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Bremer asks Italy to extend military
occupation of Iraq
Compiled by Josh Furgeson
Feb. 25 (AGR)-- American officials say US forces will be needed
in Iraq long after a sovereign government is restored this summer, but
they have yet to work out the terms of a continued presence.
Paul Bremer, US administrator in Iraq, has also urged Italy and other
countries to keep their troops in the country at least until December
2005, an Italian newspaper reported.
“It is necessary that coalition troops, including Italians, remain
in Iraq at least until December 2005,” Bremer told the Corriere
della Sera newspaper in an interview. “To leave now would be a
grave matter — a sign of giving in to terrorism,” he said.
“The coalition must remain united in order to stabilize Iraq.”
Over 30 countries have troops in Iraq as part of the 150,000-strong
US-led occupation force. Britain is the second largest contributor with
11,000 troops, while Italy has sent around 3,000. South Korea last week
agreed to send 3,000 troops.
Senior Pentagon officials said Feb. 18 they were confident that the
Iraqis, once given political control, would agree US troops should stay.
But some outside the government question whether that would hold true
once an elected Iraqi government took over.
Anthony Cordesman, a close observer of the Iraq situation as a strategist
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that if
political control was turned over on July 1 to an Iraqi body that is
not elected, it likely would align itself with US objectives and therefore
welcome a continued US military presence. But once elections were held,
the US role would be in doubt. If the new Iraqi government decided it
wanted American forces to leave, “We would certainly be obligated
to leave, under international law,” Cordesman said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita,
told reporters at the Pentagon that there is a “fairly confident
belief” that most Iraqis accept the US view that American troops
will be needed over the long haul to ensure a stable transition to democracy.
Di Rita said that the basis for a continued US military presence under
the authority of a transitional Iraqi government is “being developed,”
although he would not elaborate further.
The legal basis for US troops operating in any foreign country is normally
spelled out in a legal arrangement called a status of forces agreement,
which defines legal protections for US troops accused of crimes in that
country. Without it, US troops in Iraq would be subject to local Iraqi
law, once the US occupation authority is ended and a government is restored.
At this point it is unclear whether American authorities can work out
such a complex legal agreement by June 30, when some form of transitional
Iraqi government is due to take control.
The US plan is to gradually move responsibility for security into the
hands of the Iraqis, thereby reducing the US military’s role. But
senior officials say that process will take many months, if not years.
The US-led coalition and interim Governing Council in Baghdad face a
self-imposed deadline of Feb. 28 to finalize arrangements for drawing
up a new constitution and agreeing a legal framework for Iraq’s
return to self rule.
In a report to the UN Security Council, Kofi Annan, the secretary-general,
said the political process was currently limited to “a few actors
with varying credibility.” Competition within the elite was taking
place against a backdrop of “massive unemployment, rising disillusion
and anger.”
Lakhdar Brahimi, Annan’s special adviser, said there was consensus
that neither general elections nor the US-proposed caucus system were
viable ways to choose an interim government.
The White House asked the United Nations to come up with proposals for
Iraq’s political future after Shiite leaders rejected the original
US plan, which envisioned choosing members of a new legislature at regional
caucuses. The lawmakers would then select a government to take power
by July 1.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, a powerful Shiite spiritual
leader, has led the push for direct elections, arguing that a government
based on caucuses would be “illegitimate.”
However, Al-Sistani reportedly said he would accept a short delay in
elections, insisting that any non-elected administration must have strictly
limited powers.
Asked in an interview with German newsmagazine Der Spiegel exactly how
long of a delay he would accept, al-Sistani replied that “it must
not take long.” He did not elaborate.
Ahmad al-Barak, a Shiite council member and coordinator of the Iraqi
Bar Association, said after meeting with al-Sistani in Najaf that the
Shiites were hoping for an early election but would be willing to wait
a few more months if Annan recommends against a vote before June 30.
