Dennis you always say that I have an obligation to show the world what is going on down here and it seems that we've done every thing but the world doesn't get it, so it might work if the world sees the US sentencing a child to life in prison, it might show the world how unfair and sham this process is, and if the world doesn't see all this, to what world am I being released to? A world of hate, unjust and discrimination! I really don't want to live in a life like this. - Omar Khadr in a letter to defense attorney Dennis Edney.
Omar Khadr was the first child soldier to be charged with a war crime since world war two. The non-existent crime that he was charged with, “murder in violation of the law of war” can be summed up as: It is legal for US soldiers to kill children. It is a war crime for children to kill US soldiers.
After eight years of delays while the US government searched for a possible crime and changed courts and judge, Omar found himself in front of a military tribunal with seven military officers who decided his fate ought to be another forty years of imprisonment. (For a sentence of ten years or more, six of the seven jurors had to agree.) Human Rights Watch said of the fifteen officers selected as potential jurors, All of the 15 indicated that Khadr's age held no significance for the case. ... An Air Force Captain said that in his opinion, a child would need to be as young as five or six to avoid adult courts if accused of a homicide.
The plea deal
Canadian defense attorney Dennis Edney is involved in four of the cases we are currently covering. WL Central has received updates from him on three of them.
Moazzam Begg, a high profile advocate for Guantanamo inmates and international lecturer and author, was denied board on a direct Air Canada flight from London to Toronto on the grounds that the plane could possibly be diverted to the US where Begg is on a no-fly list. Begg, a British citizen, was imprisoned in Guantanamo for three years and released in 2005 with no charge. Edney had invited him to Canada to speak.
You were attempting to get him a flight over the north pole to avoid the excuse of a possible diversion into US air space - has there been any response from the Canadian authorities on that?
We have attempted to get clarification from Canadian authorities to state whether they would challenge his entry if he took a flight over Greenland so no fear of being close to U.S. airspace - with no clarification.
Who exactly have you spoken to in the Canadian government or Air Canada regarding this policy?
We have spoken to people at the Canadian High Commission and I have asked Moazzam to go to the London office to get an official response why he was not allowed to fly.
He was to attend 3 conferences in Toronto/ Montreal and Edmonton.
Abdullah Khadr, older brother of Omar, won against the Canadian government's appeal on May 6. The Canadian government was arguing in support of the US government who are trying to extradite Abdullah based on testimony obtained under torture. Edney represents both Khadrs.
Jerzy Mierzewski, the prosecutor who had been in charge of the investigation into alleged CIA prisons on Polish territory, has been replaced by Waldemar Tyl, Gazeta Wyborcza reports. This decision came shortly after the Open Society Justice Initiative New York and lawyers acting for one of the alleged prisoners, Abd al-Nashiri, filed a complaint against Poland at the European Court of Human Rights.
This case has recently been in the focus of media attention when a source told public broadcaster TVP that evidence for rendition flights had been uncovered. It is also expected to be discussed at a visit of US president Barack Obama to Poland next week.
Read more on Gazeta Wyborcza.
AP article on the ECHR complaint.
See also, on the possible evidence.
For other WL Central coverage on the topic please see here.
"There would be virtually no political blowback domestically for the Conservative Party if the government chooses to pursue an appeal, making this a strong likelihood.”
The above statement from US State cable #09OTTAWA629 sums up the last decade of Omar Khadr’s life. The Canadian government, under the last three prime ministers, two Liberal and one Conservative, have done nothing about the plight of a tortured fifteen year old Canadian boy imprisoned with no trial in the world’s most notorious torture camps. They have contributed nothing to his education, nor to his emotional or psychological welfare. They have expressed no concern for his well being. They have not requested his repatriation, nor have they requested that the illegal and amoral conditions of his confinement be improved. (Read a summary of the conditions here.) US State cable 09STATE11937 describes a February 5, 2009 meeting between French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and US Secretary of State Clinton, where the French Foreign Minister requested that the US review his case, but there is no similar suggestion from the country with a legal obligation to defend him.
Omar Khadr (centre in the picture at left) was born in Toronto, Canada on September 19, 1986. His father was an Egyptian born Canadian who ran charities to provide food and education for orphans, and was an old friend of Osama Bin Laden. His mother was a Canadian of Palestinian descent. Omar spoke four languages fluently. When he was 15, his family sent him to accompany a group as a translator. The US military identified that group as Al Qaeda.
