Guantanamo Prisoners Stuck In Legal Vacuum

[KashifAsrar]

14,000 beyond reach of law



Guantanamo Prisoners Stuck In Legal Vacuum




In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the US military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.
Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the UN secretary-general and the US supreme court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major US penitentiaries.
“It was hard to believe I’d get out,” Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi said after his release — without charge — last month. “I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell.”
Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through US detention, the vast majority in Iraq.
Many say they were caught up in US military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90% of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were “mistakes”, US officers once told the international Red Cross. AP

Lensman held for 5 months sans charges


The US military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.
Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for “imperative reasons of security” under United Nations resolutions.
AP executives said the news cooperative’s review of Hussein’s work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.
Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the Associated Press in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year.
“We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable,” said Tom Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “We’ve come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure.” AP

White House: Deal possible on CIA interrogations


Washington: The White House and Senate Republicans who revolted against the president’s proposal on tough CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects said on Sunday a compromise was possible to heal a party rift over treatment of prisoners.
Stephen Hadley, White House national security adviser, said election-year differences between president George Bush and senior senators from his own party could be worked out on legislation to allow the CIA to continue the programme.
The White House wants Congress to pass a law that would give the CIA a legal foundation for tough questioning methods.
“In a war on terror there are some things that have to remain secret if they are to be effective, but it is not out of control and we’re not saying trust us,” Hadley said on ABC. REUTERS

IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE: A detainee in an outdoor solitary confinement cell at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad