December 2007
Video from Adel Hamad’s Homecoming
Seeing Adel Hamad reunited with his 6 year old daughter, a girl born just a few months before Hamad’s imprisonment, is priceless.
The entire print article about Adel Hamad’s homecoming can be found at
English Al Jazeera.
— David
Dec 15 2007 10:02 am | Uncategorized and habeas corpus and guantanamo and adel hamad and project hamad and detainee rights | No Comments » | Comments RSS
Report from Hamad’s Home
William Teesdale and Steve Wax have just got off the phone with Adel Hamad, back at his home in Sudan. Tired but happy, Adel expressed thanks to all of us, particularly about all the publicity generated around his case. Below is the press release just issued by Steve Wax of the Federal Public Defenders Office with more quotes from Adel Hamad from his home in Sudan:
The Federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon is pleased to
announce the repatriation of two of its clients from the United States prison at
Guantánamo - Adel Hassan Hamad to Sudan and Chaman Gul to Afghanistan.
Mr. Hamad had a joyful reunion with his family and friends early Thursday
morning Khartoum time. Speaking over the noise of the celebration, he told his
lawyers, “I thank God almighty and express my gratefulness to you. I can finally
see the light after the darkness.”Mr. Hamad is an innocent hospital administrator and aid worker from Sudan
who spent nearly five years in Guantánamo after being arrested in his bed in his
home in Peshawar, Pakistan where he had been living with his family and working for an international charity. Since being assigned to represent Mr. Hamad in October 2005, Federal Defender Steven Wax and his staff have been working to clear his name. In August 2006, Federal Defender Investigator and Attorney William Teesdale traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan and obtained ten sworn statements from Mr. Hamad’s employer, doctors at the hospital, Afghan government officials, and his landlord. In April 2007, Mr. Teesdale and Mr. Wax traveled to Sudan and gathered additional evidence of Mr. Hamad’s innocence.Mr. Hamad was approved for transfer from Guantánamo in November 2005. In addition to gathering evidence of his innocence, his attorneys worked hard at getting the Sudanese and United States government’s to agree on his repatriation. Mr. Hamad became one of the visible faces among the prisoners at Guantánamo as the story of imprisonment of this innocent man was spread around the world. While Mr. Hamad and his attorneys are thrilled that he is finally home, the fight to clear his name goes on. As Mr. Hamad told his attorneys, “I still want justice.” In the labyrinthine world of the military, his repatriation was called a transfer, not a release. He will continue to press the United States Military to hold a hearing based on the evidence of innocence submitted by his attorneys to clear his name. He will also continue to press the habeas corpus and Detainee Treatment Act cases pending in the District of Columbia courts through which he has been attempting to secure release and clear his name since 2005.
Chaman Gul, the Federal Defender’s other client released this week, is not as
fortunate as Mr. Hamad. He has been transferred to Unit D of the Policharki
prison recently built outside Kabul with United States assistance. All Afghans sent
back from Guantánamo in recent months have been locked up in Policharki. It is
not clear how much control the United States continues to have over them and
what rights they will have there.Nearly 300 prisoners remain in Guantánamo, including three of the Federal
Defender’s original seven clients. The fight for their freedom and the fight to
restore habeas corpus rights goes on in the courts. Having twice rejected the
administration’s overly expansive view of its powers under the Constitution, the
Supreme Court heard arguments last week on a third round of litigation designed to restore the proper balance under our Constitution.
— David
Dec 13 2007 01:39 pm | habeas corpus and guantanamo and adel hamad and project hamad and detainee rights | No Comments » | Comments RSSBreaking News: Adel Hamad is Back in Sudan!