“I think that elections can be held after five months from now
and in that case we have no problem,” al-Barak told reporters.
“Power could be transferred to the Iraqi people through the Governing
Council or any other body which will take the responsibility to make
the right preparations for the elections.”
Meanwhile, in an interview broadcast Feb. 21 by Al-Jazeera television,
Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric and Governing Council member, said
the US-run coalition should have begun planning for elections months
ago.
Al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq, wanted guarantees that “there’ll be no more stalling
as was the case in the past.’’
While Shiite leaders continued to call for a timely power transfer,
the Bush administration acknowledged on Feb. 20 that its ambitious plan
to transfer sovereignty directly to a democratically elected government
in Iraq was unlikely to succeed in providing elections untainted by
US influence.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration’s
initial plan for an interim, government through a complicated series
of 18 regional caucuses had failed to pass muster with Iraqi leaders.
“There’s wide recognition that the caucus plan is something
that has not received much support,” he told reporters. “This
is becoming more and more of an Iraqi-driven process.”
Barely four months before the June 30 transfer of sovereignty by the
US-led Coalition Authority, the White House said it was talking to Iraqi
leaders about new options for leaving the country with a “representative,
transitional government” while awaiting recommendations from the
United Nations.
McClellan, however, emphasized that the United Nations had not assumed
a presiding role over negotiations in Iraq.
“We have always said the United Nations had a vital role to play.
We appreciated their efforts in assessing the feasibility of elections,
and we will continue to discuss ways they can continue to be involved,”
he said.
Meanwhile, as the election year White House deals with the question
of Iraqi sovereignty while struggling to defend the decision for invasion,
new questions are being raised over Bush’s manipulation of information
in the process of leading the country to war.
According to Rumsfeld’s War, a new book written by a correspondent
for the conservative Washington Times, President Bush set the US on
the path to war in Iraq with a formal order signed in February 2002,
more than a year before the invasion. The revelation casts doubt on
the public insistence by US and British officials throughout 2002 that
no decision had been taken to go to war, pending negotiations at the
United Nations.
The book was written by Rowan Scarborough, the Pentagon correspondent
for the Times, known for its contacts in the defense department’s
civilian leadership.
“On February 16, 2002, Bush signed a secret national security council
directive establishing the goals and objectives for going to war with
Iraq, according to classified documents I obtained,” Scarborough
wrote, in an account of the “global war on terrorism” as seen
from the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense.
Ivo Daalder, an official in Bill Clinton’s national security council,
said a national security presidential directive was “the most formal
way that decisions by the president and others are communicated to the
rest of the government.”
Rumsfeld’s War also reproduces excerpts from a secret Defense Intelligence
Agency briefing document in July 1999 about future threats to the US.
The briefing portrays Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a threat only if
sanctions were lifted. But the administration decided that neither inspections
nor sanctions were working, partly as a result of reports that Saddam
had stockpiled WMDs. Those reports were later found to be false.
Sources: Washington Post, Reuters, AP,
AFP, MSNBC, Independent (UK) Ltd, the Guardian (UK), Knight Ridder
Chalabi, Garner provide new clues to
war
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Feb. 22 (IPS)— For those still puzzling
over the whys and wherefores of Washington’s invasion of Iraq 11
months ago, two major, but curiously unnoticed, clues were offered this
week by central players in the events leading up to the war.
Both clues tend to confirm growing suspicions that the Bush administration’s
drive to war in Iraq had very little, if anything, to do with the dangers
posed by Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
or his alleged ties to terrorist groups like al-Qaida — the two
main reasons the US Congress and public were given for the invasion.
Separate statements by Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National
Congress (INC), and US retired Gen. Jay Garner, who was in charge of
planning and administering post-war reconstruction from January through
May 2002, suggest that other, less public motives were behind the war,
none of which concerned self-defense, pre-emptive or otherwise.
The statement by Chalabi, on whom the neo-conservative and right-wing
hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office are
still resting their hopes for a transition that will protect Washington’s
many interests in Iraq, will certainly interest congressional committees
investigating why the intelligence on WMD before the war was so far
off the mark.
In a remarkably frank interview with the London Daily Telegraph, Chalabi
said he was willing to take full responsibility for the INC’s role
in providing misleading intelligence and defectors to President George
W. Bush, Congress and the US public to persuade them that Hussein posed
a serious threat to the United States that had to be dealt with urgently.
The Telegraph reported that Chalabi merely shrugged off accusations
his group had deliberately misled the administration. “We are heroes
in error,” he said.
“As far as we’re concerned, we’ve been entirely successful,”
he told the newspaper. “That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans
are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration
is looking for a scapegoat. We’re ready to fall on our swords if
he wants.”
It was an amazing admission, and certain to fuel growing suspicions
on Capitol Hill that Chalabi, whose INC received millions of dollars
in taxpayer money over the past decade, effectively conspired with his
supporters in and around the administration to take the United States
to war on pretenses they knew, or had reason to know, were false.
Indeed, it now appears increasingly that defectors handled by the INC
were sources for the most spectacular and detailed — if completely
unfounded — information about Hussein’s alleged WMD programs,
not only to US intelligence agencies, but also to US mainstream media,
especially the New York Times, according to a recent report in the New
York Review of Books.
Within the administration, Chalabi worked most closely with those who
had championed his cause for a decade, particularly neo-conservatives
around Cheney and Rumsfeld — Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
Undersecretary of Defens e Douglas Feith and Cheney’s chief of
staff, I. Lewis Libby.
Feith’s office was home to the Office of Special Plans (OSP) whose
two staff members and dozens of consultants were tasked with reviewing
raw intelligence to develop the strongest possible case that Hussein
represented a compelling threat to the United States.
OSP also worked with the Defense Policy Board (DPB), a hand-picked group
of mostly neo-conservative hawks chaired until just before the war by
Richard Perle, a long-time Chalabi friend.
DPB members, particularly Perle, former CIA director James Woolsey and
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, played prominent roles in publicizing
through the media reports by INC defectors and other alleged evidence
developed by OSP that made Hussein appear as scary as possible.
Chalabi even participated in a secret DPB meeting just a few days after
the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon in which the
main topic of discussion, according to the Wall Street Journal, was
how 9/11 could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq.
The OSP and a parallel group under Feith, the Counter Terrorism Evaluation
Group, have become central targets of congressional investigators, according
to aides on Capitol Hill, while unconfirmed rumors circulated here this
week that members of the DPB are also under investigation.
The question, of course, is whether the individuals involved were themselves
taken in by what Chalabi and the INC told them or whether they were
willing collaborators in distorting the intelligence in order to move
the country to war for their own reasons.
It appears that Chalabi, whose family, it was reported this week, has
extensive interests in a company that has already been awarded more
than $400 million in reconstruction contracts, is signaling his willingness
to take all of the blame, or credit, for the faulty intelligence.
But one of the reasons for going to war was suggested quite directly
by Garner — who also worked closely with Chalabi and the same cohort
of US hawks in the run-up to the war and during the first few weeks
of occupation — in an interview with The National Journal.
Asked how long US troops might remain in Iraq, Garner replied, “I
hope they’re there a long time,” and then compared US goals
in Iraq to US military bases in the Philippines between 1898 and 1992.
“One of the most important things we can do right now is start
getting basing rights with [the Iraqi authorities],” he said. “And
I think we’ll have basing rights in the north and basing rights
in the south ... we’d want to keep at least a brigade.”
“Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century:
they were a coaling station for the Navy, and that allowed us to keep
a great presence in the Pacific. That’s what Iraq is for the next
few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the
Middle East,” Garner added.
While US military strategists have hinted for some time that a major
goal of war was to establish several bases in Iraq, particularly given
the ongoing military withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, Garner is the first
to state it so baldly.
Until now, US military chiefs have suggested they need to retain a military
presence just to ensure stability for several years, during which they
expect to draw down their forces.
If indeed Garner’s understanding represents the thinking of his
former bosses, then the ongoing struggle between Cheney and the Pentagon
on the one hand and the State Department on the other over how much
control Washington is willing to give the United Nations over the transition
to Iraqi rule becomes more comprehensible.
Ceding too much control, particularly before a base agreement can be
reached with whatever Iraqi authority will take over June 30, will make
permanent US bases much less likely.
Sweeping new powers in UK war on terror
By Gaby Hinsliff and Martin Bright
London, England, Feb. 22— Terror suspects could be convicted
on the evidence of “electronic eavesdropping” of phone calls
and emails under sweeping moves to combat the threat of an al-Qaida
atrocity.
In a blunt admission that the risk of attack remains “real and
serious,” UK Home Secretary David Blunkett will pledge a massive
staffing boost for MI5. Priorities will include linguists, translators
and surveillance to help infiltrate overseas-sponsored terror networks
in Britain.
Blunkett will also flesh out highly controversial plans for new anti-terrorism
powers which would see suspects convicted on lower standards of proof
than the criminal courts and of crimes not yet even committed -- such
as an intent to execute a suicide bombing.
But in a gesture to liberal opinion anxious about threats to detain
terror suspects indefinitely without trial, he will make it clear that
the British Home Office is also seriously reviewing the use of ‘intercepted
communications’ as evidence in court.
“We are testing certain types of intercepts against different case
studies to see how they would work in real cases,” said one Home
Office source. “It is about making these hearings more effective
and making more charges stick. Are there ways in which we could loosen
up what is admissible in court?”
However, the deal risks provoking uproar, with lawyers yFeb. 21, demanding
assurances that evidence extracted under duress could not become admissible
under the new system. Gareth Peirce, solicitor to several Guantanamo
detainees, said British intelligence officers were known to have traveled
to the camp to interrogate prisoners.
“On the face of it, we are squeamish about the treatment of prisoners
at Guantanamo Bay, but we are still quite happy to use the product of
interviews with the men being kept there,” said Peirce. “In
this we are complicit in the illegality.”
She warned that evidence extracted under torture abroad could be admitted
over secret hearings now taking place into the 14 foreign nationals
held without trial in Britain on suspicion of al-Qaida involvement.
On Feb. 25 Blunkett is expected to publish his proposals on a new system
for trying terrorist suspects, when he responds formally to the Newton
Committee set up to review his powers under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime
and Security Act of 2001.
It demanded he find alternatives to the indefinite detention of foreign
nationals considered a threat to national security, such as the Belmarsh
14, which could also apply to Britons.
Blunkett’s first efforts at explaining his thinking, during a trip
to India earlier this month, led Labor peers to condemn him as a “shameless
authoritarian.”
However, a liberal consensus is now growing over allowing intercepted
communications -- so-called “electronic eavesdropping” on
phone calls -- to be admissible in court. Lawyers argue it offers light
at the end of the tunnel for some of the Belmarsh 14, since it could
enable cases to come to court.
Its use was backed by the Newton committee, a panel of senior MPs and
peers asked by Blunkett to review his anti-terrorism powers last year,
which concluded that lifting the blanket ban could be an alternative
to internment.
The stumbling block is the security services, which have long argued
the use of phone taps and intercepted evidence in courts would jeopardize
operations.
Blunkett’s former special adviser Nick Pearce, now director of
the Blairite thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research, said
the closed nature of the court system proposed by his boss could override
such objections: “There must surely be better ways of securing
convictions, if you have got evidence from the security services and
others that these people are a risk.
“If we are bringing these people back into the criminal justice
system I think it has got to involve some element of putting security
service material before the courts.”
Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, backed the
idea, adding: “We would feel more comfortable with looking at different
forms of evidence to be used as part of a trial.” Home Office sources
stressed last night that the use of intercept evidence was not a “panacea
for all ills.”
Peirce last night demanded assurances that the new courts would not
use evidence extracted under torture. A British intelligence officer
admitted in July during secret hearings concerning the Belmarsh inmates
that “we might factor in” such evidence to intelligence assessments,
which could then be presented to the hearings.
The anti-terrorism proposals will be seen in part as an attempt to reassure
Washington of British commitment to the war on terrorism. It is unlikely,
however, that the new system would be in place in time for Britain to
offer to try the four remaining Guantanamo detainees whom the US refuses
to release.
Talks between London and Washington will now center on trying to arrange
a form of trial in the US for the four acceptable to British sensibilities.
Blunkett is expected to backpedal on threats of internment for Britons
on Feb. 25, making clear that would only be likely to be exercised in
the wake of a major terrorist atrocity.
He will say however that the latest assessment of the terror threat
still indicates a “national public emergency,” and unveil
funding for another 1,000 MI5 staff over the next three years.
Source: Observer (UK)
Middle class shuns former ally, the unemployed
By Marcela Valente
Buenos Aires, Argentina, Feb. 19 (IPS)— The recovery of
Argentina’s economy has turned the middle class against its former
allies in demanding political change: the unemployed workers movement,
whose roadblocks across the country Feb. 19 failed to win many friends.
Traffic was cut off for seven hours at around 100 locations around Argentina
and on the main access routes to Buenos Aires.
The Independent Movement of the Retired and Unemployed, the National
“Piquetero” Movement and other smaller groups that make up
the “hard-line” segment of the unemployed movement had mobilized
to set up the roadblocks, their trademark mode of protest.
These organizations within the “piquetero” movement —
the name refers to their blockading of streets and highways in large
groups — came out to protest the government’s failure to deliver
the benefits promised to 250,000 unemployed persons, out of a total
of two million, and against the proposed labor law reform.
But the socio-political climate today is not what it was in late 2001,
when social upheaval cut across class definitions and drove Fernando
de la Rúa to resign from the presidency.
It was evident Feb. 19 that the middle-class sector is fed up with the
piquetero protests, which nevertheless ended without incident amidst
heavy police presence.
Gone are the days in which profound economic crisis prompted a massive
march of unemployed workers that was received in Buenos Aires with applause
and tears by the residents of mostly middle-class neighborhoods.
In early 2002, the “hosts” in the capital had water to drink
and food to eat for the marchers who had come from all over the country.
“Piquetero and pot-banging, it’s all the same fight,”
they shouted in their protests, referring to the spontaneous and seemingly
continual clamor of middle-class residents beating pots and pans to
demand action against the deep recession that begun in the late 1990s.
They called for policies that would prevent them from sliding into poverty,
as happened to more than 50 percent of the 37 million Argentines as
a result of the economic and financial crisis.
In the wake of De la Rúa’s resignation in December 2001,
through the government of Eduardo Duhalde, and in particular since President
Néstor Kirchner, the Argentine economy has shown some vigor.
In 2003, growth returned, reaching 8.4 percent, and unemployment fell
from 21.4 percent of the economically active population to 14.3 percent.
The attempt to stanch widespread poverty came in the form of monthly
subsidies to unemployed heads of households with children. It is this
benefit that the Feb. 19 protests focused on, demanding payment as millions
remain in poverty.
The middle-income sectors, which during the worst of the crisis had
supported the unemployed in protests against the banks that had frozen
their savings and pushing for De la Rúa’s resignation, now
reject the most radical among the piqueteros, who say they refuse to
leave the streets until each and every one of their demands are met.
But the piquetero movement itself has shown weak spots in recent months.
There has been infighting between those who want to continue the mobilizations
and roadblocks and those who have opted to cut back on protests and
wait to see if the economic reactivation will bring its own benefits.
