Torture Continues at Guantanamo

It never ended under Obama at US torture prisons worldwide, Guantanamo the tip of the iceberg.

The practice continues under Trump. He believes it works. Clear evidence proves otherwise.

He believes if it doesn’t work, detainees deserve it anyway. The vast majority in US torture prisons post-9/11 were innocent victims, wrongfully called terrorists, brutalized for their faith and ethnicity – their pain and suffering ignored, largely unreported by Western media.

International law is clear and unequivocal. Torture is illegal at all times, under all circumstances with no allowed exceptions.

It’s mostly used for punishment and control, not to obtain useful information. Most, maybe all, detainees in US torture prisons have nothing to tell.

They’ll say anything their torturers want to hear to stop the pain. Most everyone would do the same thing.

Common US torture methods include waterboarding (simulating drowning), severe beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, hooding, prolonged isolation under extreme heat or cold, deafening noice, use of stress positions, along with sexual humiliation and abuse.

Founded by civil and human rights attorney Clive Stafford Smith, UK-based Reprieve “fight(s) for the victims of extreme human rights abuses with legal action and public education.”

The group’s main focus is on the death penalty, indefinite detentions without trial, extraordinary renditions, extrajudicial killings and torture.

Last October, it published seven facts most people don’t know about Guantanamo, as follows:

“1. Most detainees were sold to the US for enormous bounties.

2. The Bush administration decided that the prisoners had no rights, and Reprieve was a big part of changing that.”

3. All the prisoners initially faced the death penalty.

4. At least 15 children have been held in Guantanamo.

5. More men have died in Guantanamo than have been convicted of a crime.

6. Over 90% of Guantanamo detainees have been released without charge.

7. Guantanamo is possibly the world’s most expensive prison.”

It costs Washington around $445 million to keep Guantanamo’s 41 prisoners incarcerated – $29,000 per prisoner daily, a shocking waste of money on top of committing grievous human rights abuses.

Of the roughly 775 Guantanamo detainees since its detention facilities opened in January 2002, only four were convicted of a crime.

The vast majority were held uncharged and untried, their fundamental rights denied. At least 10 were killed by prison guards or other US personnel, falsely listed as suicides.

The ACLU called torture and abuse at Guantanamo one of the most shameful episodes in US history, urging its facilities to be shut down.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) led the fight against indefinite detention and torture at Guantanamo – calling it an “island prison designed to exist beyond the rule of law.”

Trump vowed to resume sending prisoners there, saying he wants to “load it up with some bad dudes.” CCR continues working for the release of remaining detainees, seeking closure of the facility.

UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer said he has information that Ammar al-Baluchi, falsely accused of involvement in 9/11, is being tortured and abused at Guantanamo, explaining:

“In addition to the long-term effects of past torture, noise and vibrations are reportedly still being used against him, resulting in constant sleep deprivation and related physical and mental disorders, for which he allegedly does not receive adequate medical attention.”

Other detainees perhaps are treated the same way. Melzer called for prosecution of US officials responsible for involvement in torture, issuing a statement saying:

“By failing to prosecute the crime of torture in CIA custody, the US is in clear violation of the Convention against Torture, and is sending a dangerous message of complacency and impunity to officials in the US and around the world.”

He and his predecessors were denied access Guantanamo – to learn firsthand what apparently still goes on.

The post Torture Continues at Guantanamo appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Government-Funded Martyrs? ISIS Suicide Bomber “Paid $1.24 Million to Blow Himself Up”

It may well be that the West is inadvertently fueling its own demise.

In a turn of bizarre and tragic events, a man who was released from Guantanamo Bay with the help of British legal aid has now killed himself in a suicide bombing that targeted a military facility in Iraq.

The UK-born citizen was compensated handsomely for his time in the notorious prison for terrorists, only to turn around and return to Syria and Iraq to wage jihad.

via the Daily Mail:

A British ISIS suicide bomber has been revealed as a former Guantanamo prisoner who was handed £1million in taxpayers’ money as compensation before fleeing to Syria.

UK national Jamal Udeen al-Harith was photographed moments before blowing himself up in an attack on a military facility near Mosul in Iraq.

The Muslim convert – who changed his name from Ronald Fiddler in 1994 – was sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2002 after he was caught by American forces in Afghanistan.

al-Harith/Fiddler was released a couple of years later, and sued the government for monetary damages after making the case that he was misidentified as a terrorist, and mistreated during captivity.

But ironically, and due to a lapse of securtiy, he returned to the terrorism fight after being reintegrated into to normal life in British society.

He launched a compensation claim on the grounds British agents knew or were complicit in his mistreatment and was handed £1million to stay silent.

… [D]espite security services being fully aware of his previous detention, al-Harith, who worked as a web designer for a time, was able to escape the UK in 2014 to fight with ISIS in Syria, leading to his eventual death.

[…]

His journey was revealed following an escape from ISIS-controlled Syria in 2015 by British mother Shukee Begum and her five children.

Somehow, it is as if the West is chasing – and biting – its own tail in the Middle East, eating up all gains that is has won, and ensuring that a cycle of perpetual violence, war and turmoil will continue in the region.

