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Last night, the families of two men who died at Guantanamo in June 2006
asked the district court in Washington, D.C. to reconsider its February
16 ruling dismissing their case, which seeks to hold federal officials
and the United States accountable for their sons' torture, arbitrary
detention, and ultimate deaths.
Last night, the families of two men who died at Guantanamo in June 2006
asked the district court in Washington, D.C. to reconsider its February
16 ruling dismissing their case, which seeks to hold federal officials
and the United States accountable for their sons' torture, arbitrary
detention, and ultimate deaths. The families' request is based on newly
discovered evidence from four soldiers, including a decorated Army
officer, who describe a cover-up by the authorities and say they were
ordered not to speak out. The soldiers' accounts were reported in
Harper's Magazine in January. The families are represented by the
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).
While the Pentagon has always maintained that the two men, along with a
third prisoner, had committed suicide in their cells, the soldiers'
first-hand accounts raise serious questions about the actual cause and
circumstances of the deaths. Their accounts strongly suggest that the
men died as the result of torture at a "black site" at Guantanamo.
Said Talal Al-Zahrani, father of one of the men who died that night,
"Mr. President, the killing of my son in the hands of his guards and
under the supervision of the administration of the detention center is
a serious and gruesome crime. It is against all human values and norms,
and whoever covers up this gruesome crime or obstructs the criminal and
judicial investigations is a co-conspirator with those who have
committed the crime itself." The full text of Mr. Al-Zahrani's statement to President Obama, the courts, and the American People is on the CCR case page.
Said CCR attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, "It took courage for these soldiers
to come forward with information that the government had every
intention of keeping secret, and the details that are emerging are
disturbing to say the least. The families of these men should not be
barred at the courthouse door without any further inquiry."
Background
In granting a request by the government and 24 named federal officials,
including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to dismiss the
families' case, the district court accepted the defendants' argument
that national security factors should bar the constitutional claims on
behalf of the deceased, and that the alleged torture of the men, even
if "seriously criminal," was within the officials' "scope of
employment," thus barring claims asserted under the Alien Tort
Statute. The court also dismissed claims under the Federal Tort Claims
Act for breaches of the officials' basic duty of care toward the
deceased and for the emotional distress suffered by the families,
ruling that Guantanamo is a "foreign country" for the purposes of the
act and thus outside the scope of its protection. The dismissal
effectively left the families and their sons with no remedy for the
violations they asserted again U.S. officials.
The families' request for the court to reconsider its dismissal of
their claims is based on the accounts of four soldiers stationed at the
base the night the men died, which Scott Horton reported in Harper's Magazine
on January 18, 2010. The soldiers' eye-witness accounts, including that
of a ranking Army officer who was on senior guard duty the night of the
deaths, strongly suggest that the men were taken to a secret "black
site" at Guantanamo nicknamed "Camp No" that night, and died at that
site or from events that transpired there. The unofficial, undisclosed
facility is thought to have been used by the CIA or the Joint Special
Operations Command of the Defense Department to hold and interrogate
detainees at Guantanamo. The soldiers further describe a high-level
cover-up initiated by the authorities within hours of the men's deaths,
and say they were ordered by their superiors not to speak out.
Additional reports by Seton Hall University School of Law
analyzing the military's investigation files reveal major unanswered
questions and information gaps in the official account of the deaths,
including failures to review relevant available information and
interview material witnesses.
In June 2009 Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih became the sixth person to
die at the base. He was a 31-year-old Yemeni man who had been detained
at Guantanamo since 2002.
CCR represents the families of Yasser Al-Zahrani of Saudi Arabia and
Salah Al-Salami of Yemen, the two men who died at Guantanamo in June
2006 along with a third detainee, Mani Al-Utaybi of Saudi Arabia. At
the time of their deaths, Al-Zahrani and Al-Salami had been detained
incommunicado for more than four years without charge. Al-Zahrani was
17 at the time of his arrest. The families' case against the United
States and 24 named federal officials is Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld, which
is pending in the district court for the District of Columbia.
Visit the Al-Zahrani case page for more information and case documents.
CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for more than eight years
and been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro
bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men detained
there. CCR also works with men who were formerly detained and their
families to seek justice and accountability for the abuses suffered
during their imprisonment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
(212) 614-6464For serious injuries linked to the company's insistence that employees maintain a relentless pace of work, Amazon was fined $60,000—the amount it made "every four seconds in 2022."
A paltry $60,000 fine for failing to keep employees safe at one of the world's richest companies offered the latest evidence, according to one critic, that the system ostensibly meant to protect workers "is so broken."
