Bagram and Guantanamo

Article on a US court refusal to extend to Bagram the right of detainees to challenge their detention (habeas corpus right).

Indeed, in 2008 the US Supreme Court granted detainees at Guantanamo the right of habeas corpus, and now progressives are trying to extend it to Bagram. Judge Bates had then used that decision to suggest in April 2008 that detainees at Bagram would also have the right of habeas corpus. More precisely, he referred only to detainees at Bagram who were not Afghans and who had not been captured in Afghanistan--in other words, he referred only to a minority of detainees at Bagram, but nevertheless, his judgment was significant.

But then the Obama administration went against that: indeed, the Justice Department argues that Bates's ruling is flawed because Bagram is in "a highly active war zone," and dealing with federal court proceedings would hamper the war effort and complicate diplomatic relations with the Afghan government, federal attorneys wrote in court papers. Such concerns do not exist in Cuba, they say.
They are also wondering if then habeas corpus rights would need to be extended to detainees at all US military bases overseas.

Another article here:

In April 2009, Judge John D. Bates ruled that Maqaleh and two other petitioners in the case, Amin al-Bakri and Redha al-Najar, have a constitutional right to petition U.S. courts for a writ of habeas corpus.

Judge Bates’ decision was based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which established that detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo had a constitutional right to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts.

But before any of the Bagram detainees could have his day in court, the Barack Obama administration appealed Judge Bates’ decision, arguing that none of the 600 detainees at Bagram have any rights under U.S. law.

As the organization representing the Bagram detainees, the IJNetwork has called on the Obama administration to end the practices of rendition, torture, and indefinite detention and provide fundamental human rights to all individuals held in U.S. custody – including at Bagram.

Though President Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo, the Department of Justice continues to defend the George W. Bush administration’s position that individuals held at other U.S.-run military facilities have no legal rights.

"The fundamental question at issue in these cases is whether the United States government can seize individuals from peaceful countries anywhere in the world and imprison them without charge indefinitely, based solely on the location of the prison facility where the government decides to detain them," Foster said.

She added, "The position of the Obama administration is that it can do so, as long as it uses Bagram, instead of Guantanamo, as its legal black hole. This is an extreme position – and one that allows the president to do exactly what the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional in the Guantanamo cases."

Torture

David Cole on the torture of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was dispatched to Syria by US authorities for one year where he was tortured even though he was innocent. US courts have recently rejected his attempts to sue the US government.
He also makes the important point that US courts have accepted trials and suits by foreigners against foreigners for crimes committed abroad, but this is not acceptable for US officials:
The usual reluctance to have a US court pass judgment on overseas conduct not involving any American citizens was overcome by the fact that the prohibition on torture is universal. Since that decision, US courts have adjudicated human rights claims involving brutality in Burma, South Africa, Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Mexico, the Philippines, Argentina, and many other nations. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in 2004. Yet according to the Second Circuit, the same sorts of claims are too sensitive to permit adjudication when brought against US officials.

The notion that domestic courts can hold another country's torturers accountable is not an American anomaly, as the Italian case illustrates. International law recognizes a principle of "universal jurisdiction," which holds that torturers can be held to account anywhere. Applying that principle, a Spanish judge in 1998 issued an arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity, including torture. Great Britain's highest court, the Law Lords, ruled that the warrant could be enforced to extradite Pinochet from England to stand trial. (In the end, Pinochet was returned to Chile on medical grounds, but was then indicted there.) The same Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, is currently investigating whether criminal charges should be leveled against the Bush administration lawyers responsible for authorizing torture at Guantánamo—John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, and Douglas Feith. The torture they authorized was inflicted on several Spanish citizens at Guantánamo, causing terrorist charges against them in Spain, also prosecuted by Garzón, to be dismissed.

The principle of universal jurisdiction recognizes that if a country is responsibly pursuing accountability for its own wrongs, a foreign court should defer to the domestic process. In his speech at the National Archives on May 21, 2009, President Obama insisted that the Justice Department and the courts "can work through and punish any violations of our laws or miscarriages of justice." Cases like Arar's belie his confidence, as does the Justice Department's failure even to investigate the lawyers who authorized the CIA and the military to engage in torture and disappearances as a means of getting suspects to talk. If we fail to carry out this responsibility, other nations, using principles that the US did much to develop, may take up the charge.

Blackwater

Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater in Afghanistan.

Afghan environmental degradation

Afghan environmental degradation aused by the war.

Al Qaeda and southerners in Yemen

Separatists in southern Yemen and Al Qaeda could end up uniting against the Yemeni government if the US pushes for more armed actions against Al Qaeda in Yemen and the Yemen government uses this opportunity to attack separatists. Separatists and Al Qaeda could unite to face a common enemy:

Any melding of the Southern Movement and al-Qaeda is far from established, he said. But that could change if the U.S.-backed war deepens without Washington pressuring Saleh to stop repression in the south. Angry southerners, meanwhile, have accused the government and the United States of killing a few dozen civilians in an airstrike last month. Yemeni officials say they killed militants and their relatives.

