Guantánamo And The Courts Part One: Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
15 July 2009

In recent months, those who have been studying Guantánamo closely have come to the disturbing conclusion that the biggest obstacle to President Obama’s pledge to close Guantánamo by January 2010 comes not from the fearmongering and opportunistic politicians who recently voted to prohibit the use of any funds to release or to transfer prisoners to the United States, and who also authorized legislation that “requires the President to report periodically to Congress on the status of Guantánamo Bay detainees and plans for their transfer,” but from the administration’s own Justice Department.

Echoing the position taken by the Bush administration, Eric Holder’s Justice Department is pursuing patently indefensible cases that should have been dropped before being presented to a judge, and is also engaged in what appears to be a systematic policy of delays when it comes to providing exculpatory material to the prisoners’ defense teams (in other words, material that tends to disprove the government’s case), or, in fact, any other material that is vital to mounting a proper defense. Moreover, when given the option to defend a judge’s right to order the release of prisoners against whom no case could be proved, the Justice Department sided with a notoriously pro-Bush judge in the Court of Appeals, who ruled that, although a District Court judge could demolish the government’s case against a Guantánamo prisoner, he or she was powerless to actually order the prisoner’s release.

Former Gitmo detainee describes prison ordeal

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france24english
June 15, 2009

THE FRANCE 24 INTERVIEW: Former Guantanamo inmate Lakdhar Boumediene told FRANCE 24 in an exclusive interview about his seven-year ordeal in the US prison camp, where his protestations of innocence were met with escalating brutality from interrogators.

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h/t: ICH

see

Held Seven Years, Former Aid Worker Tells ABC News He Was Tortured + Countdown

Lakhdar Boumediene Talks About Torture At Guantánamo

Life After Guantánamo: Lakhdar Boumediene Speaks by Andy Worthington

The Last Iraqi In Guantánamo, Cleared Six Years Ago, Returns Home by Andy Worthington

Newly Released Detainee Statements Provide More Evidence Of CIA Torture Program

Held Seven Years, Former Aid Worker Tells ABC News He Was Tortured + Countdown

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Updated

By JAKE TAPPER, KAREN TRAVERS, and STEPHANIE Z. SMITH
ICH
June 08, 2009 “ABC News”

For 7½ years, Lakhdar Boumediene was known simply by a number: “10005.”

These were the digits assigned to him when he arrived at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, swept up in a post-Sept. 11 dragnet and accused of plotting to blow up the U.S. and British Embassies in Sarajevo.

Detainee Speaks Out After Being Freed – June 8, 2009

gwbushisOnePoS
June 08, 2009

Monday, June 8, 2009 Lakhdar Boumediene speaks out after being held 7.5 years in the U.S. Torture Camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ”Gitmo”

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In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Boumediene said the interrogators at Gitmo never once asked him about this alleged plot, which he denied playing any part it.

“I’m a normal man,” said Boumediene, who at the time of his arrest worked for the Red Crescent, providing help to orphans and others in need. “I’m not a terrorist.”

The 43-year-old Algerian is now back with his wife and two daughters, a free man in France after a Republican judge found the evidence against Boumediene lacking. He is best known from the landmark Supreme Court case last year, Boumediene v. Bush, which said detainees have the right to challenge their detention in court.

[…]

via Life Inside Gitmo: Former Detainee Speaks

***

Updated

Countdown-Still Bushed!: tortured prisoner Lakhdar Boumediene of Red Crescent speaks

Life After Guantánamo: Lakhdar Boumediene Speaks by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
29 May 2009

So many of the stories relating to Guantánamo are bleak that I thought it was worth mentioning a recent interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, who was released from Guantánamo two weeks ago after seven years and four months of pointless and brutal imprisonment.

I first reported the story of Boumediene and his five compatriots — Algerians who had settled in Bosnia in the 1990s, and who were kidnapped by US agents in January 2002, in connection with a non-existent plot to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo, and flown to Guantánamo — in my book The Guantánamo Files. I also covered the Supreme Court case which bore Boumediene’s name — and which allowed the Guantánamo prisoners to challenge the basis of their detention in the US courts — last June, and followed up by reporting on the six men’s habeas corpus review last November, which led to the judge ordering the release of five of the men, including Boumediene, because the government had failed to establish a case against them.

Guantánamo detainees have constitutional right to habeas corpus: Supreme Court Checks and Balances in Boumediene

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by Marjorie Cohn
Global Research, June 16, 2008
Jurist

After the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited opinion, upholding habeas corpus rights for the Guantánamo detainees, I was invited to appear on The O’Reilly Factor with guest host Laura Ingraham. Although she is a lawyer and former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, Ingraham has no use for our judicial branch of government, noting that the justices are “unelected.” Indeed, she advocated that Bush break the law and disregard the Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush:

“Marjorie, I was trying to think to myself, look, if I were President Bush, and I had heard that this case had come down, and I’m out of office in a few months. My ratings, my popularity ratings are pretty low, I would have said at this point, that’s very interesting that the court decided this, but I’m not going to respect the decision of the court because my job is to keep this country safe.”