No Real Justice in Guantanamo

Common Dreams
Reed Brody

Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, seen in an undated handout image from the FBI, is charged with being a key organizer of
Al Qaeda's attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000,
which killed 17 U.S. servicemen.

Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, wearing white prison clothes, seemed by turns amused and bewildered as he sat in a bright room last week during a pretrial hearing at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Nashiri is charged with being a key organizer of Al Qaeda's attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole on Oct. 12, 2000, off the coast of Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. servicemen, as well as of two other attacks. He faces the death penalty if convicted in a trial before a military commission that is scheduled to begin in November.

The Nashiri case is seen as a dry run for the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other alleged planners of the Sept. 11 attacks, who will be arraigned in Guantanamo on May 5. But it is also important in its own right. He is accused of dreadful crimes, but even if he is found guilty, his execution would be a deeply disturbing end to a long ordeal of abuse in an archipelago of secret U.S. prisons around the world.

Nashiri was captured in Dubai in October 2002 and secretly transferred to CIA custody. He was reportedly first taken to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan known as the "Salt Pit," then to another secret jail in Bangkok, Thailand.

A report by the CIA's inspector general details a range of abuses to which Nashiri was subjected, including waterboarding. He was sent on to Poland, where he was, according to the report, threatened with a power drill revved near his head while he was hooded but otherwise naked. His captors also cocked a semiautomatic handgun close to his head as he sat shackled, held him in "standing stress positions" and threatened to sexually abuse his mother in front of him.

In 2003, he was flown out of Poland, presumably to other secret CIA jails. It was not until September 2006 that the United States government acknowledged his secret detention and that he was at that time being held in Guantanamo.

Last week's hearing, which I attended, dealt with, among other things, Nashiri's request that his feet be unshackled during meetings with his attorneys. A select number of observers from nongovernmental organizations were permitted to watch from behind a soundproof glass wall at the back of the courtroom. A video and audio feed was piped in on a 40-second delay — enough time to censor any classified information that came up.

Report: CIA secret prisons in Poland were illegal, unconstitutional

Monsters and Critics

Warsaw - Secret prisons operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Polish territory violated international law and the Polish constitution according to legal experts, reported the daily Gazeta Wyborcza Monday, citing sources close to an investigation.

The CIA held terror suspects inside a military intelligence training base in Stare Kiejkuty, north-eastern Poland from 2002 to 2005, anonymous Polish intelligence officers have said.

Public prosecutor Jerzy Mierzewski had wanted to charge officials from the 2001-2005 Democratic Left Alliance government with violating the constitution, unlawful detention and participation in crimes against humanity, the daily reported.

The left-wing party is today Poland's second largest opposition party. Polish politicians who were in power when the prisons allegedly operated have denied allegations that CIA prisons were located in the country.

Mierzewski, however, was withdrawn from the case two weeks ago, the daily wrote. His supervisor, Dariusz Korneluk, declined to comment on the reason for the dismissal.

Mierzewski had asked international law experts in February to determine whether the CIA prisons were lawful and constitutional, the daily said.

The law experts replied in May in a 50-page report that the prisons were unlawful, according to both international law and the Polish constitution. The US regulations that allow for waterboarding were also against international law, the experts added.

Prosecutors have been investigating allegations about the secret prisons since 2008, but have not released their findings.

According to Wyborcza, Poland and the US agreed that the US would not reply to a Polish request for assistance in the case. This would prolong the investigation until the case could be suspended, the daily reported, citing a source in the prosecutor's office.

Prosecutors representing Saudi national Adb al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, claim the man was tortured at the facility between 2002 to 2003. Al-Nashiri was subjected to waterboarding and mock executions with a power drill while he was naked and hooded, the prosecutors said.

Flight logs obtained from Polish officials in February 2010 confirmed that CIA planes landed in Poland during 2003. Human rights groups suspect these were rendition-related flights.

The logs, which were obtained by human rights organizations, showed that CIA-chartered planes landed in Szymany, north-eastern Poland, at least six times in 2003.

New York-based Human Rights Watch claimed in a 2005 report that secret CIA prisons in Poland were used to house suspected terrorists from Afghanistan.