Guantanamo, where more than 100 inmates have been on hunger strike since February, is listed first among Amnesty International’s human rights concerns in the US chapter of its annual report, which covers the year 2012. It states that the majority of Gitmo’s 166 detainees were kept at the facility without charge or criminal trial, “nearly three years after President Obama’s deadline for closure of the Guantanamo detention facility.” Amnesty International’s 2012 annual report is a survey on human rights in 159 countries. The organization, founded in 1961, claims it does not accept funding from governments. It draws information on human rights abuses from its 3 million members and supporters around the world. The human rights group also keeps count of the death toll at Guantanamo: “Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni national who repeatedly expressed distress at his indefinite detention without charge or trial, died during the year, bringing to nine the number of detainees known to have died at Guantanamo since January 2002 ,” the report said.Latif was one of the first Gitmo prisoners, taken into US custody in 2001. He was ordered to be released from prison by the US District Court in Washington in July 2010, but the decision was overruled a year later on the grounds that Latif was an Al-Qaeda combatant.The Amnesty International report recounts the 2012 trials – or rather, “attempts at trials” – for the Gitmo detainees. Five Gitmo prisoners accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks were arraigned for a capital trial last year that did not take place.The report states that before being sent to Guantanamo, those five and another detainee “had been held incommunicado for up to four years in secret US custody, during which time at least two of them had been tortured.” Another detainee who was allegedly tortured, Pakistani national Majid Khan, pleaded guilty in December 2012. He became the seventh prisoner convicted by a military commission at Guantanamo, and one of the five who had pleaded guilty in return for the possibility of early release from US custody. The report also raised the issue of the 600 detainees in US custody at the US Military base in Afghanistan’s Bagram. Fifty of the inmates are non-Afghan nationals, some also held without charge or trial.Drones: ‘A violation of international law’The ongoing US program of targeted killings of suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen –as well as the questionable legal grounds of the practice – was the basis of another lengthy entry. “Available information, limited by secrecy, indicated the US policy permitted extrajudicial executions in violation of international human rights law under the USA’s theory of a ‘global war’ against Al-Qaeda and associated groups,” the report said Drone strikes have increased sevenfold under Obama, Bloomberg reported in April. The US covert program to target and kill Al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders saw 35 strikes in Pakistan in 2008, the last year President Bush was in office, the Long War Journal reported. That figure grew in the following years, reaching a peak of 117 attacks in 2010. Last year, 46 US drones strikes took place in Pakistan. A high court in Pakistan recently ruled that US drone strikes in the country should be considered war crimes. It also recommended that the Pakistani government address the issue in the United Nations, saying the strikes violated the organization’s charter and the country’s laws, but the growing uproar in Pakistan has done little to change Washington’s drone war.”Our researchers, when talking to people in Pakistan, find that the people are living in constant fear in very remote areas. You really cannot figure out, at the end of the day, who has been injured or killed in a drone attack,” Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty said, according to AP. The London-based group’s report was issued on Wednesday, the same day Washington admitted to killing four US citizens with drones. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney-General Eric Holder revealed that Anwar Awlaki was the only US citizen specifically targeted by a drone, while three others – Abdulrahman Awlaki, Samir Khan and Jude Kenan Mohammed – were also casualties in the drone war. President Obama is expected to address the issue in his Thursday speech at the National Defense University. Bush administration still unaccountable for secret detention deaths The CIA’s program of secret detention is mentioned among other US human rights violations. Amnesty International is concerned that no one was held accountable for the deaths of two people, who are believed to have perished in US custody abroad. “On 30 August, the US Attorney General announced the closure of criminal investigations into the death of two individuals in US custody outside the USA. He stated that no one would face criminal charges in relation to the deaths, believed to have occurred in Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003,” the report said. The report described the deaths as “crimes