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Ruling Means Gitmo Detainees Have No Legal Protection: Rights Group
A federal court ruling this week that prevented the families of two dead Guantanamo detainees from seeking damages means that "no court can hear abuse and wrongful death claims from Guantanamo," says a human-rights group.
"In dismissing the case, the district court ruled that the deceased's constitutional claims ... could not be heard in federal court," said the Center for Constitutional Rights, in a statement released Thursday.
On Wednesday, a US district court in Washington, DC, rejected claims for damages from the families of two Guantanamo inmates who were found dead in 2006.
Salah Ahmed Al-Salami and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, along with a third inmate, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, were found dead in their barracks with rags stuffed down their throats in June, 2006.
Al-Salami's and Al-Zahrani's families had sued, claiming it was "a violation of due process and cruel treatment to detain them for four years without charge while subjecting them to inhumane and degrading conditions of confinement and violent acts of torture and abuse," according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Although their deaths were ruled suicides by the US military, subsequent investigations have cast serious doubt on that assertion.
A report from Seton Hall University Law School, released late last year, questioned how -- and why -- three people who hanged themselves would have managed to stuff rags down their throats before they died. Another question was why neither the guards on duty nor the paramedics who showed up were interviewed; or, for that matter, why the paramedics who showed up didn't even ask the guards what had happened.
Last month, journalist and constitutional lawyer Scott Horton reported that four US soldiers had cast doubt on the official version of events. Horton's report suggested that the trio were taken to a "black site" at the Guantanamo base, possibly run by the CIA, and their deaths may have been the result of the activities that took place there. The report also indicated that there may have been a concerted attempt to cover up the actual events that led to the deaths.
In their lawsuit against the United States, the families of Al-Salami and Al-Zahrani argued that the duo had been subjected to "specific methods and acts of physical and psychological torture and abuse, including sleep deprivation, prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures, invasive body searches, beatings, threats, inadequate medical treatment and religious abuse, such as forced shaving and desecration of the Quran," according to Courthouse News.
In her decision, US District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ruled that the inmates had been officially designated "enemy combatants" and were therefore not automatically entitled to due process in US courts. The judge also cited previous rulings which asserted that the Guantanamo facility is not on US soil, and US courts therefore have little jurisdiction over what happens there.
"These men were tortured and detained for four years on the basis of an arbitrary designation of 'enemy combatant' and died in the custody of the United States military," said Pardiss Kebriaei, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. "They and their families should have the right to have their claims heard at the very least."
Kebriaei added that "the court's decision is all the more troubling in light of recent information that seriously undermines the official account of how these men died, and creates an even greater urgency for transparency and accountability."
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24 Comments so far
Show AllWasn't it our freedoms they purportedly hated us for? Well no reson for that any more.
In her decision, US District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ruled that the inmates had been officially designated "enemy combatants" and were therefore not automatically entitled to due process in US courts.
I am so comforted by the fact that the enemy combatant designation was "official".
Also applies to Americans. Amerika has gone Fascist and has less than 15 years left as a coherent country/economy. Hang on tight folks.....
Frankly, I'd say it's a LOT less than 15 years.
I am haunted of late by a line from Orwell's 1984:
"It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage."
Hang on tight, indeed.
Only in America, with its long, ugly history of slavery followed by official segregation of African Americans, can a group of people be marginalized and officially recognized as being non-human thus entitled to no protection or rights.
The Declaration of Independence recognizes that people have unalienable rights (something celebrated every 4th of July). The U.S. courts need to recognize these rights if they want to continue to exercise legitimate power.
"officially designated "enemy combatants" and were therefore not automatically entitled to due process in US courts"
I guess that says it all, "enemy combatants" whatever that might be get no due process.
I keep searching for words. There are none, except FILTHY.
"There are higher moral laws, US District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, and, if you had had any guts, you should have raised a ruckus."
"Oh, but that's not what THE LAW is about."
"What LAW"?"
cm
It boggles my mind that the Bush Administration can dream up a category "enemy combatant" that magically has legal standing.
I thought the whole point of the "laws of war" was to ensure that no one was beyond the reach of civilized law.
Even the rulers of the US understood this at one time.