In July 2002, US Special Forces attacked the camp where he was staying. When US military entered the site, Omar was buried face down under rubble, blinded by shrapnel and crippled. Another man was beside him. US military documents say a US militant stood on top of Omar's body before realizing that someone was buried beneath. The first US fighter to arrive on the scene shot the man beside Omar dead and then shot Omar twice in the back, leaving two large exit wounds in his chest and chunks of his chest and shoulder ... blown out. He was somehow identified as being the son of his father, either before or after a second US militant prevented the first from shooting him again. He was consequently captured instead.
The Bahrain regime is playing a rather odd game of promising dialog and reform to international observers, while it continues its repression.
Small signs of goodwill
The trial of 20 political detainees, which was meant to take place on the 8th of May was postponed the 12th of May to allow all the detainees time to review the charges and to prepare.
It is even said that some lawyers were allowed to be present at some interrogation.
However the special military court set for the occasion fails to meet the minimum standards for a fair trial and has led to the following sentences :
Trial observers were refused entry to the military court.
Some of the healthcare professionals that were detained for obscure reasons were also released.
View the updated list here.
The king also announced on the 9th of May the lift of emergency state for the 1st of June, the ministry however said no date was definite on when the Saudi forces will go.
While the arrest and future trial of doctors and nurses has been quite well covered by mainstream media, it is only one measure among many that were taken to repress the pro-democratic movement in Bahrain.
Following the violent and deadly crackdown in February and March that led to at least 31 casualties, 18 members of the main opposition party Al Wefaq, resigned from the parliament.
Monday, we learned that Jawad Ferooz and Mattar Mattar were detained.
The arrest of Mattar came a day after he spoke to Al Jazeera.
Despite the claim by Press TV, that he died in custody, there has been no such confirmation. There have, however, been several reports of him leaving to hospital due to brutal torture.
The General Federation for Bahrain Trade Unions announced Wednesday that at least 1115 people lost their jobs in the past two months for taking part in strikes or protests.
Among them is Abdulhadi Alkhawaja’s wife, who was fired from her work after 10 years at Kanoo School. Abdulhadi Alkhawaja is a prominent human right defender whose daughter went on hunger strike after his brutal abduction by the Bahraini regime on the 8th of April. Abdulhadi was held incommunicado for weeks, no lawyer or relative was allowed to see him.
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WL Central will be updating news on Iran, with new items added at the top. All times are ET in USA.
You can contact me on twitter @carwinb or by email at carwinb@hushmail.com. Don't send media when links available. Most email is not encrypted and not anonymous. I cannot guarantee anyone's safety in transmission.
Current time and date in Tehran:
SUNDAY, May 8, 2011
In December 2005, Abdullah Khadr, older brother of Omar, Abdurahman and Abdul Karim Khadr and younger brother of Zaynab, returned to his home in Toronto, Canada after fourteen months of being held in a Pakistan prison without charges. One week later he was arrested in Canada and held without bail, pending extradition to the US. The US had earlier obtained information from the Taliban which suggested to them Abdullah may have been the suicide bomber who killed a Canadian soldier in Kabul in January 2004. In an interview with CBC News on Feb. 25, 2004, Abdullah Khadr said, "If I was the suicide bomber, I wouldn't be doing this interview with you right now."
This time he was indicted in the US on charges of supplying weapons to Al Qaeda in Pakistan. In August 2006, Khadr's lawyer Dennis Edney filed an application to stay the extradition proceedings, arguing that the US government's evidence against Khadr was inadmissible because it relied on information gathered under torture in Pakistan. Khadr was held in a detention centre for the next five years until his release last August when the stay was granted and the presiding judge called his treatment "both shocking and unjustifiable."
The recent Canadian election has been the topic of much foreign news coverage, with pundits trying to explain why liberal-minded Canada has given a majority to the most right leaning party in its history, what exactly the New Democratic Party is, and why on earth Canada turned its back so firmly on its 'traditional ruling party', headed by a man described in the Guardian as "known to the British as a fine writer, historian and BBC talking head, who had returned to Canada to lead the Liberals". Embassy Magazine wrote an astoundingly condescending piece about Canada's lack of interest in foreign policy which contained the following:
Given Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's background, many had expected him to campaign on foreign policy. And at the start of the campaign he did try to frame the election around the question of ethics, especially the tenor of Conservative foreign policy. ... But ... Mr. Ignatieff failed to inspire with this foreign policy-tinged message. In fact, the more he talked about it, the less traction he seemed to be getting with centrist or progressive voters. ... At one point, the Liberal leader's frustration became quite evident, with Mr. Ignatieff wondering why Canadians were not latching onto the many controversies that had dogged the Conservatives before the election. Mr. Ignatieff's plea that Canada should regain its international standing was a version of this idea that the country should be undergoing some soul-searching prior to voting. But with his historic low, it appears Canadians weren't up for that sort of deep think.
On May 4, Mr. Colangelo, a Senior attorney at US-based Dorsey and Whitney LLP, and a consultant with Human Rights Watch was bared entry into Bahrain. Authorities cited his need for a visa, because of the "kind of work" he does, although Colangelo has frequently travelled to the country on various business matters with no prior incident.
In February, Mr. Colangelo spoke at a press conference at Bahrain Human Rights Society (BHRS) in Manama. Mr. Colangelo has also represented Bahraini who were Guantanamo detainees.
HRW has released an 89-page report stating that Bahrain needs to take "urgent steps to end torture and ill-treatment of security suspects during interrogation. The report also called on the government to promptly investigate all torture allegations and prosecute security officials suspected of abusing detainees" (Source; Saudi News Today).
Bahrain's ongoing crackdown has escalated since February, targeting every level of society with fewer and fewer outside observers allowed into the country. See WL Central's ongoing coverage of Bahrain: May, April, March 1 through 21, March 22 through 31, and February.
I spoke last night EST with Mr. Colangelo, while he was on a stop over in Paris, en route back to the Unites States from Bahrain.
TRANSCRIPT
Why were you going to Bahrain?
I have been involved with issues concerning Bahrain for a number of years. It began with representing the Bahraini who were detained at Guantanamo, and more recently I have worked as a consultant with Human Rights Watch on domestic Bahrain issues.
Amnesty International is today requesting more information from US and Pakistani authorities regarding the killing of Osama Bin Laden and four others by US forces. “We are seeking information from the US and Pakistani authorities about how many people were in the compound at the time of the operation, what happened to them and specifically what is the status and current whereabouts of the survivors,” said Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International. The survivors are said to include at least six children. Of the eighteen people reportedly at the compound, five were reported killed and two injured.
The US authorities maintain that they had full authority to kill Bin Laden, and that he was unarmed but had "resisted capture". “Given that he was not armed, it is not clear how he resisted arrest and whether an attempt was made to capture him rather than kill him,” said Claudio Cordone. “Amnesty International believes that US forces should have attempted to capture Osama bin Laden alive in order to bring him to trial if he was unarmed and posing no immediate threat.”
Amnesty has stated, Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for acts of terrorism amounting to crimes against humanity and has inspired others to commit similar acts. Perpetrators of such acts must be brought to justice in a manner consistent with international law.
WEDNESDAY, May 4, 2011
In an attempt to exterminate any form of opposition, Bahrain's two-century-old monarchy has targeting every segment of the population that showed or may have shown sympathy to the pro-democracy movement that hit the small gulf island in February.
From protesters, lawyers, teachers, and human right workers, to opposition leaders, bloggers, journalists, and medical staff. No one has escaped the regime's crackdown.
The regime has tortured, killed, and pronounced death sentences for four detainees. The four detainees had apparently 'confessed' the murder of 2 policemen under torture - torture that led to the death of one of them during custody.
During the protests in Manama, people were shot at with pellets, tear gas, nerve gas, and live ammunitions. Many of them sough medical care at Salmaniya Medical Center (SMC).
Hearing that wounded protesters were seeking medical assistance at SMC, security forces sieged the hospital, thus preventing anyone or anything from coming in or out, including ambulances.
Between January 11, 2002 and April 23, 2011 (one day before the latest Wikileaks release of the Guantanamo files) there were already about 15 million search entries, 5 million images, 25,000 videos, 6 thousand news items, 900 related books
and around 80 releated movies - 
including an American stoner styled 'comedy' pictured to your right - about the Guantanamo bay detention and torture camp.
