MISCELLANEOUS NEWS REPORTS * 2003.11.01 to 2003.11.17 misc_digest_2003_6a.txt * Aljazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage * Associated Press (AP): http://www.ap.org/ * Inter Press Service (IPS): http://ipsnews.net/ * Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/ * ABC News (Aus): http://www.abc.net.au/news/ * BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/ * CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/ * CNN: http://www.cnn.com/ * The Age (Melbourne): http://www.theage.com.au/ * Baltimore Sun: http://www.sunspot.net/ * Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ * Dawn (Islamabad): http://www.dawn.com/ * The Guardian (UK): http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/ * Toronto Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ * The Independent (UK): http://www.independent.co.uk/ * Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/ * The Mirror (UK): http://www.mirror.co.uk/ * The Observer (UK): http://www.observer.co.uk/ * Newsweek: http://www.msnbc.com/news/NW-front_Front.asp * San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/news/ * Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/ * The Telegraph (UK): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ * The Times (UK): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ ================================================================================ November 17, 2003 JUDGES HEAR U.S. ENEMY COMBATANT LEGAL CHALLENGE By Gail Appleson NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals judge said on Monday that allowing the president unchecked power to jail Americans indefinitely as part of the war on terrorism could have an "unprecedented" impact on Americans' legal rights. U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Barrington Parker Jr. made his comments during arguments in the case of "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla, 33, a U.S. citizen held incommunicado as an enemy combatant for the past 18 months. Padilla, a New Yorker, has not been charged with any crime and is barred from communicating with lawyers. Padilla is a suspect in an al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. He was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport last year as he arrived from Pakistan and is being held in isolation at a Navy brig in South Carolina. Federal prosecutors argue Padilla should not have access to attorneys because he poses a threat to national security and defense lawyers would interfere with his interrogation. They also believe defense lawyers could unwittingly be used to pass messages to al Qaeda operatives. During a lengthy hearing in Manhattan federal court, Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement argued that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress authorized the president to take actions to stop future international acts of terrorism, including the right to detain American citizens indefinitely. "Al Qaeda has made the battlefield the United States and they are trying to make it the battlefield again, the evidence indicates," Clement said of the extremist group blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks. Parker questioned the government's contention the president's authority extended to the case of Padilla, an American citizen arrested on U.S. soil. Both he and another panelist, Circuit Judge Rosemary Pooler, also raised the question of whether the power to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants rested with Congress, not the president. He said if the court were to allow the president such sweeping powers with only limited court review, "we would be affecting a sea change in the constitutional life of this country making changes that would be unprecedented in civilized society." The case is being watched as a key constitutional challenge to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism campaign after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The three-judge panel will issue its ruling at a later date. UNLIKELY ALLIANCE Padilla's challenge is supported by the American Bar Association, the nation's largest legal association, as well as a group of retired prominent federal jurists and an unlikely alliance of conservative and liberal public interest groups. Jenny Martinez, a Stanford University law professor, one of three attorneys to argue on Padilla's behalf, said that if the president was given this authority, "they can do this to any American and the courts are powerless to intervene. That has never been the law in this country and that cannot be the law." Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to hear another U.S. enemy combatant's challenge to his open-ended detention. Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, has been held without access to a lawyer in military brigs. A key difference between the Hamdi and Padilla cases was that Padilla was captured in the United States, not on a foreign battlefield. © Reuters 2003. All Rights Reserved. * * * November 17, 2003 - 23:15 GMT COURT PANEL WEIGHS LEGAL RIGHTS OF ALLEGED 'DIRTY BOMB' SUSPECT U.S. citizen has been held since June 2002 as enemy combatant From Phil Hirschkorn and Deborah Feyerick, CNN NEW YORK (CNN) -- A federal appeals court panel on Monday cast doubt over whether President Bush has the authority to designate an American citizen an "enemy combatant" and detain him indefinitely without criminal charges. In a legal showdown likely to go to the Supreme Court, the government maintained that Bush's military moves in the war on terrorism are not subject to judicial review, while attorneys representing the prisoner, Jose Padilla, said the administration is asking for unchecked powers that violate the Constitution. "We had the unusual experience today of going into a United States federal appeals court and attempting to get authorization to be able to defend our client," said Padilla's attorney, Andrew Patel. "That's not something that ... a lawyer in this country has to do." Oral arguments over Padilla's captivity were heard by a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, in a courthouse next door to the jail from which Padilla was removed 18 months ago and sent to a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina. The appeals court did not indicate a timetable for its decision. Padilla, 33, a suspected al Qaeda operative, has been in federal custody since he arrived in Chicago in May 2002 on a flight from Pakistan. He was initially arrested as a material witness for the grand jury probe into the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The government maintains Padilla received explosives training in al Qaeda camps inside Afghanistan and plotted with the group to bomb hotels and gas stations, and to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" -- a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material -- inside the United States. Defense attorneys maintain Padilla traveled to Chicago to visit his son. The government never levied criminal charges against Padilla prior to President Bush declaring in June 2002 that he represented a "grave danger to the national security" of the nation, reclassifying him as an enemy combatant, and transferring him to military custody, where he has remained incommunicado. Judges discuss time limit for non-battlefield detainees The court expressed concern about the length of the detention and wanted to know if there could be a time limit for detaining a person not caught on a battlefield. "How long can Mr. Padilla remain an enemy combatant?" asked Judge Richard Wesley. "Is Mr. Padilla in limbo until the president decides? ... What's the outer limit?" "As long as the conflict," responded Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement, who argued the government's case. Stanford University law professor Jenny Martinez, arguing for Padilla, said the government's position runs contrary to U.S. legal tradition. "When the courts are open and operating," Martinez said, "that person must be brought before the court." The judges questioned whether the president's undisputed authority on international battlefields, such as in Afghanistan, extended to domestic soil. "Al Qaeda made the battlefield the United States," Clement said. "Congress has to say that, and I'm not certain they did," said Judge Rosemary Pooler, who presided over the two-hour, 15-minute hearing. "As terrible as 9/11 was, it didn't repeal the Constitution," she said. Congress gave authority, White House attorney says Clement said the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force to respond to the September 11 attacks extended to U.S. citizens on American soil to prevent further attacks or for intelligence gathering. "Anyone who is associated with al Qaeda," Clement said, "is aiding the enemy." Judge Barrington Parker said he thought the war resolution "has to be stretched" to permit such executive power, which would be "breathtaking in its scope." If the court upheld that argument, "We would be affecting a sea change in the constitutional life of this country," Parker said. Pooler likened the struggle with al Qaeda to the long-standing war on drugs, and said the conflict differed from previous wars with nations that clearly ended with treaties. Hamdi case may provide precedent The court also asked whether the case belonged in New York, since Padilla is now incarcerated at the Charleston Naval Facility in South Carolina. Clement told the court the government might eventually grant Padilla access to counsel, but only when the administration concludes that it has exhausted its interrogations of him. Clement declined to characterize Padilla's information about al Qaeda as "stale," saying "some of these attacks have long gestation periods." The government sees a precedent for its arguments in the case of Yaser Hamdi, an Afghanistan battlefield captive who bears joint U.S. and Saudi citizenship and was the first domestic prisoner declared an enemy combatant. Hamdi, initially transferred to the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and now held in South Carolina, has been detained for nearly two years without access to lawyers. The 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled that the president's treatment of Hamdi could not be challenged, but the U.S. Supreme Court is already considering that case. * * * Financial Times: November 17 2003 BLAIR TO PRESS BUSH OVER FATE OF DETAINEES By Christopher Adams LONDON - Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, will use talks with President George W. Bush to try to resolve an impasse with the US over the fate of British detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. After months of negotiations between officials that have made little headway, Mr Blair is anxious to settle the issue of the detainees' treatment and future trial. Mr Bush, speaking ahead of his three-day visit to Britain, said that the nine "unlawful combatants" from the UK were being properly treated and he was working to arrive at a solution with which Mr Blair would be comfortable. His remarks have stoked speculation that a deal on their proposed trial by military tribunal could be announced this week. Lawyers arguing the prisoners will not receive a fair trial have been pressing for their repatriation to the UK. However, the US is unlikely to offer Britain any favours and Mr Bush appeared to rule out repatriation. "These were illegal noncombatants picked up off a battlefield. And they're being well treated, and they will go through a military tribunal at some point," he said. Mr Bush is reluctant to offer big concessions because that would risk opening the doors to claims from other countries with detainees. Mr Blair is not enthusiastic about repatriation because of the legal complexities it entails. If a deal were to be announced - and diplomats are not holding their breath - it could take the form of other concessions. Mr Blair is keen that the British detainees should have access to a proper appeals process and one option under consideration is for US civilian courts to hear appeals from any verdicts passed by military commissions. In London, the attorney-general's office on Monday emphasised the trial process, saying the objective of the negotiations with the US was "to ensure that, if the [British] detainees are prosecuted, they are ensured a fair trial". An official said the possibility of their return to the UK had been an option for many months, but that there had been no conclusion to the talks. Mr Blair had said in October he expected the issue to be resolved in the next few weeks. So far, the only safeguards have been that the military tribunal would be open and the death penalty would not apply. * * * Los Angeles Times: November 17, 2003 60 YEARS ON, AGAIN BATTLING AN ABOMINATION OF POWER * Fred Korematsu opposed Japanese internment in the '40s. Now he's urging the Supreme Court not to make the same mistakes with today's detainees. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe- turley17nov17,1,7308193.story By Jonathan Turley Largely unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of politics, a quiet and frail 82- year-old man made a symbolic return to Washington, D.C., this month. His name is Fred Korematsu, and his name graces one of the most infamous decisions ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 1944 case of Korematsu vs. United States. With that decision, Korematsu was sent to internment camps to join 120,000 other Japanese Americans who were imprisoned solely because of their ethnicity. Recently, Korematsu filed a brief before that same court on behalf of hundreds of Muslims being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. For Korematsu and thousands of camp survivors, one of the darkest and most painful chapters of American history is repeating itself. The Korematsu case has been largely taught in law schools as an abomination, a case in which the Supreme Court yielded to fear and pressure in sending tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children into camps. Then came 9/11. Soon, the Bush administration was relying on the arguments from the Korematsu case to assert the same authority exercised by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to put individuals into detention without trial or access to the courts. The administration has further argued that the president may do with the Guantanamo detainees as he wishes, including executing them under his own set of rules and standards. By locating the camp in Cuba, the president holds that his actions are no longer controlled by constitutional law. Despite the fact that Guantanamo Bay is a sealed, highly armed U.S. military base, the court has previously held that it is legally "foreign" territory under the control of Cuban President Fidel Castro. Of course, unlike World War II, there is no declared war against a nation-state. Rather, the president has declared war on terrorism, which is a category of crime. Under this interpretation, any president could declare such a war and claim wartime authority to indefinitely detain people and even execute them without access to the courts. Korematsu has heard much of this before -- 60 years ago. In 1942, he was 22 years old and had twice tried to enlist in the Army to serve his country, only to be turned down for a physical disability. On Feb. 19, 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, giving the military's Western Defense Command the authority to issue any orders that it deemed necessary to protect the nation -- the legal basis for the camps. Korematsu desperately fought to remain free. He changed his name to Clyde and underwent eyelid surgery to look less Asian. It didn't work. He was arrested and thrown into a race-track horse stall to await "processing." These are events that most Americans thought could never happen again. After all, Korematsu was given the Medal of Freedom in 1998 (the highest U.S. civilian honor) for his fight against internment, and Congress awarded reparations to the Japanese Americans sent to the camps. President Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, apologized to Japanese Americans on behalf of the U.S. Yet, last year, Korematsu, who lives in Northern California, watched as hundreds of people were sent to a camp in Cuba without hearings required under international law or access to U.S. courts. He watched as U.S. citizens were being stripped of their constitutional rights as "enemy combatants" and held in this country effectively as non-persons. A new president was citing a new threat, but the claim of absolute power remained. That is when Korematsu resolved to go back before the court that had failed him and thousands of other citizens decades before. His statement to the court in his brief is simple: "[t]o avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, this court should make clear that the United States respects fundamental constitutional and human rights -- even in time of war." The return of Fred Korematsu should be a source of great shame for members of the Supreme Court. Although other justices penned the 1944 decision, the institution failed the primary test of an independent judiciary: the ability to stand before the mob and to refuse to give legitimacy to racist impulse. Rather than being the bulwark against hate, the court became its vehicle. After the 1944 opinion, some on the court regretted their actions, and the California attorney general who advocated mass internment, Earl Warren (later a chief justice of the Supreme Court), described himself as "conscience-stricken" over his role on the camps. Warren's regrets, however, are not apparently shared by some members of the current court, particularly Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In his 1998 book, "All the Laws but One," Rehnquist defended the basis for the Korematsu decision and stated menacingly that "[t]here is no reason to think ... that future justices of the Supreme Court will decide questions differently." While agreeing that some criticism of the 1944 ruling might be warranted, Rehnquist seems to endorse a variation on the ancient maxim inter arma silent leges -- "in times of war, the law is silent." Rehnquist suggests that while laws may "not be silent in times of war ... they will speak with a somewhat different voice." That is a voice that Korematsu has already heard. Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George Washington University. * * * November 17, 2003 BUSH SPOKE ‘DEMOCRACY' BUT HE MEANT ‘HEGEMONY' President George W. Bush's "democracy" speech of Nov. 6 is still reverberating round the world. It has aroused as much puzzlement as hostility. What can he possibly mean by saying that "the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East?" Is the US preparing to administer a dose of its Iraqi medicine to other states in the area? Has the neoconservative agenda of softening up the area to make it comply with US and Israeli demands been given a new lease of life? Should Damascus and Tehran, the butt of Bush's particular insults, now fear attack? Or, as many suspect, was Bush's speech mere empty rhetoric, simply the latest illustration of his own mediocrity and of the moral and political bankruptcy of his administration? There is an especial irony in Bush criticizing Syria and Iran as illegitimate dictatorships, seeing that it was the United States which destroyed Syria's young parliamentary democracy in 1949, when it lent a hand to Colonel Husni al- Zaim's coup d'etat, and it was the United States again (with help from Britain) which overthrew Iran's elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953 and restored the shah to power as an American puppet. "I owe my throne to God, my people, my army and to you,' sobbed the grateful potentate to Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA man who brought him back to power. The US Senate has now overwhelmingly approved the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, which imposes new American economic and diplomatic sanctions on Damascus for its support for radical Palestinian groups and for the Lebanese resistance movement, Hizbullah. Promoted by venal congressmen and pro-Israeli lobbyists in Washington, aided by Maronite extremists, the message of the act is that any resistance to Israeli aggression and expansion is a crime. What sort of "freedom" is Bush planning to export? Is it the freedom he has brought to the 20,000 Iraqi civilians and soldiers killed and the 20,000-30,000 wounded since last March's invasion? Or the 5,000 Iraqis herded into detention camps in their own country? Or the half-million Iraqi children who died as the result of 13 years of punitive sanctions? Or does he mean by freedom the long-term health and environmental damage inflicted on Iraq? Or the daily toll of ordinary Afghans demonized as "Taleban" ­- killed by US troops as they comb the tribal areas on Pakistan's borders in search of Osama bin Laden? Or does Bush wish more Arabs and Muslims to share the freedom enjoyed by the hundreds of "terrorist suspects" held in judicial limbo at Guantanamo Bay for the past two years in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions? Or does he mean the freedom which the United Nations says is in store for some 400,000 Palestinians cut off from their farms, factories, offices, schools and hospitals by Israel's infamous wall, which Bush has failed to stop and pointedly refuses to condemn? In the face of obstruction from Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, Bush has shamelessly walked away from his "vision" of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. Will British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who claims to be "100 percent committed" to a Palestinian state, remind Bush of this vision when he visits London next week? Will the two leaders have the courage publicly to back the Geneva Accord, negotiated by the Israeli Yossi Beilin and the Palestinian Yasser Abed Rabbo, which offers the only viable way out of the present murderous stalemate? Instead of reining in Israel's far-right government in its willful destruction of Palestinian society, and thereby regaining some shred of international respect and authority, the United States has adopted Israeli tactics in the conduct of its war in Iraq: the widespread use of bribed or blackmailed informers, the hooding of prisoners, the use of torture in interrogations, the bombing raids, the demolition of houses, the collective punishments. This is the slippery slope down which the United States is heading. Paul Bremer, the chief American administrator in Iraq, was summoned at short notice to Washington last week to discuss with Bush and his colleagues America's new "get-tough policy" in dealing with the resistance to its occupation and, no doubt, to scratch their heads over how to stem the flood of casualties and scramble out of the quagmire. Much of the world shares the fear that Bush's "forward strategy of freedom" will mean more of the same errors that have brought the world to its present state of violent disorder: the unilateral use of American military force outside the constraints of international law; the obsession with "terrorism" and, at the same time, a refusal to consider, let alone address, the real grievances from which terrorism springs; the intellectually shabby characterization as "rogue states" of countries which refuse to bend the knee to the US or Israel; the mistrust of international organizations; the dismissal of international treaties, and of such international bodies as the International Criminal Court. A fatal weakness of America's war in Iraq has been Washington's refusal to acknowledge its true war aims. These have been concealed in a web of deceit and obfuscation. At the start, the declared aim of the war was to destroy Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction, which were billed as a threat to the entire world. This flimsy pretext has now been dropped as no such weapons have been found. Then, the aim of the war was said to be essentially humanitarian, to "liberate" Iraq from a nasty dictator and establish democracy in that unfortunate country. As Bush declared last week: "Iraqi democracy will succeed and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation." It would have been more honest and more convincing had Bush said that the aims of the war were twofold: first, to establish an unchallenged strategic stronghold for the United States at the heart of the Middle East and astride its oilfields; and second to protect Israel's regional hegemony. No one appears to have told Bush that democracy is not an article for export. Arabs and Muslims in their great majority are eager for the material improvements (and gadgets) of Westernization, but reject a Western, and especially an American, way of life. They do not wish to be colonized by American imperialism nor do they welcome the imposition of Western Christian, and still less Jewish, culture on their Islamic societies. For them, political nationalism, as well as pride in their own identity and in their Muslim beliefs and practices, are more powerful trends than the "democracy" the US is striving to implant. Of course they want freedom from tyrannical rulers, but the main freedom they seek is freedom from the United States. [ Patrick Seale is a veteran Middle East analyst. ] * * * Gulf News (UAE): November 17, 2003 ARAR STORY BREWS UP A STORM IN CANADA By Nihal Kaneira DUBAI - The case of Maher Arar, the Syrian-born Canadian citizen, who was arrested in New York, bundled off to Syria to be jailed and tortured for a year for no apparent reason, is turning out to be a real political humdinger for Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the Bush administration and for the regime in Damascus. There is visceral anger across Canada and the United States over his treatment by the governments of all three countries. His forcible removal from a plane in New York while returning to his home in Canada after a visit to Tunisia, his deportation to Syria by America despite his Canadian citizenship, the role Canadian security services played in fingering him as an Al Qaida suspect, and the treatment he received in Syria are all raising questions which Ottawa, Washington and Damascus are not keen to answer. The Arar case is threatening to expose all three governments, their machinations and their double standards when it comes to Arabs and Muslims. Ottawa clearly has something to hide because it is reluctant to accede to demands for an independent inquiry. For Chretien, Arar's demand for an inquiry amounts to nothing more than "another fishing expedition." Hehas rejected such calls even when his Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham called upon the Saudi government to accounting of the alleged torture of William Sampson, a Canadian who was recently freed from a Saudi jail after being wrongfully convicted for a car bombing that killed a British national. Ottawa was also rightly incensed when the Iranian-born Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, was put in a Tehran prison and later beaten to death. Graham insisted that the Iranian government explain the circumstances of her death, and even withdrew the Canadian ambassador in Tehran for time, demanding action against her assailants. But in the matter of Arar's imprisonment, the government has demonstrated no comparable outrage. "We have revealed all the facts that we know about it," Prime Minister told the Commons last week. "There is no need for an inquiry." In the United States too, there is growing anger among Arabs and Muslims about Arar. People who have suffered harassment under the draconian Patriot Act are demanding Congress and Attorney-General John Ashcroft, to investigate. They are especially keen to know whether the deportation violated American laws. The Center for Constitutional Rights wrote to Congress intelligence committees pressing for a review of Arar's case. The center said Ashcroft should begin a criminal investigation. Why are all these countries quiet on this? What makes the Canadian government so unconcerned? Could it be because Canada concurred in the deportation? US Secretary of State Colin Powell, and American Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci both suggested that Canada was not unhappy with the US for apprehending and dealing with Arar. There were also reports that the Canadian consulate in New York may have even given the nod to the Americans to deport Arar to Syria instead of Canada. A retiring foreign ministry official has just said that Ottawa gave out mixed signals on Arar to the Americans. Arabs and Muslims and civil rights groups are particularly irked by Arar's story because it seems to fit with several recent America media reports that have said that US law enforcement agencies are now contracting-out suspected terrorist "interrogations" to countries in the Middle East and Asia as US laws prohibit harsh interrogation methods of prisoners. Syrian officials say Arar was not charged with anything and released because their interrogators found no basis for the US claim that he was an Al Qaida suspect. But that was after 11 months of beatings and solitary confinement. Some diplomatic observers believe that Damascus decided to release Arar only to show its displeasure with Washington over US allegations that Syria is allowing Al Qaida fighters to cross over to Iraq through its land routes. "Arar came home in the end only because Syria got miffed by US allegations and ended intelligence co-operation with Americans on Al Qaida terrorism," explained a diplomat in Ottawa. "Arar was a beneficiary of this diplomatic friction." Now that Arar is home, everyone is keen to sweep the issue under the carpet and move on, the diplomat, who requested anonymity, said. "It looks like Arar was another innocent Arab who was a victim of the paranoia that is driving politics in this part of the world. Neither the Canadian government nor the U.S. nor the Syrians would want all this to be aired at a public inquiry." Many analysts agree. They see no prospect of Ottawa letting out the name of the police or intelligence official who provided the Americans with the information about Arar that led to his name being included in the Watch List. Similarly, the US is unlikely to jeopardise its intelligence-sharing arrangement with Canada by ratting on the Canadian police or security agency that tipped them off. There is a larger issue though. By denying him due process, Arar continues to be victimised. His civil liberties were violated, his Canadian citizenship failed to protect him. While the people who fingered him as a terrorist suspect are free to continue rail-roading innocent Arabs and Muslims on the grounds of mere suspicion, Arar and his wife and two children have to live under a cloud of suspicion. He has not been given a chance to clear his name. That's one part of it. The other is the matter of trust that people have in their governments. How can democratic, constitutional governments that claim to protect civil liberties, which are at the very core of their foundations, subscribe to covert programmes that send their citizens, even suspected terrorists, to other countries to be tortured for information? "There is good reason to believe that the United States knew and wanted Arar tortured to obtain information," says Jeffrey Fogel, Legal Director at the Centre for Constitutional Rights. "This practice of rendering cannot and must not be allowed to continue." [ The writer can be contacted at nkaneira@gulfnews.com ] * * * November 16, 2003 -- 0335 GMT 'DIRTY BOMB' SUSPECT APPEALS DETENTION U.S. citizen has been held since June 2002 as enemy combatant From Phil Hirschkorn and Deborah Feyerick CNN New York Bureau NEW YORK (CNN) -- Attorneys for "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla will challenge the validity of his detention as an enemy combatant before a federal appeals court Monday. It is the latest legal battle over how far the Bush administration can go in holding suspects as it fights the war on terror. A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear two hours of oral arguments starting at 10 a.m. Padilla, 32, an American citizen, was arrested May 8, 2002, at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, after a flight from Pakistan. Attorney General John Ashcroft accused Padilla of plotting with al Qaeda terrorists to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the United States. A "dirty bomb" uses conventional explosives to disperse radiological material. A month after Padilla's arrest, President Bush designated him an "enemy combatant," which means the military can hold him indefinitely without bringing him to trial or giving him access to a lawyer. Since then, he has been in a Navy bring in Charleston, South Carolina. Bush's declaration transferring Padilla to military custody said the suspect "represents a continuing, present and grave danger to the national security of the United States." Padilla has never been charged with a crime, and the government has blocked his lawyers from having access to him. "He's hasn't been allowed to defend himself. That's what we do in America. We give people -- no matter what they're accused of -- we give them their day in court," said Andrew Patel, one of Padilla's attorneys. "Never before in our history has an American president claimed the power to be able to detain without charge and indefinitely an American citizen in a civilian setting," Patel said. WAR ON TERRORISM The government justifies its treatment of Padilla as part of the war on terrorism that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "The capture and detention of enemy combatants is critical to preventing additional attacks on the United States, aiding ongoing military operations and obtaining vital intelligence in advancement of the war effort," said U.S. Attorney James Comey and Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement in their brief to the appeals court. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican, served time as a juvenile for murder in Illinois and for a gun possession charge in Florida before moving in 1998 to Egypt, where he took the name Abdullah al Muhajir. Over the next three years, Padilla traveled to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, prosecutors say. They say that in Pakistan and Afghanistan he underwent explosives training with al Qaeda and met with some of the group's senior operatives, including Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in early 2002. Multiple intelligence sources, including Abu Zubaydah, provided information that Padilla discussed the dirty bomb plot and bombings of U.S. hotels and gas stations, according to the government. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey decided in December that Bush's action was constitutionally within his powers as commander in chief -- provided evidence existed to support the claim that Padilla was a danger to national security, But Mukasey also ruled Padilla ought to be able to contest that evidence through his attorneys. The government appealed that part of the ruling and has continued to deny Padilla's lawyers access to their client. The government also contends the case should be heard in South Carolina, rather than New York, because that is where Padilla is detained. SIMILAR CASES In a similar case, a federal judge in Illinois agreed with that argument, saying attorneys for prisoner Ali Saleh al-Marri, from Qatar, must challenge his detention in South Carolina. Defense attorneys for al-Marri appealed the ruling to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago last week. Al-Marri was originally charged with credit card fraud and making false statements to FBI agents. He was moved to military custody two weeks before he was scheduled to stand trial in Peoria, Illinois, after al Qaeda captives said al-Marri was helping the group's operatives enter the United States, the government says. Another case similar to Padilla's is that of Yaser Hamdi, an Afghanistan battlefield captive who holds both U.S. and Saudi citizenship and was the first domestic prisoner declared an enemy combatant. Hamdi -- initially transferred to the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and now held in South Carolina -- has been detained for nearly two years without access to lawyers. The 4th U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled that Bush's treatment of Hamdi could not be challenged, but the U.S. Supreme Court is considering the case. In Padilla's case, a number of ideologically varied public interest groups are siding with him before the appeals court. "No congressional action justified this lawless entry, seizure or incommunicado detention," said a brief jointly submitted by the Cato Institute, the Rutherford Institute, People for the American Way and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. The groups object to the expansion of presidential military power off the battlefield, such as Padilla's arrest in Chicago and incarceration in New York. * * * Reuters AlertNet: November 16, 2003 - 16:22 GMT US SETS TERMS FOR FREEING GUANTANAMO SWEDE By Peter Starck http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/STA642501.htm STOCKHOLM, Nov 16 (Reuters) - The United States would free a Swede held at Guantanamo Bay if Sweden made sure he did not engage in terror activities, a Swedish newspaper reported on Sunday, quoting U.S. and Swedish government officials. A Western diplomat told Reuters the report could signal a policy shift aimed at defusing criticism of President George W. Bush's war on terror in the run up to his campaign for re-election next year. Swedish foreign ministry spokesman Jan Janonius said negotiations about Mehdi- Muhammed Ghezali, a 24-year-old Swede held captive for almost two years at the U.S. military base in Cuba, were under way, but that Washington had not yet come up with any concrete proposal. The daily Svenska Dagbladet quoted an unnamed senior U.S. official as saying Washington wanted to set in motion a process that would see Sweden take responsibility for Ghezali -- one of some 660 prisoners captured mostly during the war in Afghanistan and held without charge or access to lawyers. The prisoners are suspected by the Pentagon of links to al Qaeda, which the United States holds responsible for the September 11, 2001 and other attacks. Sweden believes the United States has no legal grounds to detain Ghezali. "We have talked along those lines," Carl-Henrik Ehrenkrona, the Swedish foreign ministry's head of legal affairs, told Svenska Dagbladet. Ghezali's father, a Muslim of Algerian origin, has repeatedly urged the Swedish government to do more to secure his son's release, saying he was in Pakistan to study Islam and had nothing to do with al Qaeda. Spain, a supporter of the U.S. war on terror, criticised its ally last week for the open-ended detention of prisoners. Britain has also complained about Britons held without trial at Guantanamo Bay. Bush, who visits Britain this week, told the BBC on Sunday: "I'm working closely with Tony (British Prime Minister Blair) to come up with a solution that he is comfortable with." The diplomat told Reuters: "Also inside the United States there has been growing criticism about the Guantanamo Bay prisoners because they have been left outside any legal arrangements, international law or the prisoners of war Geneva convention. Definitely there is a need for them to get this thing over with and this is maybe the beginning of the process." * * * Boston Globe: November 16, 2003 GUANTANAMO'S 'CHILD SOLDIERS' IN LIMBO By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- In a small ranch-style house perched on a seaside cliff, three young teenagers rise at 6 each morning to start their routine of educational lessons, exercise outside with a soccer ball, and perhaps a game of chess. If hungry, they have a kitchenette with fruit and ice water. If bored, they can sit on the couch and watch a videotape. But this is no ordinary adolescent lifestyle. The clothes they wear are orange. Their small yard is enclosed by a high fence covered in green tarp, save one cutaway that shows the sea. The door to their bathroom does not shut, lest the military guards at the US Naval Base here lose sight of them for even an instant. And twice a week, a team of psychologists leads group sessions to discuss the trauma these youths ages 13 to 15 may have experienced fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The presence of these "juvenile enemy combatants" at this isolated outpost in the war on terrorism has generated passionate criticism within the international human rights community. But it is hardly the only legal controversy surrounding the military detention and interrogation facility where the United States is indefinitely holding without trial some 660 detainees from 42 countries. Last week, the US Supreme Court said it would decide this term whether the detainees may challenge their incarceration in court -- an unexpected event that could swamp Guantanamo in litigation over the legality of the detentions under the Constitution and human rights treaties that have become US law such as the Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. "If the Supreme Court decides that American courts have jurisdiction, it will go back to the lower courts to pick up the questions they brushed aside," said Detlev Vagts, a professor of international law at Harvard. "There are classically limitations on how long you can detain someone without bringing him before a judge." Guantanamo's commander, Major General Geoffrey Miller, said in his first interview since the Supreme Court decided to intervene that none of the detainees named in the case -- which has been brought by their next-of-kin -- would be informed of the development. Nor have the juveniles been told that nearly three months ago Miller recommended that the Defense Department send them home because he had determined that they had been "kidnapped into terrorism," posed a low risk, and had no further intelligence to provide. The recommendation remains on a desk in the Pentagon. "These juvenile enemy combatants are in the process of being adjudicated for a decision on their transfer for release or for further detention," Miller said. "It's a very thorough and precise process that's done by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. . . . They move as quickly as they possibly can." But children's rights advocates such as Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch criticize the delay. She contends that the United States has an obligation to re-integrate these "child soldiers" into their home society as quickly as possible under a treaty ratified on Dec. 24, 2002. After Miller's announcement in August, Becker said, "People had the impression the kids would be let go, but months later they're still there. . . . The longer those kids are kept at Guantanamo, the harder it will be for them to reintegrate into society in Afghanistan." During a recent tour of the "Iguana House," as the juvenile facility is called, the teens were kept from view but a sense of their lives could be detected. They sleep on single bunks. Their Korans and prayer mats are stacked neatly in a drawer under the television. Their stove is not hooked up and was installed only for "aesthetic purposes." "They have picked up English and can make short sentences and get their thought or whatever understood," said "Sergeant I," one of several guards who cover their name tags while on duty. Discipline is rarely necessary but might consist simply of a "time-out," he added. "They are respectful. . . . Some of that is from their culture. Some of it is just the restrictions we put on them." In August, the International Committee of the Red Cross issued a rare public statement warning that despite authorities' "efforts to provide special measures for some of the juveniles," Guantanamo was an inappropriate place to detain them and the agency "worries about the possible psychological impact this experience could have at such an important stage in their development." Its use of the word "some" was a reference to another issue of contention: The decision to draw the line at 16 instead of 18 when separating juvenile combatants. Brigadier General Mitchell LeClaire, who is second in command, said there are "more than two and fewer than five" older juveniles here. These older youths live with the adults in the regular prison, dubbed "Camp Delta," which also sits atop a coastal cliff a short drive away. Unlike the Iguana House, Delta has no air conditioning or views of the water. It is surrounded by wire and watched by guards in unpainted plywood towers, on which hang large American flags. Delta provides two levels of prison security, with more comfortable accommodations given as an incentive to those who cooperate with interrogators and guards. Those in the "medium security" section live in bunk houses of 10 and are allowed to wear white clothing, exercise together daily, and serve collective meals to themselves on picnic tables. Visitors are not allowed to interact with any detainees but may see them from a distance. Most of the men appear to be in their 20s or early 30s and sport bushy beards. The majority, however, live in 6-foot-8-inch by 8-foot cells. The lights remain on and guards walk back and forth 24 hours a day. These detainees wear orange, are fed individually by guards, and are separated from their neighbors by mesh walls. "They know you're here," said Colonel Nelson Cannon, Delta's operations commander, during a tour of a cellblock that had been emptied for maintenance. "The rest of the camp knows, too. They have their own informal communication system." The temperature here is regulated by ocean breezes, though if it gets much hotter than 85 degrees, Cannon said, guards sometimes bring in fans. Detainees are given a thinner mattress than their medium-security counterparts and may be allowed into exercise pens and the shower as little as three times a week -- always shackled at the hands and feet. Rewards here include access to books, letters from home, and board games. All are issued a Koran, a prayer cap, and prayer beads, though most are given a thin pad instead of a real prayer mat. The Muslim call-to-prayer is played over prison loudspeakers five times a day. At an on-site hospital, doctors give the detainees regular health and dental checkups. A team of psychologists has about 110 on its watch list, with about 25 percent of those prescribed psychotropic medication. The tightly scripted tours are designed to show that the United States is taking pains to give the detainees proper care in accordance with the Third Geneva Convention, which was ratified in 1955. These detainees are not, however, given prisoner of war status, which would make them immune from prosecution for attacking enemy soldiers and would assure that any prosecution for war crimes includes the right to appeal to a civilian court. President Bush has said the Taliban and Al Qaeda broke the laws of war by, for example, not wearing uniforms and targeting civilians, thereby surrendering their POW status. The Geneva Conventions, however, declares that "should any doubt" emerge about a detainee's status, he is presumed a POW until a "competent tribunal" decides otherwise. None of the detainees at Guantanamo have had such a hearing. But Major John Smith, a military spokesman, argued that because the president made his determination, "there is no doubt" and no hearing is needed. That legal position was laid out in the early days of the prison, when it was an emergency holding place in the immediate aftermath of the Afghanistan war. As the war on terrorism has continued, however, the prospect of permanently incarcerating people without trial has made even some of Bush's supporters uncomfortable. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, recently told The Globe that the civil liberties problem was on his mind, but that "this is new territory" and there is no obvious solution. "It gets back to the question of what is the end to the war on terrorism and if it's forever and there is no end for the people held there," he said. Meanwhile, booming construction -- most of it by a division of Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer Halliburton -- may indicate that the Bush administration intends for this detention operation to endure. By next year, a concrete version of the prison will be open, incorporating much more sophisticated security technologies, according to LeClaire. "We'll be here as long as the global war on terrorism continues," he said. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. * * * BBC: BUSH INTERVIEW: KEY POINTS Here are the key points of US President George W Bush's interview on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme. Real media video ( 27 mins ): http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/progs/03/frost/bush_smil/bush16nov.ram President Bush on coming on a state visit: "I'm looking forward to it. It's a huge honour to be invited by Her Majesty to stay in Buckingham Palace. It's hard to imagine me even considering staying in Buckingham Palace when I was living in Midland, Texas. Buckingham Palace has got a tremendous mystique to it. On the protests that anti-war activists plan for his visit: "Well, freedom is a beautiful thing, I would first say, and it's, aren't you lucky to be in a country that encourages people to speak their mind? And I value going to a country where people are free to say anything they want to say. "Secondly, I would say that I understand you don't like war, and neither do I. But I would hope you understand that I have learned the lessons of 11 September 2001, and that terrorists declared war on the United States of America and war on people that love freedom, and I intend to lead our nation, along with others, like our close friends in Great Britain, to win this war on terror. "That war is my last choice, not my first choice, but I have obligation as the president to keep our country secure." Mr Bush on Tony Blair: "Tony is a man of strong faith. You know, the key to my relationship with Tony is he tells the truth and he tells you what he thinks. And when he says he's going to do something, he's going to do it. I trust him, therefore. I have seen him - under some tough, tough circumstances - stand strong, and I appreciate that in a person. "The other thing I admire about Tony Blair is that he has got a vision beyond the current - in other words, he can see a world that is peaceful. And he agrees with me that the spread of democracy and freedom in parts of the world where there's violence and hatred will help change the world, that there are reformers in the Middle East that long for democracy, that long to live in a free world." Mr Bush on the fight against terror: "There are terrorists who are willing to kill innocent life in order to create fear and chaos. There are terrorists who want the free world to retreat from duties so that they can impose Taliban-type governments and enslave people. There are people like Saddam Hussein, who tortured and maimed and killed, and at the same time threatened and created conditions of instability." On the US's opponents over the war in Europe, Germany and France: "We're not going to agree on every issue, but a Europe which works closely with America and an America which works closely with Europe means the world will be better off." On the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: "I think our intelligence was sound and I know the British intelligence was sound. It's the same intelligence that caused the United Nations to pass resolution after resolution after resolution. It's the same intelligence that was used by my predecessor to bomb Iraq. And I'm very confident that we got good intelligence. "And not only that, David Kay, who went over to kind of lead the effort to find the weapons or the intent of weapons, came back with a report that clearly stated that Saddam Hussein had been in material breach of resolution 1441; in other words, had the inspectors found what Kay found, they would have reported back to the United Nations that he was in breach, that he was in violation of exactly what the United Nations expected him not to do. "Nobody could say that Saddam Hussein wasn't a danger. I mean, not only was he a danger to the free world, I mean, and that's what the world said. The world said it consistently. "And he's a danger to his own people as well. Remember, we discovered mass graves with hundreds of thousands of men and women, and children, clutching their little toys, as a result of this person's brutality." On whether he believed the claim that Iraq could unleash weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes: "Well, I believed a lot of things, but I know he was a dangerous man, and I know that for the sake of security he needed to be dealt with." On the criticism that the coalition was not well enough prepared for keeping the peace after winning the war: "We look at all contingencies and are dealing with the contingencies. "What has happened is that, in a relatively small part of the country, there are Baathists... they are attacking, and they're attacking not only coalition forces, they're attacking innocent Iraqis because what they're trying to do is stop the spread of progress. This is nothing more than a power grab. "Now there are some foreign fighters, Mujahideen types or al Qaeda. They've got a different mission - they want to install a Taliban-type government in Iraq, or they want to seek revenge for getting whipped in Afghanistan." On whether the coalition was taken by surprise by the foreign fighters: "A lot of those people who came in initially have, wish they hadn't come in initially. They're not wishing at all right now, but no, I, we understood it was going to be tough. The tactics shift depending upon the decisions of the enemy, and we're making progress. That's not to say it's not tough. Of course it's tough. "But what they want to do is they want to shake the will of the free world, and the good news about having a partner like Tony Blair is he won't be shaken, you see, and neither will I. And neither will Jose Maria Aznar. " Could Saddam be behind the attacks on the coalition forces? "We did the Iraqi people a great favour by removing him, and so I wouldn't be surprised that any kind of violence is promoted by him, but I don't know. All I know is we're after him." On those who question the solution of regime change: "I can understand their concerns except they forgot the history. This issue has been discussed in the United Nations for over a decade, and the United Nations, as a kind of multilateral international body, passed resolution after resolution after resolution calling for Saddam Hussein to disarm. In other words, the diplomatic process went forward." On his assertion that Israel and Palestine should exist as two separate states "side-by-side in peace": "I believe it is in Israel's interest that there be a peaceful Palestinian state. And I know it's in the Palestinians' interest. However, to achieve a peaceful Palestinian state, the emergence of a peaceful Palestinian state, a state where people are willing to risk capital, a place where people are willing to develop an economy, there must be a focused effort to defeat terror. And there hasn't been with the current Palestinian leadership." On what will happen to the British nationals being held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay: "The good news is, one, they'll be treated fairly, like they are. And, two, I'm working closely with Tony [Blair] to come up with a solution that he's comfortable with - and I emphasise a solution that he's comfortable with. These prisoners are being treated - these were illegal non-combatants picked up off of a battlefield. They will go through a military tribunal at some point in time, which is a military tribunal which is in international accord, or in line with international accords." On his most important lessons learned from the presidency: "Have a clear vision of where you want to lead, and lead." * * * November 16, 2003 DELIVERING PEOPLE INTO THE HANDS OF TORTURERS By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist Torture. To suggest that a country engages in the practice is to set it apart from the pantheon of civilized nations. Torture is so universally recognized as a symbol of tyranny that President Bush used it to justify invading Iraq. "Bringing stability and unity to a free Iraq will not be easy, yet that is no excuse to leave the Iraqi regime's torture chambers and poison labs in operation," Bush said in February. The president claims to be at the helm of a human rights effort to extinguish torture. In June, he proclaimed: "The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example." But are we? Does Bush have such clean hands that he can lecture the rest of the world? No. Not even close. In the name of the "war on terrorism," the Bush administration is condoning and even facilitating the torture of terrorist suspects. While the activities take place behind a veil of deniability, some excellent reporting by the Washington Post has laid bare the facts. And they aren't pretty. Under a practice known as "extraordinary rendition," the CIA is delivering terror suspects into the hands of foreign intelligence services without extradition proceedings. According to the Post, the authority to do this comes from a secret "finding" by the president. Suspects have been sent to Syria, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, countries whose abusive practices have been documented and condemned by the State Department's annual human rights report. "We don't kick the s-- out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s-- out of them," an unnamed official who had participated in the rendering of prisoners told the Post. Along with the prisoner, the CIA provides the foreign intelligence services a list of questions it wants answered. Torture is illegal in the United States, by law, Constitution and international convention. Not only may the United States not engage in the practice - even in wartime - the law explicitly prohibits sending a person to another nation where there is good reason to believe he might be tortured. This is why the administration has been so cagey about its tactics. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has been trying to get answers, but the administration officially denies what it is doing. "United States policy is to obtain specific assurances from the receiving country that it will not torture the individual being transferred to that country," wrote William Haynes II, general counsel of the Defense Department, in response to Leahy's queries. Assurances are part of a wink-nudge game. The Post talked with a number of officials who essentially admitted that, despite assurances, suspects are sent to places knowing they'll be treated harshly. "The temptation is to have these folks in other hands because they have different standards," said one. Everything is couched in knowing vagaries. And now comes a living example of the administration's game: Maher Arar. For 10 months Arar was beaten, whipped with cables and threatened in a Syrian prison where we sent him. The disgrace of this case should indelibly stain the Bush administration's hands in a way that, like Lady Macbeth's, they will never come clean. Arar was born in Syria but moved to Canada as a teenager and has been a Canadian citizen since 1991. He does computer consulting and has a wife and two young children. In September 2002, Arar was traveling back to Canada from a family gathering in Tunisia. During a connection at JFK Airport in New York, Arar was pulled out of line by immigration officials and detained as a suspected member of al-Qaida. It appears the thrust of the government's case is that Arar was an acquaintance of Abdullah Almalki, a Syrian-born Canadian who is also a suspect. Arar insisted he was not a terrorist and had never been to Afghanistan, but U.S. officials refused to release him or send him back to Canada. He was held at a federal detention facility in Brooklyn and later deported to Jordan and driven to Syria. He said the cell he was put in for nearly the next 10 months resembled a grave: "It had no light. It was three feet wide. It was six feet deep. It was seven feet high." Finally, in early October, Arar was released to Canadian officials and returned home. He was never charged with any crime. The administration apparently feels justified in turning over suspects for torture, on the theory that our cause is righteous therefore anything we do in its advancement is moral. It is a delusion that all tyrants through history have embraced. The overriding truth about torture is that it degrades those who inflict or condone it. We begin to resemble the enemy being fought * * * The Guardian (UK): November 15, 2003 CONDOLEEZZA: BUSH AND BLAIR'S BRANCH OF FREEDOM IS KEY TO MORE SECURE WORLD Common vision on Middle East will be at centre of state visit talks Julian Borger in Washington Tony Blair and George Bush will discuss the further transformation of the Middle East and their shared commitment to "the spread of freedom" during the US president's state visit next week, White House officials said yesterday. In an interview in her White House office, the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, insisted that the Iraq war has neither damaged the close relationship between the US and British leaders nor weakened their shared sense of mission, particularly in the Middle East. She argued that protesters expected to take to the streets against the president's visit should appreciate what the two leaders had done to promote the cause of democracy in the Middle East. "Protests are a part of our democratic heritage and our democratic privilege," she said, adding that protesters should realise that US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq "are finally getting those countries to the place that actually people might have the same privilege of protest". Despite the protests expected in London next week, the Bush administration is determined to shift public opinion away from Iraq and towards the prospect of further change in the Middle East. It has also made it clear it is prepared to make efforts to remove irritants in the relationship, with one senior administration official promising it was "likely" that British companies would soon be able to bid on the main reconstruction contracts in Iraq. The senior official also said talks were still under way to reassure Britain about the treatment and legal status of the nine British detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but said no final deal had been made. The US official, speaking privately, insisted that when it came to the development of a common European defence policy, Mr Bush trusted the assurances of the prime minister that it would not undermine Nato. But Bush aides insist the two leaders would spend more time on the common visions they shared rather than the problems that trouble US-British relations. "They're both leaders who are committed to the proposition that the spread of freedom is the key to a more secure world and to the ultimate defeat of terrorism, and I think they will spend quite a lot of time on this question of how the transformation of the Middle East can take place," a senior official said. The starting point for that discussion was a speech by Mr Bush earlier this month in Washington, in which he compared today's opportunity in the Middle East to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. "It's a great cause for the alliance and for Europe and America to carry out together and so I think there is a very strong desire to discuss that in some detail," the official said ahead of the president's trip, the first full state visit by a US president since Woodrow Wilson in 1918. Mr Bush arrives on Tuesday night and leaves on Friday. Both Washington and London insist their views on the Middle East are close and converging despite longstanding differences on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr Bush has ruled out military action against Syria or Iran for the immediate future, and Britain has persuaded the US that the European strategy of engagement with Iran is scoring results. Meanwhile, Britain has accepted US policy to exert more diplomatic pressure on Syria to distance itself from radical Islamic groups. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ms Rice denied there were serious differences and said the US and Britain shared a common long-term commitment to the "road map" to peace, and a common impatience with the Palestinians' inability to stop bomb attacks on Israelis. The approach towards Israel has differed in the past, but Ms Rice promised the US would take a firm line in opposing the construction of Ariel Sharon's "security fence" through the West Bank. She said: "The two primary concerns are that this not be a fence that somehow prejudges an outcome, a territorial outcome. And secondly, that it not infringe, or it infringes as little as possible, on the lives of ordinary Palestinians." Guantanamo Bay remains a potentially explosive issue that could test the strength of the relationship, squeezing Mr Blair between public outrage at the treatment of British inmates at the prison camp, and his prized relationship with the US president. The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has been in talks with the Pentagon for several months in an attempt to win assurances that the Britons captured in Afghanistan should be tried under basic legal norms. But the military authorities have been reluctant to grant concessions, out of concern that other nations with citizens held at the Cuban base should demand equal treatment. Though one US official said they were working with London on how to treat the British nine, Ms Rice would not even confirm that the British inmates would not face the death penalty. "Any clarity about what is actually going to happen is going to have to wait," she said. The US has played down another longstanding problem that has highlighted Mr Blair's difficulties in attempting to be the "bridge" between Europe and the US - a common European defence policy and the emergence of a European force. While encouraging Europe to put more investment into defence, Washington has traditionally been anxious that the European initiative might detract from Nato's primary importance. But the president's aides said that Mr Bush has accepted the assurances from Tony Blair that the European defence plan and Nato were not mutually incompatible. "The president fully trusts the prime minister's transatlantic credentials and instincts," one aide said, adding that the only concern was that the new European initiative did not weaken Nato. Again and again in briefings before the state visit, US officials returned to the subject of Mr Bush and Mr Blair's common sense of mission. They argued there was a shared commitment to tackle HIV/Aids, on which there will be a roundtable conference during the president's visit, and the alleviation of poverty in the developing world. The White House said the two leaders would try coordinate their back-to-back chairmanships of the G8 group of industrialised nations over the next two years to further those goals. "The alliance, and US-UK relationship right at the core of it... is actively engaged in making the world safer, with counter-terrorism and counter- proliferation, but our great contribution to the world has always been we've cared about making the world better," an American official said. * * * Haaretz: November 15, 2003 EX-SHIN BET HEADS WARN OF 'CATASTROPHE' WITHOUT PEACE DEAL By Haaretz Service and Agencies In unusually brazen criticism of the government's handling of the conflict with the Palestinians, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service warned Friday of a "catastrophe" if a peace deal is not reached with the Palestinians. "We are heading downhill towards near-catastrophe. If nothing happens and we go on living by the sword, we will continue to wallow in the mud and destroy ourselves," ex-security chief Yaakov Perry told the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth, reflecting a consensus among his three colleagues - Ami Ayalon, Avraham Shalom and Carmi Gillon. Asked to comment on the interview, a senior government source described the former security chiefs' approach as naive. "The situation is not as weak as they describe," he said. "We have made major achievements in our fight against terrorism... [but must try] every place where it is possible... to relieve pressure on the Palestinians, we will do it." But Perry told Israel Radio on Friday that the only way forward was for Israel to take unilateral steps, such as withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. Doing so, he said, could help draw the Palestinians to peace talks, minimize terror and help Israel improve economically. It would also raise Israel's status in the eyes of the world, he said. "We need to take the situation into our own hands and leave Gaza with all the difficulty that that entails, and to dismantle illegal settlements," said Perry, who headed the agency for seven years, including during the 1987-1993 intifada. If Israel fails to take such steps, he said, it will remain under a constant threat of terror. Ayalon, a left-leaning former general who directed the Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000, urged the government to act unilaterally and pull troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, a position which Peri told the newspaper he also supported. "We are taking sure, steady steps to a place where the state of Israel will no longer be a democracy and a home for the Jewish people," Ayalon told the newspaper. Ayalon is the author of the "People's Voice" unofficial peace plan together with Sari Nusseibeh, a leading Palestinian intellectual and president of Al-Quds University. Shalom, who served as Shin Bet head from 1980 to 1986 and is the veteran of the group, called the government's policies "contrary to the desire for peace." "We must once and for all admit there is another side, that it has feelings, that it is suffering and that we are behaving disgracefully... this entire behavior is the result of the occupation," Shalom told the newspaper. The four said that Israel needs to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip even if it entails an inevitable clash with the settlers. "There will always be some groups... for whom the Land of Israel nestles in the hills of Nablus and inside Hebron and we will have to clash with them," Perry said. However, Ayalon said he expects that only 10 percent of the more than 220,000 settlers would resist an evacuation of settlements. "We have to be capable of facing such a number," he said. Carmi Gillon, whose term as Shin Bet chief was cut short in 1996 when he resigned after agency bodyguards failed to prevent the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist, described the government as short- sighted. Gillon was recently elected head of the Mevaseret Zion council. "It is dealing solely with the question of how to prevent the next terrorist attack," Gillon said, referring to Palestinian suicide bombings. "It [ignores] the question of how we get out of the mess we find ourselves in today." Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat praised the former Shin Bet leaders on Friday. "It reflects the realistic policy required from the Israeli side," he said. Former President Ezer Weizman called the ex-security service chiefs the "four musketeers" and accused them of bringing a catastrophe of their own upon Israel. "This really makes me furious," Weizman told Channel One. "We have a country that is in a very delicate situation." Two weeks ago, the Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon also criticized government policy, saying the roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were fuelling Palestinian resentment and leading to an increase in support for Hamas and other militant groups. Ya'alon also accused the government of contributing to the failure of the Abbas government, claiming that Israel did not take enough steps to bolster Abbas, who ultimately resigned after a failed power struggle with Yasser Arafat. * * * CBC: November 14, 2003 ARAR CONFESSION LEAKS THROW SUSPICION ON CSIS: LAWYER TORONTO - Prime Minister Jean Chretien says there would be no point in Canada holding a pubic inquiry about Maher Arar's deportation to Syria, because he blames the United States. But Arar's lawyer says Canadian officials were involved all along. "It's awful what they've done, but it's the Americans who did it, not the Canadians," Chretien told CBC Radio's The Current. U.S. officials in New York stopped Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, when he tried to make a connecting flight home. They arrested him, held him for questioning, and eventually deported him -- not to Canada, but to Syria. Held for a year in a Syrian jail without ever being charged, Arar says he signed a confession to get his jailors to stop torturing him. "I confessed that I'd been to a training camp in Afghanistan," he said. Details of that confession have been leaked to the media in recent days, which makes Arar's lawyer Lorne Waldman more convinced that Canadian Security Intelligence Services or RCMP agents have been involved. Waldman wants to know why the Canadian intelligence agencies apparently have a copy of a confession signed by a Canadian under torture. He suggests CSIS agents went to Syria while Arar was being held and might have provided questions for the Syrians to ask. Waldman has filed a complaint about the leaks with Canada's privacy commissioner and RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli. * * * The Guardian (UK): November 14, 2003 FACILITY 1391: ISRAEL'S SECRET PRISON It has been removed from maps and airbrushed from aerial photographs. But Facility 1391 certainly exists - you just have to ask the Palestinians and Lebanese who have been imprisoned and tortured there. By Chris McGreal The men under the black hoods all have the same question once the blindfolds and manacles are off: Where am I? A voice filtering through a narrow slit in the steel door told Sameer Jadala he was "in Honolulu", Raab Bader that he was "in a submarine" and "outside the borders of Israel", Bashar Jadala that he was "on the moon". None of them imagined it at the time, because only a handful of the political and security establishment knew such a thing existed, but they were prisoners in Israel's Guantanamo: Facility 1391. "I was barefoot in my pyjamas when they arrested me and it was really cold," says Sameer Jadala, a Palestinian school bus driver. "When I got to that place, they told me to strip and gave me a blue uniform. Then they gave me a black sack. They told me: 'This is your sack. You need to keep it with you. Any time someone comes to your cell, you must put it on your head. Any time they deliver the food, you must put it on your head. You must never see the soldiers' faces. You do not want to know what will happen if you take it off.' Sometimes I thought I would die in that place and no one would ever know." Facility 1391 has been airbrushed from Israeli aerial photographs and purged from modern maps. Where once a police station was marked there is now a blank space. Sometimes even the road leading to it has been erased. But Israel's secret prison, inside an army intelligence base close to the main road between Hadera and Afula in northern Israel, is real enough. For 20 years or more it has been housed in a large, imposing, single-storey building designed by a British engineer, Sir Charles Taggart, during the 1930s as one of a series of garrison forts designed to contain growing unrest in Palestine. Today, the thick concrete walls and iron gates are themselves protected by a double fence overseen by watchtowers and patrolled by attack dogs. The prison has held Lebanese abducted by the Israeli army as hostages, Iraqi defectors and a Syrian intelligence officer who tried to defect but was accused of spying and chose to remain in another prison rather than return home and face a firing squad. More recently, scores of Palestinians were incarcerated in 1391 for interrogation, which finally led to the almost accidental disclosure of a prison the state decreed did not exist. Those who have been through its gates know it is no illusion. One former inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was raped twice - once by a man and once with a stick - during questioning. But most of those who emerge say the real torture is the psychological impact of solitary confinement in filthy, blackened cells so poorly lit that inmates can barely see their own hands, and with no idea where they are or, in many cases, why they are there. "Our main conclusion is that it exists to make torture possible - a particular kind of torture that creates progressive states of dread, dependency, debility," says Manal Hazzan, a human rights lawyer who helped expose the prison's existence. "The law gives the army enough authority already to hide prisoners, so why do they need a secret facility?" Unlike any other Israeli prison, the International Red Cross, lawyers and members of the Israeli parliament have been refused access. One leftwing MP, Zahava Gal-On, describes Facility 1391 as "one of the signs of totalitarian regimes and of the third world". The Israeli government declines to discuss the secret prison other than to issue a standard response: "Facility 1391 is situated on a secret military base. The base is used by the security services for various classified activities and thus its location is kept confidential." But it is not just human rights lawyers and leftwing MPs who have a problem. Ami Ayalon is a former head of Israel's intelligence service, the Shin Bet. He was told about 1391 but says he refused to have anything to do with it. "I knew there was a facility not under the responsibility of the Shin Bet, but under the responsibility of the military. I didn't think then, and I don't think today, that such an institution should exist in a democracy," he says. Sameer Jadala was detained at his home in Nablus last year at 3 o'clock on a December morning. For three days, the 33-year-old Palestinian was moved from one prison cell to another. On the fourth day, he was blindfolded, handcuffed and his feet manacled. Blacked-out glasses were pushed over his eyes as he was forced into the back of a car and on to the floor. Then he was covered with a blanket. Jadala estimates that he was driven for about an hour. "We were taken out one by one. The only reason I knew there were two other prisoners in the car was the sound of the chains," he says. "I was blindfolded right up to the time they took me to the cell. There was a small slit in the door. It was not even wide enough to push a cigarette through. A voice said, 'Take the blindfold off but any time I come you must put it on and put your hands on the wall.'" Raab Bader, a 38-year-old accountant and father of two, was also in the cells, although the two men had no contact. He too had been detained in Nablus, though he was convinced he had nothing to hide. "I was held like a blind mole, except for the prolonged hours that an [intelligence] agent interrogated me," he says. Bader was variously told that he was on a submarine, in space or outside the borders of Israel. He was pushed into a windowless cell, 6ft square. A fan high in the ceiling drives air into the cell, but inmates say the noise is deafening. "The cell walls were painted black. I never saw the ceiling. When I looked up, I saw only darkness. Light no stronger than the power of a candle penetrated in a peculiar way from one side of the room," he said in an affidavit. The bed was a thin, damp mattress on a concrete slab a few inches above the ground. The toilet was a bucket, emptied every few days. Water to the cell came out of a hole in the wall, controlled by the guard. "On the ninth consecu tive day in the stench-filled cell, one of the soldiers was supposed to come and take me out. He almost vomited and rushed out of the cell," Bader says. "I spent many days in that solitary confinement cell and in others like it, and hour after hour I would talk to myself and feel that I was going crazy, or find myself laughing to myself." Jadala was still trying to work out why he had been arrested in the first place. "I asked the interrogator: why am I here? What do you want from me? When I asked where I was, they told me I was in Honolulu. I didn't ask again," he says. It later dawned on Jadala that he was there because days earlier his brother, Mohammed, and a cousin, Basher, had been arrested while crossing into the West Bank from Jordan. Israel's intelligence service suspected that Mohammed was a member of Hamas. Sameer Jadala now believes he was detained as part of an elaborate psychological game to pressure his brother into talking. Mohammed Jadala, who is still a prisoner, has signed an affidavit alleging he was tortured into a confession. He says he was beaten during his initial interrogation at a regular prison and then moved to 1391. When he asked where he was, the reply was "on the moon". "They kept me there in a solitary cell for about 67 days. During this period, they continued with the torture, but they used a different method. They did not let me sleep more than two hours a day. When I started to get drowsy, they woke me up by making noise or by throwing water on me. As a result of the torture, they were able to get me to admit to all kinds of offences," he says. The interrogators brought the brothers together briefly, apparently as a means of letting Mohammed know that Sameer would pay the price if he didn't talk. "They took my brother and cousin to the secret facility and showed me them crying; the interrogators said that they would be tried because of me," Mohammed says. Probably the first prisoners at Facility 1391 were Lebanese. The prison is part of a military camp that is home to an army intelligence group, Unit 504, which specialises in interrogation. The unit has a hard reputation, and some of its members have badly blemished records. One has been accused of murder, another of spying. Unit 504's glory days were during Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, interrogating captured Hezbollah fighters and running an extensive network of collaborators, some of whom are still being put on trial for their lives by the Lebanese authorities. In the late 80s, Unit 504 went in search of another kind of prisoner; men who could be held hostage and exchanged for captured Israeli soldiers and airmen. In 1989, the Israelis seized Sheikh Abd al-Karim Obeid, a spiritual leader to Hezbollah. Five years later, they snatched Mustafa Dirani, a leading Shi'ite fighter. Both were taken directly to Facility 1391. The soldiers who grabbed Obeid also abducted his bodyguards, members of his family and Hashem Fahaf, a young man who happened to be visiting the sheikh to seek his blessing and who found himself locked up for the next 11 years, initially at 1391. Fahaf was never accused of any crime, but he was refused access to a lawyer and any other contact with the outside world. For the first few years, the Israelis denied they were even holding him. In April 2000, the Israeli supreme court finally ordered Fahaf's release. The government said it had been holding him and another 18 Lebanese as hostages - or "bargaining chips", as Israeli officials prefer to call it - in the hope of winning the release of an airforce navigator, Colonel Ron Arad. Mustafa Dirani, the primary target of the abductions, had been the head of security in the Shi'ite movement Amal, and held Arad for about two years, at times driving around with the Israeli colonel in the boot of his car. Dirani was questioned for five weeks around the clock. Freed from Facility 1391 eight years later but locked up in another Israeli prison, he filed a lawsuit in the Israeli courts alleging that he was sodomised by his Israeli interrogators. The legal action names a "Major George" who, Dirani alleges, ordered a soldier to rape him. On another occasion, the Lebanese prisoner accuses the major of thrusting a stick up his rectum. Other former prisoners at 1391 have described how they were stripped naked for interrogation, blindfolded and handcuffed, and a stick was pressed against their buttocks as they were threatened with rape. In its response to the lawsuit, the Israeli government denied Dirani was raped but it confirmed that prisoners were routinely stripped naked for interrogation. However, the state attorney's office later went further and said that "within the framework of a military police investigation the suspicion arose that an interrogator who questioned the complainant threatened to perform a sexual act on the complainant". "Major George" was sacked. Dozens of other interrogators signed a petition objecting to his punishment for using methods they said were sanctioned by the authorities. Another Lebanese prisoner, Ahmed Ali Banjek, was convicted of smuggling a surface-to-air missile into the Israeli-controlled zone of southern Lebanon on the basis of a confession made at 1391. He later told a military court that it had been extracted under torture, including being forced to sit on a stick until it penetrated his anus. The court was persuaded that the confession was not reliable, and released Banjek. Facility 1391 remained a secret for two decades or more because those delivered to its clutches could be made to disappear. But even amid the severity of occupation, Israel does recognise that Palestinians have rights. Last year, as the army rounded up thousands of Palestinians during the reoccupation of West Bank cities, it ran out of places to interrogate them. Some were delivered to 1391. A Jerusalem human rights organisation, the Centre for the Defence of the Individual (Hamoked), went in search of one man, Muatez Shahin, who was taken from his home by the army a year ago. The military insisted he was not on any of their lists of prisoners. Hamoked petitioned the high court and, after various attempts by the state to block the truth, won an unprecedented admission earlier this year that Shahin had disappeared into the previously unknown prison. State prosecutors initially told the court that the prison was no longer in use. A few weeks later, the state was forced to confess otherwise. "The circumstances have changed, and the security people have informed us that detainees are currently being held at Facility 1391," prosecutors told the court. Hamoked's director, Dalia Kerstein, an Israeli, was horrified. "I was shocked to find out there is such a facility. I don't want the country I live in to have such a secret prison," she said. "We're challenging the legality of this place. We're seeking to close it and we're challenging the whole system of interrogation that goes on in the facility and is a byproduct of the fact that this place is secret, including torture. "The psychological torture is very intense. People have been there for months at a time. I've met five people from different cities across the West Bank, from different organisations, and they all describe the same methods of torture. They're not beating people but there is very strong psychological torture that results in people hallucinating or having breakdowns." Sameer Jadala was close to breakdown as he was dragged through interrogation after interrogation that seemed to lead nowhere as his inquisitors tried to get him to implicate his brother or to confess to being a member of Hamas. Then his inquisitors offered him the chance to win his freedom with a lie-detector test. "I said I know beyond doubt that there is nothing on me. I took the test. At the end, they said 'Congratulations, Sameer' and I never saw them again," he says. "During the night I was visited by soldiers. I was blindfolded and had chains on my hands and legs. They put me into the car, covered me in a blanket and I was driven to a court near Jenin. "First I had to see a doctor, who asked me where I had been. I said: 'I don't know, I really don't know.' The doctor asked the soldier where I had been. The soldier waved his hand in the air as though he were pointing to a distant planet. The doctor stopped asking questions." Eventually, Jadala was dragged before a judge, who also wanted to know where he had been held. The prosecutor said he didn't know. "The judge wanted to know if I had a lawyer. I asked how I could appoint a lawyer when I didn't even know where I was. There was no way to contact anybody outside," he says. It wasn't the end of the ordeal. Government lawyers repeatedly asked the military courts to extend his detention on "security grounds" - by a week or two at a time - but never said what it was he was suspected of. "During one hearing I burst into tears. The judge asked me why I was crying. I said that for 30 days I didn't know where I was, I had no contact with a lawyer, I was transported in a brutal way. The judge finally said they had to come up with some evidence against me or let me go. So they let me go." * * * November 14, 2003 Toronto Globe and Mail PROBE NEEDED IN ARAR CASE By Audrey Macklin Dear Mr. Easter: The case of Mahar Arar demands your attention. Here is what we know about the facts: Mr. Arar is a dual Canadian-Syrian citizen. He was detained by U.S. authorities while changing planes in New York en route to his Ottawa home. He expressed his desire to proceed to Canada but U.S. authorities instead deported him to Syria via Jordan. Mr. Arar spent over 10 months in a Syrian jail. He was tortured. Here is what we know about the law: Section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees to every citizen the right to enter, remain and leave Canada. Canada has a correlative duty to admit any Canadian citizen. These principles are mirrored at international law. This means that once the United States decided to remove him, Mr. Arar had a legal right to enter Canada, and Canada had a legal duty to admit him. Do any of the additional facts and allegations affect this basic claim? Does it matter that Mr. Arar was a citizen of Canada by naturalization, and not by birth? No. His right as a citizen to enter and remain in Canada is equal to that of a Canadian citizen by birth. Does it matter that Mr. Arar is also a citizen of Syria? No. Canada's duty to admit him Arar is not affected by the fact that he is a dual citizen. As it happens, Syria does not even permit Syrians to renounce their citizenship. Was the U.S. free to choose the country of citizenship to which Mr. Arar would be sent? No. In the event of more than one country of citizenship, the citizen can exercise his or her right to enter against either country of citizenship. The choice belongs to the one who has the right. If the dual citizen does not wish to return to either, the sending country may face a dilemma, but no such dilemma was faced here. When choosing from among countries of citizenship, international human rights law, as well as U.S. law, dictates that a person must NOT be sent to a country that presents a substantial risk of torture. Syria is just such a country. Does it matter if Mr. Arar was alleged to have been involved in wrongdoing? No. Even if Mr. Arar were suspected of terror-related wrongdoing, his right to enter Canada, and the duty of Canada to admit him upon expulsion from the United States, remain unchanged. Canada now has an extremely expansive anti-terrorist law with wide-ranging powers of surveillance and enforcement. If Mr. Arar was suspected of breaking any of Canada's laws, Canada could have deployed its justice system against him, in Canada. Here is what we do not know: Why was Mr. Arar's right to enter Canada violated? Even if Canada did not actively collaborate with the U.S. in sending him to a country where he would likely be tortured, many questions remain. Did the United States deny Canada the opportunity to admit Mr. Arar, contrary to U.S. and international law? Did Canada refuse to admit Mr. Arar, contrary to Canadian and international law? If the former is true, what steps did Canada take once it realized that Mr. Arar was in Syria? After all, protecting citizens is the first responsibility of any state, and torture is among the most egregious violations of human rights. We cannot forget that at this moment, other Canadians are being detained and possibly tortured in Syria and Egypt. There are many other questions - particularly about Canada's role in gathering and furnishing information to U.S. authorities. Only an independent inquiry, with the authority to subpoena witnesses and compel disclosure of evidence, can address these questions. The RCMP Complaints Commission lacks these powers, and therefore is not the appropriate venue to bring the relevant facts to light. All Canadians - especially Maher Arar - deserve answers. Audrey Macklin, an associate professor with the University of Toronto's law faculty, and the undersigned call upon the government of Canada to hold a public inquiry into the treatment of Maher Arar: University of Toronto, Faculty of Law: Professor Kent Roach, Professor Tony Duggan, Professor Colleen Flood, Professor Jim Phillips, Professor Martha Shaffer, Professor Lorne Sossin, Professor Hamish Stewart, Professor David Dyzenhaus, Professor Denise Reaume, Professor Lisa Austin, Adjunct Professor Noah Novogrodsky From University of Toronto, International Human Rights Program: Penelope Simons (Research Fellow) Other universities: Francois Crepeau, Universite de Montreal, Law Janet Cleveland, PhD, Universite de Montreal Sharryn Aiken, Queen's University, Law Catherine Montgomery, McGill University, Sociology Peter Showler, University of Ottawa, Law Other: Georgette Gagnon, human rights lawyer Janet Dench, executive director, Canadian Council for Refugees Fernand Gauthier, former member, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada * * * The Daily Star (Beirut, Lebanon): November 14, 2003 THE LEGAL ‘BLACK HOLE' AT GUANTANAMO BAY By Alia Malek The administration of US President George W. Bush has hardly earned a squeaky clean record in its prosecution of its "war on terrorism." It has, however, earned the rancor of human rights groups in the US and around the world, international governmental organizations and other governments, including old allies. It has also provoked criticism from within its own ranks, and now will be challenged in the US Supreme Court, which this week agreed to consider whether prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba can challenge their detention in US courts. Part of the war on terrorism has seen the Bush administration engage the US in two military conflicts, in the course of which it has detained thousands of people. Many were seized and have remained in Afghanistan; over 600 have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay; and many others have been held in the US, sometimes under the jurisdiction of criminal courts, but increasingly out of their reach, pursuant to executive measures that the administration has instituted as it mocks the US Constitution and other core American values. Critics have accused the Bush administration of violating human and civil rights as well as international and domestic law. Of particular relevance is Guantanamo Bay. There, the US has detained people, including children and the elderly, whom it alleges are Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters. The detainees have been held without charge, trial and without access to any court, lawyer, or family members. The administration has justified these detentions by labeling the detainees "enemy combatants" and asserting that the war on terrorism is so unique that the US is free from the fetters of international law. However, a British court has referred to this as creating a "legal black hole." Several human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights have correctly asserted that the Bush administration is wrong and that international law does apply to the detainees. By engaging in military operations in Afghanistan, the US triggered the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which apply to "all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict" between two or more high contracting parties, which both the US and Afghanistan are. Consequently, any detentions of persons in Afghanistan are covered under the Third or Fourth Geneva Conventions. Most importantly, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the authoritative interpreter of the conventions, "nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law." The Third Geneva Convention applies to the protection and treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). Because certain rights ensue from POW status, there are stringent definitions as to who qualifies as a war prisoner. In the case of Afghanistan, captured Taleban forces are POWs, as they fought on behalf of the country's government. POW status provides protection for the act of taking up arms against opposing military forces and requires repatriation once the conflict ends. While other detainees are not entitled to the same rights that apply to POWs, such persons are still protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilian persons in time of war, as well as other international law. Thus, it needs to be determined who of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay were Taleban fighters, and therefore are POWs, and who was fighting for Al-Qaeda, and therefore are not POWs, unless the detainees can show they were part of the Taleban's armed forces, or that they meet other specific requirements under the Third Geneva Convention. Under the convention, however, such a determination requires that a competent tribunal be established to determine, on a case-by- case basis, whether each detainee is entitled to POW status. Until that is determined, all should enjoy the protection of the convention and be treated as POWs. The Bush administration has insisted that none of the Guantanamo detainees are POWs. (It also claims that treating them as such or allowing them other rights guaranteed to accused persons would jeopardize America's security). However, specialized UN bodies have said that the authority competent to make such determinations is the judiciary, not the executive. Moreover, the ICRC has repeatedly urged the administration to clarify the legal status of each detainee "on an individual basis." While POWs cannot be tried or punished simply for participating in an armed conflict, war prisoner status does not protect detainees from being tried and punished for criminal offenses against the detaining power's soldiers. Thus, where there is evidence, the US can charge any Guantanamo detainee with war crimes, crimes against humanity, or other violations of US criminal law, whether or not a competent tribunal determines they are POWs. However, in such cases where the US prosecutes, POW status would entitle defendants trial by the same courts and procedures that US military personnel would face. Non-POWs, while not entitled to the extensive trial rights of POWs, are allowed a "fair and regular trial" before a "properly constituted, non- political military court." Both kinds of defendant would have the right to counsel, to be informed of the charges against them and to appeal a conviction and sentence. In addition, there have been serious allegations that the Bush administration has used torture and inhumane treatment at Guantanamo. Such methods are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and US law. Equally disturbing, and as illegal, are reports that a number of detainees have been turned over for questioning to countries where torture and other mistreatment are common, such as Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and even Syria. The Pentagon has refused to confirm or deny these allegations. The Bush administration's selective approach to international law is damaging on many fronts. First, while the architects of the war on terrorism sit safely in Washington, US soldiers have been placed in jeopardy in conflict zones: If the US can choose when to apply the Geneva Conventions, US soldiers might, similarly, find themselves at the whim of a detaining power. On these grounds, some retired US military officers are backing in US courts detainees contesting their imprisonment. Second, such policies hardly serve legitimate US security interests. The administration is only giving fuel to those who use American unilateralism to justify anti-American sentiment. And third, the US' ability and legitimacy to advocate for human rights with other states has been greatly diminished. Moreover, eroding the already fragile international consensus on torture and what constitutes fair detentions does not make for a safer world. The administration should heed calls to comply with international and domestic law. In the case of the latter, the Supreme Court justices must act in the likely event that the executive branch does not. But the rest of the world, especially the European Union, must insist even more vigorously on respect for the international system, and if necessary sanction the US under it. To many, Bush's flouting of the system and of human rights has delivered the coup de grace to both as foundations for international coexistence. Perhaps the only way to re-establish their relevance and legitimacy is to rein Bush in under their banner. Principles of international law and human rights exist to ensure a fair fight in which human dignity is protected. It may be tempting to regard them as hindrances and dispensable now that there are new actors not "playing fair." However, it is precisely in our willingness to remain bound by them in trying times that their true measure lies. [ Alia Malek, a human rights attorney, was one of the first Arab-Americans to serve in the US Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR. ] * * * Moscow Times (Rus): November 14, 2003 THE INHUMAN STAIN By Chris Floyd http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/11/14/120.html There is a horrible scandal eating away the heart of the American body politic. Among the many corrupted currents loosed upon the nation by the Bush Regime, this scandal is perhaps the worst, for it abets all the others and breeds new pestilence, new perversions at every turn. Last week, Maher Arar of Canada detailed his ordeal at the hands of Attorney General John Ashcroft's security "organs." Returning from a family holiday in Tunis, the Syrian-born Arar -- 16 years a Canadian citizen -- was seized at a New York airport. Jailed and interrogated without charges, on unspecified allegations of unspecified connections to unspecified terrorist groups, he was then deported, without a hearing, to Syria. When he told the Homeland Chekists he would be tortured there -- his family was marked down as dissidents by Syria's Baathist regime -- the Chekists replied that their organ "was not the body that deals with the Geneva Conventions regarding torture." They shackled him and flew him to the America-friendly regime in Jordan; from there he was bundled across the border to Damascus, The Washington Post reports. But this is not the scandal we were speaking of. For 10 months, Arar was held in a dank cell in Syria: a "grave," he called it, a closet-sized unlighted hole filled with cat and rat piss falling down from the grating overhead. He was beaten, often with electrical cable, for weeks on end, kept awake for days, made to witness and hear even more exquisite tortures applied to other prisoners. He was forced to sign false confessions. Ashcroft's Baathist comrades had a preset storyline they wanted filled in: that Arar had gone to Afghanistan, attended terrorist training camps, was plotting mayhem -- the usual template. Arar, who had spent years working as a computer consultant for a Boston-based high-tech firm, had done none of those things. Yet he was whipped, broken and tortured into submission. But this is not the scandal we were speaking of. Arar's case is not extraordinary. In the past two years, the Bushist organs have "rendered" thousands of detainees, without charges, hearings or the need to produce any evidence whatsoever, into the hands of regimes which the U.S. government itself denounces for the widespread use of torture. Apparatchiks of the organs make no secret of the practice -- or of their knowledge that the "rendered" will indeed be beaten, burned, drugged, raped, even killed. "I do it with my eyes open," one renderer told The Washington Post. Detainees -- including lifelong American residents -- have been snatched from homes, businesses, schools, from streets and airports, and sent to torture pits like Syria, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan. But this is not the scandal we were speaking of. Of course, the American organs needn't rely exclusively on foreigners for torture anymore. Under the enlightened leadership of Ashcroft, Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other upstanding Christian statesmen, America has now established its own centers for what the organs call "operational flexibility." These include bases in Afghanistan and Diego Garcia, the Indian Ocean island that was forcibly depopulated in the 1960s to make way for a U.S. military installation. Here, the CIA runs secret interrogation units that are even more restricted than the American concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. Detainees -- again, held without charges or evidentiary requirements -- are "softened up" by beatings at the hands of military police and Special Forces troops before being subjected to "stress and duress" techniques: sleep deprivation (officially condemned as torture by the U.S. government), physical and psychological disorientation, withholding of medical treatment, etc. When beatings and "duress" don't work, detainees are then "packaged" -- hooded, gagged, bound to stretchers with duct tape -- and "rendered" into less dainty hands elsewhere, The Washington Post reports. But this is not the scandal we were speaking of. Not content with capture and torture, the organs have been given presidential authority to carry out raids and kill "suspected terrorists" (including Americans) on their own volition -- without charges, oversight or evidence -- anywhere in the world, including on American soil. What's more, through a series of executive orders, Bush has asserted the right to designate anyone he pleases "an enemy combatant" and have them "rendered" into indefinite detention or simply killed at his order -- again, without charges, evidence, oversight or appeal. The life of every American citizen -- every person on Earth -- is now at the mercy of his arbitrary whim. But this is not the scandal we were speaking of. All of the above facts -- each of them manifest violations of international law and/or the U.S. Constitution -- have been cheerfully attested to, for years now, by the organs' own apparatchiks, quoted in numerous high-profile, mainstream publications, including The New York Times, The Economist, Newsweek and others. The stories appear -- then they disappear. There is no reaction. No outcry in Congress or the courts -- the supposed guardians of the people's rights -- beyond a few wan calls for more formality in the concentration camp processing or judicial "warrants" for torture. And among the great mass of "the people" itself, there is -- nothing. Silence. Inattention. Indifference. Acquiescence. State terrorism -- lawless seizure, filthy torture, official murder -- is simply accepted, a part of "normal life," as in Nazi Germany or Stalin's empire, where "decent people" with "nothing to hide" approved and applauded the work of the "organs" in "defending national security." This is the scandal, this is the nation's festering shame. This acquiescence to state terror will breed -- and attract -- a thousand evils for every one it supposedly prevents * * * Los Angeles Times: November 13, 2003 LINGUIST ACCUSED OF DATA BREACHES AT BASE IN CUBA * The contract worker gathered, transmitted and lost secret defense information related to Guantanamo detainees, an indictment charges. By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- A linguist at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday for allegedly "gathering, transmitting and losing defense information" that was part of the military's highly secret operation of interrogating suspected terrorist detainees at the prison camp there. Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, a private contract employee who worked with the detainees, most of whom are suspected of being Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, was arrested Sept. 29 at Logan International Airport in Boston while returning from Egypt. Customs and Border Protection officials found he was carrying compact discs that included sensitive and secret material from the Camp Delta prison. At that time, he was charged only with making false statements to authorities. But the indictment, announced by U.S. Atty. Michael J. Sullivan in Boston, goes much further, alleging that Mehalba was not authorized to have the material in the first place and that he was supposed to have delivered it to a U.S. military official before going to Egypt. He also was charged with twice lying to authorities after his arrest -- once in claiming that he did not realize he had the secret material and once in stating that he had never received a security clearance by the government. Last month, a federal magistrate in Massachusetts found there was probable cause to believe that Mehalba, 31, had indeed converted classified material to his own use. If convicted of the charges, he faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. Mehalba is one of three staff members at Camp Delta to have been arrested in a widening probe into security problems there. The others are a Muslim chaplain and another linguist. The arrests have embarrassed the military and have prompted a thorough in-house review of how to improve security measures at the installation, which holds about 660 detainees. Mehalba has pleaded not guilty. His Boston attorney, Michael Andrews, said Mehalba "truthfully" does not know how the material ended up in his luggage. "Mr. Mehalba has all along maintained that he was not a terrorist and was not involved in terrorism," Andrews said. "He is a patriotic, hard-working guy. "There's no accusation that he was operating on behalf of any group or organization or in conjunction with anyone else. He's just charged with basically mishandling sensitive materials." Government evidence at the earlier hearing in Worcester, Mass., showed that Mehalba had been carrying reams of documents stored among some of his 132 computer discs and that the material had been alternately marked "secret," "sensitive" and "classified." The government also provided evidence that Mehalba had been given numerous security briefings and that he knew he was not to leave the U.S. base in Cuba with any classified material. Unlike the other two defendants, who are being tried in the military court system, Mehalba is being prosecuted in federal court. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Egypt who also has served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer. He is the nephew of a retired Egyptian army intelligence officer. At the Cuban prison, he was working as a linguist on a contract basis for the Titan Corp., a defense industry firm based in San Diego. Sullivan, the federal prosecutor who announced the indictment, said Mehalba had told airport security officials that "he had been visiting his father in Egypt and that he was a private contractor for the Army working as a linguist at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." It was this combination that sparked their suspicion, which was heightened when he refused to turn over or to explain special security identification badges he was carrying from Camp Delta. Sullivan said the indictment charged that Mehalba "willfully retained and failed to deliver to authorized government officials" the classified material. But neither Sullivan nor the indictment identified the material or who it was meant for within the U.S. government. However, Sullivan said the indictment "demonstrates our commitment to prosecute those whose actions may compromise the security of the United States." He added, "We will dedicate the resources necessary to protect our homeland." * * * Toronto Globe and Mail: November 13, 2003 CRITICS USE ARAR CASE TO SLAM DETENTIONS By Colin Freeze One week after Maher Arar spoke out about being tortured in Syria, his name is being invoked by a host of critics who insist his case is only one example among many wrongful detentions of Canadian al-Qaeda suspects. Observers are using the Arar case to highlight those of 17-year-old Omar Khadr, a juvenile held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and 20-year-old Mohamed Mansour Jabarah, imprisoned in the United States. While these two prisoners have clear links to violent al-Qaeda activity, more ambiguous intelligence surrounds other men, such as Hassan Almrei, 29, in Toronto; Abullah Almalki, 33, in Syria; and Ahmad Abou El-Maati, 39, in Egypt. But in each of these detentions -- and others -- Mr. Arar's release has given critics fresh ammunition, as well as a lesson in cultivating public attention as they seek answers and assistance from Ottawa. "After Mr. Arar was released -- thank God -- I said 'Well this is fresh news,' so I started to come to the media, and here I am," said Badr El-Maati, speaking yesterday outside Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham's Toronto office. Mr. El-Maati, a 69-year-old Torontonian whose son is being held in Egypt, was surrounded by reporters as he pressed for an audience to discuss the case with the minister. Mr. Graham was not there, but a staff member said he would relay the request. Outside, Mr. El-Maati told reporters his 39-year-old son Ahmad was monitored by Canadian spies before flying to Syria in November, 2001. He was arrested, tortured and made to sign a false confession before being handed over to Egypt, his father said. Reporters noted this but asked no questions about Mr. El-Maati's other son, 40- year-old Amer, a wanted al-Qaeda suspect whose image is on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Web site. In interviews with The Globe and Mail, Mr. El- Maati said neither of his sons are terrorists, and that he has not seen Amer in years. Civil-rights activist Matthew Behrens arranged the visit to Mr. Graham's office. He is involved in drawing attention to the cases of several al-Qaeda suspects deemed threats to Canada's national security. One is Mr. Almrei, a refugee jailed on secret evidence whom Canada is trying to deport to Syria. "It's clear he would be tortured if he went to Syria," Mr. Behrens said yesterday, pointing to the Arar case. Family members of Abdullah Almalki, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, last week went public with fears he, too, is being tortured in Damascus after being arrested in April, 2002. They stated this only after Mr. Arar said he saw Mr. Almalki in prison, and that he "was very, very thin and pale. He was very weak." Details of Mr. Arar's conversations with his Syrian captors during his 10 months in jail recently were leaked to the Canadian news media. Mr. Arar filed a privacy complaint with the federal government yesterday, complaining that incriminating -- and false -- information he made up under torture is being circulated. The leaks are simply clumsy attempts to discredit Mr. Arar and divert attention from the apparent complicity of the RCMP in his deportation, said his lawyer, Lorne Waldman. "Mr. Arar is deeply distressed by the serious invasion of his privacy that has occurred as a result of these leaks," the lawyer said in a letter to the privacy commissioner. In a letter to the RCMP commissioner, Mr. Waldman said the leaks almost certainly came from the Mounties and would "constitute an illegal act committed by members of your force." Gar Pardy, recently retired head of consular services at the Department of Foreign Affairs, said he is concerned about another case, that of Mohamed Mansour Jabarah. "CSIS brought him back here and convinced him to go into the States," Mr. Pardy said. The 21-year-old from St. Catharines, Ont., has admitted to plotting al-Qaeda bombings in Singapore before he was arrested in Oman then handed over to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The agency persuaded Mr. Jabarah to cross the border. He remains there today, working out a deal with the U.S. government. * * * Al-Ahram: November 13, 2003 AN EXTRAORDINARY VIOLATION The plight of Canadian-Syrian Maher Arar is a disturbing example of how far the United States is prepared to go in its hunt for suspected terrorists By Jaideep Mukerji On 26 September 2002, Maher Arar landed at John F Kennedy International Airport, stepped off an airplane and walked into a nightmare. Arar, 33, was stopped by US officials during a routine layover in New York as he returned home to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia. He was subsequently detained and subjected to interrogations by US officials who accused him of having links to Al-Qa'eda. Then, using a covert procedure known as an "extraordinary rendition", US officials secretly deported Arar to Syria even though he had been travelling on a Canadian passport and had not been to Syria in over 15 years. Arar claims that once in Syria he was tortured and forced to sign false statements about his involvement with Al-Qa'eda. The incident has once again raised serious concerns about questionable US treatment of suspected terrorists, and has also sparked outrage in Canada over why Canadian officials were unable to prevent Arar's deportation. Speaking to reporters last week, Arar gave a vivid account of his ordeal, starting with his detention in the US. "A team of people came and told me they wanted to ask me some questions," he said. "I was scared and I told them I wanted a lawyer. They told me I had no right to a lawyer, because I was not an American citizen. They swore at me, and insulted me. I was very, very worried, and asked for a lawyer again and again. They just ignored me." Arar says he was deprived of food and sleep and was not allowed to make a phone call until five days into his detention. During that time, Arar says American officials accused him of hiding facts about his relationship with another Syrian-Canadian, Abdullah Al-Malki, whom US officials apparently also suspected of having links to Al-Qa'eda. Arar pleaded with his interrogators to let him pass through to Canada and claims he repeatedly told them that he would be tortured in Syria. After eight days in custody, US officials finally allowed Arar to meet with a Canadian consular official. The official, Arar says, told him that Canada would provide a lawyer and assured him that the US would not deport him to Syria. A few days later, however, that is precisely what happened. Arar was flown to Syria and taken to a prison in Damascus. "I [lived] in a grave," Arar said, describing his cell at the prison. "It had no light. It was three feet wide. It was six feet deep. There was a small opening in the ceiling, about one foot by two feet with iron bars. There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time the cats peed through the opening into the cell. I spent 10 months and 10 days inside that grave." Arar alleges that he was repeatedly tortured by Syrian officials and forced to sign a confession stating that he had received training at an Al-Qa'eda terrorist camp in Afghanistan, despite the fact that he had never set foot in Afghanistan. It took a year of intense international pressure and diplomatic wrangling to secure Arar's release. Arar says he is innocent and told reporters that he will fight as long as it takes to clear his name. "I want to know why this happened to me. I have never had trouble with the police, and have always been a good citizen. I am not a terrorist. I am not a member of Al-Qa'eda and I do not know anyone who belongs to this group." Lorne Waldman, Arar's lawyer, told Al- Ahram Weekly that his client's plight has shed light on how the US government deals with suspected terrorists. "We now know that it is a standard practice for the US to render low level suspects to third countries where they are tortured to get information," he said, adding that such extraordinary renditions are "a blatant and flagrant violation of international law". The Washington Post, which first broke the story of extraordinary renditions to the US public last week, quoted one unnamed US official as saying "The temptation is to have [terrorist suspects] in other hands because they have different standards." Another official added that "someone might be able to get information we can't from detainees." An official with the US Department of Homeland Security told the Weekly that the US government was perfectly within its rights to deport Arar to any country it wished. "The laws and regulations do govern the removal process to include determining which nation an individual is sent to," he said. "The law was followed in this particular case." Steven Watt, a human rights lawyer with the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, disagrees. His is investigating the US's actions in the Arar case and explained to the Weekly that "the US has ratified the UN Convention Against Torture and is therefore under a binding legal obligation not to send persons to countries where they will be subjected to torture," adding that "even under US domestic law, there are certainly due processes to which Mr Arar was entitled to and did not receive." The Canadian government has so far maintained that it had no idea Arar was going to be deported and that it did everything it could to protect him. A spokesperson for Canada's foreign affairs minister told reporters that, "Everyone was completely taken by surprise by the fact that the Americans -- despite the fact that we are good neighbours -- chose to deport [Arar] to a country where he did not want to go." Critics, however, point to recent statements by US officials who claim that Arar became a suspect only after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) alerted them to his possible links with Al- Malki as proof that Canada did in fact play a role in Arar's deportation. Watt told the Weekly "if the RCMP was in fact sending information to the US, they would have been complicit because that information was what ultimately led to Arar's deportation." Canadian officials vehemently deny that they were knowingly involved in Arar's deportation and have suggested that moles in Canada's intelligence community may be responsible for providing information on Arar to US officials. The Canadian government promised an investigation but is refusing to launch a public inquiry into the matter. As Arar's lawyer, Waldman finds that unacceptable. "We need to know if Arar's deportation was done in collaboration with Canada, over the objections of Canada or without Canada's knowledge. An [RCMP] investigation is not enough; we are extremely disappointed that the government has not called a public inquiry into the matter." Waldman pointed out that Canada took drastic security measures in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and that Arar's case is a clear example of the deleterious effects those measures are having. "Canada needs to rethink its cooperation with the US over the war on terror if the US is going to render Canadian citizens to other countries to be tortured," he said. "There is a situation now here where if you know someone who happens to know someone who might be a terrorist, then you yourself are a suspect. That's incredibly dangerous." * * * November 13, 2003 THE UPCOMING SUPREME COURT CASES INVOLVING THE GUANTANAMO DETAINEES Why They Will Be Transcendently Important By EDWARD LAZARUS elazarus@findlaw.com http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20031113.html Every year, the Supreme Court decides a group of especially significant cases, landmarks in the evolution of our constitutional system. Last year, for example, the decisions assessing the constitutionality of the University of Michigan's affirmative action programs were among the landmarks of the Term. And then, every once in a while, for good or for ill, the Court decides a case of truly transcendent importance - a Dred Scott v. Sanford or Brown v. Board of Education or Nixon v. United States. Such a case not only has powerful legal and political significance but also tests and illuminates the character of the Court and of the country. Separating the transcendent cases from the merely important ones, is a task best done with benefit of hindsight. But in this column, I will hazard a prediction. Recently, the Supreme Court granted review of the cases arising from the detention of aliens captured in Afghanistan and now imprisoned at Guantanamo. In resolving these cases, the Supreme Court will be testing nothing less than its own and the nation's commitment to the rule of law and the ideal of Americanism that may yet inspire a planet. Its decisions on these issues are almost certain to be of the kind of transcendent importance that makes or breaks not only a Term, but a Court, and even a nation. Why the Stakes in the Guantanamo Cases Are Exceptionally High At first blush, perhaps what I have said will seem like overstatement. After all, the actual legal issue that is before the court is fairly narrow, and extremely remote from everyday American life. The issue is this: Do the federal courts have the authority to consider, even minimally, the legality of the detention of aliens seized last year during the fighting in Afghanistan and imprisoned at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay? Or, alternatively, is their imprisonment (and eventual release, if they are ever released, and trial, if they are ever tried) a matter left entirely to the discretion of the Executive Branch? The stakes in the Guantanamo cases, however, extend far beyond the seemingly arcane world of federal court jurisdiction. At bottom, the Bush Administration is claiming for itself the unilateral authority to detain the citizens of allied countries, hold them without charge, deny them access to lawyers, and grant them no recourse either to American courts or to relief under international law. In short, the Administration is claiming the right to create a modern-day Bastille in which it can warehouse foreign nationals for justifications known only to itself. That question is a profoundly important one. In a technical sense, it involves the meaning of Constitutional Due Process, and its application to foreign nationals held by the U.S.. But it a deeper sense, it involves the issue of what kind of nation America wants to be - one where the Executive department considers itself legally accountable, or one where it does not. The Key Supreme Court Precedent Relevant to the Guantanamo Cases As a legal matter, the Administration's position is not without some basis in past case law. The key precedent is the 1950 Supreme Court decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. The case arose because, near the end of World War II, a U.S. military tribunal convened in China convicted a group of Germans of aiding the Japanese against the United States -- a war crime. The Germans sought review of their convictions. But the Court ruled that U.S. federal courts had no jurisdiction to hear their claims. Is Eisentrager just like the Guantanamo cases? The answer is no -- for three reasons. First, the Germans had already received some due process, having been convicted of war crimes by a properly constituted legal tribunal. The Administration claims the right to imprison the Guantanamo detainees with no process at all. Second, the Germans were clearly "enemy combatants," and thus had radically diminished legal rights. In contrast, the Guantanamo detainees say they are not -- and, indeed, that they never participated in any hostile action against the U.S.. (Far from being soldiers in enemy armies, many are citizens of countries allied with the United States.) In addition, for the purposes of assessing federal court jurisdiction, as a technical matter, these denials of enemy combatant status must be deemed to be true. And that makes perfect sense. These issues are the ones the federal court, if it had jurisdiction, would consider. They shouldn't be resolved before the court can even take a look. Third, the Germans were held abroad. The detainees are held in Guantanamo, which (as Anupam Chander has explained in a column for this site) is U.S. territory in everything but "ultimate sovereignty" - which rests with Cuba. Once all these facts are put together, Eisentrager seems quite inapposite. There, the Germans were seeking judicial redress as convicted enemy combatants being held on foreign soil. Here, the Guantanamo detainees are seeking judicial redress as foreign nationals neither charged with, nor convicted of, any crime, while they are being held on land entirely within U.S. control. Still, Eisentrager is a broadly written opinion. And it contains snippets of language from which a clever lawyer (like Solicitor General Ted Olson) could plausibly argue that the combination of a foreign nationality and extraterritoriality means no constitutional rights, and no recourse to an American court. And technically, Guantanamo is extraterritorial. The Court's 1990 decision in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez could also lend credence to such a view. There, the Justices ruled that U.S. agents did not have to comply with the Fourth Amendment's limits on searches and seizures when, while in a foreign country, the agents seized the property of a nonresident alien (who was wanted in a drug case). But Verdugo-Urquidez, too, is distinguishable: Although the defendant in that case could not avail himself of the Fourth Amendment's warrant clause, he was nonetheless afforded all other due process protections afforded criminal defendants when ultimately tried. As Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion makes clear, that case stands only for the proposition that what process is "due" a non-citizen in a case involving extraterritorial actions by the United States will depend on individual facts and circumstances. In short, the decision lends only modest support for the idea that the U.S. may permanently deny due process to detainees who are locked up in what, in effect, in U.S. territory. Another Way the Administration Can Win: Deference on Enemy Combatant Status Despite these distinctions, a broad reading of Eisentrager, plus reliance on a broad reading of Verdugo-Urquidez, could mean a win for the Bush Administration. And there's another way it could win, as well. The Administration could also prevail if it convinced the Court that it must consider the Guantanamo detainees "enemy combatants" (notwithstanding their denials) because the Administration claims they are and, according to the Administration, no court has the power to review this judgment. As noted above, such a ruling would thwart typical jurisdictional law. It would also be unfair, as it would summarily resolve against the detainees the very question they seek to have a court review -- and then deny court review based on that summary resolution. Placing someone who seeks review in that impossible position is hardly due process in any sense of the phrase. What Will Likely Be the True Basis for the Court's Decision In the end, however, I don't expect that the Justices are going to decide the Guantanamo cases based mainly on a reading of the Court's precedents. Neither Eisentrager nor Verdugo-Urquidez provide clear enough guidance. Indeed, the Executive's claim of authority to act independently of any outside legal constraint, and without providing any due process, is truly unprecedented. In Eisentrager, as noted above, convictions had already been duly rendered. In Verdugo-Urquidez, a seizure was at issue; after that seizure, process could and did follow. As a result, the Justices have lots of room, in the Guantanamo cases, to make law without disturbing previous decisions. Thus, instead of looking to precedent, I think a majority -- including Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court's pre-eminent moralist and a crucial swing vote -- will be moved by a visceral repulsion. They will be repelled -- rightly so -- by the idea that the Executive Branch may limitlessly detain any person without trial of any kind and hold that person incommunicado without any judicial review at all. That didn't happen in Eisentrager or Verdugo-Urquidez. But it's happening now at Guantanamo. For these Justices, such Executive self-aggrandizement will run headlong into basic notions of Constitutional checks and balances, and of the proper role of the Judicial Branch in particular. It will also run smack into the historical view - dating back at least to the Magna Carta - that unchecked Executive authority is a basic hallmark of tyranny. This negative reaction, moreover, is likely to be compounded by the fact that the Administration's legal arguments will importantly hinge on a claim that, even viewed charitably, is mere hair-splitting. It is the claim that Guantanamo, land that the United States holds under lease in perpetuity and over which it exercises total control, is not U.S. territory because Cuba holds "ultimate sovereignty" to the land. For these reasons, I believe the Court will rebuke the Administration in the Guantanamo cases. At a minimum, it will require that judicial review of "enemy combatant" status be provided. Even If Legally Defensible, the Bush Administration's Claims Are A Policy Disaster Meanwhile, a question of surpassing importance remains unanswered. I've explained why the Bush Administration is able to concoct a plausible (though not convincing) legal basis for its claim of unrestrained power over the Guantanamo detainees. But why in the world is it choosing to do so? In the international community, the Administration's approach exposes the nation to the corrosive charge of hypocrisy. The charge is simple but powerful: America cannot impose democratic norms on others while flouting the rule of law at home. Meanwhile, this approach exposes Americans stationed abroad to the substantial danger that other countries will give Americans taken prisoner the same legal rights the U.S. is affording the Guantanamo detainees -- that is, none at all. Even within our own borders, the Administration approaches creates risk and distrust. Most people recognize that, in the age of terrorism we now entered decisively, Americans will be called upon to trade some of their liberty for a greater assurance of security. But, at the same time, they hope that incursions on liberty will be minimized -- taken as a regrettable necessity, not a fresh opportunity to avariciously expand power. This hope is dashed when, as in the Guantanamo cases, the Executive Branch arrogates to itself the right to exercise totally unreviewable power. Courts patrol the boundary of our liberties. But what if the courts cannot intervene? In sum, we can be hopeful (though never extravagantly) that the Guantanamo cases will mark a decisive high note in the Supreme Court's sporadic history of checking unbridled governmental power. But it will remain a sad and troubling fact that the hubris of the Bush Administration made this test of national character necessary in the first place. [ Edward Lazarus writes about, practices, and teaches law in Los Angeles. A former federal prosecutor, he is the author of two books - most recently, Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court. ] * * * Birmingham Post (UK) November 13, 2003 FATHER CLAIMS SON HAS BEEN TORTURED By Richard Warburton, Birmingham Post The father of a Birmingham man detained as a suspected terrorist in Guantanamo Bay yesterday claimed his son had been brutally tortured. Azmat Begg said 35-year-old Moazzam had made references to being beaten by US interrogators at the notorious Camp Delta in Cuba. Mr Begg's comments came after lawyers for his son and a second detained Briton intensified pressure on Prime Minister Tony Blair to use next week's visit by President George Bush to secure the suspects' return to Britain. Psychiatric reports suggested that Feroz Abbasi, from London, had been forced into making confessions by Camp Delta officials. Mr Begg, a former bank manager from Showell Green, said he had become increasingly concerned by letters he had received from his son which made references to torture and also questioned his mental state. "We are concerned he is in a state of depression," said Mr Begg. "He also mentioned his fingernails were being treated and that he was using cream to apply to his body. The main reason for the American authorities not to show prisoners to the public or to lawyers or relations is because their body is not in the right shape. "They must have tortured them so badly that it is not possible to show it to their relations." Moazzam Begg was seized by the Central Intelligence Agency in February 2002 after he had moved to Islamabad in Pakistan from Afghanistan following allied attacks in October 2001. The CIA and Pakistan police officers took him back to Kabul, where he was held at Bagram airbase for nearly a year until he was taken to Guantanamo Bay under similar circumstances to fellow Briton Feroz Abbasi. Louise Christian, solicitor for Mr Abbasi's family, yesterday said she was going to write to the Prime Minister asking for him to raise with President Bush that all British residents in Guantanamo Bay be brought back to this country. "We have the most Draconian anti-terrorist laws in Europe," she said. "If they have done something they can be prosecuted here and if they haven't done anything they can't be prosecuted - so be it, because that's the nature of a fair trial." Chairman of the Bar Council's human rights committee Peter Carter QC said he was concerned a series of negotiations between Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and the Pentagon had failed to reach agreement. "Clearly the Attorney General believes Guantanamo Bay cannot have a fair trial - that's why he's been making such strenuous efforts on behalf of British citizens," said Mr Carter. "The problem is that Lord Goldsmith is not a member of the Cabinet and it looks, sadly, as if his efforts have failed." Ms Christian also revealed an anonymous Pentagon psychiatrist had examined Mr Abbasi, and a report on his mental state had been forwarded to her by the Foreign Office. It reported that the detainee had "overcome much of his mistrust in recent months and exhibited much more outgoing behaviour and co-operation with a better mood and emotional disposition". Beforehand, the psychiatrist noted, he had "exhibited withdrawn behaviour suggestive of recurrent depression". Professor of Forensic Psychology at the University of London, Professor Gisli Gudjonsson, was commissioned to study the Pentagon report, and concluded it was unclear how Mr Abbasi had overcome mistrust of his captors. He speculated that he may have negotiated a deal with the authorities, or been persuaded to reveal incriminating material. * * * Sydney Morning Herald: November 13, 2003 GUANTANAMO ESCAPE MAY BE JUSTIFIED: KIRBY By Cynthia Banham http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/12/1068329638532.html If a cell in Guantanamo Bay, the American prison holding two Australians captured in the war on terrorism, had a broken toilet, was full of vermin, rats and cockroaches, and bread was the only food, would a detainee not be justified in law to try to escape? This was the question Justice Michael Kirby threw at the Federal Government's barrister, the Solicitor-General David Bennett QC, in a ground-breaking case heard in the High Court yesterday, testing for the first time Australia's mandatory immigration detention scheme. The hearing involved three separate cases. In one, asylum seekers who escaped from the Woomera detention centre claimed as their defence that conditions were so bad their detention was invalid. The Solicitor-General argued that if conditions were bad in prison, a person had the right to seek remedies in either tort or criminal law; but no matter how bad the conditions, it did not make the detention itself illegal. His argument divided the bench. Justice Kirby said he had seen prisons in Cambodia which were so bad that if he were detained in one he would "feel duty- bound, as a human being, to remove myself from it". "If you say that if conditions fall below those standards, which are standards of human dignity, are so awful that they do not then respond to the word in an Australian statute - 'prison', 'detention', 'punishment' - then a person is not in prison, detention or punishment but in a vermin-infested cell and therefore entitled to walk away from it, because that is not the lawful punishment for which Australian law provides," Justice Kirby said. However, some of his brother judges took a different view. Justice Michael McHugh said imprisonment did not become unlawful "because the person is bashed every day by jailers". Justice Kirby cautioned him to "keep an open mind" and said: "A point would be reached where, if there is violence, that is not punishment, that is not the lawful punishment that a court of law in Australia has provided." The second case testing the legitimacy of immigration detention concerns Iraqi- born Abbas Al-Khafaji, whom the Government acknowledges is a refugee but denies him a visa, saying he could seek asylum in Syria. The man was released from detention by the Federal Court after three years because, although he had been asked to be deported, the Government had been unable to find a country willing to accept him. The third case involves a stateless Palestinian whose refugee application has been refused. He too has asked to be deported, without success. Justice Ian Callinan also clashed with Justice Kirby over his comments about Australia's obligations to asylum seekers found not to be refugees. Justice Callinan suggested that in relation to people found not to be refugees, "then possibly none of the [Refugee] Convention provisions at all apply to them". Justice Kirby retorted: "Surely you cannot just lock them [up] forever because they do not happen to meet the requirements of the convention." "I am not suggesting that," Justice Callinan replied. "It may be that if they do not have any status as refugees, then they may be dealt with in a different way entirely from the way in which the convention requires them to be dealt with." * * * CNN: November 12, 2003 -- 0343 GMT GUANTANAMO TRANSLATOR INDICTED Civilian translator Ahmed Mehalba was indicted Wednesday for having classified government information without authorization. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A civilian translator at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was indicted in Boston Wednesday for carrying unauthorized classified government information and lying about it. The three-count indictment charges Ahmed Mehalba with gathering, transmitting or losing defense information. It claims he had unauthorized possession of "documents relating to national defense" and did not deliver the documents to the proper officials, the U.S. Attorney's office in Massachusetts said. The indictment also charges that Mehalba lied when he told investigators he did not know how the documents ended up on a compact disc in his possession and that he did not understand "secret" as it relates to classified documents. To bring an indictment, a grand jury does not have to find guilt, only the probability that a crime was committed, that the accused person did it and that he should be tried, according to the Web site law.com. "As today's indictment makes clear, the Department of Justice will prosecute those who jeopardize the nation's security by mishandling classified, sensitive information important to the war on terrorism," Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a written statement. Mehalba's attorney, Michael Andrews, told reporters after the hearing his client did not know how the information got onto the disc. Mehalba will be formally charged at a later date. Mehalba was arrested at Boston's Logan International Airport September 30 after immigration officials found him with CD-ROMs and paper documents allegedly related to the detainees being held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo. He was returning from a visit to see family in Egypt. After Mehalba told government officials he was not carrying any business or government documents relating to Guantanamo, government officials said they found a number of compact discs, one of which was labeled "Backup #3 for MO's Profile." At a hearing in October, an FBI agent testified government computer experts determined 368 of the 725 files found on the disc were labeled "secret." The United States is holding some 660 men from about 40 countries, said to be al Qaeda or Taliban fighters, at Guantanamo. Some have been held for as long as two years without access to lawyers or family. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two appeals over whether hundreds of terrorist suspects in secret custody are being held unlawfully. Mehalba worked as a translator for Titan Corp., a San Diego-based firm that provides information and communications products and services. The Department of Homeland Security said Mehalba is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Egyptian descent. Mehalba is one of three people -- and the second translator -- charged with alleged security breaches at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Military authorities arrested a Muslim chaplain, U.S. Army Capt. James Yee, September 10 as he arrived in Jacksonville, Florida, on a flight from Guantanamo Bay. Yee is charged with carrying classified documents to his home at the base in Cuba and with him on the flight to Florida. Each count carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a bad conduct discharge. The 35-year-old chaplain is being held in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina. A former Air Force interpreter, Senior Airman Ahmed I. al Halabi, is accused of e-mailing information to people in Syria that included details about the base's flight schedule, officials said. Halabi worked nine months at Guantanamo Bay as a translator. He was taken into custody July 23, but authorities did not announce his arrest until October. He is being held at a prison facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. An American of Syrian descent, Halabi faces more than 30 charges, including espionage and aiding the enemy. He has pleaded innocent. * * * Jacksonville Daily Record: November 12, 2003 BALANCING PROSECUTION AND PROTECTION by Richard Prior, Staff Writer http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=39812 The manner in which terrorist prisoners are being held and prepared for trial is producing nightmares for prosecutors and may create at least as many problems as they solve, according to a law professor at Duke University. "The overall problem is we've unfortunately taken an ad hoc approach," said Scott Silliman. "Some [prisoners] are in the federal courts; we've got some that we're holding in military jails, where they were never charged and never had a lawyer. And we've got the folks in Guantanamo Bay. "There's no consistent pattern for our prosecution of terrorists." Silliman was invited by members of the Duke Club to speak during a luncheon at Coffman Coleman Andrews & Grogan. He retired as an Air Force colonel in 1993 after 25 years of service. He supervised the deployment of all Air Force attorneys and paralegals during Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm. "This country is facing a threat that it's never seen before," Silliman told the two dozen members of his audience. "All of us need to be concerned with how we're coping and how to get the best measure of protection while still keeping as many of our Constitutional rights intact as possible." Silliman raised several cases that threaten to put more elastic in the Constitution than Americans are accustomed to. One involves Zacarias Moussaoui, who represents "a prosecutor's worst nightmare." Moussaoui has admitted in court that he's a member of al-Qaeda and that he was in this country to commit a terrorist act. "The problem was," said Silliman, "the terrorist act he admitted he was here to commit was not the one that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001." The trial judge granted Moussaoui's request to represent himself. The initial reaction was he would probably "get buried under our legal system," said Silliman. "Unfortunately," he added, "for many in our government, he has reaped the benefits of our due process, and he's done a very good job of it." Moussaoui contends that three high-ranking members of al-Qaeda could testify that he was not involved in a conspiracy to commit the Sept. 11 attacks. All three, however, are being held prisoner "somewhere in the world where we don't know," said Silliman. The trial judge asked for videotaped depositions. Attorney General John Ashcroft refused because the prisoners were being interrogated. "Their location is classified; what they're saying is highly classified," said Silliman. "It's a question of can the government proceed with a trial when it refuses to allow classified information to be used in that trial? "What the government is basically saying is there needs to be a national security terrorism exception to the Sixth Amendment. That's a pretty big issue. Once you start creating exceptions for terrorism, where does it go from there?" Another case involves Yasser Hamdi, captured in Afghanistan after the same uprising that yielded John Walker Lindh. Hamdi was taken to Guantanamo Bay, where he disclosed that he was born in Shreveport, La., of Saudi parents. He was taken to the Naval brig at Norfolk, Va., a year ago yet still has not been charged with a crime or given the opportunity to see a lawyer. "The government has no intention of charging him with a crime," said Silliman. "The theory being, we can keep these people behind bars for the duration of the war on terrorism. "I tried to figure out when the war on terrorism will end. I'm not sure I have an answer yet." The case of Jose Padilla is perhaps the most interesting of all, he said. Padilla, an American citizen, was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport for allegedly planning to detonate a radiological weapon. He was then taken to New York, where the grand juries were meeting, held on a material witness warrant. The warrants, under a judge's supervision, are good for about 30 days. Padilla was held in New York for 29 and a half days when the Bush administration declared him an "unlawful combatant" and shipped him to Charleston, S.C. "The problem with Jose Padilla's case is, when he was being held by the Department of Justice, not the military, his lawyer met with him for 17 hours," said Silliman. "Now that he is in Charleston, the government is saying, ‘You cannot see your lawyer. That will impede the investigation.' "He's not been charged with a crime, and he can't see his lawyer." Favoritism has also become a problem for the Bush administration, he said. Representatives of Britain and Australia have already gotten concessions from the attorney general and the Department of Defense for three of their citizens being held in Guantanamo Bay. Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan took note and, last Thursday, asked for the same consideration. "We very much need to keep Pakistan on our side; we very much need to keep Egypt on our side," said Silliman. "So it becomes very political. "If you start making different categories of folks for how you prosecute . . . is there any assurance of fair treatment among these people? Or does it depend on which country they come from?" Present and future problems may also arise out of the handling of the 654 persons, of 40 different nationalities, who have been held at Guantanamo Bay for about 18 months, "and we still don't know who some of them are." "What we're doing . . . by holding individuals without ever charging them, even American citizens, I think, presents an even greater danger," said Silliman. "We are creating a precedent that may come back to haunt us. "I envision a situation in which, maybe one of your sons, or a daughter who is in the military, is kidnapped. In Yemen. And the theory goes something like this: your son or daughter is in the service of a country that uses cluster bombs. As we have. That's a violation of international law. "Therefore your son or daughter is an unlawful combatant, not deserving of any conventions, the Geneva Conventions or any other, under international law. "We then . . . say, ‘No, that's not correct. They are clearly prisoners of war, and you're holding them unlawfully.' They will say, ‘Look back 10 years, and what did you do at Guantanamo Bay?'" * * * Toronto Globe and Mail: November 12, 2003 WORDS ARE AMONG THE CASUALTIES OF COUNTERTERRORISM By Paul Knox More than two years into the post-9/11 world, words are fast becoming casualties. Several are in danger of being degraded to the point where they are no longer useful for meaningful communication. Intelligence, as in Central Intelligence Agency, is one. Decades of spy movies gave the word the credibility of the tablets from the mount. But it's nothing more than secret information and the act of collecting it. Sometimes, it's garbage, sometimes it's gold. To acquire value, operational or otherwise, intelligence must be analyzed. Are the sources credible? Are they in a position to have direct knowledge or are they passing on second-hand tips? Have they always told the truth? Have their stories checked out before? Where data and first-hand observation are concerned, what's the context? The next time you read about something attributed to intelligence sources, ask yourself whether it sounds as if those questions have been asked -- or whether it's just a self-serving leak of partial data, devoid of real significance. The boundary between intelligence and propaganda was seriously blurred when the United States and Britain used information about Iraqi weapons programs as a pretext for invasion. We now know they embraced primarily intelligence that dovetailed with the predetermined goal, including a fabricated tale about the procurement of enriched uranium in Africa. In some cases, the information was withheld from rigorous analysis, in others the judgment of trained analysts was ignored. Either way, the principles of intelligence handling were seriously abused. Misunderstandings about intelligence and its value may also underlie the Maher Arar affair -- in which, it is now clear, Canada served up one of its citizens on a platter for deportation to Syria and its torturers. Our super-snoopers are busy shrouding their hindquarters by leaking Syrian intelligence about Mr. Arar. But even a novice analyst would recognize the difficulty of assessing information that might have been coerced. Serious analysis would also recognize that Syria has its own battles to fight with militant Muslim organizations. And that it's eager to get itself removed from the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states. To properly weigh Syrian intelligence, it would have to be tested to make sure its purpose is not to extrajudicially eliminate one of its internal enemies, or demonstrate its zeal to Washington. Terrorism is another degraded word. Syria's is not the only opportunistic government seeking to have its internal enemies lumped in with al-Qaeda. Suddenly there are no insurgents or rebels or guerrillas or partisans any more. They're all simply terrorists, no matter whether terror attacks on civilian targets is their only tactic, or one of many. All attacks on innocent civilians are reprehensible, and some rebel struggles degenerate to the point where terrorism is about all that is left. But terrorism is not the key characteristic of insurgency in countries such as Colombia or Sri Lanka. To suggest otherwise is to miss an essential fact about terrorism: It is fundamentally a tactic, rarely a strategy and almost never a philosophy. To misunderstand its character is to complicate significantly the battle against it. War is a third victim of word abuse. Despite the rhetoric of Bush administration propagandists, the war on terrorism is not a real war, any more than the war on drugs. It's a comprehensive, militarized police action, targeting an international criminal conspiracy. It became a localized war in Afghanistan, where a government that was part of the conspiracy was removed, and where postconquest military operations continue. The invasion of Iraq was initially tangential to the counterterrorism campaign, and it is likely to remain so unless al-Qaeda and its allies mount a concerted challenge to the U.S. occupation there. In real global wars, societies are mobilized for the fight, either by default or by design. Everyone pays part of the price. But despite the bluster of George W. Bush, the United States is not mobilized, not even to the limited extent it was during the war in Vietnam. The campaigning President seeks to avoid calling attention to the real sacrifices being made by the U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq, and the reserve members being called unexpectedly to service overseas. And it goes without saying that Canada isn't even close to being on a wartime footing. In fact, to call the campaign against al-Qaeda a war dishonours the memory of the real war-fighters whose sacrifices we commemorated yesterday. Not only did Canadians and their allies suffer and die in the last century's global conflicts, they mobilized on a massive scale at home: saving, rationing, retraining, supporting the war effort in every possible way. Far from asking for similar contributions now, our leaders, and those of our American friends, would prefer us to sit back and be silent as ham-fisted gumshoes manhandle civil liberties and mishandle intelligence. To fight a war you need a social consensus. It isn't there. We don't even agree about the words. * * * Toronto Globe and Mail: November 12, 2003 Editorial THE LAW IN GUANTANAMO By insisting that the 660 prisoners at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are beyond the reach of judicial review, the United States has done more than strengthen security at the expense of liberty. It has thrown out a basic democratic norm, the time-honoured right of habeas corpus. It is therefore welcome news that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear whether civilian courts have the jurisdiction to consider prisoners' challenges to the lawfulness of their detention. The core value at stake is that the state be subject to the law, rather than a law unto itself. It should be stressed that the United States has not abused its prisoners (Taliban soldiers from Afghanistan and suspected members of the al- Qaeda terrorist network) at Guantanamo, and has allowed International Red Cross observers to monitor their treatment. Nonetheless, Guantanamo is a "legal black hole," as Human Rights Watch puts it. The principle at stake is much the same as in the recent torture case of the Canadian Maher Arar. When democratic nations violate legal norms (as when the U.S. deported Mr. Arar, whom it suspected of terrorism, to Syria), the results can shock the conscience. They also do nothing for the battle for hearts and minds in which the democratic world is engaged. Consider the 16 prisoners (12 Kuwaitis, two Britons, two Australians) who brought the challenge accepted by the Supreme Court. Most claim they are humanitarian workers captured by bounty hunters from Afghanistan and Pakistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. What they have asked for, after 18 months in custody, is simply to be informed of any charges against them, to be allowed to meet with lawyers and family, and to be given access to an impartial tribunal that will determine whether any basis exists for their continued detention. All these basics are denied to Guantanamo's prisoners, whom the U.S. dubs "unlawful combatants" so that neither the Geneva Conventions that protect prisoners of war nor the due-process rights afforded the criminally accused apply. They may be held, and interrogated, indefinitely. Among those who have stood up for democratic norms in friends-of-the-court briefs are the top legal officers, now retired, from the Navy and Marine Corps. This is a perilous time, they said, but that does not justify indefinite confinement without the lifeline of judicial review. * * * International Herald Tribune: November 12, 2003 SPAIN CRITICIZES POLICY ON DETAINEES IN CUBA (The Associated Press) MADRID: In a rare admonishment of the United States, Spain's foreign minister said Tuesday that the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay was a "major error." Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said on Telecinco television that she hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would "open a path" that would remove the prisoners from "legal limbo." Palacio, along with the governing Popular Party, is known for her consistent support of the Bush administration and its antiterrorism campaign. The minister spoke one day after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal asking whether foreigners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba may contest their captivity in American courts. The case concerns more than 650 prisoners held essentially incommunicado at Guantanamo Bay following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush administration maintains that because the men were picked up overseas on suspicion of terrorism and are being held on foreign land, they may be detained indefinitely without charges or trial. Palacio said the Spanish government had been "very clear" on its position on the Guantanamo Bay detainees. She said authorities were in contact with a Spanish national held at Guantanamo Bay for suspected ties with Al Qaeda, and were conducting "a critical dialogue" with the American authorities. Palacio told Telecinco that a U.S. delegation would travel to Madrid in the coming days to meet with Spanish officials "to see what solution can be found" in the case of the Spaniard because "this situation cannot continue." Several U.S. allies have complained about the open-ended detentions, and at least 40 prisoners have been returned to their home countries. Last month, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the mental health of a large number of inmates was deteriorating. "We've been saying to the Americans, as far as the Australians are concerned, we'd accept them being taken before a military commission, provided that the military commission meets the basic principles of justice that are acceptable to us in Australia," said the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer. "It would be better that they were taken before a military commission rather than just left in limbo." Among the detainees named in the appeal is David Hicks, 28, an Australian who has been held for more than two years at Guantanamo after being captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan in December 2001. Hicks, a former Australian cowboy who converted to Islam, will be among the first six Guantanamo Bay detainees to face a hearing by a U.S. military commission. No date for the hearing has been announced. Lawyers for the Guantanamo detainees had raised broad civil liberties objections to their detention and treatment, but the high court declined to look at those issues. The men could presumably renew those challenges if they win this case. Civil liberties lawyers were rebuffed as they tried to challenge the detentions and interrogations on the men's behalf. Lower courts found that the American civilian court system had no authority to hear complaints from the detainees alleged by U.S. authorities to have been Al Qaeda and Taliban foot soldiers. "The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law," lawyers for four British and Australian detainees argued in asking the high court to consider the case. * * * The Age (Melbourne): November 12, 2003 - 9:23AM NO AUTOMATIC RIGHT OF RETURN FOR GUANTANAMO DETAINEES: PM The two Australians being held in Guantanamo Bay had no automatic right to be brought back home, Prime Minister John Howard said today. David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib have been held at the US military base in Cuba since late 2001 for having alleged links to terrorist organisation al-Qaeda. They have won the right to appeal against their detention in the US Supreme Court but Howard says he has been pushing for America to set up a military commission to hear their case although they can't be brought back to Australia. "When an Australian is arrested for an alleged wrongdoing in another country, there is no automatic right of repatriation," Howard said after meeting with British prime minister Tony Blair at Downing Street today. "A lot of the debate in Australia seems to have proceeded on the basis that if you're arrested for something overseas, you can demand that you be brought back to Australia to be tried. That's not true. "I mean if a foreigner comes to Australia and does something that we think is contrary to our law or does something elsewhere that is contrary to our law and we have control of him, the idea that a foreign government could insist that he be returned is not something that we would support. Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said today the two Guantanamo Bay detainees should be brought back home to face justice rather than have their cases heard in a US court. Senator Brown said Mr Howard was allowing the United States to treat Australians as second-class to Americans by not asking Mr Bush for the two men to be sent home. Mr Howard said Australia continued to discuss the matter with the US. "We have made some progress and we'll continue to discuss it, and Mr Blair and I have naturally exchanged notes on the subject, but that's our position," he said. Two Britons will also have appeals heard in the US Supreme Court. Blair said it was important the detainees were given a fair trial, but in the context of the allegations that they were involved with the organisation which orchestrated the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. "We carry on in dialogue and discussion with the Americans about this and obviously it's important that anyone who is tried is given a fair and proper trial and that's what we're talking about," Blair said. "I do ask people to remember that this arose out of the situation in Afghanistan, which itself arose out of September the 11th, and it is important that we take the interests of course of people for a fair trial into account, but also the wider interest of security." - AAP * * * The Age (Melbourne): November 12, 2003 HICKS US COURT WIN MAY NOT STOP MILITARY TRIAL By Marian Wilkinson in Washington, and Penelope Debelle in Adelaide Lawyers for Adelaide terrorist suspect David Hicks fear he will be tried by an American military tribunal before US Supreme Court action challenging his incarceration can be dealt with. The US Supreme Court yesterday intervened in the cases of Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, the two Australians being held at Guantanamo Bay, and will hear an appeal that challenges President George Bush's powers to detain foreign terrorist suspects indefinitely without legal rights. A decision on the case is expected in June and will affect all 660 suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay with no access to lawyers or family visits. Many have been there up to two years, with some in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day. "It's a huge step forward," said Steven Watt, a lawyer with the US Centre for Constitutional Rights, which took the case on behalf of the Australians and two British detainees. But Adelaide civil rights lawyer Stephen Kenny said he expected Hicks, 28, a former abattoir worker who undertook military training in Pakistan, would come before the US military commissions set up by Mr Bush to try terrorist suspects before his legal rights were tested. "Unfortunately it has taken us two years to get to this stage and even now the court is not considering the ultimate issue, which is the legality of his detention," Mr Kenny said. Hicks was one of six foreign nationals from Guantanamo Bay singled out earlier this year as eligible for trial by military tribunal, raising concerns that they may have agreed to plead guilty in return for a prison term with a known release date. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the Federal Government had told the US it would accept Hicks and Habib being tried before a military commission provided the "basic principles of justice" were met. "It'd be better that they were taken before a military commission rather than just left in limbo," Mr Downer said. Prime Minister John Howard asked Mr Bush during his recent Australian visit to speed up the tribunal process. The US Supreme Court will decide only the narrow question of whether the detainees have the right to bring their cases to a US court, which could then examine the legality of their detention. The US Government has argued it has the right to hold the detainees indefinitely as "enemy combatants". Many were arrested in Afghanistan in December, 2001. The US court decision took Australian authorities by surprise and came after Australian officials visited Hicks and Habib at Guantanamo Bay. An Australian embassy spokesman said the visit had been for "intelligence gathering" but they also checked the welfare of the prisoners and brought out messages for their families. A Pentagon spokesman told The Age it was not known whether the Supreme Court decision would put the military commissions on hold. Lawyers acting for the British and Australian detainees joined with counsel for 12 Kuwaitis to mount the Supreme Court challenge against the Bush Administration. The lawyers had failed in their attempts to bring petitions for unlawful detention in the federal courts. The appeal to the US Supreme Court, the highest in the country, was bolstered by seven groups who submitted briefs in the case as "friends of the court". These included former American prisoners of war from Vietnam and Japan who argued that the Guantanamo Bay detentions undermined the Geneva Convention and could put captured US servicemen in jeopardy. Former US diplomats, military lawyers, the International Bar Association and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association also argued for the appeal. Hicks's father, Terry Hicks, said in Adelaide he doubted that the appeal to the US Supreme Court would succeed, although yesterday's ruling was a rare ray of light in his son's fight for freedom. "With the American system I'm never confident," Mr Hicks said. - with Louise Dodson, Mark Forbes * * * CBC: November 11, 2003 ARAR WANTS U.S. TO INVESTIGATE HIS ARREST AND DEPORTATION http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/11/11/arar031111 OTTAWA - Lawyers for Maher Arar have asked U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to launch an investigation into the arrest and detention of the Syrian-born Canadian. Arar was deported from the United States to Syria after being detained at an airport stopover at the end of a family holiday last year. His lawyers say there is good reason to believe the United States wanted Arar tortured to obtain information. Arar's legal counsel is asking Ashcroft to investigate whether the deportation was a violation of U.S. law. American authorities alleged Arar was a member of al-Qaeda and say they acted on information supplied by Canadian police. Written by CBC News Online staff * * * Aljazeera: US BLAMED FOR INNOCENT MAN'S SYRIAN TORTURE November 11, 2003 -- 22:48 GMT A major US intelligence committee has launched an investigation into how a Canadian man was handed over by America to Syria where he was brutally tortured. Lawyers for the Canadian say their client was tortured in Syria after the United States turned him over as an al-Qaida suspect. They have called on Attorney General John Ashcroft and congressional intelligence committees to investigate, according to letters released on Tuesday. Lawyers for Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, wrote to Ashcroft in a 10 November letter: "There is good reason to believe that the United States knew and wanted Arar tortured to obtain information. "There is also no basis for the belief that Mr Arar has any connection to terrorism." The lawyers asked Ashcroft to investigate whether there was any violation of a US law that prohibits sending a person to a country where it was believed the person would be tortured. Arar was arrested in September 2002 while changing planes in New York on his way back to Canada from Tunisia. The 33-year-old telecommunications engineer was sent to Syria several days later, despite insisting he be flown home to Canada. Canada is struggling to contain the fallout from the case of Arar, who was released last month and said he had been regularly tortured during the year he spent in Syria. US authorities alleged he was a member of al Qaida and say they acted on data supplied by Canadian police. Canadian critics are demanding a public inquiry into whether Canadian and US officials conspired to have Arar illegally deported to Syria so he could be tortured there. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has criticised the United States for deporting Arar to Syria and said Ottawa asked Washington to investigate whether Canadian officials played any role in the case. Lawyers for Arar also sent letters to US congressional intelligence committees calling for an investigation "into the extent to which the United States is condoning and aiding in torture." There was no immediate comment from the Justice Department or congressional committees due to the federal Veterans Day holiday. Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said he believed the case deserved consideration and for Congress "to determine what the facts are and what response, if any, ought to be achieved on the part of our country as we look at these circumstances." * * * Los Angeles Times: November 11, 2003 -- 2:53 PM PST ATTORNEYS DEMANDING ACCESS TO DETAINEES By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- Attorneys for accused Air Force spy Ahmad I. Al Halabi are demanding that they have access to 16 detainees at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who they believe can help show he was not trying to turn over classified material from the prison to the government of Syria. Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., a Rochester, N.Y., lawyer who is helping represent the senior airman who served as a translator at the prison, said today that while the government has refused to accommodate them, the lawyers are considering filing an appeal in order to interview the detainees. Rehkopf said another defense attorney was at the Camp Delta prison last week and when the subject of detainee interviews came up, the lawyer was told by Michael Boehman, the staff judge advocate at the prison, to provide a list of "precisely who you would like to talk to." But when a list was provided, Rehkopf said, the military quickly refused to make any detainees available. "And they gave us no grounds for their refusal," Rehkopf said. Military authorities declined to discuss any aspect of the case, noting that the Pentagon has steadfastly refused to acknowledge any of the names of the 660 detainees, said by the government to be Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Indeed, the government's refusal mirrors what is occurring in another high- profile terror-related case. Prosecutors in the Zacarias Moussaoui case also have refused to allow him and his standby attorneys access to terror detainees, and the government now is in the awkward position of having to defend the position at the risk of having the death penalty and crucial Sept. 11 evidence stricken from the case. In the Al Halabi matter, the list provided by the defense, which was obtained by The Times, shows that his attorneys are seeking a group of English-speaking detainees, many of whom have become high-profile prisoners Four of the 16 detainees are petitioners in a legal challenge, which the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear, questioning whether the Bush administration can legally continue to hold detainees without granting them due process under the law. Three of the 16 have reportedly been targeted for trial in the first round of military tribunals at Camp Delta. Another detainee allegedly served as a translator for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The four who brought the legal challenge to the Supreme Court are Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, British citizens, and Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, who are Australians. Their lawyers have said that Rasul, Iqbal and Hicks were in the Pakistan area for personal reasons when they were seized during the war with Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. Habib, the lawyers said, was living in Afghanistan and may have joined the Taliban when he was captured. The three detainees who reportedly have been targeted for tribunals have been identified by their governments as Hicks, and Feroz Ali Abassi and Moazzam Begg, both British. Begg is also the detainee whom sources have identified as Bin Laden's translator. Rehkopf declined to discuss why the defense team wants to talk to these 16 individuals. He would not say whether Al Halabi translated some of their interrogations, or whether he allegedly smuggled material concerning them out of the prison. But Rehkopf said that Al Halabi did not give his legal team the names of the 16 detainees to interview. "Why we want them is classified," Rehkopf said. "But there is a common thread. For every 10 interviews you do, you get a nugget of information. That's the lot of a defense attorney. You keep digging." Al Halabi was arrested July 23 after flying from Cuba to the naval air station in Jacksonville, Fla. A Syrian native who grew up in Detroit, he had served as a translator at Camp Delta for nine months and was based out of the Travis Air Force Base in Northern California. It is there that he will stand court-martial on 20 charges, including allegations that he sought to deliver highly classified prison data to the government of Syria. His lawyers have denied the allegations and Al Halabi has pleaded not guilty. He maintains that he was en route to Syria for his wedding, and that he was not part of a spy ring at the detainee prison. Of two other prison officials who have been arrested, including a civilian translator and an Army chaplain, Al Halabi's case -- if proven -- represents the most severe breach of security at the installation. His defense attorneys are also complaining about how he was treated after his arrest, saying the military broke its own rules on how not to treat the Camp Delta detainees themselves. Rehkopf, in a letter to Air Force officials, said Al Halabi was "interrogated for a full day" immediately after his arrest. Then, denied sleep, a shower or a shave, "or even to change his underwear," he was "flown to California and thrown into a county jail." Rehkopf added: "He again was denied basic humanitarian considerations of sleep, showering, shaving and clean clothes ... and was brought to his pretrial confinement hearing in a dazed, confused and dirty condition -- and without his uniform." * * * November 11, 2003 FAST-FOOD ENCOUNTER DREW ATTENTION TO ARAR By Colin Freeze and Jeff Sallot Canadian agents trained suspicious eyes on Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki as the two men ate together in an Ottawa restaurant -- a meeting that occurred two years ago, just as an alleged associate was arrested in Syria. The fateful fast-food meal was simply an encounter between two Syrian-Canadians who barely knew one another, Mr. Arar's supporters say. But police saw something more sinister, a hunch that likely contributed to both men joining a third Canadian in a Syrian jail. On Nov. 11, 2001, Ahmad Abou El-Maati was detained as a suspected terrorist as he landed at a Syrian airport. Days after Sept. 11, he and his brother, Amer, had been placed on a global terrorist watch list circulated by the United States. It is unknown why the Kuwaiti-born brothers from Toronto were placed on the list. But dozens of listed people would soon be arrested as major al-Qaeda operatives -- including some who would later be cleared of any links to terrorism. The names of Mr. Arar and Mr. Almalki did not appear on that watch list. But intelligence agents suspected the two men might be linked to Mr. Abou El-Maati or al-Qaeda. On, Nov. 12, 2001, Mr. Arar and Mr. Almalki were spotted eating together at Mango's, an Ottawa fast-food restaurant. Subsequent interrogations involving Mr. Arar showed that Canadian police or intelligence agents duly noted the encounter. "They said: 'You met with him in the rain and had lunch with him,' and [that was] the only time he had lunch with him," said Kerry Pither, a spokeswoman for Mr. Arar. She describes the circumstances of the meeting as beyond banal: Mr. Arar was looking to buy a printer cartridge at Future Shop when a colleague suggested that his brother, Abdullah Almalki, knew someone who worked there and could get him a discount. "So Maher says he called Abdullah and they arranged to go to the Future Shop," Ms. Pither said. And then, "they had, like, a 15-minute lunch and walked back to the Future Shop and went their separate ways." Ms. Pither said Mr. Arar told her he was "positive" the date was Nov. 12, 2001. The fact that the meeting was noted shows that either Mr. Arar, Mr. Almalki -- or both -- were being watched in Canada long before they ended up in jail. Mr. Almalki was arrested in Syria in April, 2002, after travelling there from Malaysia. Mr. Arar was deported to Syria by the United States as he passed through New York on his way home from Tunisia. Mr. Almalki and Mr. Abou El-Maati remain in Syrian jails. Ms. Pither said she is outraged that Canadian sources appear to be leaking information that may have flowed from Syrian torture chambers. "Every leak is proof that Canadian security agencies orchestrated this whole ordeal," she said. Yesterday, Solicitor-General Wayne Easter announced plans to review intelligence-sharing agreements between Canada and the United States to make sure human rights are protected. Mr. Arar's arrest will almost certainly be discussed when Mr. Easter meets U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft next Wednesday in Washington, officials said yesterday. But Mr. Easter said he cannot discuss the Arar case publicly because it is the subject of an RCMP complaints commission investigation. He said Canada wants to make sure "Canadian values" of human rights are respected when police and security agencies in both countries exchange information and collaborate on security cases. "Both countries talk about the protection of the individual and human rights. We have to make sure that that is uppermost in our minds in all the things we do as well." The United States has a very real responsibility to protect its citizens from a repeat of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, he said, and Canada must do the same. Mr. Arar was arrested in by U.S. officials in September, 2002, at New York's John F. Kennedy airport, detained for more than a week, ordered deported as a terrorist suspect at a 3 a.m. jailhouse hearing, and flown to the Middle East. There, he was beaten by Jordanians and turned over to Syrians who tortured him and imprisoned him in a tiny cell for more than 10 months. The 33-year-old man has never been charged in any country. U.S. government sources have told The Globe and Mail that the RCMP passed along Mr. Arar's name to them as a terrorist suspect. * * * VOA: 11 Nov 2003 -- 17:40 UTC Pentagon Unable To Prove War Crimes Committed Against Us Troops Alex Belida Listen to Alex Belida's report (RealAudio): http://www.voanews.com/mediastore/Belida_Pentagon_11nov03.ram Pentagon -- This is Veterans Day in the United States, a solemn day to honor all those men and women who have served in the armed forces. The commemoration is taking on special significance this year because tens of thousand of military personnel are deployed in Iraq. Nearly 400 have been killed there, and over 2,000 wounded. It may be one of the most intriguing mysteries of the Iraq war, and one of the few known cases of possible war crimes carried out directly against American soldiers. In late March, U.S. troops in a maintenance unit went astray in the town of Nasiriyah, and were ambushed by Iraqi forces. Eleven soldiers were killed and five others captured. When Iraqi authorities released photos of the prisoners, they also released photos of some of the dead American troops. Some had what appeared to be head wounds, indicating to Pentagon authorities that they may have been executed, apparently in violation of the Geneva Conventions. But more than seven months later, U.S. military sources tell VOA, they have been unable to uncover any evidence that would prove the soldiers were murdered. The sources say this does not mean there was no Iraqi war crime, only that they have been unable to interview any witnesses, or discover any documents that would conclusively prove what actually happened. The first top Pentagon official to speak out publicly on the deaths was Marine General Peter Pace, who is deputy chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a televised interview with CNN's Larry King in late March, General Pace said the only thing that had surprised him about the conduct of the war up to that point was that "the forces that are loyal to Saddam Hussein have already committed so many war crimes." Among the examples he then listed was the execution of prisoners of war. He did not specifically say "American" prisoners, but his meaning seemed clear, as he was referring specifically to the first week of the ground war. But just days later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to back away from the charge. He mentioned that Saddam Hussein's regime had executed POWs, but in an exchange with reporters he later denied any knowledge of American prisoners being executed. "You stated flatly that American POWs have been executed. On what basis do you make that statement?" asked a reporter. "Did I say 'American' prisoners of war?" replied Mr. Rumsfeld. "I didn't...." "Are you saying that there have not been American prisoners executed then?" continued the reporter. "There may very well have been," answered Mr. Rumsfeld, "but I'm not announcing that, if that's what you're asking." Officials of the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division have been looking into the incident, the same one that led to the capture and subsequent rescue of Jessica Lynch, the celebrated former American POW, who has been the subject of a made-for-television movie, and who has a new book out this week on her experiences as a prisoner. In the book, it is alleged she was the victim of a sexual assault after her capture. That, too, would constitute a war crime. U.S. officials have disclosed to VOA that they are holding some 4,000 Iraqis on suspicion of committing crimes against U.S. and other coalition troops, or because they are considered to have value as intelligence sources. However, the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cannot say how many may be accused specifically of war crimes. Pentagon sources have indicated the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq hopes eventually to allow a newly reconstituted Iraqi judiciary to prosecute former loyalists of Saddam Hussein's regime for crimes against humanity. But it is uncertain whether any Iraqi accused of crimes against U.S. soldiers will be turned over, or whether such suspects will be tried directly by American military authorities. * * * San Francisco Chronicle: November 11, 2003 SPANISH FOREIGN MINISTER SAYS U.S. MAKING 'MAJOR ERROR' WITH GUANTANAMO DETENTIONS MADRID, Spain (AP) -- In a rare admonishment of the United States, Spain's foreign minister said Tuesday the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay was a "major error." Foreign Minister Ana Palacio told Spanish television channel Telecinco she hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would "open a path" that would remove the prisoners from "legal limbo." Palacio, along with the governing Popular Party, is known for her consistent support of the Bush administration and its war on terror. The minister spoke one day after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal asking whether foreigners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba may contest their captivity in American courts. The case concerns more than 650 prisoners held essentially incommunicado at Guantanamo Bay following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Bush administration maintains that because the men were picked up overseas on suspicion of terrorism and are being held on foreign land, they may be detained indefinitely without charges or trial. Palacio said the Spanish government had been "very clear" on its position on the Guantanamo Bay detainees. She said authorities were in contact with a Spanish national held at Guantanamo Bay for suspected ties with al-Qaida, and were conducting "a critical dialogue" with the American authorities. Palacio told Telecinco that a U.S. delegation would travel to Madrid in the coming days to meet with Spanish officials "to see what solution can be found" in the case of the Spaniard because "this situation cannot continue." * * * Los Angeles Times: November 11, 2003 KUWAITI 12'S FAMILIES ELATED BY DECISION * Supreme Court agrees to hear the appeals of the young detainees, whose struggling relatives have spent $2 million trying to win their release. By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The families of the so-called Kuwaiti 12 had almost given up hope before Monday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their loved ones' legal appeals. For the families, it was a day of rejoicing. "This is great news. God bless America!" Khalid Al Odah shouted during a telephone interview from Kuwait. After two years without criminal charges being brought against the 12 young Kuwaiti men, locked up among the 660 suspected terrorists and war criminals at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the court had decided to hear the prisoners' plea that they be given a chance to prove their innocence. Al Odah said he could not wait to tell his wife the news about their son, Fawzi. "I had lost faith in the courts over there," said Mansoor Kamel, the brother of another detainee. "We have waited so long." Monther Rabiah was near tears. Struggling to express himself in English, trying to explain how much he missed his older brother, he blurted out, "This is superior news!" Much has happened in the nearly two years since the dozen young Kuwaiti men were incarcerated. Fathers of two of the prisoners have died waiting for their sons to come home. The father of another prisoner has suffered several strokes, and today he slips in and out of a coma. Children born to three of the detainees are already talking. Together, families of the Kuwaiti prisoners have spent about $2 million trying to win the prisoners' release, only to see lower courts refuse to hear their cases. Most of the 12 young men have said they were doing charity work in Pakistan when they were captured during the war in Afghanistan. At first, letters from the 12 detainees kept their families' spirits up. "One day I will be back home, God willing," wrote Omar Rajab. But as time has passed, the letters have been less hopeful. Abdullah Kamel wrote his will. Faiz Al-Kandari angrily signed one of his letters, "Your son in the prisons of the American Nazi." "We are suffering from a tyranny that nobody can know except God," Adil Al Zamil wrote. He begged for justice. "There is nothing and no problem between the Americans and me," he wrote. "... What is my guilt, I don't know." Sometime next year, he may find out. The court will rule then on whether the Bush administration can continue to hold the men without affording them due process of law in the U.S. courts. The administration has said it has the right, even the responsibility, to hold "enemy combatants" captured during the war as long as necessary, until the war is over or until the administration is sure that they are not a threat to the American public. But the Kuwaitis, through their defense attorneys, argue that it is unconstitutional to indefinitely confine anyone without trial. "The issue, really," said attorney Thomas B. Wilner of Washington, who represents the petitioning prisoners, "is whether the United States can set up prison camps for foreigners outside the court's scrutiny." Not only have the men been locked out of the courts, but they also have been kept from their families. Al Odah, a colonel in the Kuwaiti air force during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, organized the group of families after the 12 were taken prisoner in fall 2001, during the U.S. war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Pooling their money, they hired Wilner and his law partners. They lobbied the Kuwaiti government to pressure Washington and tried, unsuccessfully, to visit their sons and brothers in Cuba. Money has run low. "We have exceeded our limits," lamented Al Odah. "This is taking a very long time. It's very expensive. We are trying very hard to finance this campaign. We do manage sometimes. But sometimes we fail." Mansoor Kamel said his brother had written about their grandfather, now in his late 80s and in frail health. "He's afraid he won't see him again," said Mansoor. "But I write him not to worry. I keep telling him we are trying to do something new to get him back." Mansoor's brother has four children, one a daughter he has never set eyes upon. The entire Kamel family now lives under one roof, trying to save money to help Abdullah. "We are willing to sell everything just to get him back," Mansoor said. "We think about my brother more than anything else. We all live in one house with our parents and we are very, very close now. So losing a member of our family like this is too much. It's like a part of the house is missing." Monther Rabiah and his detainee brother, Fouad, have a father who has suffered several strokes, and just this week fell once again into a coma. "He cannot really cope with it," said Monther. Fouad, once a supervisor with a Kuwaiti airline, has a wife and four children. Because he is receiving no wages, the rest of the family is making his mortgage and car payments. What is most frustrating, the families said, is that at the start they understood the need to question detainees, especially after the attacks of Sept. 11. But to keep them all this time hurts everyone, they say. "It is like a lion that is injured," said Monther Rabiah. "But how long must you keep the lion while he is injured? After all this time, his wounds must be healed. Let him go. "Because if you don't, his family will be wounded too." * * * Los Angeles Times: November 11, 2003 HIGH COURT TO RULE ON TERRORISM DETAINEES * In the justices' first case on U.S. tactics in the war on terrorism, foreigners could win a chance to fight their detentions at Guantanamo Bay. By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, taking up its first challenge to the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, agreed Monday to decide whether the president has the power to imprison hundreds of captured foreigners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without giving them a chance to show that they are innocent. Over the objections of administration lawyers, the high court voted to hear an appeal filed on behalf of two Britons, two Australians and a dozen Kuwaitis who say they have been wrongly held in harsh confinement for nearly two years. The men assert that they were neither enemy soldiers nor terrorists, but that they have been denied a hearing to challenge their imprisonment. Several of them have claimed that they were in Pakistan when U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan and that they had no role in fighting U.S. forces. "We believe they were civilians who were at the wrong place at the wrong time," said Joseph Margulies, a Minneapolis lawyer who filed one of the appeals along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal and educational organization in New York. The imprisoned men have been kept in solitary confinement and held by President Bush's commanders in "a law-free zone," cut off from their families and friends, in violation of the Geneva Convention and the U.S. Constitution, their lawyers told the high court. Until Monday, courts rejected these complaints, which had received wide attention in Europe. Administration officials say the president, as commander in chief, has the exclusive authority to decide what to do with "enemy aliens" captured abroad during a war. At the same time, the administration says the war on terrorism is not a true war and, therefore, Bush's military commanders need not abide by the terms of the Geneva Convention and its rules for prisoners of war. In a stark claim of executive authority, administration lawyers also maintain that judges have no role in reviewing the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. If these captured men are due any rights, wrote U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, they "are to be determined by the executive [branch of government] and the military, not the courts." "The extraordinary circumstances [in this case] implicate core political questions that the Constitution leaves to the president as commander in chief," Olson wrote in his response to the appeals. "The courts have no jurisdiction ... to evaluate or second-guess the conduct of the president and the military." That argument prevailed in two lower courts, which had turned away the appeals filed on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees. In March, in the second ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that foreigners held outside U.S. territory do not have a right to contest their detention in U.S. courts. Its opinion described the base at Guantanamo Bay as the sovereign territory of Cuba, even though it has been occupied by the U.S. Navy since it leased the site in 1903. Lawyers for the two sets of detainees appealed the question to the Supreme Court. In something of a surprise, the justices voted to hear both cases in order to decide whether the courts have "jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad." Two former Bush administration lawyers who had clerked at the Supreme Court said they had not expected the justices to take up the issue. "This is a surprising grant, given that the lower courts had spoken with one voice on this issue," said former Justice Department lawyer Viet Dinh, who teaches at Georgetown University Law School. He was the chief architect of the USA Patriot Act, which gave the government broad powers to combat terrorism- related activities. "I still think they will uphold the government," said John C. Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, who was a legal advisor on terrorism issues at the Justice Department. "The court has been very leery of contradicting the executive branch in its management of the war during the war. "The bigger issue underlying all this is delegitimizing terrorism. Al Qaeda is not a nation, so members of terrorist groups are not entitled to the protection of the laws of nations, and they're not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They get no hearing and no formal process of law," Yoo said. Human rights activists say it is the U.S. that is operating outside of international law. "In essence, the court must decide whether the United States will reaffirm or reject its commitment to the rule of the law," said Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. About 660 inmates have been held at Guantanamo in cells that measure 6 feet by 8 feet, the group said. Their appeals were bolstered by a group of retired military officers and former prisoners of war who, in a friend-of-the-court brief, urged the justices to intervene. "They are concerned that if we play games with the Geneva Convention, there will be a time when this comes back to bite the members of our military," said Donald Rehkopf, a military law expert in Rochester, N.Y. The legal battle focuses on the words of the 5th Amendment: "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." This provision generally means that the government may not hold someone without some legal process, such as charges and a hearing. And the high court has often stressed that it refers to "persons," not just U.S. citizens. However, the court has also refused to extend that right outside the territory of the United States, raising the question of whether the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay is within the jurisdiction of the United States. The treaty spelling out the terms of the long-term lease says that while its "ultimate sovereignty" rests with Cuba, the "United States shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas." As a practical matter, it is akin to U.S. territory, Rehkopf said. "If you fly to Guantanamo, you go through U.S. Customs. And children who are born there are deemed American citizens, not Cubans," he said. The justices will hear arguments in March in the two cases, Rasul vs. Bush and Al Odah vs. United States. They are likely to rule by late June. Even if the justices were to rule for the detainees at Guantanamo, it would not mean that the men would go free. Rather, the court might say the military must offer the detained men some "due process of law," such as a hearing or a trial. Some lawyers believe that the Bush administration could have avoided the showdown in the Supreme Court had they given the men held at Guantanamo Bay a hearing before a military court. In November 2001, two months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush issued an executive order asserting his authority to capture and hold "certain noncitizens in the war on terrorism." That order set off a controversy because the president said that suspected foreign terrorists would be tried by special U.S. military courts. Since then, however, such courts have not been used. * * * Boston Globe: November 11, 2003 GUANTANAMO CASE SEEN AS RISKY FOR DIPLOMACY Critics expect review by court will raise anxiety of US allies By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff WASHINGTON -- Anti-American feelings could increase in important US allies as a result of the Supreme Court's decision to review whether "enemy combatants" at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can challenge their detention in court, specialists in international affairs said. The official reaction from the embassies of the three US allies whose nationals are named in the cases -- Australia, Britain, and Kuwait -- was muted in response to the court's announcement yesterday. Spokesmen for Australia and Britain said it would be inappropriate to comment on what they termed "an internal matter," and the Kuwait Embassy in Washington did not return several calls. But the reaction was significantly louder in the international news media and among politicians and activists who have made the cases of the detainees a cause celebre in their home countries. In Australia, for example, the senator who made international headlines for heckling President Bush over the Guantanamo issue during a speech last month said the court's decision was "an important step a long time in coming." But he emphasized that the issue would remain of why John Walker Lindh, an American citizen captured while fighting for the Taliban, was given a civilian trial at home while citizens of other countries have been treated differently. "It won't substitute for returning the prisoners to face an Australian court, but there will be a lot of people now watching to see now if the American legal system fails international law and fair-dealing," Senator Bob Brown of Tasmania said by phone from Australia. If the court ultimately rules against the detainees, Brown added, the fact that it took up the case in the first place may end up hurting bilateral relations more than if the court had simply left the issue alone. That caution about the outcome of the case was echoed by several activists in Britain who have received strong media coverage for their warnings about the lack of legal process afforded to British detainees. The potential for greater damage was noted by several specialists in foreign policy and international law based in Washington. "I think the fact that the Supreme Court decided to take the case will increase anxiety abroad about the way in which the detainees have been treated," said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. "There's been a lot of back-and-forth between the administration and allies on this question of due process and the status of individuals in Guantanamo, and this simply reopens it," Kupchan said. "That it's going to the highest court in the land puts the issue back in the spotlight." Laurence Rothenberg, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: "On the one hand, it might be that people will view this as positive development: 'Oh, the rule of law still exists in the US. The Supreme Court will order the administration to give these people access to the courts.' On the other hand, it may be viewed as the court -- which is the same court that installed Bush as president -- is going to ratify his administration's approach." © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. * * * Boston Globe: November 11, 2003 HIGH COURT TO HEAR DETAINEES' APPEALS Kin of prisoners challenge US view they have no rights By Lyle Denniston, Globe Correspondent WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court yesterday stepped into the constitutional combat over the war on terrorism for the first time, saying that it would consider whether to allow foreign prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to contest their detention in US courts. The court agreed to hear two appeals made on behalf of 16 prisoners -- citizens of Britain, Australia, and Kuwait -- by family members who argue that the detainees are entitled to challenge the grounds for holding them indefinitely, without criminal charges or any access to lawyers. By taking the cases, the court rejected the Bush administration's advice that the justices stay on the legal sidelines of the war. Justice Department lawyers had urged the justices to bypass the Guantanamo dispute, citing a "potential for interference with the core powers of the president," particularly when "American soldiers and their allies are still engaged in armed conflict overseas." To decide the appeals, the court apparently will have to give its current views of one of its own precedents, decided a half century ago, that the Justice Department has relied upon in defending itself in a variety of terrorism cases over the past two years. The new cases potentially risk much of the government's legal defense of its antiterrorism strategy. Since the United States first responded militarily to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has detained about 660 prisoners, all of them foreigners and most captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan, at the US naval base in Cuba. From time to time, a few prisoners have been allowed to leave, but the government plans to hold most indefinitely. In a speech in September, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said: "Our interest is in not trying them and letting them out; our interest is in, during this global war on terror, keeping them off the streets." No US citizens are held at Guantanamo, even if they were captured in military operations in the war on terrorism. Citizens either are being placed in brigs, to be held indefinitely as "enemy combatants," or they are being charged with crimes to be tried in regular courts. So far, none of the detainees in Cuba has been put on trial, although the government said last summer that it had plans to bring charges in a military tribunal against six individuals now at Guantanamo. They have not been identified. Lawyers for the 16 detainees whose cases the Supreme Court will hear sought to raise a variety of issues, including specific claims of violations of constitutional rights. One of the appeals contends: "The US has created a prison in Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law. Within the walls of this prison, foreign nationals may be held indefinitely, without charges or evidence of wrongdoing; without access to family, friends, or legal counsel; and with no opportunity to establish their innocence." But the court, in response, said its review would be confined to the sole question of whether US courts are entirely closed to the detainees seeking to raise challenges. If the justices do find that the courts are open to the detainees, the justices would probably let lower courts be the first to decide any challenges. Still, a decision to permit the detainees or their families to be in court would be a major legal breakthrough for them and a significant setback for the administration and its frequently expressed desire to decide on its own what to do about such detainees. The administration regards the capture and control of individuals during overseas hostilities to be solely a matter for the military. A federal appeals court ruled last March that the detainees, as foreign citizens being held abroad by the US military, have no constitutional rights at all and that no US court has the jurisdiction to review their detention or the conditions under which they are held at Guantanamo. Tha court, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, relied on the Supreme Court's 1950 decision in the case of Johnson v. Eisentrager. In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that 21 German nationals who had previously been tried and convicted by a US military tribunal for aiding Japanese forces in World War II were enemy foreigners who had no right to sue in US courts for their release. Although none of the Guantanamo detainees involved in the case has been accused of fighting against US troops and although none has ever been tried on wartime charges, their fate is still controlled by the 1950 Eisentrager decision, the appeals court concluded. In an appeal by the families of 12 Kuwaitis detained in Cuba, lawyers said that this was an unwarranted extension of the 1950 ruling. That case, their appeal argued, was about enemies of the United States who already had been convicted in military courts and who sought their release afterwards. The appeals court in Washington, the lawyers added, has ruled that "no alien -- enemy or friendly -- located outside the sovereign territory of the US may ever petition the US courts for relief from detention without trial or charge. This is very far from the court's holding in Eisentrager." But the Justice Department, in replying to the new appeals, said the 1950 decision means all foreigners who are being held by the US military overseas have no right to bring challenges in US courts. The department often cites the Eisentrager decision to support its actions in the war on terrorism, as, for example, it is currently doing in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only individual facing criminal charges for the Sept. 11 attacks. The 1950 decision, the department contends in an appeal in that case, means that Moussaoui has no right to demand access to captured Al Qaeda operatives abroad to get testimony to aid in his defense. "Vital separation of powers concerns preclude courts from interfering with the quintessentially military determinations involved in detaining enemy combatants abroad," the department's brief argues in citing the Eisentrager decision. One of the appeals before the Supreme Court was filed by families of two Britons and two Australians, the other by relatives of 12 Kuwaitis. The justices will combine the two cases for a hearing in late March and may decide them by the beginning of next summer. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. * * * Toronto Globe and Mail: November 11, 2003 GUANTANAMO CASES GET HEARING IN U.S. TOP COURT Rights of hundreds of detainees at stake as judges agree to consider testimony By Paul Koring WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the rights of hundreds of foreigners -- including at least two Canadians -- held incommunicado as "unlawful combatants" on a remote U.S. naval base in Cuba, the court announced yesterday. It is the first time the court has agreed to take a case arising out of the special measures imposed by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration as part of its war against terrorism. The court, however, limited its review to the narrow but significant question of whether the 650 Guantanamo detainees -- all non-U.S. citizens and mostly Muslims seized in Afghanistan who reportedly range in age from 13 to 70 -- have the right of access to U.S. courts. It is expected to hear the case next year. Yesterday, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would consolidate and consider cases brought on behalf of Australian, British and Kuwaiti detainees, lawyers for the two British detainees said they were "delighted" by the Supreme Court's decision to take the case. "This is without a doubt the most encouraging news they [the detainees] will have had -- if they can ever be privy to it -- since their detention began nearly two years ago," lawyer Steven Watt said. By holding them at a U.S. naval base on leased land in Cuba and deeming them unlawful combatants, the Bush administration maintains the detainees have none of the usual legal rights under U.S. law. Nor, the administration says, do the detainees have the rights afforded prisoners of war under the Geneva conventions because they were not part of a uniformed or legally constituted military. Some foreign governments and many civil-rights activists in the United States have voiced outrage at how the Bush administration has incarcerated and held detainees for nearly two years, mostly without charging them. About 40 have been sent home and only a handful have been charged. International-law experts didn't expect that the court would agree to consider the case. "I was very surprised that the court took this case at all," said Laurence Rothenberg, an international-law specialist at the Washington-based Center for International and Strategic Studies. He suggested that the judges -- only four of nine are required to agree to consider a case -- could look at the issue in either a very narrow or much broader perspective. "They could look at the whole scope of what the administration is doing" with respect to detainees and their rights, he said, or "they might just say that the President has exclusive authority." During the Second World War, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the government to intern people of Japanese origin, even those who held U.S. citizenship. "Historically, the court has deferred to the executive branch on matters of national security," said David Cole, a professor at Washington's Georgetown University. If the court rules the detainees do have the right of access to U.S. courts rather than military tribunals established to try them, it may unleash a flood of further actions. A spokeswoman for the Canadian Foreign Affairs Department said "we're not in a position to comment" on whether that would affect the legal status of Canadians held at Guantanamo. Ottawa has previously maintained that the ambiguous legal status of two Canadians known to be held in Guantanamo makes it impossible to say what will happen to them. The brothers -- Omar and Abdul Rahman Khadr, aged 17 and 20 respectively -- were apprehended in Afghanistan. Neither has been charged. They are the sons of Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian-born Canadian charity worker whom U.S. intelligence agencies allege to be a key al-Qaeda operative. Ottawa has voiced concern over the detention of Omar because of his age, but U.S. officials say he shot and killed a U.S. medic during a firefight at a suspected al-Qaeda compound when he was 15. In their submission to the court, lawyers for the British and Australian detainees argued "the United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law." * * * Toronto Star: November 11, 2003 'WE NEED CANADIANS TO SPEAK UP' By Thomas Walkom Maher Arar, the Canadian deported from New York so he could be tortured in a Syrian jail, is a living example of North America's 9/11 frenzy gone toxic. He is also a living rebuke to Canada's practice of sharing so-called intelligence information with outlaw states, be they Syria, Egypt or George W. Bush's United States. But the worst aspect of the Arar case is that it is not unique. Since Arar's return, relatives of other Canadian Muslims held and tortured in foreign dungeons have come forward to speak. They are both emboldened by Arar's forthrightness and sickened by his experience. The stories the relatives have to tell may differ in the details. But the broad strokes are chillingly similar. Like Arar, these Canadian citizens came under suspicion after Sept. 11, 2001. Like Arar, they were never charged with anything. Yet like Arar, after being fingered by Canadian security services, they ended up jailed and tortured abroad. Abdullah Almalki is one. The 32-year-old engineer, an acquaintance of Arar's, was in Malaysia with his wife's family on Jan. 22, 2002 when -- at 7:30 a.m. -- RCMP anti-terrorist officers executed co-ordinated raids on his home and those of relatives in London, Ont., and Ottawa. The Mounties claimed that Almalki had been exporting computer equipment to companies that eventually sold them to terrorists. The warrant for their search was sealed -- that is, the justification for these suspicions was not made public. It remains sealed. No charges were laid. "It was very scary all around," recalls Almalki's brother Youssef, at the time a medical student at the University of Western Ontario in London. "I didn't know what to do." Luckily for Youssef, the university found him a lawyer. "They (the Mounties) asked me what my specialty was and did I ever get gifts from my brother. What a crazy question. Who doesn't get gifts from his family? But my lawyer said 'Don't answer that. They're trying to tie you into something.'" Back in Malaysia, Almalki was sanguine. "That's just Sept. 11 craziness," he told his worried siblings. His wife Kuzimah was pregnant and didn't want to travel. So they stayed on with her parents. In the spring of 2002, their fifth child, Zack, was born. In May, Almalki flew to Syria to see his parents, who like many elderly immigrants return to their native country each year. "My mother got into the VIP section of the airport and met him," recounts Youssef. She was hugging him when they (Syrian police) took him out of her arms. She never saw him again." Back in Canada, Almalki's family didn't quite know what had happened. His mother spoke to them by telephone but guardedly. "She was afraid," says Youssef. Even once they understood the gravity of the situation, the Almalkis weren't sure what to do. "We didn't know about consular officials or anything," says Youssef. "We were afraid. People we knew in Syria said, 'Oh, he's innocent; they'll let him out.' We did tell our lawyer here but were hesitant about making waves. You can't understand how afraid we were ... "It's an immigrant mentality. You worry that if you antagonize government, it will only make matters worse. That's why we didn't talk about it publicly." The family notified Canada's Foreign Affairs department. Foreign Affairs put in a routine request to the Syrians. The Syrians didn't bother to reply for eight months. Almalki has still not been allowed a consular visit. Meanwhile, the family was both frightened and ashamed. If you don't understand this, you've never been related to someone accused of a terrible crime. "Stuff like this hurts your reputation," says Youssef. "At university, even people I thought were friends started calling me Al Qaeda behind my back." However, Arar's revelation last week that he had met a severely tortured Abdullah in a Syrian prison caused the horrified Almalkis to rethink their low- key approach. Says Youssef: "My mother just sits there hearing all this about torture and asks, "What does this mean? What is this metal chair (a piece of Syrian torture equipment)?' My dad is beyond himself." Youssef is still wary of being too critical -- of either the RCMP or the federal government. "I don't want to antagonize anybody," he says. "I'm still afraid that going public will make things worse, that the RCMP will smear us." He doesn't like to say it so I will. Abdullah Almalki, a Canadian citizen, is being tortured in a Syrian prison because the security services of his own country passed on unproven suspicions to Damascus -- either directly or, more likely, through the U.S. This is beyond outrageous. If this is what intelligence sharing means, it must stop right now. "We need Canadians to speak up," says Youssef. "If Canada wants my brother for something, it should bring him back and try him here. "Just get him out of there." [ Thomas Walkom's column appears on Tuesday. He can be reached at twalkom@thestar.ca ] * * * The Guardian: November 11, 2003 DILEMMA FOR BLAIR IN LANDMARK US CASE Court to hear Guantanamo Bay inmates' demand for civilian trial Julian Borger in Washington The US supreme court decided yesterday to review the Bush administration's conduct of its war on terrorism, agreeing to hear the demands of inmates at Guantanamo Bay for civilian trials. The landmark case, which is likely to be heard in the first half of next year, also presents the Blair government with a serious dilemma. Two of the detainees whose case will be heard are British citizens, and the government will be under pressure to make an argument before the supreme court, making clear its position on the Bush policy of detentions without trial. "This is a nightmare for Blair," said a Washington lawyer with considerable supreme court experience, who argued that ignoring the case would be politically unacceptable in Britain. "Either the British embassy will have to seek Washington counsel or file an amicus brief [a written argument], or he will be pilloried." The British attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has sought to negotiate a separate agreement with the US military authorities on the treatment of British inmates captured in Afghanistan. He has claimed he has won a promise that the Britons would not face the death penalty if and when they go before special military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay. However, the Pentagon has not officially confirmed the deal. According to some reports, military authorities at the Cuban base have already built a death chamber next to the courtroom. Pentagon lawyers asked for comment on those reports did not return calls yesterday. Four of the nine supreme court justices, the minimum necessary, voted to hear appeals from two Britons, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, two Australians and 12 Kuwaitis. They are arguing against lower court rulings that US courts have no jurisdiction over what happens to inmates at Guantanamo Bay because the cases do not involve US citizens or US territory. It is the first time the supreme court has opted to carry out a judicial review of the laws passed under the Bush administration in its war on terrorism. "It means that they're going to have to decide whether these guys have any rights," Clive Stafford Smith, one of the Britons' US-based lawyers, said, pointing out that with one more supreme court vote, the inmates would be given access to the US judicial system. "I think we'll have a real shot at winning." Arguing for the justice department, the US solicitor general, Ted Olson - whose wife was killed in the September 11 attacks - justified the detention of 660 foreign inmates in Guantanamo Bay. He said: "American soldiers and their allies are still engaged in armed conflict overseas against an unprincipled, unconventional, and savage foe." The interrogation of the detainees is yielding valuable intelligence in the war against al-Qaida terrorists, the Bush administration argues, which could dry up if the inmates were allowed to consult lawyers. The US government has based its argument on a 1950 case known as Johnson v Eisentrager, which looked at the prosecution of Germans accused of spying on the allies who were tried in China. The supreme court then ruled that US federal courts had no jurisdiction in the case. Lawyers for the inmates argued that this case was not relevant to the war on terrorism because the undeclared conflict respects no borders, has no foreseeable end and could result in detainees being held without trial indefinitely. The US government, the lawyers argued, "may simply forget them, in the vain hope the world will, as well". By agreeing to hear the arguments put forward by the Guantanamo Bay inmates, the supreme court is, in effect, agreeing to take another look at the precedent set by that 53-year-old case. The Bush administration and the Blair government were caught by surprise by yesterday's decision. Both had assumed the supreme court would refuse to hear the Guantanamo Bay case, as it did in March. The court had also refused to hear challenges to the government's detention of hundreds of Muslim immigrants in the wake of September 11, or its increased use of surveillance under the counter-terrorism legislation of the patriot act. The development is likely to intensify scrutiny of the relationship between Tony Blair and George Bush during the US president's visit to Britain next week. Mr Blair has come under fire from the inmates' families and in parliament for not demanding the repatriation of British detainees. * * * Chicago Tribune: November 10, 2003 COURT TO HEAR WHETHER DETAINEES CAN FIGHT THROUGH U.S. LEGAL SYSTEM By Jan Crawford Greenburg WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Taking up its first terrorism-related case since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Supreme Court announced Monday it would decide whether foreigners being held at a U.S. military base in Cuba can turn to American courts to challenge their detention. The justices agreed to hear a legal challenge on behalf of 16 detainees who were arrested during the war in Afghanistan. Lawyers for the men contend that U.S. courts should decide whether the government can continue holding them indefinitely, without informing them of any charges against them and without permitting them to consult lawyers, friends or family members. Twelve of the men are Kuwaiti nationals, two are Australian and two are British. They were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan and are being held with more than 600 other detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A D.C.