The franchise opened some branches in Syria

'Yiiiiikes': John Bolton Threatens to Send Venezuela's Maduro to Offshore US Prison at Guantánamo

Did CIA Director Gina Haspel run a black site at Guantánamo?

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Hilarious, even if so tragic.

Guess many American voters must like that semi-permanent target painted on their backs.  Either that or they have a lot more 'faith' in counter-terrorism measures than I do or perhaps they simply do not know what they doeth.   

Trouble is that some of us who look like Americans get painted with the same target on our backs.   

Blame Git on Congress but the Obama drone attacks are his alone.  Bush, Jr. lite.  The threat of blow back and self-loathing, destructive hyper vigilance are inevitable. 

Guantanamo Bay Begins Construction On Senior Care Wing

Grisly Guantanamo stories refuse to go away

Nurse Refuses Navy's Force-Feeding of Gitmo Prisoners | Common Dreams

A nurse in the U.S. Navy has refused to participate in the force-feeding of hunger striking detainees in what is the first widely-reported act of defiance on ethical grounds by a U.S. military service member at this offshore prison.

“This is a historic stand by this nurse, who recognized the basic humanity of the detainees and the inhumanity of what he was being asked to do," said Cori Crider, a lawyer for UK-based charity Reprieve—which refers to the refusal as 'conscientious objection.' Crider learned of the act of refusal in a July 10 phone call with Abu Wa’el Dhiab—a Syrian man currently detained in Guantánamo Bay—and the news broke to the media on Tuesday.

The unidentified nurse told Dhiab, “I have come to the decision that I refuse to participate in this criminal act," according to a press statement from Reprieve. “Before we came here, we were told a different story," the nurse added. "The story we were told was completely the opposite of what I saw."

Journalist Carol Rosenberg received confirmation from Navy Capt. Tom Gresback that “there was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee.”

It is not clear what repurcussions await the nurse, who is described by Dhiab as an approximately 40 year-old Latino man who may be a captain, according to Rosenberg. Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for the command that oversees Guantánamo, also confirmed the refusal to the Guardian, stating, "It's being handled administratively." Dhiab says he has not seen the nurse since the act of refusal. (...)

Life after Guantánamo: Stories from Afghanistan | Andy Worthington

(...) I have previously written about Haji Shahzada, not just in my book but also in an article in September 2011, in which I explained that he was a father of six and a village elder in Kandahar province, who was seized in a raid on his house in January 2003, with two house guests, and held at Guantánamo for over two years until his release in April 2005.

As I also explained:

Shahzada’s story (and that of the men seized with him) was one that had struck me as particularly significant when I was researching my book The Guantánamo Files, as it was a clear demonstration of how easily US forces in Afghanistan were deceived, seizing innocent people after tip-offs from untrustworthy individuals with their own agendas. In Shahzada’s case, it has not been confirmed whether the tip-off came from a rival or from members of his family seeking to seize his assets, but the entire mission was a disgrace.

One of the men seized with him, Abdullah Khan, had sold Shahzada a dog, as both men were interested in dog-fighting, but he was regarded by the soldiers involved in the raid (and, subsequently, by US interrogators) as Khairullah Khairkhwa, a senior figure in the Taliban. The problem with this scenario was not only that Khan was not Khairkhwa, but also that Khairkhwa had been in US custody since February 2002 and was held at Guantánamo (where he remains to this day).

In addition, Shahzada, a landowner who had never liked the Taliban, endured numerous aggressive interrogations in which he was obliged to repeat, over and over again, that his friend Khan was not a Taliban commander, and that he had not been supporting the Taliban. He was also particularly eloquent in warning his captors that seizing innocent people like him was a sure way of losing hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

“This is just me you brought but I have six sons left behind in my country,” he said. “I have ten uncles in my area that would be against you. I don’t care about myself. I could die here, but I have 300 male members of my family there in my country. If you want to build Afghanistan you can’t build it this way … I will tell anybody who asks me that this is oppression.”

I also analyzed Haji Shahzada’s Detainee Assessment Brief (one of the classified military files released by Wikileaks in April 2011) here.

In The Guantánamo Files, I wrote about Haji Ghalib as follows:

40-year old Haji Ghalib, the chief of police for a district in Jalalabad, and one of his officers, 32-year Kako Kandahari, were captured together, after US and Afghan forces searched their compound and identified weapons and explosives that they thought were going to be used against them. Both men pointed out, however, that they fought with the Americans in Tora Bora. “I captured a lot of al-Qaeda and Arabs that were turned over to the Americans,” Ghalib said, “and I see those people here that I helped capture in Afghanistan.” He explained that he thought he may have been betrayed by one of the commanders in Tora Bora, because he “let about 40 (al-Qaeda) escape so I got on the phone and cussed at him and that is why I am here.” (...)

Skinny Puppy

U.S. prisons could safely hold Guantanamo prisoners, report says

Federal and military prisons in the United States could securely hold the remaining 166 Guantanamo prisoners, according to a U.S. report that assessed the logistics but not the politics of closing the controversial detention facility.

The prisoners were captured during counterterrorism operations overseas and have been held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, most without charge for more than a decade.