While new information has been published in Wikileaks' latest release of the Guantanamo files, a plethora of evidence about Guantanamo's child detainees, its specious justification and illegality were already available in the public domain. That includes a Senate Armed Services Committee report that stated that detainees were murdered in US custody.
As Jason Leopold said in my interview with him last week, "Murdered. I am talking about murder. I mean, this report talks about how the torture program was based on the US military's resistance to interrogation survival training technique...So, yes, you are absolutely right there are a number of documents and a number of reports that are out there. The problem is that people, and that includes some journalists, frankly don't take the time to read it."
The image above of 'Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo' is not a comedy. It's a horror show. And, Guantanamo Bay is only the beginning of the entertainment superpower's 'theater of cruelty', coming to a town near you.
The institutions of society and of government - in other words, the organs of power, their structure, and their relationship to one another - the press, the legislature, the executive, and the judicial - no longer function in a manner that ensures their intended counter balance to tyranny. As a result our nation's civic, civil, and military power has been usurped by the highest bidder, some of them even foreign, and our democratic republic is drowning in a sea of Blackwater.
Co-authored by Alexa O'Brien
WL Central's Heather Marsh spoke this week to Dennis Edney, the Canadian defense counsel for Guantanamo inmate Omar Khadr. Following is an excerpt from the interviews.
Photo credit: Colin Perkel / The Canadian Press
Transcript:
Have you read the Wikileaks release ... the Guantanamo file on Omar Khadr?
Yes.
Do you have any observations on that?
Of course. I do. What is it that I should say about that? Well, the one thing that is striking is how unreliable the evidence is to keep people in Guantanamo Bay. So much of the evidence relied upon and detaining people in Guantanamo Bay is second-hand hearsay, unreliable, and not the kind of evidence that would stand up in any court of law, proper court of law.
What a lot of people got ... or a lot of the media got out of Omar Khadr's report is that he was being treated not so much as a criminal, but as an intelligence asset because of his family.
Which is quite ... Absolutely. And what does it suggest? What intelligence does a fifteen year old boy have? What it was is that he was being held there because of his father. So, that's what they were looking for ... information about his father ... and so, his son has been left to rot in Guantanamo Bay because the Americans want to know about the father.
WL Central will be updating news on Bahrain, with new items added at the top. All times are ET in USA. You can contact me on twitter @carwinb or by email at carwinb@hushmail.com. Don't send media when links available. Most email is not encrypted and not anonymous. I cannot guarantee anyone's safety in transmission.
Current time and date in Manama, Bahrain:
Send Arabic #firstaid images by MMS/SMS/email or print as fliers usng http://bit.ly/gv3tS #Bahrain.
Amnesty calls for halt to execution of four young men who were protesters sentenced to die tomorrow by firing squad. Three others sentenced to life in prison.
[CORRECTION] My sincere apologies for the error in today's report. I regret any pain the headline may have caused. Please see revised headline and subtitle. - @carwinb
*Picture via @a340aviator
Death Sentence:
Life Sentences:
Excerpt from Amnesty International:
Authorities in Bahrain must not allow the execution of four protesters sentenced to death by a military court over the killing of two police officers in anti-government demonstrations last month, Amnesty International said today...
...“In this case, the accused were tried before a special military court, although they are civilians. It also appears that the trial was conducted behind closed doors. As well, those sentenced have no right of appeal except to another special military court, raising great fears about the fairness of the entire process.”
The court sentenced Ali Abdullah Hassan al-Sankis, Qassim Hassan Matar, Saeed Abduljalil Saeed and Adbulaziz Abdulridha Ibrahim Hussain to death on 28 April.
Three other defendants tried with them, Issa Abdullah Kadhim Ali, Sadeq Ali Mahdi and Hussein Jaafar Abdulkarim, were sentenced to life in prison by the same court. All seven accused are reported to have denied the charges. (Source: Amnesty International
Andy Worthington is a journalist, blogger, and author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison. He is also co-director of a new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”.
In 2009, Worthington revealed information about the demise of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi the former US 'ghost prisoner' whose alleged suicide death in a Libyan jail is still under suspicion.