under international law committed under the administration of President George W. Bush.”Tasers: ‘Excessive use of force’Forty-two people died in the US in 2012 after tasers were used against them by police, according to Amnesty International. “Most of those who died after being struck with a Taser were not armed and did not appear to pose a serious threat when the Taser was deployed,” the report said. According to Amnesty International’s report, taser use has caused 540 deaths since 2001. The report cites the American Heart Association, which conducted a study on the use of Tasers that concluded they can “cause cardiac arrest and death.”The potential risks of tasers – electroshock pistol-like weapons capable of jolting the target with 50,000 volts of electricity – have long been a source of public concern. A recent high-profile case of alleged Taser-induced death involved Richard Metcalf, a 35-year-old from western New York. Metcalf died in November after suffering a massive heart attack while in the custody of the Erie County Sheriff’s Office. … Read More
‘We could end this strike in a week’ – Gitmo attorney
It remains unclear when any concrete steps would be taken to address the prisoners’ grievances, when over half of them have already been declared innocent. The situation continues to be dire with regard to the prisoners’ health, and yet there is still no clarity on just how severe things really are. On top of that, allegations of inhumane and cruel treatment continue.There are also disagreements within the White House, with President Barack Obama having long expressed his desire to shut the prison down (since his presidential victory back in 2008), but alleging that the US Congress is standing in his way. Similarly, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was found to have sent a January memo to the White House asking for the start of the transfer of the 86 prisoners that have been cleared for release, but her request was shot down, according to sources speaking to Newsweek.Nonetheless, some semblance of progress on the issue is being made, as US attorney general Eric Holder gave an indication on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that the Obama administration may indeed be readying a transfer of Guantanamo’s Yemeni population, which is a large portion of the 86 prisoners who have been found innocent on lack of evidence. Those prisoner transfers remain one of the biggest reasons for the continuing hunger strike.And yet, there are wildly differing versions as to what actually goes on inside the prison.RT interviewed Guantanamo’s spokesman Robert Durand, who denied any and all allegations leveled at the prison’s authorities by the many lawyers and human rights advocates over the 11 years of its operation.“They’ve been leveling these allegations for 11 years. We get visited by the ICRC [the International Committee of the Red Cross]. None of these allegations have ever been substantiated. We welcome the oversight of our commander, of the ICRC. We couldn’t operate this place as we do for 11 years with the kind of incredible allegations that they keep replaying over and over. It’s just not true.”He also described a dilemma the prison has been facing with choosing to view the strike as a group or an individual action, alluding to religious and peer pressure as the main components. Therefore, according to Durand it would be difficult to avoid the duty of sustaining someone’s life under the circumstances.“There is tremendous peer pressure, tremendous religious and military pressure that you will hunger strike to the death and the matter of autonomy, unlike someone who was by themselves and wanted to commit suicide or hunger strike on their own for a means of protest, we don’t know that they’re making that decision on their own, so our policy is to preserve life.”Durand went on to recount the much debated procedures of force-feeding and cavity searches, which he claimed were not as severe and thorough as has been described by opponents of the prison. His bottom line on the issue was that the policy of the United States is to sustain life by lawful means, at all costs. Durand maintained that the strike is an entirely drummed-up event and that the real reasons the prisoners have acted are nothing to do with inhuman conditions, but a pursuit of media attention in light of the government’s and media silence on the issue.“I believe they acted together, chose an event to say ‘this is what we’ll create outrage over’. They started in mid-February saying they were 100 hunger strikers, when there were only six. The number’s built up over time and they’re 100 today, so they’ve accomplished their media goal. But they haven’t asked us to correct any conditions in the camp. Al they want is media attention, to restart the process of transferring out. And to an extent they’ve achieved that mission: the president is talking about it; the Congress is talking about it; diplomats are talking about it.” It remains to be seen if the prisoners will be successful on any of their pleas. And of course, the question of prison conditions hangs in the air, as no one has yet been able to completely ascertain whose version of the story is true and which one is exaggerated.