"It will change the sympathies if they have a common enemy in the United States," Wilcke said. "Al-Qaeda will become more of an ally. This is exactly what we don't want to get into."

CIA base bombing and drones

Al Qaeda said the CIA base bombing in Afghanistan was retaliation for drone attacks over Pakistan.
Although the Afghan Taliban, and then the Pakistani Taliban have also said they were responsible. The Pakistani Taliban said the bombing was in retaliation for drone strikes.

Iran nuclear tunnels

William Broad and the NYT continue their propaganda campaign: now the story is that Iran has a network of tunnels where nuclear activities can take place!

Juan Cole has an excellent post on January 7th on the nuclear question in Iran.

Asian energy grid

Excellent article in Asia Times online on the latest pipeline and energy deals and their implications for geoeconomics and geopolitics.

Hmong in Thailand and Laos

An article about the repatriation of Hmong from Thailand to Laos. The Hmong were CIA allies during the Vietnam war, so one would think the US would defend them, but the US has adopted a low key stance because it doesn't want to upset Laos, over which it wants to gain influence to counterbalance China's influence in South east Asia.

US intelligence

An article on intelligence reform saying that reforms by Bush were cumbersome etc.

Blackwater trial

Some wonder if the US prosecutors that sued Blackwater and failed did not fail on purpose as they had been warned repeatedly by the US government that the way they were building their case was not legal.

Here is an Democracy Now interview with a lawyer:

Scott Horton: And specifically what they did is they took statements that were taken by the Department of State against a grant of immunity; that is, the government investigators told the guards, “Give us your statement, be candid, be complete, and we promise you we won’t use your statement for any criminal charges against you.” But the Justice Department prosecutors took those statements and in fact used them. They used them before the grand jury. They used them to build their entire case. And they did this notwithstanding warnings from senior lawyers in the Justice Department that this was improper and could lead to dismissal of the case. It almost looks like the Justice Department prosecutors here wanted to sabotage their own case. It was so outrageous.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that’s possible?

SCOTT HORTON: I think it is possible. Specifically in this case, there were briefings that occurred on Capitol Hill early on in which senior officials of the Justice Department told congressional investigators, staffers and congressmen that essentially they didn’t want to bring the case. In fact, one of the congressmen who was present at these briefings told me they were behaving like defense lawyers putting together a case to defend the Blackwater employees, not to prosecute them. And I think we see the evidence of that copiously in Judge Urbina’s opinion.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Jawad, talking about what happened to his wife and his son, as they were gunned down in Nisoor Square by the Blackwater operatives. Now the case against them has been dismissed. Scott Horton, can another case be brought against them?

SCOTT HORTON: Absolutely. In fact, this decision puts the US in breach of its treaty obligations to prosecute this case, which was an absolute international law obligation. Now, this case was being prosecuted in US court because of an order that was issued by the US occupation authorities that granted these people immunity from Iraqi criminal prosecution and accountability.

And I think the rule of international law is quite well settled. If the US cannot, for technical reasons—that’s this ruling here, it is purely technical, has nothing to do with the merits of the case—if the US cannot, for technical reasons, prosecute the case, the US is really obligated to waive the immunity under that order and surrender these individuals to the Iraqi authorities for prosecution, probably with an agreement as to what charges will be brought and an agreement that any prison term they were sentenced to could be served in the United States.

In addition to that, there’s also the possibility, that was alluded to in the setup here, for a civil action, and civil claims on behalf of the families of the victims are already pending in US courts. And the Iraqi government has now announced it’s going to directly support those claims.

SCOTT HORTON: Well, that’s right. In fact, I would note that one of the statements the Iraqi government made in response to this was that even though Blackwater was no longer formally a contractor in Iraq, they found that many of the Blackwater employees had simply recontracted with the new contractors there, so they were still in place. And the Iraqi government said that’s completely unacceptable.

Well, the problem is that the US has not changed its pattern of heavy reliance on private security contractors. If anything, we’re actually seeing that reliance increase in connection with the operations in Afghanistan. And in fact, there are only a handful of qualified and authorized service providers. So Blackwater, almost by definition, is going to continue to hold a large part of these contracts as they’re awarded, not with—this is notwithstanding promises that were made by Hillary Clinton, when she was running for president, to terminate the Blackwater contracts. I mean, now she is Secretary of State, and Blackwater is still the principal security contractor to the State Department.

Yemen and Russia

Even though the US wants to get more influence over Yemen, Yemen gets most of its weapons from Russia, and also China, not from the US.

FARC and Al Qaeda on cocaine

An article says that FARC and AlQaeda are collaborating to ship cocaine to Europe.

Iran nuclear forgeries

Porter continues his investigation of leaked supposedly incriminating documents about nuclear Iran.

Genocide in Gaza?

Article asking the question here.