Nicholas Kristof wrote an article in today’s New York Times, When We Torture, that mentions Adel Hamad’s unconscionable detention. The article focuses on the treatment of one of the other Sudanese detainees, Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj, who remains in Guantanamo to this day. He has been on a hunger strike protesting the abuse he has suffered during his six year detention.
One indication that the government doesn’t take its own charges seriously, the lawyers say, is that the United States offered al-Hajj a deal: immediate freedom if he would spy on al-Jazeera. Al-Hajj refused.
Kristof continues:
Al-Hajj cannot bend his knees because of abuse he received soon after his arrest, yet the toilet chair he was prescribed was removed - making it excruciating for him to use the remaining squat toilet. He is allowed a Koran, but his glasses were confiscated so he cannot read it.
All this is inhumane, but also boneheaded. Guantánamo itself does far more damage to American interests than al-Hajj could ever do.
To stand against torture and arbitrary detention is not to be squeamish. It is to be civilized.
It is well worth the read (click on the title above to open a link to it.)
Since returning to Sudan, Adel has continued to pursue justice for the detainees who remain at Guantanamo uncharged. He is also fighting in U.S. court on two fronts. 1)He is trying to clear his name as an enemy combatant through a habeas corpus petition. Work and travel restrictions still remain until his name is officially cleared. 2)He is suing in U.S. court for compensation for his 5 year incarceration without evidence ever being brought against him.
Amazingly, Adel Hamad harbors no ill will towards America. In this article he eloquently states his case with the following quote:
“We don’t want animosity, we just want to respect America again,” says Hamad, speaking in English phrases he learned while in prison. “The American conscience and the American people need to return to the great concepts established by the Founding Fathers, of freedom, democracy, equality, and justice. All these values and even the justice system are being shaken, played with.”
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.
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.
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.
Adel Hamad’s lawyers have been working on two fronts simultaneously on his behalf. The first front, which we have discussed previously here at Project Hamad, is the attempt to expedite his release. It involved traveling to Sudan to discuss his situation with the Sudanese government. It prompted the Sudanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs to travel to the U.S. on behalf of the Sudanese detainees. It also raised the profile of Adel Hamad in his home country. During a visit to the Sudanese Embassy in Washington D.C., William Teesdale was shown a United States government document revealing that Hamad was approved for transfer to Sudan in November 2005, now two years ago, a fact that the U.S. government kept from Hamad’s own defense team.
The second front is the attempt to clear his name and remove the designation of “enemy combatant.” The Federal Public Defenders Office of Oregon filed a formal petition under the Detainee Treatment Act in D.C. court of appeals to challenge Mr. Hamad’s indefinite detention. They obtained a statement from the Army Major who sat on Hamad’s CSRT (and the CSRT of 48 others), calling his detention “unconscionable”. This Major gave sworn testimony in D.C. district court that was not only damning to the legitimacy of Adel Hamad’s detention, but to the entire Tribunal process’ legitimacy. Among other things, he cited that evidence in favor of detainees’ innocence was never reviewed, no training was given in how to weigh evidence, and pressure was applied from above to declare detainees as enemy combatants, so much so that detainees who were ruled non-enemy combatants were given new CSRTs to have the decisions reversed.
The pleading includee a new statement from Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, another officer formerly assigned to assist with the gathering of government information to be used in the tribunal review process. Below are two excerpts from his testimony:
“Not only was no independent effort ever made to verify or disprove claims of innocence, the detainees were unable to obtain evidence from witnesses they themselves identified.”
“Detainee claims of innocence often could have been corroborated or disproved by a few simple inquiries. For example, if a detainee told interrogators that he had worked at a hospital in Afghanistan, OARDEC could have required that an agency with regional or functional purview locate and obtain records from the hospital and interview personnel there.”
This new evidence was presented in November of 2006. Just now, a full year later, the circuit court granted oral arguments on Hamad’s case. The government responded by deciding to grant him a new CSRT and moved to stay the briefing. The timing is telling and consistent with other maneuvers by the government to forestall or avoid rulings that would inhibit Executive power. Only after the courts granted oral arguments did the government agree to grant a new CSRT. They apparently did not want these arguments to be made in court, and with the new CSRT they are again entirely in control of the process.
Thus, Adel Hamad remains in legal limbo. For the two years he has been on a transfer list. His lawyers attempts to get him a new CSRT hearing to clear his name went unheeded under the argument that he was being transferred soon, a statement belied by the sober fact that Hamad remains imprisoned to this day.. Now that the judicial system is ready to hear arguments that are damning to the administration’s position they are, all of a sudden,wanting to do a new CSRT in an attempt to make the arguments against them moot. It is unclear if the administration must adhere to any timetable with regards to Hamad’s new tribunal but we can hope that continued pressure from his legal team and from the public will make it that much more difficult to hold an innocent man for much longer.
We are writing today because there is a simple act you can do that can
make a world of difference.
We recently sat down with the lawyers of Adel Hamad to get an update
on his situation. We learned that the newest head of Guantanamo has
moved the vast majority of the detainees into 22 hour total lock down.
This is complete isolation from human contact with a mere 2 hours of
“recreation time” occurring in a small concrete room, not outdoors,
and often in the middle of the night. Needless to say, more and more
cases of psychosis and other significant psychiatric conditions are
arising from indefinite detention under these conditions.
Fortunately Adel Hamad is one of about 50 detainees not in lockdown
but morale is still at an all-time low. He has watched many
detainees, some of whom have actual evidence against them, get
released simply because the United States has good relations with
their home countries (Britain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia etc.). Others
like him—where the government has produced no evidence– hospital
administrators, fruit vendors, people turned in because of bounties
offered by the U.S. or Pakistanis simply for being foreigners or
looking different– remain at Guantanamo for no other reason than the
U.S. is not friendly with their country of origin.
Hamad’s lawyers have just now learned, from their recent trip to
Sudan, that he was cleared for transfer in November of 2005, TWO YEARS
AGO. The U.S. government never shared this information with his own
defense team and obviously do not seem to feel any obligation to
expedite the release of a man that they have charged with no crime.
But we aren’t writing you to share yet another piece of depressing
news you can do nothing about. For the last 10 months we have been
encouraging Project Hamad members to write Adel Hamad at Guantanamo,
to make sure the U.S. government knows he has not been forgotten. We
were operating under the assumption that he might never see the
letters. But he mentioned them to his lawyers as the only bright spot
in an otherwise grim existence.. A parish from the midwest that had
organized a letter writing campaign on his behalf, has received
letters back from Hamad, thanking them, and wishing them well.
We are hoping that you will take a moment, with the two year
anniversary of his “transfer approval” approaching, and write Adel
Hamad.
Adel Hamad (ISN 940)
Camp Delta
P.O. Box 160
Washington DC 20053
USA
As Adel Hamad’s lawyers feared, Hamad’s name appearing on a transfer list has not secured his freedom or cleared his name. Months later he remains imprisoned with no signs that the U.S. government and Sudan have come any closer to an agreement around his return. Certainly the increasing strain between the two countries over the Darfur crisis cannot be helping his cause. Many detainees who, unlike Adel Hamad, had some incriminating evidence presented against them, have been returned to their countries if the U.S. had good relationships with their home governments (e.g. Britain, Canada). Consequently two of Adel Hamad’s attorney’s William Teesdale and Steve Wax are travelling to Sudan to present his case directly to the Sudanese government in hopes of jump starting the process. You can read more about their trip in the Portland Tribune article “Lawyer Seeks African Allies.”
In a post-habeas corpus world there are no obvious ways forward. Most lawyers aren’t arguing their cases on YouTube or travelling to Pakistan and Sudan on behalf of their clients. But it is this sort of creative new thinking that is required of all of us. The two traditional avenues left to restore habeas corpus and bring justice back to the justice system, the Supreme Court and the Congress, are no sure thing.