‘All of them are without charge. All of them are innocent.’Carlos Warner, who is a US Federal Public Defender, has a total of 11 clients at Guantanamo, 10 of them currently on hunger strike. He outlined their reasons for striking as follows:“It was sparked by the military and it was sparked by a change of command, and the military continues to do all the wrong things. But the reason is the hopelessness and the fact that President Obama still has not made any moves to close Guantanamo.”Perhaps the most pertinent point Warner makes in the case against Guantanamo are that a vast majority of its prisoners remain in a state of suspension, without charge, and that to this day there is no evidence to implicate them in anything.“All of them are without charge. First of all, all of them are innocent. Certainly there isn’t evidence that could put all of them on trial, but we know that 86 of 166 our government has admitted are innocent and should be immediately released and are not a danger and they have places to go. So it remains on the President’s shoulders to do what’s right here and release these men.”Warner points to the strained relationship that exists within the government as well, alluding to the recent news of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s memo that pleads with the government to get the transfers of innocent prisoners underway. But the request was shot down.RT asked Warner if there was any truth to the claims of Guantanamo spokesman Robert Durand about comfortable prison conditions and the “non-invasive” methods they have of getting the prisoners to comply with certain procedures. Warner denied all this, asking us to remember past statements and actions of the prison’s administration.“Remember this is the same military that denied a strike was going on for a long time. It’s the same military that yesterday said if you’re extracted from your cell, a tube shoved down your nose, that’s not force-feeding. So you have innocent men in solitary confinement and the military has begun new procedures, like searching the men’s genital areas before they come to talk to lawyers. They’ve never done this before. They’ve employed this tactic to try to keep the men away from the lawyers.”The big question is always whether the military has any real choice in the matter. After all, they have sworn to preserve life at any cost, according to Robert Durand of the prison administration. Warner makes a case for the detainees’ actions by asserting that it is firstly a peaceful strike, and explaining that the men imprisoned in Guantanamo simply believe they have no other choice than to either die quietly or not, and they have chosen the latter.Warner, Obama’s supporter, continued by remembering the president’s words: “’We have two bad choices – either they die or we force-feed them.’ Well, I believe there’s a third choice”, Warner says. “Releasing the innocent men – which Obama has the power to do. That would end the strike. The military has another choice too. They can negotiate with the men and with people like me. If they did that, we could end this strike in a week…but instead of de-escalating, they escalate over and over. It makes you wonder if the military wants this to continue!”And finally, Warner directs attention to the fact that it was the military themselves who had said that the strike was “not a sustainable situation”, which puts in question just how long the Guantanamo ordeal is to last. The prisoners simply cannot survive on the tube-feeding formula. Furthermore, the question of Congress is seen as a non-issue: President Obama does have the power to start prisoner transfers, according to Warner. It is unclear why he hasn’t done so until now.“He likes to blame Congress, because it satisfies people on the left. The bottom line is – he has the authority…and he stated that Guantanamo is not in the interests of national security… it’s not a matter of Congress, but of whether he has the political courage to release them.”‘They did invite me, but I couldn’t talk to the inmates’Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, told RT that he had been pressing the US government to let him in for inspections. But in the end he simply couldn’t accept the Department of Defense’s invitation, because it was too limited and would prevent him from carrying out his duties to the full – one of them being allowed the unrestricted ability to talk to any prisoner without supervision.“I was invited after insisting, but under my mandate I couldn’t accept. Everywhere I go, in every country, I have to be able to visit every part of the facility and have private conversations with inmates of my choosing without there being any repercussions. The DOD did invite me to come…but they told me I could not visit and have private conversations with inmates.”Mendez has not backed down and is continuing to insist on a visit to the facility in a way that would satisfy the UN’s concerns for international standards.“For us the most important thing is: 1) to allow unfettered visits to Guantanamo – which they [the US government] are not doing; 2) to solve the problem of those inmates that have been cleared for release and release them; 3) to try those who have to be tried under due process and fair trial guarantees, and finally – close Guantanamo. That’s basically the agenda of our engagement with the United States government on that.”Although Mendez did stress the UN “never said that force-feeding was torture”, he concludes that it amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, which is also an offense, and something that requires prompt action on the part of the United States. … Read More