The more moderate groups, which are more likely to negotiate with the
government, include the Federación de Tierra y Vivienda (Land
and Housing Federation), Corriente Clasista y Combativa (Combative and
Classist Current) and Barrios de Pie (Neighborhoods on their Feet).
Today, business owners complain because the piquetero roadblocks interrupt
traffic and are cutting into sales, and there are workers who do not
even want to hear mention of the unemployed.
“They might want to work but they’re going to put us on the
street,” said an irate employee of a phone center in San Isidro,
in the Buenos Aires outskirts, worried she might lose her job for arriving
late to work because of the roadblock on the Pan-American highway.
According to a survey by pollster Graciela Romer, in June 2001 just
15 percent of respondents said the De la Rúa government should
“stand firm and prevent the piqueteros from blocking traffic.”
By December 2003, the percentage calling for a firm hand had risen to
51.
In the two polls, the proportion who suggested “negotiating”
with the piqueteros fell from 81 to 42 percent. And the respondents
who considered the unemployed movement’s demands legitimate dropped
from 56 to 33 percent in that period.
In Córdoba province, “we choose to carry a shovel in the
car and we wave it out the window when we approach a piquetero roadblock,”
said a caller on a radio program in Buenos Aires.
The unemployed constitute a “leftover population” that refuses
to lose visibility, according to sociologist Maristella Svampa, author
of a book about the experience of the piquetero organizations.
“They are on the outside, they don’t occupy any specific space,
and that is why they block the roads,” she wrote.
Svampa notes that the piquetero phenomenon dates back to 1996, originating
in the southern province of Neuquén amongst former workers of
the now-privatized oil company Yacimiento Petrolíferos Fiscales
(YPF). They set up roadblocks to protest the lack of jobs.
Now, in contrast, most of the piqueteros are people who have never been
formally employed.
Interviews conducted during a tour of the roadblocks set up by the more
radical of the piquetero groups, today consisting mostly of women, young
adults and adolescents, indicate that few have worked a steady job.
Roadblocks were set up Feb. 19 in and around Buenos Aires, and in two
other populous cities, Córdoba and Santa Fe. Blockades on national
highways were reported throughout the country.
Despite fears of disturbances caused by demonstrators, police crackdowns,
or a combination of the two, the day of protest took place in relative
calm.
But some of the movement’s leaders admit that the roadblocks are
leading to too many complaints and potential backlash from the middle
class, who accuse them of “laying siege” to the cities. The
activists say they are beginning to consider other modes of protest.
Speaking on behalf of the Kirchner government, Cabinet chief Alberto
Rodríguez said the piqueteros “should realize that they
are generating a strong feeling of rejection among the population,”
especially after recent protests in which there was violence that was
not the result of police intervention.
In December, a small explosive injured some 20 piqueteros during a protest
in the Plaza de Mayo, across from the presidential palace in Buenos
Aires. Feb. 13, a protester taking part in a roadblock hit a taxi driver
and then smashed the vehicle with a club.
The incident, caught by television cameras, prompted debate within the
piquetero groups. That day’s demonstration ended the hunger strike
at the Labor Ministry in protest against the reduced number of subsidies
being distributed to the unemployed.
Leftist leader Vilma Ripoll, who took part in Thursday’s protests,
told IPS that the government refuses to recognize that it let 250,000
subsidies lapse because of demands by the International Monetary Fund,
and not because the recipients had found work.
“Labor Minister Carlos Tomada told us that there are 900,000 people
on the waiting list for subsidies, which means that if there were really
250,000 people who found jobs, those funds should be shifted to the
people on the list,” said Ripoll, who until December was a local
legislator for the United Left party.
Ripoll admitted that there has been a “distancing” between
the middle class and the piqueteros that was not so evident in the past.
“When the middle class was a victim of the neoliberal economic
model, there was a ‘romance’ with the piqueteros, but that
ended when their demands began to be met,” she said.