That was the assessment of Paris Marx, host of the podcast "Tech Won't Save Us," after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced Wednesday it had issued a citation to Amazon for worker safety violations at three of its warehouses in Deltona, Florida; Waukegan, Illinois; and New Windsor, New York.
As part of an investigation that is still ongoing, OSHA found that Amazon warehouse employees experience "high rates of musculoskeletal disorders" and are at high risk for lower back injuries due to frequently being required to lift heavy packages for long hours.
A log of injuries sustained by workers at the warehouse in Waukegan showed one employee suffered a foot fracture while handling a 55-pound package, another person's face was "crushed/smashed" by a 61-pound piece of furniture, and another worker sprained their lower leg while handling a 148-pound item.
\u201cNEW: Dept of Labor is preparing to fine Amazon $60K for workplace safety hazards. \n\nRecent injuries at a warehouse in Waukegan, IL include:\n-a 61 lb piece of furniture smashing a worker's face\n-a 90 lb TV spraining a shoulder\n-a bed cutting a worker's nose\u201d— Lauren Kaori Gurley (@Lauren Kaori Gurley) 1674060652
While many warehouse workers at a variety of companies lift heavy objects during their workdays, Amazon has been denounced by workers and labor rights groups for requiring employees to maintain a grueling pace in order to meet quotas and ensure deliveries are made rapidly.
As the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) said in its report Primed for Pain: Amazon's Epidemic of Workplace Injuries in 2021, "the company's obsession with speed has come at a huge cost for Amazon's workforce," with workers suffering serious injuries at a rate 80% higher than warehouse employees at other companies.
"Each of these inspections found work processes that were designed for speed but not safety, and they resulted in serious worker injuries," said Doug Parker, assistant secretary for occupational safety and health at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Despite OSHA's findings, noted Mother Jones, the agency fined the e-commerce giant "roughly 0.000013% of its reported $469,822,000,000 2021 revenue," or as progressive journalist Timothy Burke put it, the amount the company made every four seconds last year.
\u201cAmazon made $60,000 every four seconds in 2022.\u201d— Timothy Burke (@Timothy Burke) 1674059859
Amazon said Wednesday it plans to appeal OSHA's citation and appeared to reject the agency's findings, which represent the first time the Labor Department has accused a employer of maintaining an excessive work pace.
"The government's allegations don't reflect the reality of safety at our sites," Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon, toldWired. "The vast majority of our employees tell us they feel our workplace is safe."
Eric Frumin, health and safety director at SOC, called on Amazon "to drop its relentless resistance to OSHA's orders to fix these hazards."
"Today's OSHA citations are the latest evidence that Amazon has company-wide, corporate-level policies and practices that create hazardous workplaces, and may result in medical mistreatment or denial of treatment for seriously injured workers," said Frumin. "Amazon treats its workers from the warehouse to the delivery route as disposable in its relentless drive for profit."
OSHA's investigation into the company is continuing at warehouses in Aurora, Colorado; Nampa, Idaho; and Castleton, New York.
"If there is no positive response from the government, today is a first step, and there will be a second step," said one union leader.
The streets of France filled with outraged workers on Thursday as rail employees, teachers, and others walked off the job to protest President Emmanuel Macron's deeply unpopular plan to overhaul the nation's pension system by raising the official retirement age from 62 to 64.
The union-led demonstrations—which ground significant portions of the country, including many schools and transportation systems, to a halt—come as Macron is attempting to steamroll far-reaching opposition to his pension overhaul, declaring that "we must work longer."
Macron's government formally presented its draft law last week, the first step in the process of enacting a reform that would force French citizens to work longer to qualify for a full pension.
(Photo: Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images)
Philippe Martinez, the head of France's General Confederation of Labor union, told reporters that Thursday's strikes are just the beginning of widespread worker unrest if Macron doesn't abandon his attempt to hike the retirement age by 2030.
"If there is no positive response from the government, today is a first step, and there will be a second step," Martinez declared ahead of a march in Paris.
Eric Sellini, the union's coordinator for the French petroleum company TotalEnergies, echoed that sentiment.
"For the moment, we're sticking to our schedule," Sellini said. "Depending on how the situation in the country evolves, and if employees don't want to stop the strike, there could be an extension."
Reutersreported Thursday that the mass protests "led to a substantial fall in electricity output and halted deliveries from refineries operated by TotalEnergies and Esso."