The report by the Government Accountability Office said 98 federal prisons and six military prisons could safely hold them under the same type of security conditions that exist at Guantanamo. (...)

Yemeni Detainee at Guantánamo Died of Overdose - NYTimes.com

Lawyers for Adnan Latif, the Latest Prisoner to Die at Guantánamo, Issue A Statement

A Court Denounces ‘Executive Fiat’

In a scalding opinion issued on Thursday, Judge Royce Lamberth of Federal District Court rejected new rules imposed by the Obama administration last spring that limit access to counsel for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who are not actively challenging their detention.

Calling the government’s position an untenable challenge to the separation of powers, he said the administration had improperly given itself “final, unreviewable power to delay, hinder or prevent access to the courts, ” which amounted to “executive fiat.”

Under the new rules, those not challenging their detention would not be guaranteed access to their lawyers. Instead, the military commander of Guantánamo would have “authority and discretion” to decide whether they could meet, and about other matters, like whether lawyers would have access to their own files containing classified information.(...)

Eleven Years After 9/11, Guantánamo Is A Gulag Political Prison

Eleven years since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the majority of the remaining 168 men in Guantánamo are not held because they constitute an active threat to the United States, but because of inertia, political opportunism and an institutional desire to hide evidence of torture by US forces, sanctioned at the highest levels of government. That they are still held, mostly without charge or trial, is a disgrace that continues to eat away at any notion that the US believes in justice.

It seems like an eternity since there was the briefest of hopes that George W. Bush’s “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo would be shut down. That was in January 2009, but although Barack Obama issued an executive order promising to close Guantánamo within a year, he soon reneged on that promise, failing to stand up to Republican critics, who seized on the fear of terrorism to attack him, and failing to stand up to members of his own party, who were also fearful of the power of black propaganda regarding Guantánamo and the alleged but unsubstantiated dangerousness of its inmates.

The President himself also became fearful when, in January 2010, the Guantánamo Review Task Force, which he himself had appointed, and which consisted of career officials and lawyers from government departments and the intelligence agencies, issued its report based on an analysis of the cases of the 240 prisoners inherited from George W. Bush (PDF). The Task Force recommended that, of the 240 men held when he came to power, only 36 could be prosecuted, but 48 others were regarded as being too dangerous to release, even though insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial. (...)

 RichardPrins wrote: 

Torture: The Bush Administration on Trial
by Andy Worthington, May 7, 2012

Rodriguez joins an elite club of public officials — including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld — who have not been prosecuted for using torture or authorizing its use. Instead, they have been writing books, going on book tours, and appearing on mainstream TV to attempt to justify their unjustifiable actions.

They all claim to be protected by a “golden shield,” a legal opinion issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel crafted by attorney John Yoo. While the office’s mandate is to provide impartial legal advice to the executive branch, the opinion redefined torture and approved its use — including the use of waterboarding, an ancient torture technique and a form of controlled drowning — on a supposed “high-value detainee,” Abu Zubaydah. The opinion came in the form of two memos, dated August 1, 2002, that will forever be known as the “torture memos.”

A four-year internal ethics investigation concluded in January 2010 that Yoo and Bybee had been guilty of “professional misconduct,” which ordinarily would have led to professional sanctions, but a senior Department of Justice official, David Margolis, overrode that conclusion, stating that both men had been under great pressure following the 9/11 attacks, and had merely exercised “poor judgment,” which was the equivalent of nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

No one bothered mentioning that Article 2.2 of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the U.S. became a signatory under Ronald Reagan, declares, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

'Vomiting and screaming' in destroyed waterboarding tapes

Secret CIA video tapes of the waterboarding of Osama Bin Laden's suspected jihadist travel arranger Abu Zubaydah show him vomiting and screaming, the BBC has learned.

The tapes were destroyed by the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez.

In an exclusive interview for Newsnight, Rodriguez has defended the destruction of the tapes and denied waterboarding and other interrogation techniques amount to torture.

The CIA tapes are likely to become central to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, at Guantanamo Bay. (...)

 romeotuma wrote: 
Also, some of these people have been in there since just after 9/11. 10 years ago!  If they were still torturing them up until just recently, what information do they think they have? I would imagine any information these people once had (if they had any at all which seems more and more unlikely as the years pass by) is too outdated now to do anything with. But going back to the main point, most of these people are in there based an pretty sketchy evidence and without trial. Imagine how you would feel if you were locked up in a hell hole like that, severely tortured, both mentally and physically because you happen to follow a certain faith and so therefore presumed guilty. Forget the Taliban, terrorist breeding grounds, America have created their very own right there in Guantanamo! 

What I don't get is those that were pro Bush when he opened this place are now more anti Obama because he hasn't closed it!  Make your friggin' minds up will ya? 

 romeotuma wrote:
 
The stuff coming from Rolling Stone's guy, what's-his-name Tabibbi? has been pretty spot-on lately.

 romeotuma wrote:
  Good point. I like him a lot. Damn rare breed though.

 romeotuma wrote:
  Is there anybody ELSE in Congress?