By Carol Rosenberg, Published: July 21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/71-guantanamo-prisoners-will-get-parole-style-hearings-pentagon-says/2013/07/21/2ed31a6c-f241-11e2-ae43-b31dc363c3bf_story.html
MIAMI — Seventy-one detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo
Bay will get parole-board-style hearings at the Navy base in Cuba, the
Pentagon said Sunday, though it did not say when the panels will meet,
whether the media can watch and which of the long-held inmates will go
first.
The disclosure followed a flurry of e-mails after 10 p.m.
Friday from Pentagon bureaucrats notifying attorneys for some of the 71
inmates that the government was preparing to hold the hearings, which
were ordered by President Obama two years ago.
Retired Rear Adm. Norton C. Joerg, a senior Navy lawyer during
the George W. Bush administration, told the lawyers that the new
six-member “periodic review boards” will not decide whether the
Pentagon is lawfully imprisoning their clients.
Rather, the panels will “assess whether continued law of war
detention is necessary to protect against a continuing significant
threat to the security of the United States,” Joerg said.
He offered no explanation for the late-night notices, which
came during a long-running hunger strike by prisoners at Guantanamo
over the conditions of their detention.
As of Sunday, the military said 46 detainees were malnourished
enough to require forced feedings, which currently are conducted after
dark in consideration of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast
from dawn until dusk.
Once the daily fasting hours are over, according to prison
spokesmen, Navy medical personnel offer to let a hunger striker drink a
nutritional supplement before shackling him to a chair and snaking a
tube up his nose and into his stomach to deliver the drink.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has urged the
Obama administration to get on with the reviews. Army Lt. Col. Todd
Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman, would not say whether the first
hearing would be held by mid-September or whether there is a target
date for completion. He said only that the first hearing will take
place “when conditions dictate.”
Also unclear is whether the review board members will go to
Guantanamo to hear from the detainees or whether they will use a video
link between the prison and Washington, as federal judges do when
considering habeas corpus petitions. The six members on a panel
represent the Pentagon; the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence; and the Departments of State,
Justice and Homeland Security.
Breasseale said Joerg is processing 71 of the prison’s 166
inmates for reviews: 46 “indefinite detainees,” a category created by
an Obama task force in 2010 that includes prisoners considered too
dangerous to release but for whom there is no evidence to justify a
criminal trial, and 25 other detainees who in 2010 were listed as
candidates for trials by military commissions or civilian courts.
Since then, the chief war-crimes prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen.
Mark Martins, has decided to pursue fewer cases, citing a federal court
ruling that “providing material support for terrorism” is not a war
crime applicable to Guantanamo’s current detainee population.
“Our number may be reduced if charges are referred to a
military commission,” Breasseale said in response to a series of
questions sent to Joerg on Saturday. “Likewise, our number could
increase if convictions are overturned or charges are withdrawn.”
Six Guantanamo detainees are awaiting death-penalty trials, and
three have been convicted of war crimes. They will not get hearings.
Eighty-six others have been cleared for release and so are also
ineligible for the reviews. But they have no release dates because the
Obama administration has not overcome congressional restrictions on
releases.
Breasseale would not say whether reporters will be allowed to
watch or photograph the hearings, even if the detainees desire media
coverage.
Pentagon officials also would not discuss specific cases. But
based on the categories, the 71 men whose files will be reviewed
include five Taliban members whose release is sought as part of an
Afghanistan peace agreement.
The five are “indefinite detainees,” along with seven other
Afghans, 26 Yemenis, three Saudis, two Kuwaitis, two Libyans, a Kenyan,
a Moroccan and a Somali.
Others could argue for their release as candidates once
considered for trial. They include:
●Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, a 42-year-old, one-eyed
Palestinian who was one of the CIA’s first prisoners in the campaign
against terrorism. Better known by the nom de guerre Abu Zubaida, he
was critically wounded when captured in Pakistan in 2002. Agents held
him naked in a cage and waterboarded him 83 times to find out what he
knew about al-Qaeda before delivering him to Guantanamo in 2006.
●An Indonesian named Riduan Isamuddin, 49, better known as
Hambali, whom the CIA profiled a decade ago as a senior leader of
Southeast Asia’s Jemaah Islamiah, the Islamic group blamed for the 2002
Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people. Hambali was captured in
Thailand in 2003 but has never been charged with a crime.
●Mohammed al-Qahtani, 37, a Saudi who was considered at one
time for prosecution as the possible “20th hijacker” in the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks. Agents subjected Qahtani to such harsh
interrogation at Guantanamo that a senior Pentagon lawyer during the
Bush years concluded that the United States had tortured him and
forbade his inclusion in the Sept. 11 death-penalty tribunal.
--
Freedom Archives
Freedom Archives
--
SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!
Free All Political Prisoners!
www.jerichony.org
No comments:
Post a Comment