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi's testimony, which was obtained under torture and coercion, and later recanted, was cited by the George W. Bush Administration in the months preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
The head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch stated al-Libi was "Exhibit A" in hearings on the relationship between pre-Iraq War false intelligence and torture. Confirmation of al-Libi's location came two weeks prior to his death.
Most recently, Worthington partnered with WikiLeaks on its latest release of thousands of pages of documents regarding the cases of 758 out of 779 Guantanamo detainees dating between 2002 and 2008. The documents consist of memoranda from JTF-GTMO, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida.
You can find Mr. Worthington on his Web site or on twitter @GuantanamoAndy.
Transcript
I wanted to talk to you a little bit about a couple things that you had mentioned when you were talking with Amy Goodwin on Democracy Now. One of the things you talked about was that ‘guidelines’ needed to be set up for filtering or discriminating the content that was found in the documents. Could you tell me a little bit about what that would be like in terms of application?
Well, you know, to be honest...a certain amount of hard work is required and some of that has already been done… I am glad to know…by some of the journalists who’ve been writing about it already...who have worked out that a lot of this supposed ‘body of evidence’ consists of allegations that have been made by a small number of prisoners… who have made repeated allegations against large numbers of their fellow prisoners, which have been called into doubt.
Now, you know, the doubts about this information are not necessarily mentioned, in fact, they are rarely mentioned in these military documents.
Jason Leopold is the deputy managing editor of Truthout.org and a co-founder of The Public Record.
As an investigative journalist he has written extensively on the Guantanamo Bay detention and torture camp, Enron, and the Military. The list goes on.
In February 2011, Leopold interview Australian David Hicks, a former Guantanamo detainee. It was Hicks' first interview about the torture and abuse he endured at Guantanamo, and his struggle with the injustice of US ex-judicial processes.
Leopold and his colleague, Jeffrey Kaye, have also investigated medical experiments at Guantanamo and psychological techniques used to design Bush's torture program.
His work has been published in The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Salon, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Financial Times, Alternet, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, Homeland Security Today, and numerous other national and international publications.
Leopold was the recipient of the Project Censored award two times for his investigative work on Halliburton and Enron. He was awarded the Thomas Jefferson award by The Military Religious Freedom Foundation for a series of stories on the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. Military.
You can find him on twitter at @JasonLeopold.
What is particularly unique about the documents from the latest Wikileaks’ release?
WL Central will be updating news on Iran, with new items added at the top. All times are ET in USA.
You can contact me on twitter @carwinb or by email at carwinb@hushmail.com. Don't send media when links available. Most email is not encrypted and not anonymous. I cannot guarantee anyone's safety in transmission.
Current time and date in Tehran:
For WL Coverage of Iran see March and February.
TUESDAY, April 26
Kevin Rudd
Minister Foreign Affairs
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
AUSTRALIA
Dear Minister
1) Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
Firstly I would like to say that the international community who support Julian Assange would undoubtedly thank you for your support of him on the issue of his legal rights in the UK and scotching the threats made by your colleagues the prime minister Ms Gillard and attorney general Mr McClelland to cancel his passport late last year. Your support of human rights in relation to Julian Assange is to be commended, including the intercession of our diplomats on his behalf asking certain questions of Swedish authorities (1) which it is assumed emanated from your good offices.
More could be done for example to point out to the European Union that their European Arrest Warrant System is disgracefully flawed and subject to serial abuses by member states (especially Poland) now that showing a prima facie case has been removed entirely from extradition procedures in the European Union’s EAW system. Australia as you would likely be aware, did not extradite without the applicant nation showing a prima facie case up until 1985 when the “no evidence” and “dual criminality” provisions became available to applicant nations under amended legislation.(2) Where subjected to abuse, prima facie requirements should be reinstated.
As you are also no doubt aware the US Department of Justice is leaving no pebble unturned in their vengeful attempts to find - or more likely - manufacture some evidence against Julian Assange for a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage.
This is happening despite First Amendment protections which the DOJ’s epigones are attempting to undermine as they engage in polemical arguments using gymnastic semantics in the US media, in an exercise to assert he is not a journalist as a means to preclude those rights, contrary to the US constitution.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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