Gitmo hunger strike spreads amid protests at US embassies
A prison spokesperson alleges that the number of self-starving strikers now stands at 39, rising from the previously stated numbers of 28 a week ago and 37 on Friday. However, one of the most widely-know prisoners, Shaker Aamer, has said through his lawyer that that the protest now encompasses some 130 men. Saudi-born Aamer says he has lost 32lbs (14.5kg) since it began on February 6. He was confined in Guantanamo in 2002, and has since been the subject of an Amnesty International campaign requesting an end to his indefinite detention. Lawyers say prisoners’ lives are at risk. Three were hospitalized last Tuesday as a result of the strike. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived on March 26 to investigate activities at the camp. Of the 166 currently imprisoned in Guantanamo, only six are facing trial. Carlos Warner, a defense lawyer for a Kuwaiti detainee called the hunger strike the biggest in the history of Guantanamo.“The entire camp is striking as of today,” he told TruthOut on Monday. Hundreds of protesters flocked to the streets of both Kuwait and Yemen over the weekend, with Yemeni demonstrators taking their banners to the US embassy. The Yemeni government has requested that the US government send its nationals imprisoned in the US to Sana’a for possible rehabilitation – a practice employed with repatriated Saudis. However, the request has not yet received a response from Washington. Some 90 protesters in the Yemeni capital were relatives of Guantanamo inmates. Some banners mentioned prisoners by name, most notably Kuwait’s Fouzi Khalid Abdullah al Awda, who has also been detained without charge since February 2002. Most have been imprisoned for more than a decade. There are two Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantanamo, and both have been subject to force-feeding – a practice which is tantamount to torture, according to a UN Human Rights Commission report in 2006. Lawyers have reported that their dire situation matches that of the other striking detainees, and are prepared to die in the process of securing assurance that their requests will be met. However, spokespeople continue to maintain a veneer of nonchalance. Earlier this month, Captain Robert Durand, a Guantanamo spokesperson, downplayed the plight of the prisoners to RT, saying that prisoners were housed in a “safe and humane environment.” Warner says that the severity of the strike is still being downplayed.“The military is doing what it has always done at Guantanamo,” he said. “It’s telling the world to look away and move on. It’s assuring the world everything will be just fine. Things are not fine and I hope the world will not look away this time.” … Read More
Guantanamo hunger strikers ready for death: lawyer
His body ravaged and weakened by a 50-day hunger strike staged in protest at alleged mistreatment of Korans at Guantanamo jail, Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahab has a message for his loved ones. “Tell my family if I die to forgive me,” said Abd al-Wahab, a 33-year-old Yemeni national who has…
Over 100 Guantanamo inmates ‘on hunger strike,’ possibly in grave condition
Most of 166 people housed in Camp 6 of Guantanamo Bay may beinvolved in the strike.”My client and other men have reported that most of thedetainees in Camp 6 are on strike, except for a small few who areelderly or sick,” Pardiss Kebriaei, a New York lawyerrepresenting Yemeni detainee Ghaleb Al-Bihanim, told AFP. Menhave reported coughed up blood, lost consciousness and were forcedto move to other wings of the facility for observation.The first reports of the widespread hunger strike in Guantanamoemerged in early March.The protest was allegedly sparked by interference with theinmates’ personal belongings.