We finally have some great news to report. Adel Hamad is back in Sudan. Over two years after being cleared for transfer, Adel Hamad has finally arrived in Khartoum and was immediately released and allowed to reunite with his family. Earlier this week the U.S. government had announced the transfer of 15 Guantanamo detainees, two of them Sudanese. The Sudanese government believed that one of those detainees would be Adel Hamad but we had no confirmation that indeed he was on that plane until this morning. William Teesdale, his legal counsel from the Federal Public Defenders Office of Oregon, should be talking to him within the next hour or two.
We at Project Hamad want to thank everyone for your efforts and for keeping hope alive.
We will post again soon about the implications of Hamad’s release. His lawyers hope to press the U.S. government to still give Adel Hamad his new CSRT hearing so he can truly clear his name. And we must remember that Adel is only one of many detainees cleared for transfer long ago, but who remain in legal limbo at Guantanamo. Adel Hamad’s downstairs neighbor in Pakistan, Ameur Mammar, detainee #939, is just one of many examples. Lets keep them in our hearts while we celebrate Hamad’s release.
We will write again soon.
— David
Dec 13 2007 10:39 am | Uncategorized and habeas corpus and guantanamo and adel hamad and project hamad and detainee rights | No Comments » | Comments RSSCode Pink, the Supreme Court, and Adel Hamad
This picture was taken on Wednesday in Washington D.C. at the Supreme Court hearings reviewing detainee rights:
Click here for the account of the woman dressed as Adel Hamad for the Code Pink protest.
— David
Dec 07 2007 09:34 pm | Uncategorized and habeas corpus and military commissions act and guantanamo and adel hamad and project hamad and detainee rights | No Comments » | Comments RSSAdel Hamad back in the News
Today the Supreme Court hears arguments concerning the rights of detainees at Guantanamo. Because of this there has been a reemergence of interest in the media regarding Adel Hamad.
Project Hamad appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Morning Edition with host April Baer. You can listen to the the program here: Portlanders Keep an Eye on Detainees’ Cases.
British journalist Andy Worthington wrote a piece entitled Guantanamo Whistleblower Launces New Attack on Rigged Tribunals, that appeared on Counterpunch and the Huffington Post. In this article he discusses the importance of the sworn testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Abraham in the upcoming Supreme Court cases. Adel Hamad’s lawyers obtained this sworn testimony on behalf of Adel Hamad’s case but because of how damning it is to the legitimacy of the Guantanamo tribunal system it should play prominently in the arguments on behalf of the detainees this week.
Lastly, we have put several of the important documents on the Project Hamad website. You can find them here.
They include the following as pdf documents:
1)Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham’s declaration about the serious flaws in the CSRT process. The declaration of an officer intimately involved in the Combatant Status Review Tribunal process, showing among other things that pressure was exerted to find all detainees as enemy combatants, and that evidence in favor of a detainee’s innocence was never reviewed. This declaration will play a role in the upcoming review of detainee rights by the Supreme Court.
2)Declaration of William Teesdale concerning the negotiations between Sudan and the State Department for Adel Hamad’s release. Many detainees cleared for release remain in Guantanamo. For years, the U.S. has blamed the detainee’s home country for this, claiming that the home country was unwilling to cooperate with the United States in repatriating their citizens. This document not only exposes the lie to this argument, but actually reveals the U.S. government’s continued efforts to delay and frustrate attempts by the Sudanese government to gain the release of their citizens.
3) Notice of Adel Hamad’s New Tribunal. A year has passed since new evidence was submitted in district court on Adel Hamad’s behalf. Only now, now that the court has agreed to hear oral arguments in Hamad v Bush, has the U.S. government suddenly agreed to a new tribunal for Hamad. It is probably both an attempt to avoid having a legal opinion go against them and an attempt to regain control of the process again. If Hamad ever gets this new Tribunal, and it is performed with some semblance of justice, it would be an opportunity to show that no evidence has been presented to lawfully hold him as an enemy combatant.
— David
Dec 05 2007 09:48 am | Uncategorized and habeas corpus and military commissions act and guantanamo and adel hamad and project hamad and detainee rights | No Comments » | Comments RSS