"The CGT union expects that at least 70% of its refinery sector employees at TotalEnergies' four refining sites have joined the strike in opposition to the government plan to raise the retirement age," the outlet noted.
French unions also estimated that around 70% of the country's primary schoolteachers were on strike Thursday.
(Photo: Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images)
A survey conducted earlier this month by the polling firm Elabe found that roughly three-fifths of the French public opposes Macron's proposed pension overhaul, the latest iteration of a plan that the president has repeatedly put forth and subsequently delayed due to furious opposition.
"When he sought reelection last year amid an emboldened far right, Macron sent mixed messages on the issue," The Washington Postreported. "After first announcing that he wanted to raise the minimum retirement age even higher than planned, from 62 to 65, he later backtracked and said that '65 years is not a dogma.'"
(Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
Opponents of the pension attack—including the leftist leader of the France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon—are pushing Macron to drop the proposal for good as mass protests signal sustained opposition from workers.
"It is time for Macron to withdraw his reform," Mélenchon said Thursday.
The program "presents a threat to the integrity of traditional Medicare, and an opportunity for corporations to take money from taxpayers while denying care to beneficiaries," said Physicians for a National Health Program.
A national physician group this week called for the complete termination of a Medicare privatization scheme that the Biden White House inherited from the Trump administration and later rebranded—while keeping intact its most dangerous components.
Now known as the Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (ACO REACH) Model, the experiment inserts a for-profit entity between traditional Medicare beneficiaries and healthcare providers. The federal government pays the ACO REACH middlemen to cover patients' care while allowing them to pocket a significant chunk of the fee as profit.
The rebranded pilot program, which was launched without congressional approval and is set to run through at least 2026, officially began this month, and progressive healthcare advocates fear the experiment could be allowed to engulf traditional Medicare.
In a Tuesday letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) argued that ACO REACH "presents a threat to the integrity of traditional Medicare, and an opportunity for corporations to take money from taxpayers while denying care to beneficiaries."
The group, which advocates for a single-payer healthcare system, voiced alarm over the Biden administration's decision to let companies with records of fraud and other abuses take part in the ACO REACH pilot, which automatically assigns traditional Medicare patients to private entities without their consent.
CMS said in a press release Tuesday that "the ACO REACH Model has 132 ACOs with 131,772 healthcare providers and organizations providing care to an estimated 2.1 million beneficiaries" for 2023.
"As we have stated, PNHP believes that the REACH program threatens the integrity of traditional Medicare and should be permanently ended," Dr. Philip Verhoef, the physician group's president, wrote in the new letter. "Whether or not one agrees with this statement, we should all be able to agree that companies found to have violated the rules have no place managing the care of our Medicare beneficiaries."
Among the concerning examples PNHP cited was Clover Health, which has operated so-called Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs)—the name of private middlemen under the Trump-era version of the Medicare pilot—in more than a dozen states, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and New York.
PNHP noted that in 2016, CMS fined Clover—a large Medicare Advantage provider—for "using 'marketing and advertising materials that contained inaccurate statements' about coverage for out-of-network providers, after a high volume of complaints from patients who were denied coverage by its MA plan. Clover had failed to correct the materials after repeated requests by CMS."
Humana, another large insurer with its teeth in the Medicare privatization pilot, "improperly collected almost $200 million from Medicare by overstating the sickness of patients," PNHP observed, citing a recent federal audit.
"It appears that in its selection process [for ACO REACH], CMS did not prevent the inclusion of companies with histories of such behavior," Verhoef wrote. "Given these findings, we are concerned that CMS is inappropriately allowing these DCEs to continue unimpeded into ACO REACH in 2023."
\u201cOur full letter to the @HHSGov secretary and @CMSGov administration highlighting troubling trends in Direct Contracting and REACH, and asking them to cancel this failed experiment: https://t.co/fnAT18CAtr\u201d— Physicians for a National Health Program (@Physicians for a National Health Program) 1674090685
While the Medicare pilot garnered little attention from lawmakers when the Trump administration first launched it during its final months in power, progressive members of Congress have recently ramped up scrutiny of the program.
Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) led a group of lawmakers in warning that ACO REACH "provides an opportunity for healthcare insurers with a history of defrauding and abusing Medicare and ripping off taxpayers to further encroach on the Medicare system."
"We have long been concerned about ensuring this model does not give corporate profiteers yet another opportunity to take a chunk out of traditional Medicare," the lawmakers wrote, echoing PNHP's concerns. "The continued participation of corporate actors with a history of fraud and abuse threatens the integrity of the program."