“Since approximately February 6, 2013, camp authorities havebeen confiscating detainees’ personal items, including blankets,sheets, towels, mats, razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos,religious CDs, and letters, including legal mail; and restrictingtheir exercise, seemingly without provocation or cause,” theCenter for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said in a March letter tothe US Military.They added that men’s Qurans were confiscated in a “desecrating”manner, and that prayer time was not respected. Most, if not all,of the Guantanamo detainees come from the Middle East, and aredevout Muslims.Prison officials have acknowledged that the hunger strike istaking place. However, they deny that it is a large-scale event:Nine detainees are refusing food, five of whom are being fedthrough tubes inserted into their stomachs, according to RobertDurand, director of public affairs for the Joint Task ForceGuantanamo.Durand also said that the claims of desecration of the Quranwere unfounded.”To be clear: there have been no incidents of desecration ofthe Quran by guards or translators, and nothing unusual happenedduring a routine search for contraband,” he told AFP.Guantanamo Bay is a US Military prison facility opened on thewake of 9/11, as part of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘Waron Terror.’ The prison currently holds 166 people, many of whomhave spent over a decade there without official charges broughtagainst them. Washington has alleged the inmates are terrorists whoplotted or acted against the American people. Guantanamo Bay becamea source of heated public debate after it was revealed that USforces had tortured detainees.Barack Obama promised to close the facility at the beginning ofhis first term as president, but the facility remains open. … Read More
Nobel peace prize winner predicts political collapse in Yemen
Yemeni Nobel peace laureate Tawakkul Karman warned in an interview with AFP that her country’s transition process is on the brink of collapse and demanded ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh be banned from politics. The activist, who was a leading figure during the youth uprising in Yemen in…
Black widows of Yemen: Inequality sparks spate of husband killings
Most of the 50 Yemeni women accused of murder in 2012 were arrested for killing their husbands, the country’s ministry of interior has announced. The killings are deemed by many a desperate reaction to rampant gender inequality in the country.
The women were between the ages of 25-50 and had mostly carried out the crime with the aid of male relatives, a report released by the Yemeni Interior Ministry’s Information Security Center revealed.Domestic violence, marriage inequality, jealousy, a sense of inferiority and economic pressures were cited as the primary motives. Most of the men were shot, poisoned, or beaten to death.The most infamous crime of this nature occurred in August in a village in the province of Marib, where a 40-year-old woman killed her husband and two sons following a domestic dispute, Dr. Mujib Abdul Bari, a specialist in psychiatric and neurological disorders, told AlArabiya.net.Bari said statistics relating to such crimes should be published to help facilitate public service campaigns which would help empower women in the country. “In case women have taken a wrong decision in marriage, they should resort to legal solutions, such as divorce or going back to their families [who can] help them on a
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psychological level,” he continued.Despite the recent spike in violence committed by wives in 2012, nearly two times as many women were victims of attempted murder during the same period.Following the 1994 Yemeni Civil War, gender inequality has drastically increased in the country. In 1999, the minimum marriage age of 15 was scrapped. Subsequent attempts a decade later to introduce legislation requiring women to be 17-years or older, were halted by conservative parliamentarians, Rebecca Murray from IPS news agency reports.United Nations figures compiled in 2004 show 17.2% of girls aged 15-19 were either married, divorced or widowed.While sexual intercourse with girls who have not reached puberty is illegal under article 15 of the country’s Personal Status Law, Human Rights Watch has documented cases where pre-pubescent girls have been subjected to marital rape.In Yemen, there are currently no laws on the books against marital rape. For those women trapped in abusive marriages, divorce laws reflect the extent of gender inequality in the country. While a husband can divorce his wife by simply repudiating her three times, a woman can only ask for a divorce under certain conditions- for example, if her husband fails to provide for the family financially even if he is capable of doing so. If a woman hopes to divorce for other reasons, she must file for a no-fault divorce which requires that she pay back her dowry.Custody of children is highly biased towards husbands, as men are considered the natural guardians of children, while women are viewed as physical custodians but have no legal rights.Rebecca Murray says domestic violence, health complications, a lack of education and career opportunities are often directly connected to early or forced marriages.She also cites Yemen’s penal code as being heavily biased in favor of men who commit “honor killings,” with husbands who murder allegedly adulterous wives receiving a one-year maximum prison sentence, or even a fine.The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index in 2012, ranked Yemen’s gender disparities last in economic, political, education and health criteria. … Read More
