captive’s detention is illegal offers the most detailed picture to date of how the government is struggling, often unsuccessfully, to justify indefinite imprisonments with sometimes thin and unverifiable evidence. The government’s difficulties in proving these cases are likely to persist even if the detainees are moved to U.S. soil or if a new detention review system is created.

The judge evaluating Al Mutairi’s imprisonment issued a lengthy written opinion detailing and eviscerating the government’s evidence.

Al Mutairi’s case was the first to be completed by Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a judge with considerable national security experience, in the slew of lawsuits brought by some 200 Guantanamo inmates. In these lawsuits, known as habeas corpus petitions, the detainees claim the government wrongly imprisoned them as enemies in the conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban. The cases have been randomly assigned among the 15 judges of the federal trial court in Washington, D.C.

ProPublica recently examined 31 cases completed since a June 2008 Supreme Court decision empowered federal trial courts to scrutinize and, if called for, overturn presidential detention decisions. Case by case, the judges have been answering core questions that policy experts have addressed in theory: When can the president place someone in preventive detention, and how solid does the evidence need to be? (Our analysis of the cases was co-published as an op-ed by the New York Times.)

Judges have found 28 detainees to be unlawfully held. Nineteen of these men remain jailed at Guantanamo. More lawsuits continue to move ahead...

After reviewing the government’s classified evidence, the judge last week concluded that "there is nothing in the record beyond speculation" that Al Mutairi had "become a part of al Qaida or an associated force of al Qaida," as the government alleged. She ordered the Obama administration to "take all necessary and appropriate steps to facilitate Al Mutairi’s release forthwith."

The government’s evidence failed to sway her, because it was sparse and unreliable.

She said some of it was "unfinished" or "raw" intelligence that, by the government’s own admission, had never been "fully analyzed for its ‘reliability, validity, and relevance.’"

A "typographical error in an intelligence report" led the government incorrectly to claim for more than three years that Al Mutairi had manned an anti-aircraft weapon in Afghanistan, the judge wrote. The report had confused Al Mutairi’s internment serial number – a unique identifier assigned each detainee – with that of the person actually suspected of manning the weapon.

The government gave the judge no reason to think the appearance of Al Mutairi’s name on certain prison lists – parts of the opinion suggest the prison was in Pakistan – meant he was affiliated with al Qaeda, the judge said. "Multiple independent sources" had testified that such lists were collected by guards merely to inform family members of the whereabouts of the incarcerated, and administration lawyers supplied no proof to the contrary.

Among the pieces of evidence the judge rejected in the Al Mutairi case was a passage from an account of the detainee’s own interrogation...

Kollar-Kotelly discussed Al Mutairi’s "agitated" state of mind at the time he gave the statement and says "he appears to have been goaded into making these statements by the linguist in the interrogation room."

During another interrogation, the judge said, an agitated Al Mutairi claimed that 'he was Osama bin Laden." She quoted a passage from that interrogation report, which is striking because it reveals the detainee’s seeming frustration and despair over his treatment in U.S. custody:

ISN [Internment Serial No.] 213 was uncooperative. He stated that he wished to be called Osama bin Laden . . . ISN 213 stated he was an enemy of America because Americans had told him so. Americans cursed his parents. Prior to the war, he’d had no problem with Americans. But due to the situation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and legal process being so useless, he might as well be Osama bin Laden, since he was never going to be freed from U.S. custody.

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My question is: why does the Obama administration insist on retaining these prisoners? What happened to Obama the candidate who insisted on closing GITMO detention center ASAP?