The fact that the US legal system denies even the most basic rights to some people shows how far we've descended toward barbarism.
That foolish judge should be removed from office for misfeasnce. Her idea of justice would suit Genghis Khan. The US judicial system is so corrupt I'm surprised anyone with any ethics or morals would be associated with it. It truly is sickening!
Last July, this same Judge Ellen Segan Huvelle granted the habeas corpus petition of Mohamed Jawad and saw fit to discourage US authorities from persecuting him further.
In hearings preceding her decision, Huvelle scathingly chastised the prosecutors for effectively abusing process and the interests of justice by ruthlessly and relentlessly prosecuting Jawad despite an appalling lack of evidence.
She sure seemed to have her head on straight in THAT case. Here, she may simply have lacked discretion to protect the plaintiffs from being doubly-victimized by malign and rotten laws that are nevertheless duly enacted and valid.
· Yr Obd't Servant
"enemy combatant" has no real meaning. the term was concocted by bush to sidestep Geneva's rules about prisoners of war. It can be stuck on anyone so named by bush or whoever he designates, according to the military commissions act.
which passed because a gutless congress dutifully obeyed their president, and the judiciary abdicated.
Am I the only one who saw the video of the news person (I believe it was a news-person) that showed him being beheaded by these terrorists. He was screaming for his life but WACK (Off with his head, just like Alice in Wonderland) remember those days? That is where most of these posts sound like they are coming from--people who never lay in a foxhole and got most of their information from the mainstream media.
See if you can find that video and then we can have a real discussion about how many rights these terrorists should get. They will kill you on sight because they think that is what their religion wants them to do. Read the Koran.
Any discussion of terrorism has to begin with the very real terrorism committed by the USA, not the imaginary terrorism hyped up by the media. There is little question about who is guilty of demolishing villages in Pakistan. But the prisoners illegally held by the USA in illegally occupied part of Cuba, Guantanmo Bay were never tried, and without that, the likes of yourself can CALL them terrorists, but unlike Dick Cheney, we do not actually know that they were terrorists, and what little evidence we have suggest that they have committed no crime.
As for those beheaded, how would you treat Chinese who invaded this country, cut off the water and the electricity, claim that their fundamentalist religion predicts Armageddon - and that gives the right to kill anyone, kill your father, treat your wife to strip searches, blow up buildings and then lie about it. Basically, how would you treat REAL terrorists, like those beheaded.
Sounds more like you get _your_ information from "mainstream" media ... like Faux News.
FACT: Most of the "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo have been found to have NEVER been involved with any terrorist organization ... but now the US has _made_ them hate us, by ILLEGALLY detaining them without charges, and without the Constitutional rights that are afforded EVERY person in the country, not just citizens. The Supreme Court has found that they _are_ entitled to Constitutional rights. The way I see it, any good lawyer should be able to beat _any_ legal proceedings against them on the grounds that they have been denied their right to a speedy trial, their right to face their accuser, and their right to see the evidence against them, _ALL_ of which are rights that have been upheld by the Supreme Court.
The claim that Guantanamo is not under US control is absolutely stupid. If that parcel of land is not in our control, then what are we doing there? Cuba certainly doesn't control it.
“How Empires Fight Wars”:
Progressive-Patriot, it seems to me that the whole issue revolves around the question of how Empires fight wars, and what legal protection really means for all but an Empire.
Leaving off the question of how early our country started behaving in wars like a country evolving toward Empire, I think it is quite clear that by the Second World War of Empires, where the U.S. evolving Empire had to fight two very nasty and overt Empires (which were at least honest in calling themselves Empires), there is little historical doubt that the aggressive 'methods' by which these enemy Empires conducted their wars of aggression (although without the fullest knowledge of their populace) was certainly horrific. There is also little historical doubt that the U.S. followed suit in fighting like these overt Empires to beat them ---- saturation bombing of civilian cities, etc (which even Gen. Curtis LeMay said of, "If we had lost the war, we would have been charged with war crimes").
Thankfully, the last/third World War of Empires was 'only' a cold war, and therefore neither of the two Empires (one overt and one covert) had to do saturation bombing of each others' civilian populations (although the populations of their 'client states' were not so lucky).
I would respectfully suggest that of the two 'cold war' Empires (more politely called 'super-powers') the one overtly called an 'evil Empire' by the President of the more covert Empire was historically proven to be a bit less willing to fight like an Empire --- if by fighting wars "like an Empire" one means taking actions that would be massively horrific, exceeding the Second World War of Empires, and, because nuclear weapons were readily available, would truly be 'existential'.
Perhaps by circumstance, perhaps by luck, or perhaps by willingness to step back from the abyss, the overt Empire backed-off several times from confrontations that would have seemingly lead to certain nuclear (civilian extermination) war between modern Empires.
One documented example was that of Vasili Arkhipov, commander of a Soviet Empire submarine involved in the Cuban missile crisis (qua ‘showdown’) which had been depth-charged by a U.S. destroyer. When Arkhipov was ordered to fire the nuclear torpedoes, which the American ‘national security state’ intelligence did not know of, the Captain refused to fire what almost certainly would have led to existential nuclear war against civilians in both ‘super-powers’ (qua Empires).
Whether there may well have been similar acts of patriotic sanity by U.S. B-52 pilots or others at the “tip of the Empire’s spear” with nuclear weapons, who stepped-back from the abyss of ‘fighting like an Empire’, I do not know.
However, there can be no question or doubt that now, once the next to the last Empire on earth has collapsed, and now, that the last remaining Empire (qua super-power), while not wishing to accept the title of the only standing Global Empire, has absolutely no enemy that is an Empire or a super-power left --- and has achieved, by its documented design, clearly and unarguably contained in both PNAC and Bush’s National Security Strategy 2002, that this unapologetic but unnamed covert Global Empire would maintain superior military might over any “country or group of countries” and would use such power to wage war either reactively or “preemptively” to maintain its Global hegemony, regardless of the cost or human terror created by waging an unlimited war of Empire.
So now, Progressive-Patriot, there can be little question of who is the ‘baddest’ (and only) Empire on earth, nor any doubt about the level of terrorist war crimes (far beyond the dreams of any rag-tag terrorists) that this last standing Global Empire will commit to rule the roost ---- as if to say, “I’ll see your beheading of a few journalists, and raise you the slaughter of a few hundred thousand civilian women and children.” Or, “I’ll see you your capture of a few of our mercenaries, and I’ll raise you ‘black-site’ rendition and torture of all the men you have in the world.” Or, “I’ll see your puny 20% enrichment of uranium, and raise you by shoving a dozen nuclear bunker busters up your ass.”
No, Progressive-Patriot, when it comes to terrorism and mass deaths of civilians this last standing Global Empire can not be outdone by a few dozen bearded guys with knives or box-cutters. This is one bad-ass Empire, and they know it ----- which we will also, and soon.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Quick, get back to the Free Republic site where they believe your drivel.
Criminal act of murder not unlike that of Dr George Tiller. Should be handled in courts using due process and not made up laws and terms. What difference does it make how the man was killed? Does the method of killing determine your classification as a terrorist or is it just skin color or birth origin? So a person that straps on a bomb and kills people with it are terrorists and someone killing people with a bomb dropped from an aircraft is a hero? The airplane is what made him a hero then as his actions and consequences of same seem exactly the same as the strap on bomber except the airplane hero gets to go home after his murders.
Was it THESE terrorist? Or did they just look like THESE terrorists?
The terrorist sympathizers don't give a rat's ass to learning the Koran. The Islamofascists are their idols.
No, the terrorist sympathiser (Republicans) typically idolize the Christofacscist fundamentalist religious wingnuts.
What we do to the least of Gods creatures we do to God and to ourselves.
Am I the only person who thinks it's past time for Congress to start impeaching a whole lot of judges?
Why waste time with impeachment. Just have Obama declare them (especially the SCOTUS thugs) enemy combatants. And tomorrow morning the likes of John Roberts can wake up in an orange jump suite with a feeding tube down their throats while waiting for their mid-morning waterboarding. All nice and legal like.
Ha Ha! All nice and legal like!
Human Rights groups are terrorist sympathizers.
It is bizarre to hear a judge decide that torture and inhumane treatment can not be prosecuted. As for sympathizing with terrorists: 'Sympathizing' in this context means a call to respecting principles of justice, such as basic human rights.