How did things get so twisted that the UK, or U.S. or any other “friendly” country could be funding its own enemies, funding terrorism and sowing the seeds of destruction?

Read more:

As Terror Attacks Hit Home, U.S. Caught “Bombing Syria to Aid ISIS”

Homeland Security “Concerned About Security Breach” From ISIS As Refugees Prepare to Flood America

New Patch for U.S. Troops Fighting ISIS… Looks Like ISIS Logo

US Complains As Putin Bombs its Terrorists: “ISIS Is An Intentional Creation of U.S.”

ISIS Fires American-Made Missiles At Syrian Army: “U.S. Funding, Arming ISIS From the Beginning”

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Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 28 people
Date: February 22nd, 2017
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

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In New Executive Order, Trump Plans To Send ISIS Detainees To Guantanamo

February 8, 2017   |   admintam

(ZHE) The Trump Administration is preparing an executive order that would direct the Pentagon to bring future Islamic State detainees to Guantánamo Bay prison, despite warnings from national security officials and legal scholars that doing so risks undermining what increasinly appears as an “illegal” war launched by Obama to combat the terrorist organization (which many have accused of being directly and indirectly created by Saudi Arabia and the US itself).

According to the NYT which obtained a draft of the order (see below), White House officials “have spelled out their thinking about a new detainee policy in an evolving series of drafts of an executive order being circulated among national security officials for comment.

While previous versions have shown that the draft has undergone many changes – including dropping language about reviving C.I.A. prisons – the plan to add Islamic State detainees to the Guantánamo population has remained constant.  The latest version of the draft, which circulated this week, would direct Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to use Guantánamo to detain suspected members of “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, including individuals and networks associated with the Islamic State.”

The White House has kept similar language in the draft order despite warnings from career government national security officials that carrying out its plan would give federal judges an opportunity to reject the executive branch’s theory that the war against the Islamic State is legal, even though Congress never explicitly authorized it. The issue could arise when reviewing an inevitable habeas corpus lawsuit filed by an ISIS detainee.

The Obama administration first argued in late summer 2014 that the Islamic State was part of the existing armed conflict that Congress authorized in 2001 against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But while the Islamic State got its start as Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq a decade ago, that theory is disputed because the two groups later split and went to war with each other. By pushing forward with the ISIS detention provision, legal experts challenge that Trump could undo the very basis of the unwritten US war against ISIS:

“It raises huge legal risks,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former senior Justice Department official in the Bush administration. “If a judge says the Sept. 11 authorization does not cover such a detention, it would not only make that detention unlawful, it would weaken the legal basis for the entire war against the Islamic State.”

Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor who worked at the Pentagon during the Obama administration, also chimed in and said there were other reasons bringing an Islamic State detainee to Guantánamo for indefinite detention, as opposed to prosecuting him in civilian court, might raise problems: Foreign allies, he said, might refuse to turn over prisoners or assist in detention operations if that was the administration’s goal.

But even if that turns out not to be the case, he said, the legal risks of bringing a suspected member of the Islamic State, sometimes referred to as ISIL, are “very serious.”

“If I were in the administration, I would advise that bringing ISIL fighters to Guantánamo raises too many legal risks,” he said. “If a court finds the 2001 statute does not apply to ISIL because of the extraordinarily remote links between ISIL and the original Al Qaeda, then it would put into legal jeopardy the executive branch’s basis for lethal operations as well as detention operations.”

Ironically, if Goldsmith and Goodman are right, it would be yet another case of Trump getting blamed and punished for errors accumulated during the Obama administration. Here is a brief timeline why, from the NYT:

In the 2012 version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, Congress bolstered the government’s power to imprison suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces by authorizing such detentions without reference to the Sept. 11 attacks. But while it has provided funds for military operations against the Islamic State, it has never explicitly authorized combat or detention operations against it.

In summer 2014, when the group swept out of Syria and began rapidly conquering swaths of Iraq, Mr. Obama launched a bombing campaign to curtail its advances. At the time, he put forth the theory that the group’s early ties to Al Qaeda were sufficient to bring it under the Sept. 11 war authorization without new action from Congress.

Nevertheless, in 2015, the Obama administration asked Congress to enact an authorization for use of military force against the Islamic State. Lawmakers disagreed about whether it should place limits on the use of ground forces or impose an expiration date, and Congress never acted on the proposal. Congress has continued to give no sign that it has the will or the consensus to explicitly authorize war on the Islamic State.

Last year, an army captain sued Mr. Obama, arguing that the war was illegal because Congress had not authorized it. A Federal District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit without ruling on the legal merits, saying the plaintiff lacked standing to bring the case.

Ultimately, the risk is that any Islamic State detainee at Guantánamo would have legal standing to get a court to rule on the question of whether the group is legitimately part of the war against Al Qaeda, thus collapsing Obama’s nearly three year old war against ISIS which was never legally sanctioned.

The full order as released by the NYT is below:

Trump Draft Executive Order on Detention And by zerohedge on Scribd

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This article (In New Executive Order, Trump Plans To Send ISIS Detainees To Guantanamo) by Tyler Durden originally appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was used with permission. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org.