The Supreme Court has ruled twice against the Bush administration over Guantanamo but the new Roberts court has notably refused to hear the third appeal. Some speculate that the more liberal justices voted against hearing the case rather than have the Roberts court rule in favor of Bush’s military commissions, thus setting a disturbing precedent around habeas corpus suspension. Regardless of motive, the Military Commissions Act stands as U.S. law. In other words, habeas corpus is suspended, evidence obtained by coercion is allowed, the government can prevent the detainee from being present at parts of his own hearing, and detainees can’t see the evidence against them or expect to call witnesses in their defense.
The second traditional avenue of reform would be legislative action to repeal or reform the Military Commissions Act. Legislation exists in both the House and Senate, most notably the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007, sponsored by Senator Dodd. But it is unclear whether this Act will ever make it out of committee to a general vote.
So where does that leave us? Either at a dead end or thinking outside of the box. Hopefully Adel Hamad’s lawyers will inspire the latter. One of you might come up with the next best way to bring Adel Hamad’s situation or the woeful condition of our Constitution back into the national discussion. We, at Project Hamad, have been working on the local level to try to get the City of Portland to pass a resolution in support of the restoration of habeas corpus. Cities took the lead around the Iraq war several years ago with many passing anti-war resolutions that hopefully emboldened their respective state and Federal delegations to be more assertive on this topic. The suspension of habeas corpus seems even more fundamental with more dire consequences to our civil rights and liberties if not restored. Even if the war ends tomorrow, even if Guantanamo is closed and all detainees are tried or released, the conditions that allowed the United States to detain people indefinitely without presenting evidence against them will still exist. If the Military Commissions Act stands as U.S. law it is a significant blow to a cornerstone of our Constitution, something that our Founding Fathers considered fundamental to American democracy.
Most people do not have a sense of what habeas corpus is, let alone that it has been suspended for only the second time in U.S. history. Once explained, most people are quite astonished and sympathetic to the cause. We found this at Portland City Hall. But we failed to find a city commissioner who would bring the resolution forward to a vote. Perhaps this movement will start in your town instead. If we can get one city to stand behind this most basic civil right it could be the beginning of a movement. Below is a copy of our proposed resolution. Feel free to adapt it and present it to your local leaders. Keep us posted of your progress and let us know of any other ideas you have come up with to keep this issue alive.
David
Resolution No.
Declare the City of Portland in support of the writ of habeas corpus and efforts towards its full restoration
WHEREAS, the 800 year history of habeas corpus, preceding the Magna Carta of 1215, has been an essential check on executive power and the cornerstone for the rights of individuals to question the legality of their imprisonment
WHEREAS, habeas corpus is enshrined in our Constitution and considered by Thomas Jefferson as an essential principle of our government and by Alexander Hamilton as one of the greatest securities to liberty
WHEREAS, the writ of habeas corpus has not been suspended in the United States since armed rebellions during the Civil War
WHEREAS, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 has suspended the writ of habeas corpus
WHEREAS, the language of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is inconsistent concerning the applicability of the Act to U.S. citizens
WHEREAS, the city of Portland has already experienced the wrongful incarceration of Portland lawyer Brandon Mayfield, falsely accused of terrorism; that the ability of Mr. Mayfield and others wrongfully arrested to properly have their cases heard is unduly compromised since the passage of the aforementioned act of 2006
WHEREAS, we live in a political climate where the patriotism of public defenders of persons detained by the U.S. government is in question
WHEREAS, the public defenders office of Oregon, based here in Portland, represent 7 of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
WHEREAS, Portland citizens have begun a campaign for the restoration of the writ of habeas corpus for these and all detainees of the United States government
WHEREAS, the City of Portland can make an important statement on principle by asserting the rights and liberties of its citizens
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THE PORTLAND CITY COUNCIL
1. Asserts support for the writ of habeas corpus and the efforts to restore it
2. Asserts support for the pro bono work of public defenders in general, and the public defenders office in Oregon in particular, as vital to a healthy democracy
3. Endorses the efforts of local citizens who have advocated for these goals through Projecthamad.org