-based federal appeals court threw out their claims in March, unanimously ruling that the U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to resolve whether their confinements are legal because the base is outside the United States. In agreeing to hear the case, the justices said Monday they would focus on the narrow legal question of whether U.S. courts can consider challenges to the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and being held at Guantanamo. They will not decide the broader question of whether that detention is legal. Despite the narrow legal issue, lawyers involved in the case said the case could shed light on how the court may approach other cases challenging the Bush administration's policies in the war on terror. Federal appeals courts now are weighing legal claims in other terrorism cases, including whether the government can designate American citizens as "enemy combatants" and hold them indefinitely without access to a lawyer. Those issues are unlikely to reach the court until its 2004-2005 term. "Obviously, there are going to be a lot of clues that come out of this case," said Jeffrey E. Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing the British and Australian detainees in the Supreme Court case. "The government (is asking) the court to show extraordinary deference to military determinations. The amount of deference the court shows will be instructive to other cases, as well." In papers urging the Supreme Court to hear the case, lawyers challenging the detentions argued that the United States "has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law." But the Bush administration contended in legal papers that U.S. courts should not interfere with military affairs that are the concern of the political branches. It pointed to a line of Supreme Court cases since the World War II era to support that view. The administration argued that that the litigation could seriously interfere "with the core war powers of the president" during an ongoing conflict. It notes that the litigation challenging the military detentions has arisen while American soldiers and their allies are still fighting overseas against the Taliban, "an unprincipled, unconventional and savage foe." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice defended the White House position during an interview Monday with a Fox television affiliate in Atlanta. "We believe that the law is on our side," Rice said. "We've always said with the detainees that they are being treated consistently with international law, and we believe that we're right in this." The administration has aggressively defended its anti-terrorism policies and urged the justices not to take up the detainees' case. It also had asked the court to stay out of another post-Sept. 11 case involving the Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity accused of supporting terrorism. The court declined Monday to intervene in that case, letting stand a Chicago- based federal appeals court decision written by Judge Frank Easterbrook that the government had authority to freeze the group's assets. In deciding whether to hear the legal arguments over the Guantanamo Bay detentions, the court was presented with wide array of "friend of the court" briefs from civil liberties groups, military officers and World War II Japanese- American detainee Fred Korematsu. The retired military officers, represented by the Chicago law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, argued that the United States was violating military regulations and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 by refusing to hold hearings to determine the status of the detainees. They said the detention of the foreign nationals could come back to haunt U.S. service personnel in future conflicts. "The issues in these cases are especially significant to the members of American military forces, who may be denied the protections of the Geneva Conventions in the future by foreign captors using American treatment of the Guantanamo detainees as precedent," the military officers argued in court papers. Retired Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms said Monday that the he was "delighted" the court had agreed to resolve the jurisdictional issue, calling it "vitally important to all Americans, especially members of the American military." University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone wrote the brief for Korematsu, arguing that "history teaches that, in time of war, we have often sacrificed fundamental freedoms unnecessarily." Donald Rehkopf, who wrote a legal brief challenging the detentions for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the case could provide a significant statement on the scope of presidential powers. "I think the court realizes its decision here has an impact not only on the people detained (in Guantanamo) but people we may be detaining at other military facilities elsewhere," Rehkopf said. © 2003, Chicago Tribune. * * * The Observer (UK): November 9, 2003 AMERICANS SOW SEEDS OF HATRED By Patrick Graham Falluja -- Sarab rolls up her sleeve and looks at the thick scar across her upper arm. The eight-year-old says she was playing in the bathroom of her house when the shots were fired but cannot remember anything else. 'It is their routine,' said her grandfather, Turk Jassim. 'After the Americans are attacked, they shoot everywhere. This is inhuman - a stupid act by a country always talking about human rights.' Last September, US forces shot dead Sarab's two-year old sister, Dunya, and wounded two other girls in her family, 13-year-old Menal and 16-year old Bassad. The family belongs to the Albueisi tribe who farm the rich land along the Euphrates river south of Falluja. The Albueisi fought against the British and even Saddam Hussein found them difficult to control. Since April, at least 10 members of the tribe have been killed by US forces, including five policemen. While the US authorities maintain that resistance attacks are carried out by former Baathists and supporters of Saddam, they continue to ignore the tribal nature of the insurgency which has grown steadily over recent months. Deeply conservative clans like the 50,000-strong Albueisi have codes of honour which they complain the American army ignores at checkpoints and during raids on houses. They also believe that the Koran demands jihad against foreign invaders. Asked how many American lives should be taken if one of their own is killed, the answer is: 'As many as possible.' Last week an American Chinook helicopter was shot down by a heat-seeking missile a few kilometres from Sarab's house, killing 16 soldiers. It could have been worse, the neighbours say. Resistance fighters were ready to fire another missile at a second Chinook when they were stopped by worried locals. After the crash, others in the area came out with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Kalashnikovs, but they, too, were dissuaded for fear of retaliation. And with good reason. After Friday's downing of a Black Hawk helicopter near Tikrit,US troops dropped two 500lb bombs and fired tank rounds at the area of the crash in a show of force. According to Albueisi resistance supporters, the attack on the Chinook was carried out by members of the tribe, as was a second attack later in the week on a military train. One of the freight containers from the train lies behind Sarab's house, its lettering partially effaced by handfuls of mud. 'If the Americans came as normal citizens, we'd welcome them,' said Khalid, an Albueisi with ties to the resistance. 'When they came for liberation, I sent them food. Now I just want to kill them. If I didn't have children, I'd join tomorrow.' As a teenager, Khalid won local fame for revenging his brother's death. A notoriously good shot, he says he is now thinking of dusting off his Kalashnikov. 'What are we supposed to say? "Oh, the poor American soldiers died" when they kill people here every day? I expected more than just a Chinook to be shot down.' Like everybody in the area, he believes far more soldiers died in the crash than the authorities admit. According to Khalid, the tactics and aims of the resistance in the Falluja area are different from those in Baghdad. In the countryside, foreign fighters and Saddam's supporters play a far smaller role than tribal relationships and traditional codes. 'The Albueisi have hot blood and will do anything without caring about the results. If something happens to one of them, they will get together and take revenge. More helicopters will go down, definitely.' According to Khalid, last month a Russian made Sam-7 Strela anti-aircraft missile like the one used against the Chinook could be purchased for $325, mostly from tribes in southern Iraq who collected thousands following the fall of Saddam. He had heard that a new, more compact missile was on the market but did not know the name or the price. The US troops pulled out of the Chinook crash site at the end of last week, leaving behind piles of Tootsie Roll wrappers and plastic containers for Menu 19, Beef With Mushroom. Near by, women in bright dresses and scarves wrapped round their faces weeded potato and wheat fields. Yassim Hachim smiled broadly as he wheeled by on his bike past bulldozed farmland where US troops had scooped up even the soil next to an irrigation ditch. 'It was like Eid, because it was the best celebration,' he said, referring to the festival that ends this month's fasting of Ramadan. 'I saw the missile come from the west and hit the helicopter. After the crash, people got their weapons to shoot the US soldiers, but they were stopped. Everybody here hates the US.' Since April, at least 40 civilians and police have been killed in and around Falluja, as well as 22 US soldiers, two of them yesterday in a bomb attack west of the city. It is a cycle that does not look like it will end soon. 'They do not understand psychology,' said Dr Adnan Chechan, a surgeon at Falluja's main hospital. 'When you are violent, you get a violent reaction.' Last week, he pointed out, six people were killed 500 yards from the hospital as they drove past a US convoy shortly after a roadside bomb exploded. Television footage from inside one of the mini-vans carrying employees of the Oil Ministry was too gruesome to be broadcast. Adnan was sitting under posters that read: 'Free Dr Omar Abdul Sattar.' He said that the former head of the provincial healthcare system had been arrested for operating on members of the resistance six weeks ago and was still in jail. People in Falluja have been particularly critical of the 82nd Airborne - which has been given responsibility for occupying the area and ordered to crack down on insurgents. 'Previously, I had a good view of American people,' said Adnan. 'But we have changed our mind after seeing the aggression - the soldiers in Falluja and Khaldiya are very aggressive. 'The people here do not do these attacks for no reason. If someone in their clan has been killed, they will take revenge.' In the area around Falluja, the US army appears to be winning hearts and minds - for their enemy. 'The American army is our best friend,' a resistance fighter told us. 'We should be giving them medals.' * * * Ottawa Citizen: November 9, 2003 SECOND CANADIAN IN SYRIAN JAIL HAS NO TERROR LINKS, WIFE SAYS Khuzaimah Kalifah plans to return to Canada to fight for Almalki's release By Kate Jaimet Khuzaimah Kalifah plans to return to Canada and fight for her husband's freedom after news emerged last week that Abdullah Almalki is in a Syrian jail where he is allegedly being tortured. "I'm just hoping he'll be released soon," she said, in a phone interview from her native Malaysia, where she is staying with her mother and tending to her and Mr. Almalki's five children. "I'm so worried. I don't know whether he's going to survive much longer." She hasn't seen Mr. Almalki, a 32-year-old Syrian-born Canadian, since he left for a visit to Syria in May, 2002. "He's gone. He's disappeared from our lives," she said yesterday. "There's no words to describe how I feel. I don't know what to do. I'm here, I'm so helpless. I just want to go and get him out. At the same time I'm very angry at the people with no heart, who torture him." The RCMP will not comment on the Almalki case. News reports have suggested that Mr. Almalki is a suspect in an alleged terrorist cell that planned to bomb the U.S. embassy in Ottawa. "I know it's a lie," said Ms. Kalifah, who says police started to come around shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and searched Mr. Almalki's home the following January. "They raided the house, and that was 22 months ago. Until today, they didn't charge him. If they have anything against him, they should charge him." For now, Ms. Kalifah said she's just trying to maintain a stable life for her children. Family is helping with the bills. And she is heartened by the release of another Syrian prisoner, Maher Arar, who arrived home in Ottawa last month after a year in jail, freed thanks to the efforts of humanitarian organizations, politicians, diplomats, and his wife, Monia Mazigh. Mr. Almalki, a Canadian-trained engineer, was seized at the airport in Syria on May 4, 2002, when he arrived to visit his parents. The family knew nothing of his whereabouts or condition until last week, when Mr. Arar revealed that he had met him in Syria's Sednaya prison, where they exchanged stories of torture. Mr. Almalki's name was brought up by U.S. agents interrogating Mr. Arar before shipping him to Syria. The agents brandished Mr. Arar's apartment lease, which had been witnessed by Mr. Almalki, to establish some sort of alleged link to terrorist organizations. Ms. Kalifah met Mr. Almalki at Carleton University, where he was studying engineering and she was working on a degree in economics. "We met and we fell in love," she said. "He's kind and gentle. With the kids, a fun and loving dad. He's a great guy." Mr. Almalki was involved with the Muslim student association. He helped establish and maintain places on campus where Muslims could pray, Ms. Kalifah said, but he was never involved in any movements supporting violence or terrorism. "That thought never crossed my mind." They married in 1993 and he went into business for himself, selling computer equipment from North America to customers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. By 2001, the couple had four children, with a fifth on the way. They lived with his parents in a large family home in Ottawa. Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 happened and suddenly, Ms. Kalifah said, their world changed. "We were shocked, just shocked. I didn't go out after that. People were hostile with the Muslims." An RCMP officer came to their home a few days after the attacks and spoke to her husband outside. He didn't discuss the questioning with her, she said, but after that, "we got followed around." In November of that year, the family went to Malaysia to stay with Ms. Kalifah's mother, who was ill. Mr. Almalki continued to manage his business from Malyasia via phone calls and e-mail. It was while they were in Malaysia that the RCMP searched Mr. Almalki's house in January, 2002, and seized his computers and files. Mr. Almalki decided to travel to Syria in May, 2004, to meet his parents who were visiting friends and relatives. He was arrested at the airport. © The Ottawa Citizen 2003 * * * November 6, 2003 SAMPSON LAMBASTES CANADA OVER TORTURE CASES Canadian Press OTTAWA - William Sampson lambasted the Canadian government today, saying it complied with his torture in a Saudi jail by presuming he was guilty and failed to act forcefully to get him out. Sampson, who has described brutal torture over his 31-month incarceration, said the Department of Foreign Affairs now has a damning "track record" of mismanagement given the evidence of his case and those of Maher Arar and Zahra Kazemi who were also tortured in jails in the Middle East. Kazemi died after a beating in Iran. Sampson demanded public inquiries into all three cases during a scathing presentation before a Commons foreign affairs committee. "Throughout my incarceration, I considered that the activities of the embassy officials . . . fell well short of anything that could be considered supportive," he said in his first Canadian appearance since his release in August. "Their behaviour and treatment of my family, my father in particular when he visited Saudi Arabia, was thoroughly inadequate." Sampson's dramatic appearance, on the heels of Arar's riveting tale of torture earlier this week, is expected to increase pressure on the Liberal government to call an inquiry. Arar cited new evidence today to indicate Canadian officials played a role in the American decision to deport him to Syria from New York last year. Disturbing allegations of diplomatic naivete and economic self-interest emerged from Sampson's testimony. After promising to pay all his medical costs related to his ordeal, Foreign Affairs cut off Sampson's medical coverage without explanation as of October 28, Sampson said. Since his release, he's undergone cardiac operations, several dental procedures, and trauma counselling directly related to the beatings and abuse he received. While some Canadian consular and government officials may not have noticed the signs and signals that he had been tortured, others deliberately chose to ignore them, Sampson said. They downplayed his case publicly and hid behind the argument that they were using so-called "soft diplomacy" in order to protect Canada's oil interests in the region, he said. "For the Canadian government to have pushed harder would not have put me at any more risk than I already was," he said. "Had we been kept in a country with less economic power and less economic clout than Saudi Arabia has, it might well have been that a lot harder pressure would have been brought to bear. Oil, in the case of Saudi Arabia (caused hesitation)." Consular officials in Riyadh and Foreign Affairs staff assumed he was guilty, said Sampson. "One of your operatives in the embassy put forward a statement to my father indicating my guilt," he said with his father, James, at his side. Sampson said that during a prison visit, another embassy official told him he was guilty of the Saudi charges - illegal bootlegging and planting the car bomb that killed British citizen Christopher Rodway. The failure of diplomats and government staff to act decisively in the early stages sealed his fate, even if they later stepped up their efforts, he said. "By that stage I was in prison for a year and by that time I was already sentenced to death," he said. Aileen Carroll, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham, defended her government's handling of the case and told Sampson he was always presumed to be innocent of the Saudi charges. "I am dismayed to hear your very negative judgment," she said, noting that Sampson's life had been spared after months of living under a death sentence by beheading. "My sense is . . . that every conceivable effort in every possible diplomatic venue was employed to try to obtain that release." Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International, said consular officials aren't properly educated to recognize the signs of torture. They believed intermittent statements by Arar and Sampson during their imprisonment that they weren't being tortured, Neve said. "All throughout Mr Sampson's and Mr. Arar's detention we heard what I would say were very naive statements from the government." Officials must react more quickly and at higher levels, he added. "That should be happening at the very outset," he said. Sampson said Canada can help him now by seeking his exoneration from Saudi Arabia on the car-bombing charge, of which he has never been cleared. * * * BBC: November 10, 2003 -- 17:16 GMT GUANTANAMO CASES GO TO TOP COURT The US Supreme Court is to hear appeals by Afghan war detainees at the US military's Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba. For the first time the court will assess whether US courts have the jurisdiction to consider appeals made on behalf of inmates held at the camp. The appeals have been lodged by lawyers for 16 detainees, claiming that they are being held illegally. The BBC's correspondent in Washington, Rob Watson, says the review will be very limited in its nature. 'Unlawful combatants' He says the justices will be looking at whether the inmates' detentions are any business of the US legal system. The Bush administration says the detainees are not US citizens, nor are they being held on US soil, so they are not protected by laws relating to prisoners of war. In March, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected a lawsuit claiming the detainees were under de facto US control, even though the Guantanamo camp is on Cuban territory leased to the US. If the appeal is successful, the case will be referred back to the District of Columbia court, which will consider whether the detainees are being held illegally. Lawyers appealing on behalf of two Britons - Shafiq Rasool and Asif Iqbal - held at the camp welcomed the Supreme Court's move. "This is without a doubt the most encouraging news they will have had - if they can ever be privy to it - since their detention began nearly two years ago," said lawyer Steven Watt. "We're absolutely delighted," he said. Held without charge In their application to the Supreme Court, lawyers for two Australian and 12 Kuwaiti nationals, and the Britons, said: "The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law". "Within the walls of this prison, foreign nationals may be held indefinitely, without charges or evidence of wrongdoing, without access to family, friends or legal counsel, and with no opportunity to establish their innocence." Washington has classified the detainees as "unlawful combatants" without any rights under the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of POWs. Under such status, prisoners are not charged or allowed access to any legal process. Last month, Christophe Girod - the senior Red Cross official in Washington - publicly attacked conditions at Guantanamo Bay, saying it was unacceptable that the detainees should be held indefinitely without legal safeguards. The court will hear the appeal next year and will issue a ruling by the end of June, Reuters news agency reported. * * * Reuters November 10, 2003 -- 16:08 GMT US COURT TO HEAR GUANTANAMO APPEALS WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court says it will hear appeals by Afghan war detainees challenging their incarceration at a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first time the justices will decide a case on the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policy. The justices agreed on Monday to review a ruling that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to consider claims by a group of detainees held without access to their families or to lawyers, and held without any charges brought against them. The Supreme Court will hear arguments next year, with a decision due by the end of June. The high court said it would decide appeals by two British, two Australian and 12 Kuwaiti nationals. They are among about 660 detainees from more than 40 nations at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba following their capture during the war in Afghanistan. The justices said in a written order they would decide whether U.S. "courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba." The United States considers the detainees enemy combatants, not prisoners of war entitled to specific protections under international law. The United States has identified a handful of detainees it considers eligible for military tribunals. The detainees were seized during the U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban government in Afghanistan and against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The first detainees arrived in January 2002 at Guantanamo. Attorneys for the 16 foreign nationals argued the U.S. Constitution and international law forbade indefinite detention without providing the prisoners certain protections. * * * New York Jewish Times: Novemebr 10, 2003 CHARGES REFERRED AGAINST AIRMAN CHARGED WITH UCMJ VIOLATIONS http://nyjtimes.com/cover/11-10-03/AirmanViolations.htm SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. -- Charges against Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi, 60th Logistics Readiness Squadron, Travis Air Force Base, Calif., were referred to a general court-martial Nov. 6 by Maj. Gen. Paul W. Essex, 18th Air Force commander here. Maj. Gen. Essex did not refer the case as a capital case. He also selected a panel of court members from officers stationed at Travis AFB to hear the case. Charges referred include seven specifications alleging the accused failed to obey a lawful general order or regulation in violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ); one specification alleging the accused aided the enemy in violation of Article 104; four specifications alleging espionage in violation of Article 106a; five specifications alleging the accused made false official statements in violation of Article 107; two specifications charged under Article 134 alleging the accused willfully retained documents without authority in violation of 18 U.S.C. 793; and one specification charged under Article 134 alleging the accused executed a fraudulent credit application scheme in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1344. Charges against Senior Airman Al Halabi that were dismissed include four specifications alleging the accused failed to obey a lawful general order or regulation in violation of Article 92; one specification alleging the accused aided the enemy in violation of Article 104; four specifications alleging the accused made false official statements in violation of Article 107; and one specification charged under Article 134 alleging a violation of 18 U.S.C. 793. Military members are subject to the UCMJ regardless of where the alleged offenses occur. Senior Airman Al Halabi was on temporary duty at Guantanamo Bay (GTMO), Cuba, for nine months serving as a translator at the time of the alleged offenses. He was apprehended at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Fla., July 23, and was transported to his home station, Travis AFB the next day. He is currently being held in pretrial confinement at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The criminal investigation in this case was conducted by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations detachment at Travis AFB, and included extensive cooperation and information sharing with the investigative branches of other military services and federal agencies to include the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On Aug. 27, Brig. Gen. Bradley S. Baker, the 60th Air Mobility Wing commander and special court-martial convening authority, appointed an investigating officer for Senior Airman Al Halabi's Article 32 hearing. The hearing (analogous to a civilian preliminary hearing and grand jury process) was held at Vandenberg AFB from Sept. 15 - 17. Senior Airman Al Halabi was present and represented by two military defense counsel. The Investigating Officer prepared a report of this pretrial investigation and provided it to Brig. Gen. Baker, Oct. 2. On Oct. 17, Brig. Gen. Baker forwarded the charges, the Article 32 Investigating Officer's report, and his recommendations to Maj. Gen. Essex, the general court-martial convening authority. The court-martial is expected to be conducted at Travis AFB, Calif., at a date to be determined. * * * Aljazeera: November 9, 2003 -- 4:36 PM GMT GUANTANAMO FAMILIES HOLD GOVERNMENT TALKS by Shaista Aziz A delegation of Muslims will be lobbying the British government to secure the release of UK prisoners from Guantanamo Bay this Tuesday. Azmat Begg, the father of Moazzam Begg who has been held in Guantanamo for two years without charge, will be among those holding talks with Baroness Simmons, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. Mozzam Begg, a father of four from central England was kidnapped by US forces from Pakistan in Febuary 2002 and taken into Afghanistan against his will, according to his solicitor. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay a year later after being held in primitive conditions in Bagram's US-controlled prison. His family insists that he is innocent and is demanding that he is released by the Americans and returned to the UK. "I want my son back home, if the Americans have any evidence against him they should allow the British authorities to put him on trial here. He has been locked up for two years without charge, this has torn the whole family apart" says Azmat Begg. He hopes that the meeting with the Foreign Office will provide him with answers as to what the British government is doing behind the scenes to ensure that his son and others receive a fair trial. "The last time I heard from my son was in June, via letter. I know that his health is suffering, especially his mental health, I pray that he is able to cope with the situation that he finds himself in." Campaign Campaigners working with the families of prisoners are unhappy with the response that they have had so far from the Foreign Office. Shaz Munir, working with the pressure group Prisoner of the west feels that the British government isn't doing enough to ensure that prisoners are receiving their basic human rights. "A group of us met Baroness Simmons a few weeks ago to discuss our concerns. We showed her letters from British prisoners who say that they are constantly hungry and not receiving enough food to eat. "I feel that Baroness Simmons was trying to pacify us with her assurances that the government is looking into our concerns, we have yet to see any action," said Munir. Torture An Australian lawyer representing a number of prisoners says that the US military is torturing captives. Richard Bourke, told and Australian television news channel that methods of torture were similar to those found in the "dark ages." Bourke claims that he has received leaked reports from the US military personnel and eyewitness accounts from individuals who have been released by the Americans. "One of the detainees had described being taken out and tied to a post and having rubber bullets fired at them. They were being made to kneel cruciform in the sun until they collapsed," he said. Bourke is calling on the governments of the world to stand up to the White House and demand that the United Nations investigates reports of torture. Algerian lawyer, Hassan Ariebi, who revealed last month that Guantanamo Bay guards had converted to Islam, is also calling on human rights activists to work for the prisoners' release. "I have visisted Washington and New York and tried to convince the Americans that a lot of the prisoners are innocent. "Algerian prisoners were taken from Bosnia and have no connection whatsoever with al-Qaida members. I met some of the freed prisoners when they were released. "They confirmed to me that some of the Camp X-ray guards converted to Islam because they sympathised with the innocent prisoners," he told Aljazeera.net. * * * ABC (Aus) Online: November 9, 2003 DANISH RED CROSS DEPLORES GUANTANAMO DETENTIONS The head of the Danish Red Cross is accusing the Danish Government of complicity in the United States' detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Freddy Karup Pedersen, head of the Danish Red Cross Society, says it is the duty of his organisation to "shout it loud and clear when the rules of war are not respected" or when governments fall short of their human rights pledges under the Geneva Convention. In a reference to the 650 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Mr Pedersen deplores the "inaction" of Danish leaders and parliamentarians over the issue and calls on them to "rise to their responsibilities". At least one of the prisoners held at the American base holds a Danish passport. They were imprisoned indefinitely under the legally obscure term of enemy combatants and have no right of trial before an independent court, or right to legal representation. Mr Pederson's comments come a month after the ICRC's top official in Washington harshly criticised the US's detention of the suspects. The unusual public comments boosted the cause of civil libertarians worldwide, who have long decried the Guantanamo controversy. Mr Pedersen, addressing the annual meeting of the Red Cross society, says governments twist international law for their own convenience, especially after the attacks of September 11. "We're concerned when we hear Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen say that the United States respects all international conventions, including that of the Geneva Convention, with regard to Guanatanamo." He says such remarks "risk setting a precedent and we will have difficulty convincing other states to respect international conventions on the treatment of prisoners-of-war when democratic states like Denmark and the US pretend to respect them when in fact they undermine them". "These prisoners are held for undetermined amounts of time, and are not brought before a judge or independent court. This legal void is unacceptable to us," Mr Pedersen said. -- AFP * * * Novemebr 8, 2003 SPY SUSPECT FACES COURT-MARTIAL · A military translator at Guantanamo Bay prison is accused of trying to pass documents to Syria. By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- A military translator working with terrorist detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be court-martialed on charges that he sought to turn over scores of classified documents to Syria, the Air Force said Friday. But Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al-Halabi would not face the death penalty if convicted after his military trial, which will be held at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento. Rather, he would face a maximum penalty of life in prison. Al-Halabi was one of three Guantanamo Bay staff members arrested in a spreading investigation into alleged spying at the base's Camp Delta prison. Air Force Maj. Gen. Paul W. Essex, Al-Halabi's senior supervisor, ordered the court-martial after dropping 10 of the initial charges against the 24-year-old enlistee. But the general kept intact the more serious allegations, including four charges that Al-Halabi participated in espionage by attempting to deliver secret prison documents to the Syrians. Al-Halabi's military lawyers at Travis could not be reached for comment. But they have maintained that he had planned to go to Syria for his wedding and was not trying to sabotage sensitive interrogation efforts at the prison in Cuba. The Syrian government has denied that Al-Halabi was working for it, and his father, Abu Ahmad Al-Halabi of Detroit, said in a recent interview that his son loved America and was innocent. Al-Halabi, who was based at Travis and is being held for special security reasons in the brig at Vandenberg Air Force Base, near the Santa Barbara County city of Lompoc, worked for nine months as a translator at Camp Delta, home to some 660 Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. He was arrested July 23 at the Mayport Naval Air Station at Jacksonville, Fla., after leaving Camp Delta. He had tickets to fly to Syria from California a few days later, his attorneys have said. Essex's decision to send Al-Halabi's case to court-martial was based on evidence presented at a special military pretrial hearing at Vandenberg in September. Under the charges for court-martial, Al-Halabi faces four counts of espionage and aiding the enemy for allegedly trying to pass classified information to the Syrians, whom "the accused knew to be the enemy." The charges also state that the information about detainees "was intended to reach the enemy." Al-Halabi allegedly attempted to deliver "two written notes and over 180 electronic versions of written notes from detainees," which the government said "directly concerned intelligence gathering and planning for the United States' war against terrorists," according to court-martial documents. The government said the notes were "stored in his personal laptop computer en route to Syria." Further, the government alleges that he sent "three e-mails containing classified information of detainees" to an unidentified "citizen of a foreign government" via an unsecured Internet provider. Al-Halabi also allegedly tried to deliver other documents, such as a copy of the military flight path to the naval base in Cuba, a copy of the protocol for prisoner transfers, and classified cellblock information that included cell numbers and names and serial numbers of detainees. Al-Halabi also is charged with trying to provide Syria with a military installation map of Guantanamo Bay. Other charges include "wrongfully taking photographs" of the prison, "wrongfully transferring classified information to an unclassified computer," and "wrongfully taking classified materials to a housing unit." The charges also state that Al-Halabi lied when he initially denied to special military investigators that he had converted classified information for his personal use. The charges that were dismissed involved disobeying orders and allegedly inaccurate statements he had made. Al-Halabi is a Syria native who immigrated to this country as a youngster, was raised in the Detroit area and became a U.S. citizen. He joined the Air Force in January 2000. Of the three Guantanamo Bay spying investigations, the Al-Halabi case is the furthest along in the legal process and has the most potential for serious national security repercussions. How soon Al-Halabi's military trial would begin is unclear. Another case involves a civilian interpreter, Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, who was arrested in September at the Boston airport while returning from Egypt. He is charged with lying to federal agents after a computer disk containing classified data was found in his bags. The third investigation involves Army Capt. James Joseph Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the prison who last month was charged with mishandling classified information. Mehalba and Yee have pleaded not guilty. * * * Lakeland (FL) Ledger: November 8, 2003 Editorial THE NONPERSONS OF GUANTANAMO The war against terrorism is not a war in the traditional sense. Therefore, it follows that suspected terrorists swept up in the war are not soldiers in the traditional sense. That's the logic of the Bush administration, which is treating about 660 detainees being held at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba like neither prisoners of war nor criminal suspects. To call detainees the former would entitle them to the protections of the Geneva Convention. To treat them as the latter would bring them under the jurisdiction of the criminal-justice system, with its constitutional guarantees of due process. The administration chooses to do neither. Instead, it is keeping the detainees -- many of them captured during the Afghanistan conflict -- in an interminable legal limbo. So long as they are imprisoned on foreign soil, federal judges have said, the courts have no jurisdiction. Some of the detainees have been imprisoned for a year-and-ahalf. The administration promises that, eventually, some will be tried by military tribunals. In the meantime, detainees have no recourse to legal counsel nor contact with the outside world. They are being held in isolation with virtually no indication of what will be their ultimate fate. The situation is such that the International Red Cross, hardly an activist organization, has protested the vague manner in which detainees are being held in America's prison camp. "The open-endedness of the situation and its impact on the mental health of the population has become a major problem," said Christopher Giron, a senior Red Cross official, to The New York Times recently. Reportedly, at least 21 detainees have attempted suicide in 18 months. Because of the lack of due process and the administration's refusal to treat the detainees like prisoners of war, the inmates have virtually no rights and no way to legally contest their imprisonment. They are considered to be terrorists because the military says they are terrorists. But their accusers have no obligation to present evidence to that effect. Perhaps there is good reason for this on a shortterm basis, but no one outside the government has any way of knowing. At some point, evidence may be offered in some cases, but it likely will be before military tribunals in which the judges, jurors, rules of procedure and perhaps even defense counsel will all be selected by the government. What's wrong with that? Just that it betrays more than two centuries of American constitutional tradition. If the American military is free to hold alleged terrorists indefinitely without benefit of charges, legal counsel or observation of international protocols regarding prisoners of war, then what else may it do with impunity? Is torture then permissible? What about summary executions? And why not? These are, after all, nonpersons -- neither prisoners of war nor criminal suspects. What is going on in Guantanamo is unworthy of a nation that professes to be the world's leading defender of freedom and the rule of law. The notion that America has the right to imprison hundreds of "enemy combatants" indefinitely without benefit of due process or adherence to international treaties is a perversion of human rights. Guantanamo has, in effect, become a legal hole into which has been cast invisible people. If they are truly prisoners of war, then they deserve to be treated as such. If they are nonmilitary personnel who are guilty of committing violent crimes -- crimes of terrorism -- then they should be charged in a court of law and the evidence against them weighed on its merits. Failure to do one or the other makes the United States simply a hostage taker. * * * icBirmingham.co.uk: November 8, 2003 BREAKTHROUGH OVER DETAINEE http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/ Solicitors fighting for the release of a British man thought to have been held in Pakistan for more than a month, on suspicion of having links to al Qaida, yesterday hailed a breakthrough in his case. The legal team representing Tariq Mahmood, from Birmingham, said Pakistan's home secretary had been ordered to appear in court next Monday either accompanied by the 30-year-old or with an explanation about what has happened to him. Mr Mahmood's case has been shrouded in mystery, with one Pakistani ministry denying any knowledge of the case while another confirming in media reports that he was being detained. The married father-of-two was arrested on October 4, but his family have been unable to make contact with him and fear he may have been taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to join hundreds of other terrorist suspects. The British Foreign Office must await official confirmation of his arrest from Pakistan before it can arrange for consular access. Mr Mahmood's brother, Tahir, said: "We hope and pray that he is produced in court on Monday. "We do not even want to think what may be happening to him. This is a terrible ordeal for us." Natalia Garcia, the family's solicitor in Birmingham, said: "We feel this is a very significant breakthrough. "The fact that a judge has ordered the home secretary to appear in court reflects the concern in Pakistan about what has happened to Tariq." Mr Mahmood had been in Pakistan for the past two years, trying to settle a long- standing family land dispute. His wife and children have since returned to their home in Sparkhill, Birmingham. Earlier this week, the Foreign Office said although media reports had quoted the Pakistani Ministry of Interior confirming Mr Mahmood was being held, it was unable to take action until confirmation was provided by the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A Foreign Office spokeswoman admitted the situation was "all a bit confusing". "We are awaiting a written reply from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Until we get that formal notification we won't be able to press for access." * * * Fairfeild-Suisun City Daily Republic: November 8, 2003 TRANSLATOR TO BE COURT-MARTIALED AT TRAVIS By Ian Thompson TRAVIS AFB -- The court-martial of a Travis Air Force Base senior airman accused of espionage is expected to take place at Travis Air Force Base, according to the Air Mobility Command Public Affairs Office. Charges against Senior Airman Ahmad Al Halabi were referred to a court-martial on Thursday by Maj. Gen. Paul Essex, the interim commander of the 18th Air Force at Scott AFB. Al Halabi won't face the death penalty because Essex didn't refer it as a capital case. Al Halabi, 24, a native of Syria, was stationed at Travis AFB with the 60th Logistics Readiness Squadron before heading to Guantanamo Bay where he was a translator at the U.S. prison camp for terrorism suspects. He was arrested July 23 at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Fla., and accused of sending e-mails with information about the prisoners to outside parties and planning to give 180 written messages from the prisoners to a person who would then go to Syria. Ten of the charges against Al Halabi were dismissed but the senior airman still faces 20 others that include aiding the enemy and espionage. The Office of Special Investigations detachment at Travis AFB investigated the case. It was presented to Travis AFB commander Brig. Gen. Bradley Baker after an Article 32 hearing - similar to a preliminary hearing - was held in mid- September at Vandenburg AFB where Al Halabi is being held. Baker forwarded the charges and his recommendations to Essex on Oct. 17. Essex selected a panel of Travis AFB officers who will hear the case. Al Halabi is one of three men arrested on suspicion of helping Guantanamo detainees. The military also is holding Muslim chaplain Army Capt. James Yee and contract civilian translator Ahmed F. Mehalba on similar charges. Ian Thompson can be reached at ithompson@dailyrepublic.net. * * * Toronto Star: Novemebr 7, 2003 CRITICS CONDEMN U.S. TORTURE BY PROXY Rights group alarmed by deportations 'Renditions' considered useful tool By Olivia Ward, Feature Writer When Ottawa computer expert Maher Arar arrived back in Canada this week after a year of captivity, his account of torture in Syria and Jordan shocked many. Arar, who was seized by American officials in New York during a flight back from a family visit, has called for a full investigation of Canada's role in his ill- treatment, which he said included confinement in a dark, filthy cell, beating and psychological abuse. Arar also encountered another Syrian-born Canadian, Abdullah Almalki, in the Syrian jail, and reported he had received even more severe treatment. For Canada, accusations of complicity in offshore torture and abuse of people suspected of political crimes are unprecedented. And they are directly linked to the worldwide anti-terrorism crackdown following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. But for the U.S., deportation of suspects to countries where torture is conducted by proxy -- "rendition" as it is known in American intelligence circles -- is part of a larger pattern that is causing alarm, and critics say it's damaging America's image in the international community. "There have been a series of these renditions, mainly to countries in the Middle East," says Tom Malinowski, director of Human Rights Watch's office in Washington. "We don't really know how many people have been sent there, because it's kept highly secret." In the United States, security services are barred from conducting torture on American soil, and the government officially denies any links with torture. Both the United States and Canada are also bound by the International Convention Against Torture, which rules out surrendering citizens to countries that brutally violate human rights. However, intelligence agents, including former CIA operative and author Robert Baer, have admitted in media interviews that turning over suspected terrorists to countries noted for their violent interrogation methods is now common practice in a no-holds-barred war on terrorism. "We are doing a number of (renditions) and they have been very productive," says a Washington Post report this week, quoting a "senior U.S. intelligence official." In a previous interview with the Post, another official was more explicit: "We don't kick the s--- out of them," he says. "We send them to other countries so they can kick the s--- out of them." The most frequently used offshore torture depots are Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Morocco, human rights groups say. Ironically, those countries are frequently criticized by the U.S. State Department in its annual surveys of international human rights. Syria, according to the latest report, commonly uses such methods as "pulling out fingernails, forcing objects into the rectum, using a chair that bends backwards to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the spine." In a speech promoting democracy in the Middle East, President George W. Bush likened Syria's leaders to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, accusing them of leaving "a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin." In Egypt, meanwhile, the State Department noted that suspects are "stripped and blindfolded, suspended from a ceiling or door frame with feet just touching the floor, beaten with fists, whips, metal rods, subjected to electric shocks." In Morocco, an Amnesty International report released this week cites testimony of victims who were "strung up and beaten with metal poles or wooden rods to extract confessions..." While there are numerous reports of suspects transported and tortured in Mideastern countries, there are also allegations of severe mistreatment of Al Qaeda suspects at the American detention centre of Guantanamo Bay. "Statements made by U.S. officials suggesting that the U.S. government condones the mistreatment and possibly even the torture of prisoners and detainees gravely concerns Amnesty International," says a letter issued by London-based human rights group earlier this year. However, the use of offshore torture for political ends is not new for Washington. In the 1960s, the U.S. was accused of sponsoring a campaign of torture in Vietnam, carried out by local mercenaries against suspected Viet Cong guerrillas. Investigative reports later spoke of a continuing program for "intelligence training for friendly foreign countries," which included torture techniques used against America's Cold War enemies, such as Latin American communist guerrillas. In the '70s, Washington-trained police and militaries were responsible for alleged human rights violations in the region. In the 1990s, Washington reportedly began a covert practice of "rendition," using governments in Nigeria, the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa. After Sept. 11, the number of people shipped to offshore locations to extract information by means that are banned in the U.S. appears to have increased, although the secrecy surrounding the practice has prevented rights organizations from monitoring exact figures. "Silence or indifference from the United States will be perceived as an indication that this country condones torture and other egregious abuses," says Amnesty International. * * * Reuters: November 7, 2003 GUANTANAMO TRANSLATOR TO BE TRIED ON SPY CHARGES By Charles Aldinger WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Air Force translator who worked at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for al Qaeda and Taliban suspects will face a court-martial on charges of spying and aiding the enemy but will not be sentenced to death if convicted, the Air Force said on Friday. The general who ordered the espionage trial for senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi of Detroit, Michigan, "did not refer the case as a capital case," the Air force said in a statement. Capital cases may carry the death penalty. Al Halabi, 23, is being held held at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in a broad investigation of possible spying at the American naval base in Cuba, where the Pentagon has jailed 650 suspects in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism. Al Halabi, who says he is innocent, was arrested on July 23 and is accused of carrying jail maps, letters and other sensitive documents away from Guantanamo. He is one of three men, including another Arabic translator and a Muslim chaplain, jailed and charged in connection with their work at Guantanamo. No date has been set for al Halabi's trial, expected to be conducted at Travis Air Force Base in California. Al Halabi was arrested at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and will be tried on 20 charges, including espionage, aiding the enemy, making false statements to investigators and possessing sensitive documents. LETTERS FROM DETAINEES Maj. Gen. Paul Essex, the commander of the 18th Air Force, ordered the court- martial for al Halabi but dismissed 12 other charges dropped after studying the results of an Article 32 hearing in the case. That hearing is the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury investigation of charges. Al Halabi, a native of Syria who is a U.S. citizen, is accused of of carrying 180 letters from the detainees that he should not have had and intending to use those letters "to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of Syria." The court documents list numerous other classified documents he improperly possessed, including jail maps and papers describing prisoners' cell numbers. The 20 charges against al Halabi include four of committing espionage, seven of failing to obey a lawful order, one of aiding the enemy, five of lying to investigators who questioned him, two of improperly possessing sensitive documents and one that he lied on credit applications. The charges against him are more serious than those filed against two former military and civilian workers at Guantanamo Bay. Last month, the military charged Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the prison, with mishandling classified information after authorities found prison maps and information about detainees in his possession. The FBI, meanwhile, has said that a civilian translator at the Guantanamo prison camp had hundreds of documents labeled "secret" in his possession when he was arrested in September at Logan International Airport in Boston. Prosecutors have accused Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Egyptian descent, of lying to federal officials about classified information they say he was carrying when he arrived in the United States from Egypt, where he had been visiting relatives. No decisions have been announced on trials for Yee and Mehalba. * * * November 7, 2003 GRAHAM ORDERS REVIEW OF ARAR CASE OTTAWA - Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham wants to know why his department failed to tell him that Canadian Maher Arar was being tortured in a Syrian prison. Graham ordered an internal review of the case Friday, but said he still doesn't back Arar's demands for a full public inquiry. Arar was freed last month, just over a year after the United States deported him to Syria. He was stopped at a New York airport and accused of having ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. In August, Syria let Canadian consular officials in Damascus visit Arar. They contacted Ottawa and assured Graham that Arar was in good physical condition. Officials also said that Arar "totally rejects all allegations of torture." But after being freed, Arar gave CBC a different story. When Canadian officials visited him in prison, he said he told them that he was being beaten. The NDP said the contradiction proves the need for a public inquiry. But the federal government said it's asked the U.S. to look into why Arar was deported to Syria instead of Canada. Written by CBC News Online staff MAHER ARAR: TIMELINE Cheryl Krawchuk, CBC News Online http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/ Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria in 1970, came to Canada in 1987. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in computer engineering, Arar worked in Ottawa as a telecommunications engineer. His wife Monia Mazigh has a PhD in mathematics. They have two young children. TIMELINE: September 26, 2002 Arar detained by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officials at New York's Kennedy Airport while returning alone to Montreal from a family vacation in Tunisia. A citizen of both Canada and Syria, he is carrying a Canadian passport. American officials allege Arar has links to al-Qaeda. They detain and question him without informing Canadian officials. October 7 or 8, 2002 U.S. officials deport Arar to Syria. October 10, 2002 Canadian officials are informed Arar has been deported. October 16, 2002 Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham complains to U.S. government about arrest and deportation of Arar. October 21, 2002 Arar seen in Syria. October 22, 2002 Foreign Affairs Department says Arar is being held in a Syrian prison. October 29, 2002 Canada issues travel advisory to all Canadians born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, or Syria to reconsider entering the United States. It follows a U.S. decision to photograph and fingerprint people born in those countries who enter the U.S. November 19, 2002 Monia Mazigh meets with Foreign Affairs officials. Confusion over fate of Canadian man deported from U.S. April 30, 2003 Syria tells Canada it will charge Arar with membership in a banned Muslim organization, the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria. June 27, 2003 In a letter to Arar's wife, Prime Minister Jean Chretien pledges "all possible consular assistance" to get him released. July 31, 2003 The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations calls for parliamentary inquiry into Arar's arrest and deportation. August 6, 2003 A report by the London-based group Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) says Arar is being tortured and beaten while in jail. August 7, 2003 Monia Mazigh demands Canada recall its ambassador to Syria. Wife says husband sent to Syria 'like a parcel' August 8, 2003 Foreign Affairs Minister Graham says Canada will not recall ambassador. September 25, 2003 Graham says Syrian officials have assured him Arar will be tried in a civil, and not military trial. September 25, 2003 Appearing before a foreign affairs committee, Monia Mazigh asks MPs to continue working on behalf of her husband. RCMP Assistant Commissioner Richard Proulx refuses to discuss case with MPs. October 5, 2003 Syria frees Arar. Foreign Affairs Minister Graham notifies Arar's wife, credits "quiet Canadian diplomacy" for the release. Oct. 6, 2003 Arar returns to Montreal. It's been 375 days since U.S. immigration officials arrested him. Oct. 9, 2003 Solicitor General Wayne Easter turns down opposition calls for a public inquiry into the case of Maher Arar. Oct. 23, 2003 A commission that handles complaints against the RCMP wants the force to answer questions about whether it played a role in the deportation of Maher Arar from the U.S. to Syria. Oct. 30, 2003 CBC News learns that Arar has told federal officials that he was tortured while a prisoner in the Middle East. Nov. 4, 2003 Arar tells of his year spent in a Syrian jail and says he was mentally and physically tortured and forced to confess that he spent time in Afghanistan. Nov. 5, 2003 Prime Minister Jean Chretien tells the House of Commons that the U.S. government's deportation of a Canadian to Syria was "unacceptable," but he is adamant that he will not allow an independent inquiry into the case of Maher Arar. He says his government has asked U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell for an explanation and that the government also wants to find out whether Canadian intelligence officials played a role in the deportation of Arar. * * * Financial Times: http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer? pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1066565729630 November 7, 2003 PRISONERS 'COVERED UNDER GENEVA ACCORDS' By Rohit Jaggi, Social Affairs Correspondent The US regime under which al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects are kept in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp was on Friday criticised by a European body that specialises in constitutional law. Meeting in London, the European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission, concluded that prisoners held at the American naval base in Cuba were covered by the Geneva conventions and basic human rights law. The US argues that about 660 suspects held in the base are "unlawful combatants", which justifies them being held without charge or access to lawyers. Jeffrey Jowell, professor of public law at University College London and a member of the commission, said: "The Americans are wrong and there's no reason to put them in Guantanamo Bay. "We agree that it is a legal black hole in practice - but it shouldn't be. There is no reason why a terrorist shouldn't get the protection of human rights law or the Geneva conventions." The finding of the Venice Commission followed a similar conclusion by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Prof Jowell pointed out, and echoes strong criticism of the Guantanamo regime by the UK judiciary last November. The Venice Commission tempered its conclusion by adding that it was appropriate to consider whether new forms of terrorism warranted a new regime for dealing with them. Meanwhile, France is to raise with Washington the fate of six French citizens held in Guantanamo Bay, and wants to send a team of lawyers and officials to meet them, the French foreign ministry said yesterday. A US air force translator who worked at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp will face a court-martial on charges of spying and aiding the enemy but will not be sentenced to death if convicted, the air force said on Friday, Reuters reports from Washington. The general who ordered the espionage trial for Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi of Detroit, Michigan, "did not refer the case as a capital case", the air force said in a statement. Capital cases may carry the death penalty. Sr Amn al-Halabi, aged 23, who says he is innocent, is accused of carrying jail maps, letters and other sensitive documents away from Guantanamo. Sr Amn al-Halabi was arrested at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and will be tried on 20 charges, including espionage, aiding the enemy, making false statements and possessing sensitive documents. No date has been set for his trial. * * * Boston Globe: November 7, 2003 LIMITS PUT ON NEW MUSLIM CHAPLAIN Role at Guantanamo won't include contact with camp's detainees By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- The US military has made plans to bring a new Muslim chaplain to the base where it is holding some 660 accused terror suspects, but he will not be allowed to come into contact with the "enemy combatants" being detained here without trial. In September, the former Muslim chaplain, Captain James "Yousef" Yee, was arrested. He has been charged with disobeying an order -- reportedly for smuggling classified information off the base. Major General Mitchell LeClaire, second in command of the interrogation operation, said yesterday that the military has arranged for a replacement to be in Guantanamo Bay by early December. However, while the new chaplain will continue Yee's role of advising command staff on Islamic practices, he will minister only to Muslim soldiers and will not meet with detainees, as Yee did. LeClaire added that it "was not [Yee's] job" to counsel detainees. "It was never his job officially," he said. "I can't say it was with the approval of his commander." The news that the detainees will not have access to a replacement Muslim counselor comes amid growing international concern over their psychological condition. Yesterday, the prison's chief medical officer made a rare exception to the government's practice of never discussing individual detainees to rebut a report about a deterioration in the health of David Hicks, an Australian enemy combatant. Hicks's case has aroused intense interest in his country that has threatened to damage relations with one of America's closest allies. This week, an Australian newspaper reported that Hicks's father received a letter from his son dated in September saying he was in isolation and losing weight. Hicks's father said other details indicated his son was disoriented and depressed. The report was in synch with an extraordinary public complaint by the International Committee of the Red Cross in late August. Breaking with its practice of only expressing concerns in private in order to preserve access to war prisoners, the Red Cross warned of "a worrying deterioration in the psychological health of a large number" of detainees after 18 months in captivity without means of legal recourse. But Captain John Edmonson, who runs the detainees' hospital, described Hicks's health in more positive terms. "His weight is down a few pounds from when he got here, but nothing significant," he said. "In general, his health is very good . . . He is not depressed by any means." However, Edmonson also revealed that for the past month his hospital has been forcibly feeding another detainee, who launched a hunger strike. Edmonson said the detainee's mental health is being evaluated, adding that about 110 detainees are on a mental-health watch list. About 25 on the list have been prescribed psychotropic medication while the rest have been given counseling. There have been 32 suicide attempts by 21 detainees -- none successful. Meanwhile, there are new signs that some detainees are not responding to the prison's behavioral incentive system. It rewards detainees who cooperate with interrogators by letting them live in a "medium security" camp with group bunk houses and daily exercise. As of July, only one detainee had lost privileges -- for fighting. Now, at least six have been sent back to maximum security for reasons ranging from lying about their identity to the discovery of "contraband weapons." For example, the camp superintendent, Sergeant Major Anthony Mendez, said one detainee "accumulated plastic bags to make a rope or a weapon." In addition, while most of the detainees are observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by fasting during the daytime hours, some have shown signs of what may be a weakening faith. Sergeant Donna Swenson is in charge of putting together mini-lunches of pita bread, bananas, and string cheese for those who choose not to observe. She said nine are not participating, and as many as 28 have broken fast. Major Dan O'Dean, a Christian chaplain who has replaced Yee in handling requests for religious items for the detainees, said that two weeks ago one detainee identified himself as a Catholic and requested a meeting with the Catholic chaplain. And Lieutenant Colonel Steve Feehan, head chaplain, said recent detainee requests for religious books have gone beyond Islam. "There have been requests for Bibles as well as for Korans," he said. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. * * * Ottawa Citizen: November 7, 2003 FOREIGN SPIES MAY HAVE STOLEN ARAR DOCUMENT Minister can't explain how else U.S. agents obtained lease paper Robert Fife, CanWest News Service Solicitor General Wayne Easter raised the prospect yesterday that foreign intelligence agencies operating in Canada obtained a rental lease for the former Ottawa home of Maher Arar through illegal means, which led to his deportation to a Syrian prison where he was tortured for 10 months. Mr. Arar has said he never gave a copy of the 1997 rental agreement to anyone and Roger Greenberg, the proprietor of the giant Minto real estate company that owns the townhouse where the Arars used to live, said he did not provide the document to the RCMP or any other law enforcement agency. U.S. officials produced the lease when they arrested Mr. Arar at New York's JFK Airport last year because of alleged links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The lease was witnessed by Abdullah Almalki, an Ottawa man accused of terrorist links who has also been tortured by the Syrians and remains in a Damascus prison. Mr. Easter told reporters yesterday he did not know how the Americans obtained the lease, but said it did not come from the RCMP, and might have been obtained by foreign intelligence agencies. "That particular document, there are multi-intelligence agencies involved in these matters," he said. "Just because it happens to be a lease does not necessarily mean it came from Canadian sources," he said. "Of course, I'm worried about it. I'm always concerned about illegal matters." Asked if U.S. authorities might have broken into either Mr. Arar's home or Minto's Ottawa offices to get the document, Mr. Easter said: "As I've indicated, there are multi-intelligence agencies involved in terms of the exchange of information ... I don't know how that lease was obtained." Mr. Greenberg, president of Minto Developments, said the company did not release the document to anyone and would only do so through a court order or a search warrant. Mr. Arar, who had the only other copy, said he did not provide it to anyone either. Beth Poisson, a U.S. Embassy official, said it is up to "Mr. Easter to explain what he means." However, Mr. Easter said the RCMP are not investigating whether the law was breached to obtain the key rental document that was later used by the U.S. authorities to deport Mr. Arar to Syria. Mr. Easter said he has launched an internal investigation to determine whether there are leaks out of the RCMP or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the case will be also be examined by the RCMP's Public Complaints Commission. "I would hope from that process that we find the answers that we want," he said. Kerry Pither, a spokesman for the Arar family, said Mr. Easter's "disturbing" statement reinforces the need for a full-blown public inquiry to determine how a Canadian citizen could end up in a Syrian prison, where he was tortured with electrical cords, beaten and kept in a tiny, dark cell called the grave. "That is a very, very serious and disturbing allegation," she said. "If there are foreign intelligence officials doing this kind of work in Canada, then that is another reason why a public inquiry is need." However, Ms. Pither said she suspects Mr. Easter is trying to deflect attention from the role the RCMP and CSIS may have played in providing intelligence to the U.S. "Frankly, the RCMP and CSIS need this inquiry as much as Maher Arar does because the allegations are that they circumvented the rule of law in Canada, using the United States to deport a Canadian citizen because they couldn't do it," she said. NDP Leader Jack Layton also renewed calls for a public inquiry, saying Canadians need to know if U.S. intelligence or other spy agencies broke the law in Canada to obtain Mr. Arar's rental agreement. "This is yet another disturbing, apparent invasion of someone's privacy that resulted in a foreign country sending a Canadian citizen to the most horrible experience imaginable," he said. "This is astonishing and it is yet another reason for a full-fledged inquiry." Prime Minister Jean Chretien has refused to hold a public investigation because the matter is being examined by the Public Complaints Commission, although he opened the door yesterday to an inquiry if the U.S. provides evidence of Canadian complicity in Mr. Arar's deportation. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been asked to provide the names of Canadian law enforcement moles who he claims gave intelligence to the U.S. on Mr. Arar. "The only accusation has come from the secretary of state for the United States who said Canadians were involved. It is my judgment to say so and if there was no Canadian involved it is not the time to have a fishing expedition," Mr. Chretien told the House of Commons. "If things come from the Americans that demand to look further, of course, we'll look at what can be done and act accordingly." The opposition and the Liberal-dominated foreign affairs committee have demanded a public inquiry and Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal has broken cabinet ranks and called for a judicial inquiry into the Arar affair. Robert Fife is parliamentary bureau chief © Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen * * * November 7, 2003 TRAVIS SPY SUSPECT FACES COURT-MARTIAL The charges against the airman stem from his position as a translator at Guantanamo Bay. By Denny Walsh, Bee Staff Writer A senior airman stationed at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield will be tried by a military panel at the base on charges that he spied for Syria while working as a translator with al-Qaida and Taliban detainees in a prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Charges against Ahmad I. Al Halabi were referred Thursday to a general court- martial by Maj. Gen. Paul W. Essex, commander of the 18th Air Force based in Illinois. Al Halabi, 24, is formally charged with failing to obey orders, aiding enemies of the United States, espionage, making false official statements, retaining documents without authority and executing a fraudulent credit application. Essex declined to refer the matter as a capital case, according to an Air Force press release. He selected members of the court from officers stationed at Travis, the release says, but it does not name them. A date has not been set for the court-martial. Al Halabi's military defense attorneys have repeatedly maintained he is not guilty. The four-year veteran of the Air Force was arrested July 23 in Florida while en route from Cuba, where he served nine months, to Travis, where he is attached to the 60th Logistics Readiness Squadron. In compliance with Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a hearing -- similar to a preliminary hearing in civilian court -- was conducted at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Central California coast in mid-September. Al Halabi is being held in pretrial confinement at Vandenberg. Prosecutors presented evidence at the hearing designed to show that he photographed "facilities in and around Camp Delta," the high-security prison where 660 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban members are being held without charge pending interrogations and investigations. The prosecutors contend Al Halabi e-mailed the identities and internment serial numbers of some detainees in a communication that "was intended to reach the enemy." He also is accused of planning to deliver two written notes from Camp Delta prisoners to Syria. The notes were "writings relating to the national defense, which directly concerned intelligence gathering and planning for the United States' war against terrorists, to a citizen of a foreign government" that Al Halabi was carrying to Syria, according to the Air Force charge sheet filed at Vandenberg. Al Halabi is a U.S. citizen who was born in Syria. He had planned to travel to Syria on July 27 to get married. He is one of three persons detained for suspected security breaches at Camp Delta. Civilian interpreter Ahmed Fathy Mehalba was charged last month with lying to a federal officer after a customs agent discovered classified material in his luggage at Logan International Airport in Boston. U.S. Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim military chaplain, is being held at a Navy brig in South Carolina pending investigation. He was arrested Sept. 10 carrying sketches of Camp Delta and documents about detainees and interrogators. There is no evidence the three men are linked, but according to Pentagon spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers, all three were at the prison camp at the same time and could have had contact with one another. * * * Toronto Globe and Mail: November 7, 2003 OTTAWA CAUGHT NAPPING AS U.S. DEPORTED ARAR By Shawn Mccarthy New York -- Canadian consular officials appeared not to take seriously U.S. threats to deport Maher Arar to Syria and failed to intervene aggressively, according to U.S. human-rights advocates who worked on his case. Even as the Canadian citizen was being spirited out of the United States, a senior consular official was telling his family that international law prevented the Americans from carrying out the threat, Canadian government sources confirmed Thursday. The assurances were made even though the Canadian officials knew the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service had told Mr. Arar they suspected him of being a member of al-Qaeda, and had pressed him to sign a waiver agreeing to be deported to Syria. "They didn't take [the deportation threat] seriously," Barbara Olshansky, deputy legal director at the Manhattan-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said in an interview Thursday. Ms. Olshansky is one of a team of lawyers and researchers who worked on Mr. Arar's case after being called by his wife, Monia Mazigh, while her husband was in a Brooklyn, N.Y., detention centre. One of her colleagues visited him in the centre, while she and others kept in touch with the Canadian officials. She said the Canadian officials appeared to assume that the Americans would send Mr. Arar back to Canada. "Given that he was clearly a Canadian citizen with not only family ties but business ties in the country, I don't imagine that they could have imagined that the United States would send him to Syria," she said. Janice Badalutz, a former researcher at the centre who worked for months on Mr. Arar's case, said the consulate in New York had been caught off guard by the sudden decision to deport Mr. Arar to Syria where, he says, he was tortured for months. She said they did not share his concern that he would be sent to Syria. "They didn't take him very seriously. . . . I think they could have been more aggressive, but they weren't. And then he was just slipped out," she said. Federal officials insist that they did take the case seriously and maintained consular access to Mr. Arar both in New York and later in Syria. But they say the U.S. decision caught them off guard. "Certainly, there was consular access and they were preparing to appear for a hearing with [Mr. Arar's immigration] lawyer and then he [Mr. Arar] was gone. He was not in New York any more," said Isabelle Savard, spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham. "Everyone was completely taken by surprise by the fact that the Americans -- despite that we are good neighbours and even though they technically or legally might have had the right -- chose to deport him to a country where he did not want to go." In an interview yesterday, Gar Pardy, the former head of consular services at the Department of Foreign Affairs, said he didn't think "anybody in their wildest dreams, given the factors that we had, would have thought the Americans would deport this guy [Mr. Arar] to Syria." "The sense we had is he was being treated as a Canadian," Mr. Pardy said, adding that his officials thought they had Mr. Arar's situation under control. "At worst, two other possibilities did come to us: that the Americans would charge him under their laws or they would have sent him to Guantanamo," he said, referring to the U.S. detention centre for terrorism suspects in Cuba. "But a deportation to Syria was not on the horizon in terms of what we reasonably expected." He said the official working the Arar case was completely shocked when she learned of the Syrian Canadian's deporation. "She was devastated when we established what they Americans had done, that they had put him on a plane. Atop of that, they wouldn't tell us what they had done," Mr. Pardy said. In fact, he said, the consular officials couldn't figure out initially where the United States had sent him because the Syrians denied having him. But Canadian officials saw him two days after his whereabouts were confirmed on Oct. 21, Mr. Pardy said. Canadian officials said Maureen Gervan, the senior consular officer in New York, visited Mr. Arar at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he had been taken after being detained at John F. Kennedy airport while in transit to Montreal from Tunis, Tunisia. Ms. Gervan was shown an INS document, dated Sept. 26, that laid out the reasons for his detention, including the allegation that he was a member of al- Qaeda. Mr. Arar also told Ms. Gervan that INS officials had threatened to send him to Syria, although officials insist those threats were vague. Ms. Gervan had one visit with Mr. Arar, and the consulate also facilitated the transfer of money to the detention centre so that he could buy toothpaste and a toothbrush. It also provided the family with the names of immigration lawyers. On Oct. 7, several days after her visit, Ms. Gervan had a phone call from Ms. Mazigh who said she was concerned about Mr. Arar's situation and the threats to deport him to Syria. On Oct. 9, Ms. Gervan phoned the detention centre and was told that Mr. Arar had been moved. Her contact there said he could not provide any more information on his whereabouts and suggested she talked to INS in Washington. In fact, Mr. Arar had been hustled onto a private jet and flown to Jordan, where he was briefly held before being transferred to Syria. In another telephone conversation that day, Ms. Mazigh again expressed her fear that her husband was being shipped to Syria, but Ms. Gervan told her that there was little likelihood that the Americans would break international protocol when they knew he was a Canadian citizen, travelling on a Canadian passport. One federal official said Ms. Gervan was simply reflecting the fact that a number of immigrant Canadian citizens had been detained as undesirables in the United States. All were deported to Canada. In the House of Commons yesterday, Prime Minister Jean Chretien denied that the Canadian government was involved in the decision to deport Mr. Arar to Syria. [ With reports from Heather Scoffield and Colin Freeze. ] * * * VOA News: November 7, 2003 -- 01:51 UTC FORMAL ESPIONAGE, TREASON CHARGES FILED AGAINST US MILITARY TRANSLATOR AT GUANTANAMO U.S. military officials have formally referred espionage and treason charges against an Arabic translator for Al-Qaida and Taleban prisoners for a court- martial trial. The Defense Department said Thursday the charges against Air Force airman Ahmad Al-Halabi, 24, include four counts of espionage and one count of aiding the enemy. The charges include allegations the Syrian-born Al-Halabi transmitted sensitive documents about the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and about some Al-Qaida and Taleban suspects, to Syria. Lawyers for Senior Airman Al-Halabi have denied the allegations It is not clear when the court-martial will be held. Senior Airman al-Halabi was arrested on July 23. Yousef Yee, a former U.S. military Muslim chaplain, is also under military detention on suspicion of espionage at Guantanamo. * * * Edie weekly summaries: November 7, 2003 UN CALLS FOR QUICKER INTRODUCTION OF INTERNATIONAL LAWS TO PROTECT ENVIRONMENT FROM WAR http://www.edie.net/gf.cfm?L=left_frame.html&R= http://www.edie.net/news/Archive/7722.cfm The UN Environment Programme is calling for a quickening of the pace towards greater international law that will help reduce the environmental damage of war. The call came on the International Day for Preventing Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict on 6 November. "International law is a slow process, but the world is moving to a more 'civilised' way of conducting war," the UNEP spokesman told edie. Governments are waking up to the fact that damage to the environment leads to problems following the war. They are making the link between the quality of the environment and stability or tensions in a region, and realising that the environment is more than just wildlife, he explained. "A post conflict society will struggle even harder to recover its dignity, its health and its future if the vary life support systems upon which people rely have been partially or wholly destroyed," said Executive Director of the UNEP Klaus Toepfer. There have in the past been attempts at using legislation to reduce the environmental impact of war, notably Article 35 of the Geneva Protocol, which prohibits damage to the natural environment. There is also the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. Other legislation includes the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which have environmental implications, as well as a myriad of treaties attempting to outlaw targets such as dams or attempts to demoralise the civilian population rather than the military through acts such as torching crops. However, these treaties have not been satisfactory, a spokesman for the UNEP told edie. For instance, the Geneva Protocol is silent on the issue of long-term risk, and there is a requirement of proving that there has been widespread, long-term and severe damage. Damage to the environment can be both deliberate, or a by-product of war, says the UNEP. As far back as the fifth century BC the retreating Scythians scorched the earth and polluted drinking water in order to slow the advancing Persians. During the second century BC the conquering Roman army salted the soils around Carthage to make them infertile and the area uninhabitable. More recently the world's media showed pictures of burning oil wells during the 1991 Gulf War as Iraqi troops sabotaged oil installations, polluting the air, the desert and the waters of the Gulf, and created oil spills 40 times greater than the Exxon Valdez disaster. During the Vietnam War of the 1970s the US used defoliants to expose enemy positions in heavily forested areas. The military machine also damages the environment by over-exploiting natural resources. During World War I, Turkey severely depleted the forests in the Lebanon for fuel for its railways. More recently, warring in central Africa has resulted in wildlife such as gorillas and rhinos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and the Sudan being killed to raise money for armies. Source: edie newsroom © Faversham House Group Ltd 2003. * * * November 6, 2003 'NOW, LET ME TELL YOU WHO I AM' Statement of Maher Arar, Wednesday, November 05, 2003 http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename= thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1068159763403&call_pageid= 968332188854 I am a Syrian-born Canadian. I moved here with my parents when I was 17 years old. I went to university and studied hard, and eventually obtained a masters degree in telecommunications. I met my wife, Monia, at McGill University. We fell in love and eventually married in 1994. I knew then that she was special, but I had no idea how special she would turn out to be. If it were not for her, I believe I would still be in prison. We had our first child, a daughter named Barâa, in February 1997. She is six years old now. In December 1997, we moved to Ottawa from Montreal. I took a job with a high- tech firm, called The MathWorks, in Boston in 1999, and my job involved a lot of travel within the U.S. Then in 2001, I decided to come back to Ottawa to start my own consulting company. We had our second child, Houd, in February 2002. He is 20 months old now. So this is who I am. I am a father and a husband. I am a telecommunications engineer and entrepreneur. I have never had trouble with the police, and have always been a good citizen. So I still cannot believe what has happened to me, and how my life and career have been destroyed. In September 2002, I was with my wife and children, and her family, vacationing in Tunis. I got an e-mail from The MathWorks saying that they might need me soon to assess potential consulting work for one of their customers. I said goodbye to my wife and family, and headed back home to prepare for work. I was using my Air Miles to travel, and the best flight I could get went from Tunis to Zurich, to New York, to Montreal. My flight arrived in New York at 2 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2002. I had a few hours to wait until my connecting flight to Montreal. This is when my nightmare began. I was pulled aside at immigration and taken to another area. Two hours later, some officials came and told me this was regular procedure -- they took my fingerprints and photographs. Then some police came and searched my bags and copied my Canadian passport. I was getting worried, and I asked what was going on, and they would not answer. I asked to make a phone call and they would not let me. Then a team of people came and told me they wanted to ask me some questions. One man was from the FBI, and another was from the New York Police Department. I was scared and did not know what was going on. I told them I wanted a lawyer. They told me I had no right to a lawyer because I was not an American citizen. They asked me where I worked and how much money I made. They swore at me, and insulted me. It was very humiliating. They wanted me to answer every question quickly. They were consulting a report while they were questioning me, and the information they had was so private -- I thought this must be from Canada. I told them everything I knew. They asked me about my travel in the United States. I told them about my work permits, and my business there. They asked about information on my computer and whether I was willing to share it. I welcomed the idea, but I don't know if they did. They asked me about different people, some I know, and most I do not. They asked me about Abdullah Almalki, and I told them I worked with his brother at high- tech firms in Ottawa, and that the Almalki family had come from Syria about the same time as mine. I told them I did not know Abdullah well, but had seen him a few times and I described the times I could remember. I told them I had a casual relationship with him. They were so rude with me, yelling at me that I had a selective memory. Then they pulled out a copy of my rental lease from 1997. I could not believe they had this. I was completely shocked. They pointed out that Abdullah had signed the lease as a witness. I had completely forgotten that he had signed it for me -- when we moved to Ottawa in 1997, we needed someone to witness our lease, and I phoned Abdullah's brother, and he could not come, so he sent Abdullah. But they thought I was hiding this. I told them the truth. I had nothing to hide. I had never had problems in the United States before, and I could not believe what was happening to me. This interrogation continued until midnight. I was very, very worried, and asked for a lawyer again and again. They just ignored me. Then they put me in chains, on my wrists and ankles, and took me in a van to a place where many people were being held -- another building by the airport. They would not tell me what was happening. At 1 a.m., they put me in a room with metal benches in it. I could not sleep. I was very, very scared and disoriented. The next morning they started questioning me again. They asked me about what I think about Bin Laden, Palestine, Iraq. They also asked me about the mosques I pray in, my bank accounts, my e-mail addresses, my relatives, about everything. This continued on and off for eight hours. Then a man from the INS came in and told me they wanted me to volunteer to go to Syria. I said no way. I said I wanted to go home to Canada or be sent back to Switzerland. He said to me, "you are a special interest." They asked me to sign a form. They would not let me read it, but I just signed it. I was exhausted and confused and disoriented. I had not slept or eaten since I was in the plane. At about 6 in the evening they brought me some cold McDonalds meal to eat. This was the first food I had eaten since the last meal I had on the plane. At about eight o'clock they put all the shackles and chains back on, and put me in a van, and drove me to a prison. I later learned this was the Metropolitan Detention Centre. They would not tell me what was happening, or where I was going. They strip-searched me. It was humiliating. They put me in an orange suit and took me to a doctor, where they made me sign forms and gave me a vaccination. I asked what it was, and they would not tell me. My arm was red for almost two weeks from that. They took me to a cell. I had never seen a prison before in my life, and I was terrified. I asked again for a phone call and a lawyer. They just ignored me. They treated me differently than the other prisoners. They would not give me a toothbrush or toothpaste, or reading material. I did get a copy of the Koran about two days later. After five days, they let me make a phone call. I called Monia's mother, who was here in Ottawa, and told her I was scared they might send me to Syria, and asked her to help find me a lawyer. They would only let me talk for two minutes. On the seventh or eighth day, they brought me a document, saying they had decided to deport me, and I had a choice of where to be deported. I wrote that I wanted to go to Canada. It asked if I had concerns about going to Canada. I wrote no, and signed it. The Canadian consul came on Oct. 4, and I told her I was scared of being deported to Syria. She told me that would not happen. She told me that a lawyer was being arranged. I was very upset and scared. I could barely talk. The next day, a lawyer came. She told me not to sign any document unless she was present. We could only talk for 30 minutes. She said she would try to help me. That was a Saturday. On Sunday night at about 9 p.m., the guards came to my cell and told me my lawyer was there to see me. I thought it was a strange time, and they took me into a room with seven or eight people in it. I asked where my lawyer was. They told me my lawyer had refused to come and started questioning me again. They said they wanted to know why I did not want to go back to Syria. I told them I would be tortured there. I told them I had not done my military service; I am a Sunni Muslim; my mother's cousin had been accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was put in prison for nine years. They asked me to sign a document and I refused. I told them they could not send me to Syria - I would be tortured. I asked again for a lawyer. At three in the morning, they took me back to my cell. At 3 in the morning on Tuesday, Oct. 8 , a prison guard woke me up and told me I was leaving. They took me to another room and stripped and searched me again. Then they again chained and shackled me. Then two officials took me inside a room and read me what they said was a decision by the INS Director. They told me that based on classified information that they could not reveal to me, I would be deported to Syria. I said again that I would be tortured there. Then they read part of the document where it explained that INS was not the body that deals with Geneva Convention regarding torture. Then, they took me outside into a car and drove me to an airport in New Jersey. Then, they put me on a small private jet. I was the only person on the plane with them. I was still chained and shackled. We flew first to Washington. A new team of people got on the plane and the others left. I overheard them talking on the phone, saying that Syria was refusing to take me directly, but Jordan would take me. Then, we flew to Portland, to Rome, and then to Amman, Jordan. All the time I was on the plane I was thinking how to avoid being tortured. I was very scared. We landed in Amman at 3 in the morning local time on Oct. 9 . They took me out of plane and there were six or seven Jordanian men waiting for us. They blindfolded and chained me, and put me in a van. They made me bend my head down in the back seat. Then, these men started beating me. Every time I tried to talk they beat me. For the first few minutes it was very intense. Thirty minutes later, we arrived at a building where they took off my blindfold and asked routine questions, before taking me to a cell. It was around 4:30 in the morning on October 9. Later that day, they took my fingerprints, and blindfolded me and put me in a van. I asked where I was going, and they told me I was going back to Montreal. About 45 minutes later, I was put into a different car. These men started beating me again. They made me keep my head down, and it was very uncomfortable, but every time I moved, they beat me again. Over an hour later, we arrived at what I think was the border with Syria. I was put in another car and we drove for another three hours. I was taken into a building, where some guards went through my bags and took some chocolates I bought in Zurich. I asked one of the people where I was and he told me I was in the Palestine branch of the Syrian military intelligence. It was now about 6 in the evening on October 9. Three men came and took me into a room. I was very, very scared. They put me on a chair, and one of the men started asking me questions. I later learned this man was a colonel. He asked me about my brothers, and why we had left Syria. I answered all the questions. If I did not answer quickly enough, he would point to a metal chair in the corner and ask "Do you want me to use this?" I did not know then what that chair was for. I learned later it was used to torture people. I asked him what he wanted to hear. I was terrified, and I did not want to be tortured. I would say anything to avoid torture. This lasted for four hours. There was no violence, only threats this day. At about 1 in the morning, the guards came to take me to my cell downstairs. We went into the basement, and they opened a door, and I looked in. I could not believe what I saw. I asked how long I would be kept in this place. He did not answer, but put me in and closed the door. It was like a grave. It had no light. It was three feet wide. It was six feet deep. It was seven feet high. It had a metal door, with a small opening in the door, which did not let in light because there was a piece of metal on the outside for sliding things into the cell. There was a small opening in the ceiling, about one foot by two feet with iron bars. Over that was another ceiling, so only a little light came through this. There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time the cats peed through the opening into the cell. There were two blankets, two dishes and two bottles. One bottle was for water and the other one was used for urinating during the night. Nothing else. No light. I spent 10 months, and 10 days inside that grave. The next day I was taken upstairs again. The beating started that day and was very intense for a week, and then less intense for another week. That second and the third days were the worst. I could hear other prisoners being tortured, and screaming and screaming. Interrogations are carried out in different rooms. One tactic they use is to question prisoners for two hours, and then put them in a waiting room, so they can hear the others screaming, and then bring them back to continue the interrogation. The cable is a black electrical cable, about two inches thick. They hit me with it everywhere on my body. They mostly aimed for my palms, but sometimes missed and hit my wrists -- they were sore and red for three weeks. They also struck me on my hips, and lower back. Interrogators constantly threatened me with the metal chair, tire and electric shocks. The tire is used to restrain prisoners while they torture them with beating on the sole of their feet. I guess I was lucky, because they put me in the tire, but only as a threat. I was not beaten while in tire. They used the cable on the second and third day, and after that mostly beat me with their hands, hitting me in the stomach and on the back of my neck, and slapping me on the face. Where they hit me with the cables, my skin turned blue for two or three weeks, but there was no bleeding. At the end of the day, they told me tomorrow would be worse. So I could not sleep. Then on the third day, the interrogation lasted about 18 hours. They beat me from time to time and make me wait in the waiting room for one to two hours before resuming the interrogation. While in the waiting room I heard a lot of people screaming. They wanted me to say I went to Afghanistan. This was a surprise to me. They had not asked about this in the United States. They kept beating me so I had to falsely confess and told them I did go to Afghanistan. I was ready to confess to anything if it would stop the torture. They wanted me to say I went to a training camp. I was so scared I urinated on myself twice. The beating was less severe each of the following days. At the end of each day, they would always say, "Tomorrow will be harder for you." So each night, I could not sleep -- I did not sleep for the first four days, and slept no more than two hours a day for about two months. Most of time I was not taken back to my cell, but to the waiting room where I could hear all the prisoners being tortured and screaming. One time, I heard them banging a man's head repeatedly on a desk really hard. Around Oct, 17 , the beatings subsided. Their next tactic was to take me in a room, blindfolded, and people would talk about me. I could hear them saying, "He knows lots of people who are terrorists"; "We will get their numbers"; "He is a liar"; "He has been out of the country for long." Then, they would say, "Let's be frank, let's be friends, tell us the truth," and come around the desk, and slap me on the face. They played lots of mind games. The interrogation and beating ended three days before I had my first consular visit, on Oct. 23. I was taken from my cell and my beard was shaved. I was taken to another building, and there was the colonel in the hallway with some other men and they all seemed very nervous and agitated. I did not know what was happening and they would not tell me. They never say what is happening. You never know what will happen next. I was told not to tell anything about the beating, then I was taken into a room for a 10-minute meeting with the consul. The colonel was there, and three other Syrian officials, including an interpreter. I cried a lot at that meeting. I could not say anything about the torture. I thought if I did, I would not get any more visits, or I might be beaten again. After that visit, about a month after I arrived, they called me up to sign and place my thumbprint on a document about seven pages long. They would not let me read it, but I had to put my thumbprint and signature on the bottom of each page. It was handwritten. Another document was about three pages long, with questions: Who are your friends? How long have you been out of the country? Last question was empty lines. They answered the questions with their own handwriting except for the last one where I was forced to write that I had been to Afghanistan. The consular visits were my lifeline, but I also found them very frustrating. There were seven consular visits, and one visit from members of parliament. After the visits I would bang my head and my fist on the wall in frustration. I needed the visits, but I could not say anything there. I got new clothes after the Dec.10 consular visit. Until then, I had been wearing the same clothes since being on the jet from the United States. On three different occasions in December, I had a very hard time. Memories crowded my mind and I thought I was going to lose control, and I just screamed and screamed. I could not breathe well after, and felt very dizzy. I was not exposed to sunlight for six months. The only times I left the grave was for interrogation, and for the visits. Daily life in that place was hell. When I was detained in New York I weighed about 180 pounds. I think I lost about 40 pounds while I was at the Palestine Branch. On Aug. 19, I was taken upstairs to see the investigator, and I was given a paper and asked to write what he dictated. If I protested, he kicked me. I was forced to write that I went to a training camp in Afghanistan. They made me sign and put my thumbprint on the last page. The same day, I was transferred to a different place, which I learnt later was the Investigation Branch. I was placed there in a 12 feet by 20 feet collective cell. We were about 50 people in that place. The next day, I was taken to the Sednaya prison. I was very lucky that I was not tortured when I arrived there. All the other prisoners were tortured when they arrived. Sednaya prison was like heaven for me. I could move around, and talk with other prisoners. I could buy food to eat and I gained a lot of weight there. I was only beaten once there. On around September 19 or 20, I heard the other prisoners saying that another Canadian had arrived there. I looked up, and saw a man, but I did not recognize him. His head was shaved, and he was very, very thin and pale. He was very weak. When I looked closer, I recognized him. It was Abdullah Almalki. He told me he had also been at the Palestine Branch, and that he had also been in a grave like I had been -- except he had been in it longer. He told me he had been severely tortured -- with the tire, and the cable. He was also hanged upside down. He was tortured much worse than me. He had also been tortured when he was brought to Sednaya, so that was only two weeks before. I do not know why they have Abdullah there. What I can say for sure is that no human deserves to be treated the way he was, and I hope that Canada does all they can to help him. On Sept. 28 I was taken out and blindfolded and put in what felt like a bus and taken back to the Palestine Branch. They would not tell me what was happening, and I was scared I was going back to the grave. Instead, I was put in one of the waiting rooms where they torture people. I could hear the prisoners being tortured, and screaming, again. The same day I was called in to an office to answer more questions, about what I would say if I came back to Canada. They did not tell me I would be released. I was put back in the waiting room, and I was kept there for one week, listening to all the prisoners screaming. It was awful. On Sun., Oct. 5, I was taken out and into a car and driven to a court. I was put in a room with a prosecutor. I asked for a lawyer and he said I did not need one. I asked what was going on and he read from my confession. I tried to argue I was beaten and did not go to Afghanistan, but he did not listen. He did not tell me what I was charged with, but told me to stamp my fingerprint and sign on a document he would not let me see. Then, he said I would be released. Then, I was taken back to the Palestine Branch where I met the head of the Syrian Military Intelligence and officials from the Canadian embassy. And then I was released. I want to conclude by thanking all of the people who worked for my release, especially my wife Monia, and human rights groups, and all the people who wrote letters, and all the members of parliament who stood up for justice. Of course, I thank all of the journalists for covering my story. The past year has been a nightmare, and I have spent the past few weeks at home trying to learn how to live with what happened to me. I know that the only way I will ever be able to move on in my life and have a future is if I can find out why this happened to me. I want to know why this happened to me. I believe the only way I can ever know why this happened is to have all the truth come out in a public inquiry. My priority right now is to clear my name, get to the bottom of the case and make sure this does not happen to any other Canadian citizens in the future. I believe the best way to go about achieving this goal is to put pressure on the government to call for a public inquiry. What is at stake here is the future of our country, the interests of Canadian citizens, and most importantly Canada's international reputation for being a leader in human rights where citizens from different ethnic groups are treated no different than other Canadians. Thank you for your patience. * * * Toronto Globe and Mail: November 6, 2003 PRIME MINISTER SCORNS CALL FOR ARAR PROBE By Steven Chase and Drew Fagan Ottawa -- Prime Minister Jean Chretien rejected mounting calls for a public probe into Canada's role in the deportation and torture of Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar by shifting blame for the incident solely onto the U.S. government's shoulders. Mr. Chretien said he'll rely on U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and a police probe, rather than an open inquiry, to investigate lingering allegations that Canadian authorities gave files on Mr. Arar to U.S. authorities or somehow co-operated in Washington's deporting him to Syria in 2002. "We want to know the name of the Canadian person who might be involved and [U.S. Secretary of State Colin] Powell said to the Minister of Foreign Affairs that if such a name exists, they will give it to Canada," he told the House of Commons Wednesday. Mr. Chretien fended off opposition calls for a public investigation by washing Ottawa's hands of any responsibility for Mr. Arar's being sent to Syria -- instead of home to Ottawa -- where he endured more than 10 months of imprisonment and, he says, torture. "This is just another fishing expedition," Mr. Chretien said. "The people who are responsible for the deportation of this gentleman to Syria are in the government of the United States, not the Government of Canada. I cannot understand why the opposition wants to blame the Government of Canada for the actions of the Americans. "I am not one who will presume that some Canadians are guilty of something in that like the [parliamentary] opposition. The fact is that this gentleman was deported from New York to Syria by the government of the United States, and the government of the United States should have informed Canada before acting." Some Canadian government officials questioned Mr. Chretien's hard-line approach with Washington Wednesday, suggesting it reflected the fact he had little to lose on his second-last day in the Commons. U.S. officials say that Mr. Powell has pledged to talk with his counterparts at the departments of Justice and Homeland Security, whose staff would also have been responsible for aspects of the Arar case. But it's unclear what, if anything, will come of those conversations, considering that Mr. Powell has no authority over his counterparts, Washington insiders said. The RCMP is thought to have passed information concerning Mr. Arar to U.S. intelligence services, although the force denies being involved in the decision to deport him. The Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP will ask the force to respond to allegations that it encouraged U.S. officials to deport Mr. Arar -- in part by providing them with misleading information -- and later impeded his return to Canada. Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said the investigation could go beyond the RCMP probe if necessary. NDP Leader Jack Layton said the Liberal government is shirking its responsibility to lay bare the details of Mr. Arar's case. * * * Toronto Globe and Mail: November 6, 2003 PAUL MARTIN SHOULD LOOK INTO THE ARAR OUTRAGE By Jeffery Simpson On the face of it, grievous wrongs were done to Canadian citizen Maher Arar. Instead of outrage, or at least serious expressions of concern, the reaction of the Canadian government smacks of cover-up. If Mr. Arar's account is the whole story, then it would appear the Canadian government, agencies of the U.S. government, and, of course, the government of Syria were all complicit in aspects of his wrongful detainment, imprisonment and torture. His was a Kafkaesque tale: questioned for reasons he did not know, deprived of his rights, accused of activities he did not do, thrown into a prison in a foreign country, and tortured while there. He has every right to wonder what happened, and why. So do we all because one man's injustice at the hands of the state, or states, cannot be left unanswered. And yet, the early indications are that this is how the Chrýtien government wants matters left. It would appear the government does not want to ruffle feathers in terrorist-obsessed Washington, and it certainly isn't interested in probing what might have been done by agencies of the Canadian government. Oh yes, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham says the Arar case will be referred to the RCMP Public Complaints Commission, the graveyard of all serious inquiries. And yes, he will demand of the Syrian ambassador a full accounting, which is akin to asking organized crime to explain the body found in the ditch. Enough Liberal MPs got mad enough for the Commons foreign affairs committee to demand a public inquiry, despite opposition from Prime Minister Jean Chrýtien. Everyone who has watched Mr. Chrýtien knows that he never admits errors, minimizes potential embarrassments, and isn't going to change a lifetime of denying serious problems with his government. All those who seek answers can only hope, therefore, that the new prime minister, Paul Martin, will take a different view. After all, Mr. Martin was not prime minister, foreign affairs minister or solicitor-general when the Arar case unfolded, so he has nothing to hide. He has pledged to take seriously what Commons committees think and say. So perhaps he could start by announcing a serious inquiry just as soon as he becomes Liberal leader. But maybe he, too, would not want to ask hard questions about U.S. actions that violated the deportation treaty with Canada, to say nothing of Mr. Arar's right to counsel, or start his time as Liberal leader by explicitly rejecting the Prime Minister's milquetoast response. Everybody in Ottawa, of course, is denying responsibility. The U.S. embassy in Ottawa has suggested American operatives acted on information provided by Canada. The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service says it provided nothing. The RCMP -- the least consequential of all the agencies involved -- won't say anything. Foreign Affairs, ditto. As for U.S. agencies, good luck trying to get anything out of them. A whole lot of rights have been squashed or circumscribed in this U.S. "war on terror," so the U.S. would consider the Arar case a minor irritant. Against this array of actual or anticipated stonewalling, there is only one reasonable course of action -- a public inquiry. Normally, these are demanded for spurious reasons by politicians trying to make a point, or by some aggrieved lobby group or vested interest. When established, they run the risk of dragging on far too long and producing reports quickly forgotten, such as the Hughes inquiry into police actions at the Asia-Pacific Summit in Vancouver. Skeptics of public inquiries usually find their skepticism justified. But there are rare instances -- and the Arar case would appear to be one -- where so many government agencies here and abroad appear to be covering their backsides that only such an inquiry can ferret out culpability. Mind you, the inquiry could not get to the bottom of this injustice without full co-operation by the U.S. and Syrian governments, and that would be highly unlikely. And, of course, the intelligence agencies would scream that everything they knew had to be kept confidential. So formidable obstacles would stand in the way of a public inquiry telling the story. But we can be dead certain that referring the Arar file to the RCMP Public Complaints Commission and asking the Syrian ambassador for an accounting are the least effective avenues imaginable. Which is, quite likely, why these avenues have been chosen by a government led by a Prime Minister on his last legs who isn't about to start admitting now that things might have gone a tad awry. He'll be gone soon, though. There can be a new approach very soon, starting with a public inquiry into Mr. Arar's story. * * * Toronto Star: November 6, 2003 U.S. TO BLAME FOR ARAR'S DEPORTATION: CHRETIEN Syrian envoy says Canadian jailed as favour to U.S. 'We believe there is no case against him,' diplomat says By Susan Delacourt, Ottawa Bureau Chief OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Jean Chretien blames the United States for deporting Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured for 10 months as a suspected terrorist. "The people who are responsible for the deportation of this gentleman to Syria are in the government of the United States, not the government of Canada," Chretien, fists clenched, declared in the Commons yesterday. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has promised to hand over the names of any Canadians who may have aided in Arar's arrest and deportation in 2002, Chretien announced. Yesterday, a high-ranking Syrian diplomat said that Syria agreed to imprison Arar in a gesture of goodwill toward the United States, the Washington Post reported. "They told us he was an Al Qaeda activist, so we took him and put him in custody," said Imad Moustafa, charge d'affaires at the Syrian embassy in Washington. "The U.S. was pressing us not to send him to Canada, the Canadians were pressing us to not send him to Syria." Syrian officials freed Arar on Oct. 5 because the Bush administration cut communications with the government in Damascus and because they wanted to maintain good ties with the Canadian government, Moustafa said. The release was a "political decision" made in Damascus, he said. "We believe there is no case against him." Moustafa said U.S. officials told the Syrians they had "solid information" about Arar's links to Al Qaeda but never produced any. Arar, at a news conference in Ottawa Tuesday, revealed that U.S. officials had private information about him -- including an apartment lease that had been witnessed by another Syrian-Canadian, Abdullah Amalki, who remains imprisoned in Syria. Almalki was picked up by Syrian authorities in August, 2002, after a flight from Malaysia. Arar and his supporters allege information used by U.S. officials could only have been obtained with Canadian help -- perhaps from the RCMP or other law enforcement officials. Chretien and Solicitor-General Wayne Easter are continuing to rebuff calls for a public inquiry, arguing that the RCMP's public complaints commission and regular reviews of Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) operations are sufficient. What Easter and Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham would not fully explain yesterday was why it needs American help to track down potential Canadian involvement in Arar's deportation. Graham told reporters that was the obvious place to start since Americans are alleging they received Canadian aid. Graham said in the Commons that Canada, through quiet diplomacy and intensive consular work in New York and with Syria, had done all it could to help Arar and would continue to see what could be done for Almalki. The future prime minister, Paul Martin, is less categorical than Chretien about the U.S. role in the Arar case, saying the most immediate need is to gather the facts about the "bewildering" case. But Martin appears to be backing away from any public inquiry, even though the Commons' foreign affairs committee has voted in favour of one and Martin has said that MPs and committees should have more clout on Parliament Hill. "There is an inquiry going on. Let's see what it produces," he said. Arar was detained and questioned at New York's JFK Airport on Sept. 26, 2002, before eventually being deported to Syria by U.S. officials, who said he belonged to the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Arar vehemently denies being linked to Al Qaeda and says he told his Syrian interrogators he had been to Afghanistan only because he had been tortured. The Washington Post, citing unnamed U.S. intelligence sources, reported yesterday that Arar was deported because "he had been put on a terrorist watch list after information from 'multiple international intelligence agencies' linked him to a terrorist group. The officials said the case fit the profile what the Central Intelligence Agency describes as extraordinary rendition -- "the practice of turning over low-level, suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of which are known to torture prisoners." A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the information came from Canada's foreign intelligence agencies. The Canadian Alliance, which was curiously low-key in the Commons about the Arar controversy after Tuesday's news conference, yesterday added its voice to the chorus of critics saying the Chretien government did too little to help Arar. But Chretien snapped back at the Alliance as "hypocrites," reminding them that only a year ago they were slamming the Liberal government for protesting against Arar's deportation. The Prime Minister cited an exchange in the Commons last Nov. 18, in which Alliance MP Diane Ablonczy portrayed Canadians as "asleep at the switch" on Arar's alleged terrorist links. The Arar controversy is erupting against the background of what are expected to be Chretien's final days in the Commons as Prime Minister. It has allowed him to vent his trademark, defiant patriotism, which often materializes as distrust and suspicion of the U.S. According to a Liberal MP, Chretien expressed his concern about the Arar case in the Liberal caucus meeting yesterday. "He's appalled and distressed," the MP said. "He said the Americans should hold an inquiry." Chretien was responding to insistent requests by his MPs for an inquiry. Liberal MP Irwin Cotler told reporters an independent public inquiry was essential, because so many government agencies were involved. "There is a fundamental principle here at work, and that is the accountability of security services in a democracy." [ with files from graham fraser ] * * * Toronto Star: November 6, 2003 HOW DID U.S. GET COPY OF ARAR'S LEASE? Document used to question Arar -- U.S. officials claim RCMP provided it Allan Thompson, Special To The Star OTTAWA?The RCMP may have broken the law in order to obtain a key document later used by U.S. authorities against Maher Arar, supporters of Arar charged yesterday. At issue is a rental agreement Arar signed in Ottawa in 1997 and which was apparently used last year by the FBI to connect Arar to a man they believe is an Al Qaeda operative. U.S. officials maintain the document was provided by the RCMP, but the Mounties refuse to comment. Arar says he never gave anyone his copy of the lease and the landlord he rented from is adamant it did not release the document either. There were only two copies. Alex Neve, the head of the Canadian branch of Amnesty International and one of Arar's backers, said that while there is no proof the document was "illegally seized through an improper search," the fact that Arar and the rental agency insist they didn't provide it begs the question. "Even if there's not conclusive proof, the mounting signs that this document was obtained through improper means are pretty alarming and merit some response from the government," said Neve. "The unanswered question as to how the RCMP obtained the lease is yet another reason for a public inquiry," said Arar's lawyer, Lorne Waldman. Neither the RCMP nor Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) will comment on the Arar case. The official line from both is that they did not play a role in Arar's detention in the U.S. or deportation to Syria. But neither the Mounties nor CSIS will answer questions about whether they provided information to U.S. authorities about Arar. And neither will say what role they may have played in obtaining a copy of the lease. "Because the CPC (Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP) is conducting a review, we cannot add anything or elaborate on the allegations," said Sergeant Gilles Deziel, an RCMP spokesperson. "All I can say is we certainly act within the law," said CSIS spokesperson Nicole Currier. Arar, 33, is the Canadian who was detained in New York on Sept. 26, 2002 and then deported by American authorities to his native Syria, where he faced nearly a year of torture and abuse in a rat-infested prison. At a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, Arar said he was astonished when FBI and immigration interrogators who questioned him at New York's JFK airport produced a copy of the 1997 rental lease he signed. "They were consulting a report while they were questioning me and the information they had was so private, I thought this must be from Canada," Arar said. "They pulled out a copy of my rental lease from 1997. I could not believe they had this. I was completely shocked." The document is the lease Arar signed with Ottawa real estate giant Minto Developments in 1997 when he rented a townhouse in Ottawa's west end. American authorities confronted Arar with the document because his signature was witnessed by Abdullah Almalki, another Syrian-born Canadian the U.S. regarded as a potential Al Qaeda operative. (Almalki was arrested in Syria in August, 2002 and is still being held at a prison in Damascus.) Arar has no recollection of giving a copy of the lease document to Almalki and certainly did not give it to anyone else, Neve said. And the president of Minto Developments, Roger Greenberg, said in an interview that his company absolutely did not release the document to anyone. "Minto's policy is we do not release these documents unless it is pursuant to a search warrant or a court order," Greenberg said. Greenberg said there was no search warrant or court order in this case. And Greenberg said he asked employees to pull the Arar lease file from 1997 to double check for any notations. "The original document is in the file. The only other copy would have been given to Mr. Arar," Greenberg said. "And there is nothing in the file that would tell us that there was ever any contact (with law enforcement) about that unit at all." * * * The Nation: November 6, 2003 BRING HALLIBURTON HOME By Naomi Klein Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules. Those are a few suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations. But the "Troops Out" debate overlooks an important fact. If every last soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of another country, by foreign corporations controlling its essential services, by 70 percent unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs. Any movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonization as well. That means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation chief Paul Bremer has fraudulently passed off as "reconstruction" and canceling all privatization contracts flowing from these reforms. How can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer's reforms were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international convention governing the behavior of occupying forces, the Hague Regulations of 1907 (the companion to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, both ratified by the United States), as well as the US Army's own code of war. The Hague Regulations state that an occupying power must respect "unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country." The Coalition Provisional Authority has shredded that simple rule with gleeful defiance. Iraq's Constitution outlaws the privatization of key state assets, and it bars foreigners from owning Iraqi firms. No plausible argument can be made that the CPA was "absolutely prevented" from respecting those laws, and yet two months ago, the CPA overturned them unilaterally. On September 19, Bremer enacted the now-infamous Order 39. It announced that 200 Iraqi state companies would be privatized; decreed that foreign firms can retain 100 percent ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories; and allowed these firms to move 100 percent of their profits out of Iraq. The Economist declared the new rules a "capitalist dream." Order 39 violated the Hague Regulations in other ways as well. The convention states that occupying powers "shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct." Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines "usufruct" (possibly the ugliest word in the English language) as an arrangement that grants one party the right to use and derive benefit from another's property "without altering the substance of the thing." Put more simply, if you are a housesitter, you can eat the food in the fridge, but you can't sell the house and turn it into condos. And yet that is just what Bremer is doing: What could more substantially alter "the substance" of a public asset than to turn it into a private one? In case the CPA was still unclear on this detail, the US Army's Law of Land Warfare states that "the occupant does not have the right of sale or unqualified use of [nonmilitary] property." This is pretty straightforward: Bombing something does not give you the right to sell it. There is every indication that the CPA is well aware of the lawlessness of its privatization scheme. In a leaked memo written on March 26, British Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that "the imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorized by international law." So far, most of the controversy surrounding Iraq's reconstruction has focused on the waste and corruption in the awarding of contracts. This badly misses the scope of the violation: Even if the selloff of Iraq were conducted with full transparency and open bidding, it would still be illegal for the simple reason that Iraq is not America's to sell. The Security Council's recognition of the United States and Britain's occupation authority provides no legal cover. The UN resolution passed in May specifically required the occupying powers to "comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907." According to a growing number of international legal experts, this means that if the next Iraqi government decides it doesn't want to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Bechtel or Halliburton, it will have powerful legal grounds to renationalize assets that were privatized under CPA edicts. Juliet Blanch, global head of energy and international arbitration for the huge international law firm Norton Rose, says that because Bremer's reforms directly contradict Iraq's Constitution, they are "in breach of international law and are likely not enforceable." Blanch argues that the CPA "has no authority or ability to sign those [privatization] contracts" and that a sovereign Iraqi government would have "quite a serious argument for renationalization without paying compensation." Firms facing this type of expropriation would, according to Blanch, have "no legal remedy." The only way out for the Administration is to make sure that Iraq's next government is anything but sovereign. It must be pliant enough to ratify the CPA's illegal laws, which will then be celebrated as the happy marriage of free markets and free people. Once that happens, it will be too late: The contracts will be locked in, the deals done and the occupation of Iraq permanent. Which is why antiwar forces must use this fast-closing window to demand that the next Iraqi government be free from the shackles of these reforms. It's too late to stop the war, but it's not too late to deny Iraq's invaders the myriad economic prizes they went to war to collect in the first place. It's not too late to cancel the contracts and ditch the deals. * * * Air Force Times: November 6, 2003 TRANSLATOR'S LAWYER RAISES ISSUES OVER DOCUMENT CLASSIFICATION By Nicole Gaudiano, Times staff writer http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=0-292925-2369626.php In the case against an Arabic translator accused of security breaches with classified information, prosecutors have made their own mistakes, according to the defendant's lawyer. The alleged error: treating classified information as unclassified. "There's tremendous dispute as to what was classified and what wasn't," said Donald G. Rehkopf, a newly retained lawyer in the espionage case against Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi. "It's almost like the Keystone Kops. If the government can't sort out what's classified and what's not, how the hell is some poor enlisted guy supposed to figure this out?" The complaint is one of several outlined in a 12-page letter Rehkopf filed Nov. 4 with prosecutors and the judge advocate for the 18th Air Force, where the case now stands. In the letter, Rehkopf accused the government of trampling on Al Halabi's constitutional rights and denying the defense discovery that was critical to his Article 32 hearing, and compared the constitutional tensions in the case to the McCarthy "Red Scare" era. Al Halabi, a former prison interpreter at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, is accused of taking letters from some of the camp's 660 alleged terrorists off the base and e-mailing information about them to a citizen of an unspecified foreign government. Two of 32 charges against him -- aiding the enemy and espionage -- could carry the death penalty. The commander of the 18th Air Force, who is the general court-martial convening authority in this case, will determine whether to proceed and whether it will be a capital case, but no decisions have been made. Should the case go to trial, Rehkopf in his letter warned the prosecutors -- Lt. Col. Bryan T. Wheeler and his assistant Capt. Dennis Kaw -- that they would be called as witnesses, specifically in one instance to discuss the alleged error they made regarding the classification of information. "If they can make mistakes about classified material, then I want to know why my client can't make mistakes," he said. During the course of the case, prosecutors have provided some material to the defense as unclassified, only to later tell the defense it was classified, and vice versa, according to Air Force Maj. Kim E. London, another Al Halabi attorney who describes the scenario in a redacted Nov. 2 letter to the trial counsels and 18th Air Force. In one instance, prosecutors said information regarding his pre-trial confinement hearing and charges was initially "confidential," she wrote. When questioned about the handling of such information, she wrote, Wheeler's response was essentially "We made an error, it's not confidential, it's ‘sensitive -- for official use only.' " Citing London's letter, Rehkopf wrote, "Either the government has no idea itself as to what is or is not ‘classified,' or it is ex post facto illegally classifying everything with the false hope of convicting the accused of some transgression.... But for sure, this is not the ‘stuff' that death penalty cases are based upon." When asked to comment on behalf of the prosecution, Capt. Michele Tasista, a spokeswoman at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., said, "Due to the nature of the case and the sensitivities involved, there really wouldn't be a comment." The defense has asked for documents, notes, recordings, statements of witnesses and physical evidence in the case, along with access to 16 detainees -- two Australian, two Canadian, nine British, and one each from Iraq, Jordan and Uganda -- but was given what attorneys considered an inadequate response or denial, according to requests for discovery. The defense team also sought Al Halabi's monitored communications after government representatives "indicated they have ‘reason to believe' our client has attempted to communicate with others under investigation since he has been in pre-trial confinement," according to a Sept. 29 request for discovery. The government provided a response to the discovery requests on Oct. 19, but Rehkopf wrote that it repeatedly denies discovery on the basis that, "relevancy to this case not yet shown to the government." Rehkopf wrote that reason is illegal and prejudices Al Halabi's constitutional rights. "The prosecutors are just trying to coerce the defense into disclosing what the trial strategy is going to be," he said. The letter raises a couple of unanswered questions, including whether the Air Force has any plans to turn the case over to the U.S. Attorney's office. Rehkopf writes that the defense is aware of the ongoing discussions "presumably to avoid having messy discovery issues," but he could not comment further. Rehkopf also asserts in the letter that the case is about Al Halabi's religious rights, but stops short of an explanation because the investigating officer's report on the Article 32 hearing is, to date, classified in full. He argued the "blanket classification" is another example of the government "burying its collective head in the sand while claiming to see nothing wrong with this approach." "We can only assume ... that the usual mantra of ‘national security' concerns is what the government is relying on to ignore the law," he wrote * * * November 6, 2003 CAGE PROTEST ON HICKS DETENTION By Tim Clarke SOCIAL justice campaigner Father Brian Gore was back under lock and key today to protest against the continued detention of Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib by US authorities in Guantanamo Bay. Fr Gore gained worldwide attention in the 1980s when he was held in jail for two years in the Philippines for standing up for plantation workers against the Marcos regime. Today, the Catholic priest, clad in orange overalls, locked himself in a metal cage in Perth city centre to protest against the treatment of Mr Hicks and Mr Habib, accused by the US of terrorist activity. Fr Gore said the Australian Government's attitude towards his plight when imprisoned, and towards Mr Hicks and Mr Habib, was markedly different. "The Australian government at that time supported me, gave me full consular assistance, and during 50 court hearings I had Australian representatives," Fr Gore told AAP. "They paid for the Australian Law Society to come and monitor the case and report to the government, we had international jurists, Law Asia and we had the media. All this under a third world dictatorship. "Now you have a situation in America, under the so called leader of world democracy, treating these prisoners from 42 nations like animals -- a form of torture." Draped in a banner reading "Detention in Guantanamo Bay. President Bush, what about human rights?", Fr Gore said just spending half a day in the cage illustrated the inhumane treatment of the prisoners in Cuba. "They are totally isolated, living in cages that we wouldn't let animals live in,' he said. "Our Government with so many lawyers in it, and so many people that are supposed to be upholding international and local law, absolutely couldn't give a damn about it. "I don't know whether he (Hicks) is guilty or not, that is not bothering me. He has a right to due process and transparency and access to the accusations against him." The protest is part of an overall campaign called the "Humans in Cages Project", designed to demonstrate the living conditions of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Mr Hicks has been held in the United States military base since January last year. Mr Habib has been detained since May 2002. AAP * * * The Australian: November 6, 2003 CHARGES EXPECTED AS HICKS ISOLATED By Rebecca DiGirolamo Adelaide terror suspect David Hicks has spent the past two months isolated from the main camp of a US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sparking family concerns that the 28-year-old is about to be charged. In a handwritten letter released by his father Terry yesterday, Hicks reveals he has been transferred from Camp Delta to solitary confinement and is concerned about his weight, which has dropped to 59kg. "Now, I only see MPs (military police)," Hicks says. He passes his time reading the Koran and novels and exercising. "My main concern is food. Sometimes I have weight-loss problems," he says. In the Red Cross letter dated September 1 and stamped "Cleared by US forces", Hicks intimates the US military is controlling his correspondence with his family and urges lawyer Stephen Kenny to assist him "if anything happens". Hicks and fellow Australian Mamdouh Habib have been detained at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of links to al-Qa'ida for the past two years without charge. Last month, Prime Minister John Howard asked US President George W. Bush to fast-track the trial of Hicks, who was named in July as one of the first six foreign nationals to face military commissions. His isolation from the main compound has sparked concerns over Hicks's mental health and raised fears the US is preparing him for trial. "Perhaps this (solitary confinement) is as a result of him being identified as coming up for a potential trial," Mr Kenny said. He said the military tribunal would make recommendations for final determination by Mr Bush, "to whom there is no submissions, to whom lawyers don't get access". "He is not a judge, he is a politician (and) it's quite inappropriate that an Australian citizen be in a situation where the head of a state will determine his future," he said. "We want the Australian Government to do something about it. It's just unacceptable." Mr Hicks said his son appeared disorientated, apologising for not writing a letter for the past year when his last letter was penned in March. "I think his mental stability is now starting to weaken," Mr Hicks said. "They don't tell him what time of day it is, or what month it is, from the look of it, so he wouldn't have a clue. For him to talk about weight loss like that, then, yes something is definitely wrong." The Government yesterday maintained Hicks and Habib were in good health. "Losing weight is not an indication of poor health," a spokesman for Attorney- General Philip Ruddock said. Australian officials would soon return to Guantanamo Bay to interview Hicks and deliver a letter from his father. * * * University of Chicago Chronicle: November 6, 2003 STONE WRITES FRED KOREMATSU'S AMICUS BRIEF, AS HISTORY REPEATS By Peter Schuler, News Office http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/031106/korematsu.shtml In a "friend-of-the-court" brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court Friday, Oct. 3, Geoffrey Stone wrote, "History teaches that, in time of war, we have often sacrificed fundamental freedoms unnecessarily." The amicus curiae brief, which Stone wrote on behalf of World War II Japanese-American detainee Fred Korematsu, asked the high court to review the constitutionality of prolonged executive detentions under the Bush administration's "War on Terrorism." Stone, the Harry Kalven, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School, is the author of a major study of civil liberties in wartime, The Secret of Liberty, which will be published by WW Norton & Company in early 2004. In 1942, Korematsu was arrested and convicted for defying the U.S. government's World War II internment order of Japanese-Americans. The brief was filed in the cases of Khaled Odah v. United States, Shafiq Rasul v. George W. Bush and Yasir Hamdi v. Donald Rumsfeld. Odah and Rasul are being held at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba, and Hamdi, possibly a U.S. citizen, in a military brig in Virginia. The plaintiffs are being held "without any fair hearing to determine guilt or innocence, without the assistance of counsel and without any meaningful judicial review," Stone said. "The extreme nature of the government's position in these cases is reminiscent of its positions in past episodes, in which the United States too quickly sacrificed civil liberties in the rush to accommodate overbroad claims of military necessity," he added. More than 60 years ago, Korematsu challenged the constitutionality of President Franklin Roosevelt's 1942 Executive Order that authorized the internment of 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry who were living on the West Coast. "This is an extraordinary convergence of events, spanning 60 years of this nation's history," said Stone. "Fred Korematsu has committed himself to ensuring that Americans do not forget the lessons of their own history." Korematsu, now 84, was born to a Japanese-American family in California that owned a flower nursery. After World War II broke out, Japanese living in Pacific states were first subject to curfews and were later sent to internment camps. In 1942, Korematsu's family was taken for processing to Tanforan, a former racetrack south of San Francisco, but Korematsu, then 22 and working as a welder in an Oakland, Calif. shipyard, refused to go. He was arrested, convicted, given a suspended sentence and ultimately sent to the Topaz internment camp in Utah, where he and his family remained for the duration of the war. In Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, ruling that because the United States was at war, the government could, on the grounds of military necessity, constitutionally intern him without a hearing and without any adjudicative determination that he had done anything wrong. In 1983, Judge Marilyn Patel of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco overturned the conviction in response to a writ of coram nobis (to correct a judgment on the ground of an error of fact). A team of attorneys, many of whom had parents interned during the war, filed the appeal on Korematsu's behalf. The Court ruled that the government's 1942 case against Korematsu was based on false, misleading and racially biased information. In 1988, Congress passed legislation that apologized for the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans and awarded each survivor $20,000. In 1998, President Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The citation read, in part, "Fred Korematsu challenged our Nation's conscience, reminding us that we must uphold the rights of our own citizens even as we fight tyranny in other lands." In Korematsu's amicus brief, Stone argued to the Supreme Court that "in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, the Supreme Court should make clear in these cases that the United States respects fundamental constitutional and human rights-even in times of war. These cases present the Supreme Court with a direct test of whether it will meet its deepest constitutional responsibilities to uphold the law in a clear-eyed and courageous manner." David Strauss, the Harry N. Wyatt Professor in the Law School, and former University law professor Stephen Schulhofer worked with Stone on the brief. * * * Ottawa Citizen: November 5, 2003 SECOND CANADIAN HELD IN SYRIA 'WE DIDN'T KNOW WHETHER HE WAS DEAD OR ALIVE' Abdullah Almalki hasn't been seen by his family for more than year By Kate Jaimet, The Ottawa Citizen Abdullah Almalki was torn from his mother's arms in a Syrian airport in May 2002 and hasn't been seen by his family since. The family was in shock yesterday when relatives heard that Mr. Almalki is incarcerated in the Sednaya prison in Syria and has reportedly been tortured. The eyewitness report came from Maher Arar, an Ottawa computer engineer who was imprisoned without trial in Syria for nearly a year and spoke publicly for the first time about his ordeal yesterday. "We didn't know where he was. We didn't know if he was dead or alive," said Mr. Almalki's brother, Youssuf Almalki. "It's just ludicrous. The whole thing is ludicrous. It's beyond human imagination ... I would hope that the Canadian government steps up a little and tries to get him out. Because he was travelling on a Canadian passport. He is a Canadian." An engineer with a degree from Ottawa's Carleton University, Mr. Almalki travelled to Syria last year to visit his parents, who had returned to their native country to see old friends and relatives, Youssuf Almalki said. Mr. Almalki boarded a plane in Malaysia, where he and his wife, a Malaysian, were tending to her sick mother. But when he arrived in Syria, he was seized by officials. "They were expecting him in the airport and he was snatched out of my mom's arms." Syria has refused to allow Canadian consular officials to visit Mr. Almalki, saying that he is a Syrian national. However, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that Mr. Almalki is a Canadian. The first news the family has had of Mr. Almalki's condition came today, when Mr. Arar revealed that he had met his fellow-Canadian in prison. Mr. Arar said Mr. Almalki told him that he had been incarcerated in a tiny, grave-like cell and beaten with a metal cable, among other forms of torture. "His head was shaved, and he was very, very thin and pale," Mr. Arar said. "He was very weak ... He told me he had been severely tortured ... He was also hanged upside down." Mr. Arar said that American intelligence authorities had questioned him about his relationship with Mr. Almalki, while trying to ferret out alleged links to al-Qaeda and international terrorism. But Youssuf Almalki said his brother has nothing to do with terrorism. "I firmly believe he has no connection to terrorism. My brother is a guy with five kids, and a businessman. He's a good citizen all around. He's never been in trouble with anybody," he said. And Syria's official reason for detaining Mr. Almalki is quite different. "The only thing that they said was that they were detaining him for his lack of complying with the obligation of performing his military service," said Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron. Syrian men must serve 30 months in the army after attaining the age of 19. Almalki was just 16 when he immigrated to Canada in 1987, along with his mother, father and three brothers. Mr. Doiron said that the Syrian ambassador has been asked to "convey our concerns" about the case to the Syrian government. Syrian officials could not be reached for comment. © Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen * * * BBC: November 5, 2003 FORMER GUANTANAMO INMATE SUES US By Zaffar Abbas, BBC correspondent in Islamabad A man who was imprisoned by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is suing the Pakistani and US governments for damages worth over $10m. Pakistani cleric Mohammed Sagheer was seized by US troops fighting in Afghanistan in 2001. He spent roughly a year with other suspected al-Qaeda and Taleban operatives in the US military prison. His lawyers say he is suing for the mental and physical torture he endured at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay. 'Treated like an animal' Mr Sagheer filed his suit in an Islamabad court on Tuesday. Lawyers acting for him said the case could be heard in a Pakistani court because Pakistan's interior ministry is one of the defendants. In the first case of its kind, Mr Sagheer described his arrest by American authorities as illegal and his treatment at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay as extremely inhuman. He says he was kept for more than a year in a prison cell that was like a cage meant for animals. During this period he says he was treated in the worst possible manner and was repeatedly interrogated about his links to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Despite insisting that he no ties to the Islamic militant group, Mr Sagheer says he was punished by the authorities for what they saw as his lack of co- operation. After being released by the Americans, Mr Sagheer says he was sent back to Pakistan, where he spent a few more days in detention. The court has decided to hold a preliminary hearing for the case in the third week of December. * * * Toronto Globe and Mail: November 5, 2003 HANDLING OF ARAR COULD RESULT IN CHARGES: DERSHOWITZ By Oliver Moore Prominent Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz said Wednesday that the United States broke its own laws by deporting Maher Arar to a country that practises torture and warned that those responsible could face criminal sanction or civil suit. Mr. Arar, who was born in Syria but emigrated in his teens and took Canadian citizenship, says that he was arrested at New York's Kennedy airport and deported to Jordan and then Syria. Although never charged with anything, he says that Syrian authorities tortured and mistreated him during a year-long imprisonment. Abruptly released last month and flown home, Mr. Arar on Tuesday broke his silence to denounce his deportation and call for a public inquiry. Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham and Solicitor- General Wayne Easter were quick to dismiss the need for a public inquiry, saying that a review procedure at the RCMP is looking into Mr. Arar's allegations. Mr. Dershowitz said that Canadians should be furious about this case and that Ottawa should do whatever it can to hold to account the people responsible for sending Mr. Arar into harm's way. "If that person knew or should have known that he was sending the person to be tortured, he's violated treaties, probably violated criminal statues as well. Clearly there are consequences," he told globeandmail.com from his Boston office. "So far nobody's produced any evidence of guilt, but there has been evidence of torture." Badgered during Question Period on Wednesday, the government repeatedly brushed aside calls for an inquiry into the Arar case. Hours earlier, though, University of Toronto professor Wesley Wark, a specialist in security and intelligence issues, said that a full investigation may be crucial to ensure that the public retains its faith in CSIS and RCMP. "What is at stake, or may well be at stake," he said, "is the whole question of public confidence in the activities of the security-intelligence community. There's a public interest question here and there's a public confidence question here which simply I don't think will go away even if [the government] would like to think it will." "If it was proved that Canada was complicit in sending him to Syria for no good reason, then there is a question of political and governmental accountability. Careers should be at stake." Mr. Dershowitz agreed that the Canadian government has a responsibility to take an active role in investigating the case. "[Mr. Arar] has no standing to raise objections under treaties. Only governments do. So it's up to the Canadian government to file a formal protest with the United States, and I hope they'll do so," he said. Mr. Wark warned, though, any public inquiry may ultimately show that Canada cannot to hold the United States to its legal and treaty obligations. "Does Canada the clout in the United States to be able to protect its own people?," he asked rhetorically. Mr. Dershowitz -- who raised eyebrows when he argued that torture will inevitably be practised clandestinely during the U.S. war on terror and that it should instead be regulated and controlled under the rule of law -- said Wednesday that the habit of farming out torture is "widespread." "This the paradigm case, where the United States can maintain deniability, but it sends this guy off to Jordan and Syria, knowing that those are two of the countries that excel in torture," he said. "That way we have clean hands and get the benefit of the information; or, if not, at least the guy is taken care of. What happened with this guy is he came back, and he's appropriately complaining." An unidentified intelligence source quoted in the Washington Post agreed that the practice is relatively common. "The temptation is to have these folks in other hands because they have different standards. Someone might be able to get information we can't from detainees," the source said. Mr. Wark was reluctant to rush to judgment but noted that "on the face of it" the case seems "shocking and quite egregious." "In a way, it's the worst face of the domestic war on terrorism. It seems to show how things can go terribly wrong." * * * The Age (Melbourne): November 5, 2003 Australian forces accused of torture in East Timor By Deborah Snow Fresh allegations of torture by Australian troops in East Timor will be made in tonight's SBS Dateline program, with former militia members claiming they were beaten, kicked, and had their heads forced down excrement-filled toilet bowls during interrogation. Two of the men also say they were forced into cubicles where wasps' nests were present, with their Australian interrogators allegedly stirring up the nests so the detainees would be stung. The group further claims that one of their number, Yani Ndun, is missing, having last been seen alive in the custody of InterFET, the Australian intervention force in East Timor. The program says the group of six men were picked up by the Australian army around September 22, 1999, just days after Australian forces landed in the strife-racked province. The six were all members or suspected associates of the Aitarak militia, one of the most feared of the anti-independence groups, which went on a rampage after East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in an August 30 referendum. Three members of the group interviewed by SBS say they were taken by their Australian captors to an empty football stadium where they were forced into wasp-infested toilets and had their heads pushed down toilet bowls. Jao Ximenes, one of the interviewees, said:"They put our faces in fresh shit in the toilet and they made us sleep there." Once it got dark, the group say they were taken to a high school and told to sleep on outdoor tennis courts. There they say some members of the group were beaten and kicked, and one hit with a rifle butt. The army has made no detailed response to the allegations but confirmed it had held two of the men, Jao Ximenes and Caitano Da Silva, in custody. The army denied having any information on the missing man, Yani Ndun, and said that the "interrogation techniques used by Australian InterFET soldiers in East Timor were in accordance with the Geneva conventions". * * * The Australian: November 5, 2003 I'M WASTING AWAY, SAYS TERROR SUSPECT By Rebecca DiGirolamo A SOMBRE handwritten letter from Adelaide terror suspect David Hicks reveals the 28-year-old is wasting away alone in a US military prison cell at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hicks's father Terry told The Australian yesterday the details of his son's poor health were detailed in an uncensored one-page letter that begins "Dear Father and Beverley" (Hicks's step-mother). "Some of the stuff in the letter is disturbing," Mr Hicks said. "He has lost a lot of weight. He's always been fit and muscly and if he's lost the amount of weight that he's talking about, then it's a bit of a concern." Terry Hicks said the letter, dated September 1, was genuine because he recognised his son's handwriting. He received a faxed copy from the Red Cross yesterday and would soon collect the original letter. Lawyer Stephen Kenny said Hicks's letter indicated he had lost significant weight despite continuing his own fitness regime of push-ups and sit-ups in his cell. Mr Hicks said his son's trademark humour was missing from the letter. "He has this sombre feeling about him," he said. "There were none of the usual jokes." Mr Hicks last spoke with his son in November 2001, weeks before he was captured at a military checkpoint in Afghanistan. He last received a letter in May. Mr Hicks said strict censoring prohibited detailed political conversation, leaving his son little room to explain his situation freely. "It was a good feeling to know he is still going," he said. "But I'm always worried about his mental state." David Hicks and fellow Australian Mamdouh Habib have been held in the prison camp without charge for the past two years on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda. The US military says it is in the process of setting up military commissions to try terror suspects, including the two Australians. Mr Kenny said that according to British reports, Guantanamo Bay prisoners were held in single cells measuring 1.8m x 2.5m, given 30 minutes weekly exercise "shuffling around in chains and handcuffs" and fed "culturally appropriate" food. Mr Hicks said he was still hopeful of being able to speak with his son by phone once he was formally charged. * * * Aljazeera: November 3, 2003 -- 7:03 PM GMT http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5929DF29-C01F-4BAA-A1A8-E702B3DCCE2B.htm GERMAN FILM EXPOSES GUANTANAMO 'SCANDAL' by Roshan Muhammed Salih An international filmmaker has exposed America's Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a "human rights scandal". Ashvin Raman has made a groundbreaking documentary for German television which will be screened on Germany's ARD channel on 12 November. His film includes exclusive footage of Guantanamo Bay, as well as interviews with released detainees and top American officials. More than 600 foreign nationals have been detained without charge or access to lawyers and family members in the US naval base since November 2001. The US has refused to recognise them as prisoners of war, or allow their status to be determined by a tribunal as required under the Geneva Conventions. Bad information Raman said it was a scandal that two years after the US opened the camp, people were still being flown over there from Afghanistan. He said: "Out of 660 people in Guantanamo Bay there are probably only five to 10 big names. The rest are just foot soldiers and ordinary people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. "The truth is that Afghans have a bad habit of informing on other Afghans. They sell people off by saying they are terrorists and many Afghan warlords have made a lot of money that way." Raman, who presented a paper on Guantanamo to the European Parliament in September, said the camp is just "a showpiece for the American people". "It is there so that Bush can tell them that he is doing something about terrorism. But you just can't keep people locked up for such a long time without charge or having access to lawyers." Inhumane conditions Indian-born Raman said conditions inside the camp have not improved much since it opened. "Things have only cosmetically improved. The fact is that if you are being held in solitary confinement in a cell that is five metres squared then that is not good. Don't forget, in the last few months 32 prisoners have tried to commit suicide." He added: "The released prisoners that I spoke to just couldn't believe they had to spend a year of their lives there in the first place." After the American war on Afghanistan in 2001, about 660 people from 42 countries were sent to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation. The detainees were taken to a place outside US territory to minimise the application of legal constraints that might otherwise apply. Enemy combatants The Americans say the Guantanamo detainees are being treated humanely and receive good food, excellent medical care, and the opportunity to worship. However, the US considers them as "enemy combatants", which means they are outside the normal legal framework and can be held indefinitely without trial or access to lawyers. Washington says it cannot treat the detainees as normal criminals because of their alleged links to Usama Bin Ladin's al-Qaida network. Neither are they regarded as prisoners of war under the Geneva conventions, because they were not members of the regular Afghan armed forces. The Pentagon has announced that six Guantanamo prisoners are likely to be tried by military tribunals. The defendants may face prosecution on a number of charges, including violations of the laws of war. Depending on the particular charges, the death penalty may come into force. * * * Barbados Advocate: November 3, 2003 Letter to the Editor WHY NO OUTCRY AGAINST GUANTANAMO BAY? http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/NewViewNewsleft.cfm?Record=15448 I grew up in the traditional manner of people of my generation, going to church and Sunday school, being taught religion (Christian) at school, and learning the values of Christianity and adhered, in the main, to these teachings and values especially those of the New Testament. As I grew older I learnt and understood more about other religions and came to appreciate the similarities between all, which are greater than the differences. As a consequence I find it difficult to understand why the "Church"; Anglican, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Episcopalian -- all Christian churches, as well as Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist are not rising up and shouting with one voice against the atrocity that is Guantanamo Bay. How can Christians who follow the teachings of Jesus, or Muslims who follow the true teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, remain silent when over six hundred and fifty persons are incarcerated for over two years without any access to human rights, and subjected to degrading and inhumane conditions. How can people; ordinary citizens, lawyers, doctors, politicians, and the man in the street, go about their daily tasks and not spare one moment in the day for those prisoners, many of them innocent victims of circumstances; enmity, jealousy, or misfortune. These people are incarcerated and live in limbo, not knowing their fate and unable to defend himself or herself or have anyone defend them. These are people who would have left loved ones, children, wives, sweet- hearts, fathers and mothers. These "enemy combatants" (whatever that odious phrase means) are denied any communication with any but their interrogators. Every Sunday, Saturday, or whatever day they choose, millions of people pray to a God. How many prayers are offered on behalf of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? It is time that sermons are preached in the pulpits or in the Mosque, on television or wherever, on behalf of these unfortunate people. Guilty or innocent they must be given their day in Court. Just as the world was incensed by the atrocities of the Holocaust and the Concentration Camps of Germany, the world must become incensed by the Concentration Camp at Guantanamo Bay. It is time that the "Judeo-Christian" nation, as described by General Boykin, practise the Christian values that it espouses, and practise the teachings of Jesus: "How often shall I forgive some one who has sinned against me... and Jesus answered "not seven times seven, but seventy times seven." Justice can only be done if those charged with a crime are brought before the courts of Justice and given a fair trial. I call upon the "Church" to take up the cause of those unfortunate men in Guantanamo Bay, so that they may one day be able to shout: "Free at last, Free at last, Thank God (Allah)... we are free at last". Let freedom and justice ring for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. ALVIN CUMMINS * * * Reason Online: November 3, 2003 A CONSTITUTION OF CONVENIENCE The government can't have it both ways Andrew P. Napolitano http://www.reason.com/hod/an110303.shtml Late last month the Defense Department charged one of its own, Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halibi, with espionage and with spying for his native Syria. According to court documents, many of the acts which constituted these charges took place while Airman al-Halibi was on active duty as an Air Force translator at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. If the government can prove the charges against him in court, he could receive the death penalty. But problems of proof are the least of the government's concerns in this case. First, the government must confront the self-inflicted problem of federal jurisdiction -- which it has claimed does not exist for acts committed in Cuba. Here's how the government shot itself in the foot. The U.S. Constitution is the document that created the federal government. In broad general terms, it sets forth the government's powers, establishes limits on those powers, and guarantees rights to all persons under the government's jurisdiction. The most potent of the government's domestic powers are the powers to enact federal criminal statutes and prosecute violations of them. Since the Constitution is the sheet anchor of the government's powers, one would expect that the government would contend that it exists and subsists wherever the government wants to enforce federal law. But the government only wants to enforce part of the Constitution. Just last year, the government successfully argued to four federal courts that the U.S. Constitution does not apply at American military facilities in Cuba and, thus, no American court has jurisdiction over the acts of the U.S. government and its personnel there. The cases in which this perverse argument was made involved litigation filed by relatives of prisoners confined at Guantanamo Bay who sought to have federal courts order the government to explain and justify the prisoners' confinement. This right -- the ancient right to habeas corpus -- is guaranteed in the Constitution (except in time of war when Congress specifically suspends it) to all persons confined against their will by the government. One would think that the government would gladly justify in open court its detention of prisoners of war. But in its zeal to keep its behavior away from judicial scrutiny, the government argued that the Guantanamo Bay detainees lacked the right to habeas corpus because the Constitution does not apply to the government when it is in Cuba. The government went on to persuade federal judges in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and San Francisco that, because the U.S. leases Guantanamo Bay from Cuba, the sovereign power over Camp Delta is not the U.S. government, but is rather Fidel Castro! Tell that to the commanding American officer. Comes now the same government a year later to argue that while one is not entitled to the protections of the Constitution when one is at an American military base in Cuba, one can still be prosecuted pursuant to powers given by the Constitution while at an American military base in Cuba. Hence the government's jurisdiction headache: it cannot -- under the doctrine of judicial estoppel -- argue today contrary to what it argued last year on the same point of law. Not only can the government not argue both ways, it cannot have it both ways. Either the Constitution, with all its powers to prosecute and with all its due process protections as well, applies fully or it does not apply at all. The government knows that it cannot escape the Constitution merely by leaving the U.S. mainland because the Supreme Court has told it so. In Ex parte Milligan, the Court declared that: "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances." And, in a consistent series of cases that goes back over 100 years, the Court has ruled that federal courts have jurisdiction over acts of the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Does the government really expect Americans to believe that nothing restrains it, and it need not respect our rights, when it leaves U.S. soil? The government's argument is nonsense. Wherever the government goes -- even to the moon -- the Constitution goes with it. If there is strong evidence to believe that Airman al-Halibi is a spy, then the government should prosecute him no matter where he was when he spied. But in its prosecution of the war on terror, it seems that government lawyers from the Attorney General on down have self-interpreted their oaths to uphold the Constitution: They want to uphold the parts that grant them power, not the parts that restrain their exercise of it. Unfortunately, the government's selective defense of the Constitution is not surprising or novel. Since 9/11, the government has willfully disobeyed the orders of federal judges in U.S. v. Moussaoui and in Padilla v. Rumsfeld; claimed it can lock up Americans and strip us of all our constitutional rights without judicial review in Rumsfeld v. Hamdi; and successfully threatened to strip Americans of all rights in order to get confessions and guilty pleas in the Lackawanna Six case. So far, it has gotten away with all this. The government argues that certain defendants are so fearsome, their guilt so palpable, and their knowledge of our secrets so volatile that we need not respect their liberties. This is the justification of tyrants. When the government violates or ignores the Constitution it has sworn to uphold, it undermines the infrastructure of our culture, history, and jurisprudence. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. No court has ever seriously suggested that the rights it guarantees are discretionary. All this makes one wonder: Does this government take seriously its commitment to uphold the Constitution? Is the government defending constitutional liberties or attacking them? If the government doesn't defend liberty, what is it defending? [ Andrew P. Napolitano, who practices law in New Jersey and in New York City, was a judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey from 1987 to 1995, taught constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School from 1989 to 2001, and is the Senior Judicial Analyst with the Fox News Channel. ] * * * The Age (Melbourne): November 3, 2003 ASIO TO VISIT HICKS AND HABIB ASIO would soon visit the two Australian terrorist suspects held by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay, a Senate estimates committee was told. David Hicks has been listed for trial by an American military commission but no decision had yet been made about fellow detainee Mamdouh Habib. "There is expected to be another visit to Mr Hicks and Mr Habib very shortly and that will be undertaken by the AFP and by ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation)," Attorney-General Department assistant secretary Keith Holland said. Mr Holland declined to say what AFP and ASIO wanted to discuss with the Australians. The government revealed last month the two Australians had each already received five visits from ASIO, AFP and foreign affairs officials. The federal government had yet to determine if any legal obstacles existed to bringing Hicks back to Australia to serve any sentence passed by a military commission. "We are examining our existing legislation to make sure it will allow us to take Mr Hicks back should that opportunity arise and obviously the US would need to look at their legislation to make sure similarly that there would not be a problem," Mr Holland said. While the United States had chosen six military lawyers to represent the Guantanamo Bay detainees before military commissions, Hicks had not yet been appointed a counsel, Attorney-General's Department secretary Robert Cornall said. "At this stage, our clear understanding from the United States is that private solicitors acting for Mr Hicks or for Mr Habib would not get permission to go to Guantanamo Bay," Mr Cornall said. "It's my understanding at this stage that legal advisers have not been designated for Mr Hicks and at this stage, Mr Habib has not been put into the category of people who may be considered for prosecution." Mr Cornall later said ASIO would visit the two Australians but not the AFP. AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty said AFP officers had not visited either Australian since May last year. "We do have some on-going interest in relation to Mr Hicks, but not Mr Habib," Mr Keelty said. Mr Keelty said there were no AFP plans to visit Hicks at the moment. ©2003 AAP * * * Boston Globe: November 2, 2003 US IN TALKS TO TRANSFER DETAINEES Some in Cuba reportedly may be sent home By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff Facing international pressure to resolve the cases of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, the US government has been quietly negotiating the transfer of some detainees back to their home countries for detention and prosecution, according to two federal officials. The proposed transfers, which US officials hope will take place by January, are part of the US government's strategy to process the cases of the 660 suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. Some detainees have been held at the American facility in Cuba for nearly two years without charges, access to lawyers, or free communication with the outside world. While the US government plans to convene military tribunals to prosecute detainees who are deemed a "high threat," officials plan to repatriate some of those who are deemed a "low threat" if their governments agree to monitor them or prosecute them, said one official with direct knowledge of the negotiations. "It's dangerous to simply let them walk the streets, but we're prepared to work with other governments to try to reach an understanding," the official said on condition of anonymity, adding that the terms of the negotiations will be kept secret until the transfers occur. "The reality is this is a global war on terror, and these other countries need to accept their responsibility to play a role." The US official said that the negotiations were complex and time-consuming because the United States has to negotiate the conditions of transfer of each individual detainee with each country. However, two Arab diplomats, who also spoke on condition they not be identified, said last week that transfers they have been trying to negotiate for more than a year had been held up by a disagreement between the State Department and the Pentagon over how the prisoners would be detained in their home countries. "The larger picture is that the Pentagon says, 'OK, we will extradite your nationals to you, but you have to put them in the same small Guantanamos within your countries,' " one diplomat said. "The State Department objects to the harsh conditions that the Pentagon said should be in the agreements, which of course infringe on a lot of sovereignty issues." The negotiations are taking place as the military trials against at least two of the first six detainees have been halted to allow British officials, who wish to ensure that the process will be fair to their citizens, to conduct a line-by- line review of the tribunal rules. News of the talks also occurs amid growing international opposition to the detentions, which critics say flout the Geneva Conventions, and frustration -- even among some in the military -- at the slow pace of processing the detainees' cases. The International Committee of the Red Cross gave a rare statement last month warning that the mental health of the detainees is deteriorating. On Oct. 9, a group of federal judges, diplomats, former American POWs, and military judge advocates called on the US Supreme Court to hear the appeal of 12 Kuwaiti detainees. Last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair told Britain's Parliament he would ask that two British detainees scheduled for trial be repatriated if the rules of the military tribunals did not protect their rights. Since the first group of men captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in January 2002, 60 have been deemed "no longer a threat" to the United States and released. Four others, Saudis characterized as "low to medium threat," have been sent to Saudi Arabia to be detained there. But about 660 detainees remain, largely incommunicado, writing letters to their families that are censored before being sent. While much of the furor over the detainees has centered on the fairness of military tribunals, fewer than three dozen people are expected to be tried in front of such courts, said Thomas Wilner, an attorney representing the families of 12 Kuwaiti detainees who have petitioned the Supreme Court. More important is how the US government will deal with the detainees against whom it has little evidence, he said. "A lot of those people, they have nothing on, other than why were they in the area," said Wilner, who contends his clients were aid workers sold by Afghan tribesmen to US forces for bounties of up to $20,000 a head. "I had a guy tell me, 'If he is an Arab and he's there, he's a threat.' " Nail al-Jubeir, director of information at the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, said he has not heard about an impending transfer of more detainees, but that talks have been ongoing. "Our position has always been clear: that we want them to be returned to Saudi Arabia to stand trial there," he said. Mohammad Sadiq, deputy chief of mission of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, said his government has also been trying to negotiate the transfer of 58 nationals back to Pakistan, but that he has no information that a transfer will take place soon. "I am not aware of any formal negotiations, but we have been talking about this issue for quite some time," he said. Sadiq said Pakistani intelligence agencies traveled to Guantanamo Bay last year to interview the detainees and determined that most should be transferred to Pakistan. "There are no real charges against them," he said. "Most of them volunteered with the Taliban, but they did not do anything beyond that. They are not leaders. They are not involved in any violent activity." A Defense Department official said military prosecutors are gearing up to try detainees against whom there is "clear-cut, compelling evidence." He declined to speculate on how many would be brought before the tribunals. The official confirmed that more detainees are expected to be transferred to their home countries for further detention, but that there was no timetable. "We want to find a way to dispose of these cases, either through tribunals or through transfers," he said. Under fire over the detentions, US officials said investigators are working "around the clock" to process the cases. It takes time, they said, because of the complex, global nature of the investigations and extraordinary linguistic and cultural challenges. "Assuming the individual is cooperating -- and there a lot of them who are hard- core and who just don't talk to you -- you have to take their story, see if they really are who they say they are," one of the US officials said. Such research involves traveling the world, interviewing other detainees, and comparing notes with other intelligence agencies. The process, which is meant to determine whether a detainee raised funds or acted in a leadership role of a terrorist group, often ends with a request to a foreign government to conduct its own investigation. The official said also some countries publicly say they want detainees back, but privately resist committing to handling the cases. "When you start talking about the people who pose a threat, there are some countries that are not excited about getting them back, because it creates a dilemma for them, where their laws may not allow them to be successfully prosecuted," the official said. "Some countries say, 'We can't do anything, so you, US, hurry up and ... prosecute them and determine if they are a threat.' " But foreign diplomats say they welcome the idea of the transfers, and that they hope to see progress soon. "Our demand from the US government is due process," said Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, Salem Al-Sabah. "Be it here, or be it in Kuwait." [ Correspondent Bryan Bender contributed from Washington to this report. ] Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. * * * Boston Globe: November 2, 2003 JAPANESE INTERNEES SEE MODERN PARALLELS By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff MANZANAR, Calif. -- Walled by the Sierra Nevada mountains, in a desert of dried creek beds and yellow rabbit grass, stands the only US monument to the nation's own, officially acknowledged mistake. "No more Manzanars," read the shirts sold to help restore the camp where 10,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans were held between 1942 and 1945. But the road to atonement has taken a strange turn. Ever since the war on terrorism began, those who lived through the Japanese internment are shocked that even though American politicians have long since repudiated that dark chapter of World War II, American courts have never held that the government lacked the authority to hold people in wartime without presenting evidence. Now, while the National Park Service puts the finishing touches on a new visitors center depicting the Japanese internment as a mistake for which Congress has granted reparations and President George H.W. Bush has officially apologized, visitors keep pointing out similarities to the more than 600 foreign combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the hundreds of Muslim Americans held for questioning after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "We get a lot of questions about it, and we try to engage the public in how what happened in the '40s affects events today," said the superintendent, Frank Hayes. The facts may differ substantially, but the legal authority for some of the incarcerations derives from the same source: In a time of war, the president can order people held without judicial review as a national-security necessity. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is expected to announce whether it will hear challenges to that authority from two types of detainees, and a third case is likely to be considered in another month. A shadow from the past, Fred Korematsu, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case validating President Franklin D. Roosevelt's internment order, has emerged to file a brief in support of the Muslim detainees. At 24, Korematsu desperately tried to flee with his white girlfriend to the Midwest to avoid internment. At 84 and in frail health, he is speaking for all detainees. "To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, this court should make clear that the United States respects fundamental constitutional and human rights, even in a time of war," said Korematsu's brief. But the detainees have lost their cases at almost every stage of the process, a fact that is reverberating through the community of former Japanese internees. And while law schools have long taught the Korematsu decision as a misguided product of wartime hysteria, in some instances placing it alongside Dred Scott as an example of Supreme Court mistakes, many judges and lawyers acknowledge its holding may still have merit. "Our Constitution's commitment of the conduct of war to the political branches of American government requires the court's respect at every step," wrote Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case involving Yaser Esam Hamdi, a likely American citizen who is being held as an enemy combatant after having been arrested on a battlefield in Afghanistan. The Bush administration steered clear of the Korematsu decision in its briefs, but traced the president's national-security power to some of the precedents that also were used to help justify Korematsu's internment. The legal authority, the government said, comes straight from the Constitution's war-making power. In a series of decisions involving the Hamdi case, the Fourth Circuit cited the need "to avoid encroachment into the military affairs entrusted to the executive," although it noted in one decision that the president's power to hold US citizens, at least, is not without limits. Taken together, the cases involving Muslim detainees lack the broad-brush racial taint of the Japanese internment, when all people of Japanese extraction in certain areas were ordered into camps; the Muslim detainees are individually suspected of aiding or wanting to aid enemies of the United States. But for many former Japanese internees, the similarities are painfully obvious and stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the injustice of holding people without giving them an opportunity to vouch for their loyalty. "Did they have a hearing? An attorney? Do they have any evidence?" asked Sue Embrey, 79, who lived in the Manzanar camp with her family for 17 months and is chairwoman of the Manzanar Committee. "You can't say it's exactly what happened to us, but it's wrong." About 120,000 people of Japanese extraction were held in 10 camps. Manzanar was one. Embrey recalled moments and images like dots on a canvas: The internment orders pasted on lampposts in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles; her widowed mother giving up her small grocery store; eight family members living in one 20-by-25-foot room; unfamiliar food; showering with strangers. Mas Okui, 72, who was at Manzanar for three years, recalled going to school on the day after the Pearl Harbor attack and seeing an Asian classmate wearing a sign around his neck declaring, "I am Chinese." Even as a child of 10, Okui sensed something bad was about to happen. Before he left for Manzanar, his teacher called him up in front of the class, kissed him on the cheek, and gave him a copy of "Huckleberry Finn" to take with him. In the country, there was little doubt that Roosevelt's internment order was justified. California Attorney General Earl Warren, later a civil rights hero, said the internment was needed to prevent "another Pearl Harbor." As late as 1984, former assistant secretary of war John J. McCloy wrote that "the relocation method against the Japanese was a good reason why serious acts of sabotage did not occur." There is no evidence to support McCloy's contention, and a succession of presidents declared that the internments were, in the words of George H. W. Bush, "serious injustices." In towns around Manzanar, a remote outpost near the Nevada border, there are signs of a more complex reality. Betty Jewett, 79, who has lived in tiny Independence, Calif., since 1931, recalled the fears of the town when people heard Japanese would be interned nearby. But the camp provided jobs, which were desperately needed, and Jewett signed up to order supplies for a factory making camouflage netting. Standing beside the monument marked "I RE I TO," or "Soul Consoling Tower," Jewett recalled the internees as "very clean" and "happy in here." Jewett was at the camp in December 1943, when a riot broke out and two men were killed. Jewett blames an angry leader for stirring up others. Embrey, who was also there, attributed the shootings to the nervous trigger fingers of the guards, who fired without an order. Okui only recalled hearing the shots and running. Very little is left of the camp, only a few buildings and markers in the sand. And people living nearby have all but forgotten what happened. "What do I see?" said Jewett, casting her eyes around the site of the internment camp. "I see beautiful mountains." © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. * * * Los Angeles Times: November 1, 2003 DETAINED, WITHOUT DETAILS As the Supreme Court considers whether to hear Guantanamo Bay prisoner petitions, both sides cite a case from the Red Scare of the 1950s. By Richard A. Serrano, LA Times Staff Writer BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In the second year of his confinement, Ignatz Mezei typed a short letter to a federal judge in New York. "Let me go free," he wrote. "I did not kill anybody, I did not steal anybody, I did not make any crime." Indeed, Mezei was not even accused of a crime. It was 1951, and the longtime U.S. resident was being held without charge in an Ellis Island prison because he was suspected of being a communist sympathizer. It is a case that reverberates today as the legal fallout from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, makes its way through the courts. Among the links across half a century: William H. Rehnquist, then a young law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court and now its 79-year-old chief justice. The Mezei case is being cited by both sides as Rehnquist's high court prepares to decide, as soon as Monday, whether to take up the cases of two groups of detainees at the special prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Like Mezei, they are non-U.S. citizens who are being held indefinitely, without charge, at water's edge. They, too, are seeking the right to confront their accusers in U.S. courts. Mezei, a cabinetmaker who lived in Buffalo for many years, had attempted to return to the United States in February 1950 after a lengthy visit to Eastern Europe. Immigration officials, saying he had associated with communists in Buffalo, denied him reentry. Two lower-level federal courts ordered him released; the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals said his incarceration came "dangerously close to imprisonment for mere beliefs or propaganda." Both courts expressed frustration that the government refused to say specifically why it was holding him or to file charges so that he could defend himself. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision at the height of the Red scare of that time, ruled against Mezei. Among the memos filed in the case was one by Rehnquist, a clerk for Justice Robert Jackson. "When it comes to this guy, I have trouble crying," Rehnquist wrote. "He lived in this country 25 years and never bothered to become a citizen." Rehnquist called it an "act of grace" for the government to let him "temporarily decamp on Ellis Island." Mezei would "decamp" in the jail there for nearly four years, literally a man without a country. The tiny isle in New York Harbor was then a clearinghouse for immigrants. It was only occasionally used as a detention facility for those with medical problems or security concerns that could not be immediately cleared up. For Mezei, it became home until the Eisenhower administration quietly released him in 1954 as the government was closing down Ellis Island. Freed at age 57, Mezei returned to Buffalo. He would live with his wife and four stepchildren in Derby, N.Y., until her death in 1969. He sold their home and returned to Hungary, where he is said to have died, largely forgotten, in the 1970s. Supreme Court opinions in the Mezei case are being cited in the Guantanamo Bay cases. The government cites the court's ruling that the immigration facility on Ellis Island was not part of the United States for purposes of conferring legal rights. It makes a similar argument about the prison at Guantanamo Bay. One of the two petitions filed on behalf of some detainees at Guantanamo quotes from the Supreme Court dissent in the Mezei case, written by Justice Jackson. As Jackson's clerk, Rehnquist researched the law and sometimes recommended how to rule in cases. But the justice, as he often did, sharply disagreed with his unabashedly conservative clerk in the Mezei case. Jackson was especially troubled that the government "was afraid to tell him why it was afraid of him." Jackson also worried that future immigrants would be jeopardized by the denial of due process. "It is inconceivable to me that this measure of simple justice and fair dealing would menace the security of this country," Jackson said. "No one can make me believe that we are that far gone." The story of Ignatz Mezei (pronounced Meh-Zay) was pieced together from statements he gave to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service; letters he wrote to court, to his lawyers and to the press; other court documents; a handful of newspaper clippings; and the fading recollections of family members who scarcely knew him. Neither a stepdaughter in Buffalo nor a nephew in Miami could remember much about Mezei. They recall a lonely man who wandered away when family pictures were taken. Seldom would he talk about his years in detention, except to say on occasion, "It is like going to death.... You don't do nothing on Ellis Island. You go crazy." He had brown hair, brown eyes, thick dark eyebrows and a wisp of a moustache. He looked rather rakish in his black cap and drab suit, riding the ferry back to Ellis Island after a court hearing in 1953. Mezei was born ... who knows where? He said his parents told him he came into this world in May 1897 aboard a steamer in the Strait of Gibraltar. He said he was baptized in Romania, raised there and in Hungary, and took up arms for Hungary in World War I. That gave him his first taste of a prison cell: He was taken captive on the Italian front and held for two years. Peace came, but Europe remained in turmoil. Mezei became a seaman and learned ship carpentry. Two days before Christmas 1923, aboard the Belgian ship the Merci as it glided into New York Harbor, he jumped overboard. Coming up wet without a visa or much else, he swam to Pier 14 and climbed ashore. "I figured: What should I do?" he recalled in an INS hearing decades later. "Go back to suffer more or stay in the United States? I heard that the United States is very good for everybody. So I stayed over here." For 25 years, America was his home. He roamed Manhattan for a year, finding work as a cabinetmaker. He drifted to Chicago, and in 1929 settled in Buffalo. There he took a room in a boardinghouse run by Julia Horvath. A native Hungarian, she was twice widowed and raising four children. He paid her $10 a month and later more, he said, because "they was very poor. She had no husband." Slowly he built his carpentry business. He drove a Dodge truck. In World War II he served as a local air warden, he said. He sold war bonds. Three times he donated blood. He built battery boxes for the Coast Guard. He also learned that his father had been shot to death by the Nazis, and later that his mother was ill in Romania. He told friends and customers that he had to go back to see her. Mezei arrived in Hungary with a small suitcase with one change of clothes, plus "a little power saw" in case he should find work. But he could not obtain travel papers for Romania. For two years he traveled the European capitals, he said, hoping to get into Romania. Belatedly, word reached him that his mother had died. Meanwhile, he was reunited with his Buffalo landlady, Horvath, who was in Hungary visiting relatives. They married in Budapest and returned to New York in February 1950. But they had returned home to a changed America, a suspicious America. It was not illegal to be a member of the Communist Party, but at the height of the Cold War, many in Washington were intent on ferreting out anyone -- especially noncitizens -- suspected of communist leanings. Horvath, a naturalized U.S. citizen, went on to Buffalo. But Mezei was ordered held for his alleged affiliation with the Workers Party in Buffalo. U.S. officials said they suspected he had gone to Europe for party training. Immigration officials also brought up a 1935 guilty plea for possessing a $2 bag of stolen flour, for which Mezei had been fined $10. There was evidence that he ran a whiskey still in his home during Prohibition. They suggested he married Horvath only to ease back into this country. Soon after he was detained, William Fliegelman, an INS examiner, asked him why he had left the United States. "I never see my mother for so long, and I never saw my family for so long. They live in old country, and I never see them for so long and I was homesick," he said. Were you ever a member of a Communist organization? "No." Mezei said he briefly ran a carpentry union in Buffalo, and that sometimes they met at Hamilton Hall. He said he remembered seeing Workers Party organizers there, and that sometimes he let them speak to his union members. Why? Fliegelman asked. "When the people who is on the meeting vote for it I can do nothing," he said. "I cannot tell them they don't belong here. They must want them to speak over there. That is the liberty, they call it." Not because you are a sympathizer of the Communist Party? "That is right. On that question I am as white as the wall." But the INS would later find several witnesses who would state that Mezei was a communist agitator. Louis Reed, an American Communist leader, told the INS that he had helped recruit "Comrade Mezei" into the Workers Party of America. "He was a promising, upcoming young fellow with no attachments," Reed said. Reed and others recalled that Mezei hung around the second floor of Buffalo's Hamilton Hall, the meeting place for local Communists. And that he passed out literature and sold subscriptions to the party newspaper. Margaret Witkowski, the sole survivor of Mezei's four stepchildren, remembered in a recent interview in Buffalo how he put them to work for the cause. "He'd have fliers to hand out to everybody on election day," she said. "I guess you could vote Communist back then." Mezei vehemently denied any Communist affiliation. Testifying through an interpreter at an INS hearing, he said he never glorified Russia or praised Josef Stalin. "Have you ever stated to anyone that it's only under a Communist government that a worker gets what he's entitled to?" he was asked. "Really," Mezei responded, "that is an untruth. It is not true." When it was suggested his behavior was seditious, Mezei lashed out from the witness stand. "I was not!" he said. "Prove it!" Others said they never heard leftist talk from Mezei, and that he was more likely to be shooting pool at Hamilton Hall than inciting insurrection. Reed, the Communist leader, said that Mezei was not much of a party member. He said Mezei turned out to be lazy. "In his Communist activities," Reed told the INS, "why, the way I would characterize him is as being unreliable." Although he couldn't reenter the United States, Mezei could go somewhere else. But where? He thought his birth in British waters off Gibraltar might help make him a British subject, and he convinced U.S. authorities to take him there. But as his boat entered the port at Plymouth, England, the British government said no. They did not want someone the United States deemed a threat. Twice he was taken to France, and each time the French denied him entry. He was returned to the prison at Ellis Island, where he fired off letters to a dozen countries in Latin America. All said no. How could they accept him, not knowing why he was so dangerous? Mezei didn't have citizenship anywhere. The State Department told the Hungarians that he was their problem, but Hungary refused to take him. He said he didn't ask to return to Eastern Europe because he feared the Communist Party there would view him as a U.S. spy. In November 1951, U.S. District Judge Irving R. Kaufman in New York rejected the government's position that Mezei did not have the right to due process because he was on Ellis Island and not on the U.S. mainland. Kaufman ordered Mezei released immediately, unless the government could convince him that Mezei was indeed a danger. When federal officials refused to cooperate, he ridiculed the suggestion that "releasing this alien from detention will bring a flood of enemy agents, spies, saboteurs, madmen, homicidal maniacs and lepers down upon us." The government appealed and lost again, this time before the 2nd Circuit. The government appealed higher and Mezei was briefly paroled to Buffalo. In the Supreme Court building in Washington, working in a first-floor cubicle, one of the first to study the case was Rehnquist, then 28 and just out of Stanford Law School. In his memo, Rehnquist embraced an earlier dissent by Judge Learned Hand of the 2nd Circuit. Hand had maintained that Mezei could not "force us to admit him" into this country and that "he must find an asylum elsewhere; or, like the Flying Dutchman, forever sail the seas." Rehnquist said Congress already had provided that noncitizens like Mezei were "excludible without hearing" and that "if Congress plainly said that all aliens with green hair shall be excluded, I know of nothing in the Constitution which would prevent them." Then he wrote, "This alien is detained on Ellis Island by the government simply because he is unable to go to any other country. He is perfectly free to get on the first outbound boat that comes along." The Supreme Court narrowly reversed the lower court ruling, holding that the attorney general could indeed exclude someone without a hearing if the disclosure of confidential information would be "prejudicial to the public interest." And the high court determined that "harborage at Ellis Island is not an entry into the United States." In the current cases, the government is equating Ellis Island then with Guantanamo Bay now, arguing that it can hold the Guantanamo Bay detainees without charges or trial because Cuba is not part of U.S. soil. Though the prison is on a U.S. naval base there, Washington maintains that it merely leases the property from the Cuban government. But the detainees argue otherwise. They note that courts-martial have been held on Guantanamo Bay for Navy personnel and say it is simply unfair, as in Mezei's case, to confine people indefinitely without a right to due process in the courts. The petitions are on behalf of 12 Kuwaiti men who claim they were doing charity work in the Afghanistan region when they were captured during the war there, and a second group of two British and two Australian prisoners who also say they were not enemy combatants but had gone to the area for personal reasons when they were seized. Mezei, free while the government appealed, was returned to Ellis Island in April 1953 after the high court's decision. Guards at the prison were glad to have him back. They paid him 10 cents an hour for doing odd jobs. Guards thought him "a nice man," and the pool table needed mending and couches in the recreation room were in disrepair. The following year, as the government prepared to shut down Ellis Island, the Eisenhower administration quietly released Mezei, "pending further consideration of his case." There was no explanation, and Mezei did not wait to hear one. He cashed out his meager prison savings and purchased a train ticket to Buffalo. Three months later, the Ellis Island facility was closed for good. After the death of his wife, he returned to the old country and lived alone outside the capital city of Budapest until he died in the 1970s. His nephew, John Mezey of Miami, has gone there to visit but could not find the grave. * * * November 1, 2003 FORMER IRAQI DETAINEES TELL OF RIOTS, PUNISHMENT IN THE SUN, GOOD AMERICANS AND PITILESS ONES By Charles J. Hanley, The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- In Iraq's American detention camps, forbidden talk can earn a prisoner hours bound and stretched out in the sun, and detainees swinging tent poles rise up regularly against their jailers, according to recently released Iraqis. In these secretive islands in a scorched landscape, "they don't respect anyone, old or young," Rahad Naif said of his U.S. Army guards. He and others told of detainees in wheelchairs, and of a man carried into a stifling hot tent in his sickbed. "They humiliate everybody." Naif, 31, is one of three brothers -- butchers from the east Baghdad slums -- who were thrown into the three biggest detention centers by the Americans in July after a nasty quarrel with an influential neighbor. They never faced charges; the last brother was finally freed Oct. 15. The camps and prisons hold a mixed population: curfew-breakers and drivers who tried to evade U.S. checkpoints, suspected common criminals, anti-U.S. resistance fighters, and many of deposed President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party leadership. A Naif brother released in September, Hassan, 32, said there are "good people" among the U.S. guards, like an older man the Iraqis respectfully dubbed "al- Haji" -- "Pilgrim." Ex-detainees also say conditions improve at times, as new underwear, toothbrushes and other supplies arrive; some facilities are better than others, and none compares with Saddam's bloody political prisons. On Oct. 1, the most notorious U.S. center, the Baghdad airport's overcrowded Camp Cropper, was closed. For the third brother, however, the bitterness is too fresh. "They confined us like sheep," the newly freed Saad Naif, 38, said of the Americans. "They hit people. They humiliated people." Although details cannot be otherwise confirmed, the accounts by a half dozen former detainees in Associated Press interviews corroborated each other on key points, and meshed with what Amnesty International has heard from released Iraqis. The human rights group has accounts of detainee uprisings, punishment by exposure to the sun, and other examples of what it calls "inhumane conditions." Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the U.S. Army commander of Iraq's detention facilities, has said prisoners are treated humanely and fairly. Specific questions about AP's ex-detainee accounts were submitted to the U.S. command on Oct. 18, but no response has been received. Two pending U.S. military legal cases may offer a glimpse at problems in the detention system: In one, four soldiers are accused of beating Iraqi prisoners; in the other, two Marines are charged in connection with an Iraqi's death in detention. The number of prisoners is in dispute. The U.S. command says it holds 5,500, but some lawyers and other Iraqis believe the figure is higher. In toppling the Saddam government last April, the U.S.-British invasion force inherited a legal vacuum and began incarcerating ordinary criminals with prisoners of war and less well-defined detainees. Iraq's chief U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, says he has moved to speed up release of unjustly held Iraqis, and Iraqi lawyers and judges are slowly taking on criminal cases. The International Committee of the Red Cross, responsible under international law for inspecting wartime prison camps, says the listing and processing of detainees has improved in recent weeks. The Baghdad spokeswoman for the ICRC, whose representatives are the only outsiders allowed into the camps, said the organization's policy does not allow any public comment on any abuse or other poor conditions detected. Nada Doumani noted, however, that the law -- the Geneva Conventions -- forbids all physical pressure on detainees. The ICRC's decision to reduce its Baghdad staff, because of the bombing of its headquarters, may limit its ability to visit detention sites. Baathists deemed "high-value detainees" by the Americans have been concentrated at a detention site in southern Iraq called Camp Bucca. Before he was moved to Camp Bucca, one of them, former Parliament speaker Saadoun Hammadi, shared a tent with more than 100 men at the Baghdad airport camp and "was in miserable condition, very thin," said a former tentmate, Hassan Ali Muslim. Hammadi, a man in his late 60s who once served as prime minister, "didn't speak with anybody. In the morning and afternoon, he walked alone for an hour, back and forth along the fence," Muslim said. The famous Baath politician was dressed in shorts, his dyed hair had gone white, and he'd grown a long beard, the freed detainee said. At Camp Bucca, in the wastes near Basra, "we were suffering, sitting in the desert," said one of the Naif brothers, Rahad, who was released from Bucca on Sept. 22. Water was the first concern for internees everywhere, especially as summer temperatures topped 120 degrees. There was never enough to drink and wash with, they said. "They'd give us hot water while we'd see them drinking cold water," said Ra'id Mohammed Hassan, 41, freed from Bucca on Oct. 15 after two months' detention for having a weapon in his car. Rahad Naif said 1,000 men in his section at Bucca had to share just 10 water taps. "They would come, especially the Kuwaiti translators, and throw ice into the sand just to make us suffer psychologically," Naif said. At the airport's Camp Cropper, Muslim, a 28-year-old factory worker, tried to keep a bottle filled and hidden from thieves. When the Americans finally erected a tank for showers, there was so little water the detainees got into vicious arguments over it, he said. Skin diseases became common, he said. The ex-prisoners, uniformly, said the sick men among them were the camps' saddest sight. "There were crippled people at Bucca. Some were in wheelchairs," said Rahad Naif. He said two died in the next tent while he was there. "At the airport, they brought in a chronically ill man in a bed and put him near me. He was very sick," Hassan Naif said. One crippled man had to be carried up the steps to a toilet, he said. The prisoners staged protests or hunger strikes demanding better care for their sick comrades. At other times, they would erupt in anger over their own plight. "Twenty or so of us would start shouting, 'Get us out! Let us go!'," said Muslim, who was freed Sept. 20 after two months' detention, accused of attempted carjacking. "The demonstrations happened almost every day at Bucca," said Rahad Naif, who described scenes in which military police countered with the tools of U.S. prison guards. "Sometimes we'd fight the Americans with tent poles. The Americans would come at us behind riot shields, firing plastic bullets and electric pistols (stun guns). We can't fight against that. We knew they'd win. We'd never manage to get out." The ex-detainees said the common punishment, even for such lesser infractions as shouting over to the next tent or stealing food, was "The Gardens" -- a razor- wire enclosure where prisoners were made to lie face down on the burning sand for two or three hours, hands bound. They said they would also be punished by having rations reduced or withdrawn, or by being denied two staples -- cigarettes and tea. They were allotted two cigarettes a day. At Camp Cropper, Muslim said, he endured four days in solitary confinement, in a dark, sweltering 3-by-6-foot cell, after a confrontation with a notoriously tough guard over cigarettes. "It felt like my skin was melting," he said of the heat in the cell. A doctor came on the second day to check on him, and the Americans apologized after he was freed, Muslim said. The guard responsible was moved elsewhere, he said. "There are some good ones who don't like to punish people," Hassan Naif said of his time at Cropper. "There was an old black soldier we called 'al-Haji' who argued with the other Americans if they weren't respecting our rights." But much of what detainees saw was intolerable, Naif said, "especially when we saw Iraqi women punished in the same way as men." When one detainee shouted to his sister in a nearby women's tent, the guards punished the woman, Naif said. Seeing her lying bound in the sun, the brother angrily started to cross the razor wire ringing his tent, "and they shot him in the shoulder," Naif said. "The worst thing was their treatment of the women," said Saad Naif, who spent time both at the airport and at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where tents spread across the prison yards. "Innocent women were kept for months in the same clothes," he said. He said he remembered in particular an elderly woman "whose hands were tied up and she was lying in the dust." Saad Naif said he saw a prisoner shot dead at Abu Ghraib when he approached the razor wire. Amnesty International says it has received credible reports of such shootings. AP queried the U.S. command here about deaths in the camps, but got no response. Not knowing what they were charged with and when they might be released, detainees grew angrier and more depressed, said Ziad Tarik, 24, a friend who was swept up with the three Naif brothers after the fateful quarrel and spent more than a month at Abu Ghraib before abruptly being freed. "They interrogated me about Saddam's family, about al-Qaida terrorists, about weapons markets -- things I know nothing about," he said. "I thought they'd ask me about my case. Why was I arrested?" "There's no law," Rahad Naif said. "It's up to them. It's arbitrary." Tarik gave an example: An Iraqi colonel was released from Abu Ghraib, but the Americans still hold his wife and, according to Tarik, "she didn't do anything." That account could not be verified. The Naif brothers' mother, black-veiled Fawzia Ibrahim, 59, said she feels "like a bird" since their release, but she dreads the memory of the mid-July night when 16 U.S. soldiers, with Iraqi police, stormed into her house to take her sons away. "Death would be better than the Americans again!" she said. Ex-detainee Muslim says he knows of a worse fate -- to have been imprisoned under Saddam Hussein, as his late father was for three months in 1995. Torture and summary execution became routine in the Baathist political prison system. "Compared to Saddam, the Americans are better," he said. Copyright 2003 Associated Press. * * * * * * * * *