Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif's death at Guantánamo was announced yesterday on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. This sad case is a stark illustration of the United States government bypassing human rights obligations in its counter-terrorism policies, leaving scores of detainees in Guantánamo to live, and sometimes die, in indefinite detention.
Latif was seized by Pakistani police in December 2001 near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, handed over to U.S. custody, and transferred to Guantánamo on Jan. 17, 2002. He had been held at the naval base ever since, in deteriorating mental and physical health. Reportedly, Latif was born in 1976 in Yemen. According to his lawyer, David Remes, Latif was a mentally disturbed man who maintained that he went to Afghanistan seeking medical care because he was too poor to pay for it. But he got caught up in a military sweep and the U.S. government alleged that he was recruited by al Qaeda to travel to Afghanistan and that he trained and fought with the Taliban.
Reportedly, the Department of Defense recommended Latif for transfer as far back as 2004, and again in 2006, 2008, and 2009. In July 2010, District Court Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that the government had not proved its case for holding Latif by "a preponderance of the evidence" and concluded that Latif's detention was unlawful.
But he remained detained. The conditions he faced at Guantánamo were horrendous and he had gone on a hunger strike to protest them. According to his attorney, Latif had been held in solitary confinement for the majority of his detention and had never received adequate treatment for medical problems he had suffered throughout his decade at the detention center. In a letter to his lawyers in March 2010, Latif alleged that Guantánamo's Immediate Response Force (IRF), "[entered] my cell on [a] regular basis. They throw me and drag me on the floor...two days before writing this letter, [the IRF team] strangled me and pressed hard behind my ears...I lost consciousness for more than an hour." And in a meeting with his lawyerat Guantánamo on May 10, 2009, Latif cut one of his own wrists. He had previously made a number of suicide attempts. Writing to his lawyer from isolation in Guantánamo's Camp 5 in March 2010, he said that his circumstances make "death more desirable than living."
On Oct. 14, 2011, nearly a decade after Latif was taken into custody, a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 for the government, overturning Judge Kennedy's order. The government argued that Judge Kennedy had failed to properly assess Latif's credibility and had been wrong in his assessment of the reliability of the intelligence report.
Meeting with his lawyer in Guantánamo after the appellate ruling, Latif said "I am a prisoner of death." His lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to review Latif's case. On June 11, 2012, the Court refused to do so, without comment. A Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) investigation has been initiated to determine the circumstances and cause of Latif's death. Amnesty International is calling on the United States government to also allow a fully independent, civilian-led investigation into the death, in accordance with its obligations under international law, and for Adnan Latif's family to be provided with full information about the investigation and any other steps taken. The evidence from the autopsy and the investigation should be preserved. 167 people remain detained at the U.S. Naval Station in Cuba. Four years ago, President Obama pledged to close the Guantánamo prison, recognizing that it symbolized the U.S. government's violation of human rights and the best of American values in the name of "global war." Not only has President Obama failed to close it, he has embraced two fundamental violations of human rights that make Guantánamo a stain on the United States' credibility worldwide: unfair trials and indefinite detention. The U.S. justice system should be used to end unlawful detentions at Guantánamo, with those held being charged and tried in federal court, or released to countries that will respect their human rights. At Guantánamo, Latif waited for more than ten years for justice. He'll never be heard again and justice for Latif will never be served.
This is a long but interesting read on just why Gitmo is still open.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/guantanamo-bay-how-the-white-house-lost-the-fight-to-close-it/2011/04/14/AFtxR5XE_story.html
He will build twenty Gitmos.
"Not only has President Obama failed to close it, he has embraced two fundamental violations of human rights that make Guantánamo a stain on the United States' credibility worldwide: unfair trials and indefinite detention. The U.S. justice system should be used to end unlawful detentions at Guantánamo, with those held being charged and tried in federal court, or released to countries that will respect their human rights."
Great piece which should finally put to rest that US conducted wars are not about US exceptionalism or having a role to protect (R2P) but for what it really is, to inflict our way of life on everybody that we can regardless of whether they want to live that way. And the reason was never the "fear that communists would invade the US", for most of the countries we invaded had no designs on the US at all let alone had the capability to mount such an attack, that idea could never stand up to serious scrutiny. It was always the fear of the good example and that the people of the US might like it and prefer it to capitalism.
Each time a country chose to provide what should be the basics of life like food at reasonable prices, health care, education, housing, the US found a way, either directly or indirectly, to destroy it, for if the good example survived the American people might decide that this is what they want too.
It was, the American way of living.! The envy of the world.! And I subscribed to it.
Gladly.! -from a faraway land. The American dream became my dream.!
Alas, I don't recognize this world any more.! Am I just a, "sentimental old fool".? or, "just too blind to see".? "Play it one more time Sam, one more time" .....!
What State do you live in, they'd be perfect there!
He cannot close it without cooperation from Congress and Congress are not cooperating.
The USA is not a nation of laws when they ignore all of our laws with this institution. GITMO should belong to Cuba. We have plenty of real prisons and courts for these people. If they are so dangerous, they should be tried.
A political cartoonist in India imprisoned based on an 1860 law allowing incarceration of those who speak critically of the government.
A Russian girl band imprisoned for speaking ill of their President in a church.
All Tibetans and Uighurs.
What do all of these people have in common? They are legitimate political prisoners who have, through no wrongdoing of their own have been incarcerated in violation of their basic human rights. Each would be an excellent political prisoner for Amnesty International to sponsor. Yet for some reason, the author would champion an alleged terrorist caught on a battlefield with an unbelievable story; further compound the issue with platitudes of no moral weight; and only tell one side of the story.
One hardly wonders why Amnesty International is considered but a shell of its former self.
Our remaining options would seem to be shoving them out the gate to fend for themselves on the beach or a reversion to the quaint Vietnam era custom of flying them out a distance in a helicopter and 'releasing' them over the Caribbean. We don't have the ruthlessness to just execute them out of hand without trial and would create 'martyrs' in either event.
Not that I advocate any of that. I think they should be tried in the courts, but we have abandoned the rule of law in any meaningful sense during the 'War on Terror". Because the war can never end, since it was never declared and there is no one to surrender, we can only hold them till they die. 'Human rights' are effectively a fantasy at the practical level, as are most others.
So inspite all of Obama's "Principals" et all, he is just another politician who is only interested in getting re-elected; and to hell with principals and ideals.
However, in a lot of those countries the government wouldn't want to let them in since they would be in alignment with the Islamist opposition, e.g. the Taliban in the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The 'government' and the 'country' aren't the same thing