The blame for this disaffection, she said, lies not with the middle
class but with the government, which should ask for patience from those
who complain about the roadblocks that prevent them from getting to
wor on time.
Detainees picked up, now dropped
By Sanjay Suri
London, England, Feb. 21 (IPS)— What rights remain of the
Guantanamo Bay detainees will be put to a quick test in Britain following
the release of five Britons over the next few weeks.
While the US Supreme Court deliberates the rights of the detainees,
the release of five Britons becomes a test case within Europe that could
influence decisions over the remaining detainees, leading lawyers here
say.
The five Britons were held for more than two years without charge like
the others. But their release now marks official admission that there
was no good reason to detain them in the first place - or at least to
hold them in detention this long.
The five, Shafiq Rasul (26), Asif Iqbal (22), Ruhal Ahmed (21), Jamaluddin
(37) and Tarek Dergoul (24) are expected back in Britain next month,
but are unlikely to face any further prosecution.
British Home Secretary David Blunkett has said: “I think you will
find that no one who is returned will actually be a threat to the security
of the British people.” The release of the five was secured after
they were interrogated on several occasions by members of MI5, the British
secret service.
The “official” admission of unlawful detention raises questions
about what compensation they can hope to get, but their lawyers are
not optimistic.
“A great deal will depend on the decision of the US Supreme Court
whether the US government acted illegally in holding these men in detention,”
Greg Powell, solicitor for Ruhal Ahmed told IPS.
The US Supreme Court in New York said Friday it will set guidelines
for policy to detain terror suspects. The court is hearing the case
of Yaser Esam Hamidi, a US citizen captured in Afghanistan in 2001.
Another case challenges the detention of non-US citizens being held
at Guantanamo Bay.
“There are real questions here of jurisdiction and how a judgment
could be enforced,” Powell said. “But don’t forget that
this is the court that handed the election to George Bush the way it
did, and so we don’t have a lot of faith in it.”
But if the US Supreme Court were to rule that the US government acted
unlawfully, “then we could sue the US government for unlawful detention.”
Any compensation move would have to be made in individual cases because
the circumstances differ, Powell said. “Someone was kidnapped from
the Gambia, others were caught in Afghanistan, someone was stolen from
Pakistan,” he said. “And the courts would take one view if
someone was known just to be visiting family, and another if a suspect
was known to be a Taliban sympathiser.”
In the latter case, he said, “who would be sympathetic to you?”
Unlawful detention raises larger questions of compensation, he said.
And this was true for more people than the 14 held in London without
trial for more than two years in what civil liberty groups have been
calling Britain’s own Guantanamo Bay.
“Suspects are routinely imprisoned for maybe nine months at a time
while they face trial in this country,” Powell said. “Then
they can be told the charges are dropped, there is no case against them.
Who compensates them?”
Solicitors acting for the five are pressing more immediate matters.
Powell said he had written to the Foreign Office Friday to ask why there
was a delay in releasing the men and for access to them before release.
He had asked also for setting out the terms on which they were being
released, and “whether the release would be only a transfer from
one lock- up to another.”
The solicitors have asked also for an independent assessment of the
physical and psychological state of the detained men. That could well
become the basis of compensation claims other than those that could
arise from detention.
“This whole business is not over by any means,” Powell said.
”There are another 650 people there in Guantanamo Bay, and many
of them could face execution.”
Nor is the campaign for the release of Britons over. Four other British
nationals and three British residents will remain in detention.
The human rights organization Amnesty said it is pleased over the release
of the five British nationals and one Dane. “We remain concerned,
however, about the fate of all others who continue to be held in Guantanamo,
particularly those who may face trial by military commission.”
Amnesty urged governments around the world to make urgent representations
on behalf of those held.
“All detainees should be afforded their full rights and should
either be released or charged with a recognizably criminal offence and
tried in court proceedings that fully meet international fair trial
standards.”
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