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.”
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
After months of making the rounds at City Hall we ultimately succeeded at getting the City of Portland to officially advocate for the restoration of habeas corpus. At the bottom of this blog entry is a copy of the letter being sent to the Oregon delegation urging the endorsement of the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act and the Restoring the Constitution Act. As unsexy as it is, habeas restoration is at the heart of the issues that allow Adel Hamad to sit indefinitely in prison without recourse. If Guantanamo is closed tomorrow and all the prisoners who have no credible evidence against them are released, there will deservedly be a lot of celebration. But keep in mind that the circumstances that allowed Guantanamo to happen would still be in place. It would still be legal to hold someone indefinitely without trial, without the right to see the evidence against them, without the right to even be at one’s own tribunal. Here in Portland for instance, Brandon Mayfield, falsely accused of, and held in lockdown for, the Madrid bombings was considered a 100% fingerprint match by the FBI, a sure thing. Had habeas corpus been suspended at that point in time who knows if he would have adequately been able to defend himself from indefinite false imprisonment.
If you are interested in engaging your own city council around these issues let us know. We have copies of the resolution we originally tried to get sponsorship for. It could be used as a template for other efforts. And the letter that the City of Portland drafted is below. Props go out particularly to Jane Ames of City Commissioner Sam Adams’ office. Without her, this wouldn’t have happened.
David
Project Hamad
August 2,, 2007
The Honorable Gordon Smith
404 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Smith,
As elected representatives of the City of Portland, we urge our Oregon delegation to endorse two bills, the Restoring the Constitution Act and the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act, that have been introduced in Congress this year.
We are concerned about the suspension of habeas corpus and the resulting implications for the civil rights of Portland residents. We recognize the seriousness of fighting the War on Terror, yet believe that habeas corpus is a fundamental safeguard which is essential to defining the United States as a free and just society. As a result of The Military Commissions Act of 2006 our government can now detain people indefinitely without trial, without the right to see the evidence against them, and without the right to be present at one’s own tribunal.
Residents of Portland, of Oregon, and of the United States deserve the fundamental protections insured by our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and tertiary branched government, which are designed to provide separation of power. The fundamental right of habeas corpus is protected in our constitution except “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it [to be suspended].” We must work to preserve safety and civil rights under our current circumstances.
We urge our delegation to strongly support these important bills, and work to reinstate the writ of habeas corpus to its proper place in American democracy.
Thank you for your unending public service and consideration of this issue.
Joanna Klonsky from the Council on Foreign Relations pointed us to their page tracking the candidates stances on Military Tribunals and Guantanamo Bay:
