DAILY TRIFECTA: Monkey See You Get Away With Torture, Monkey Do It, Too
Israel franchises the US model
TITLE: The U.S. was set to move 11 detainees out of Guantanamo. Then Hamas attacked Israel.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/biden-ready-move-11-detainees-guantanamo-october-paused-seven-months-rcna152985
EXCERPT: The Biden administration was close to transferring 11 detainees out of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a country in the Middle East in October 2023, but abruptly halted the move amid concerns about political optics after Hamas’ attack on Israel, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the planning.
More than seven months later, the administration has not set a new date for the transfer, the officials said, and the detainees remain at Guantanamo with no clarity on when, or if, it will happen.
The holdup has frustrated administration officials who said they believe election-year politics are supplanting President Joe Biden’s policy of reducing the population at Guantanamo, and ultimately closing the facility. These officials said they are concerned the likelihood that the transfer takes place before November’s presidential election diminishes the closer the election gets. And they worry the stalled process that has left 11 men sitting in detention for months without clarity about when they could be transferred could become a human rights concern.
The 11 detainees are either citizens of Yemen or have ties to the country, the officials said. They were scheduled to be resettled in Oman, according to the officials.Several U.S. officials said the deal for their transfer is still under discussion with Oman, including about specific timing and conditions, and that it could happen this year. They said politics are behind the delay and that the transfer wasn’t imminent because some logistics hadn’t been finalized.
A senior administration official suggested Oman also has at times since October not wanted the transfer to take place.
“This is not like collecting dust somewhere. We’re actively looking at all those administrative steps to make it happen,” the official said, acknowledging “there are frustrations.”
The White House National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
Democrats and Republicans have objected to moving detainees out of Guantanamo, and the issue has been a political flashpoint through multiple presidential administrations. In January, for instance, the top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees joined their GOP counterparts in calling on the Biden administration not to allow intelligence community funds to help facilitate any transfers of Guantanamo detainees.
Biden, like President Barack Obama before him, has worked to close the facility. But detainee transfers nearly ground to a halt while Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor and 2024 opponent, was in the White House.Biden administration officials working to close Guantanamo expressed concern that if these 11 detainees who were set to be transferred in October are not resettled this year, and Trump is re-elected, they will remain at the detention facility for at least another four years.
Their transfer in October was imminent when it was called off at the last minute, according to administration officials involved in the process. The administration had already notified Congress that the transfer would take place, officials said, a step the executive branch is required by law to take at least 30 days in advance of transferring any Guantanamo detainees.
The transfer would have brought the population at Guantanamo to below 20 for the first time since it began holding suspected terrorists in January 2002.Biden administration officials spent months negotiating the terms for the detainees to be transferred to Oman, including measures intended to guarantee the men wouldn’t become a security threat and any possible compensation they would receive.
Multiple U.S. officials said the decision to stop the transfer was not related to any concerns raised by Oman or last-minute disagreements between the U.S. and Oman. They said they believe it was the result of members of Congress, primarily Democrats close to the president, privately raising concerns about the timing.
Most of the 11 detainees were cleared by the U.S. for release or transfer years ago, after going through the lengthy process to achieve that status.
TITLE: After Torturing Him, U.S. Breaks Guarantees of Safety To Former Guantánamo Detainee
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/21/guantanamo-algeria-terrorism-prison-saeed-bakhouch/
EXCERPT: Saeed Bakhouch was the most recent Guantánamo detainee to be transferred out of the military prison under the Biden administration, never having been charged with a crime. Bakhouch, his American lawyer Candace Gorman said, was a victim of torture at the hands of the U.S. and slowly deteriorated over his 20 years of arbitrary detention until his release in April 2023.
When Bakhouch first arrived in Algeria, he was immediately taken into custody by Algeria’s internal security forces — a standard and usually brief period of detention for Algerian detainees returning from Guantánamo. Bakhouch was vulnerable, Gorman said, having mentally deteriorated in recent years.
Gorman had warned about possible post-traumatic stress disorder and depression ahead of his repatriation. Nonetheless, Bakhouch was held incommunicado and subjected to intense interrogation with no lawyer present.
“He was interrogated every day of the 12 days — after decades of trauma — was given no help from a lawyer and he was under extreme pressure while being threatened by the interrogators,” Sofiane Chouiter, a Canada-based attorney who is providing legal support to Bakhouch, told The Intercept.
Chouiter, the president of the Justitia Center for the Legal Protection of Human Rights in Algeria, obtained a transcript of the interrogation by the Algerian intelligence services showing that Bakhouch, in the course of the encounter, began agreeing with all the accusations made against him. Bakhouch responded to all the questions with “sure, yes,” Chouiter told The Intercept.
The transcript doesn’t include what Bakhouch told Chouiter was the initial part of the interrogation, when the detainee had denied charges of ties to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
In early October, Bakhouch recanted his testimony before an investigative magistrate and denied the terror charges, Chouiter said. Bakhouch pleaded not guilty at his most recent trial and, in the presence of a judge, again recanted his initial admissions.
Being held without contact to the outside world is considered an enforced disappearance and prohibited by international law, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Ben Saul told The Intercept.
“A detainee in custody must be promptly given access to a lawyer and to communicate with family,” Saul said.
Algerian officials admit they did not allow him access to a lawyer or family calls until his 13th day of detention.
“The U.S. responsibility for his welfare did not end when he was transferred to Algeria,” Saul said. “It should be apparent that he should not suffer from any further victimization through the legal system. He has already paid a very heavy price in terms of his health and mental state, and he needs supportive measures of rehabilitation and reintegration, not more punishment.”
With a possible end to the Biden administration looming in the next six months, State Department diplomats are running low on time to clean up the legal mess created by an era of rampant arbitrary U.S. detentions and CIA torture.
TITLE: Gazans ‘shackled and blindfolded’ at Israel hospital
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgygdr7vezo
EXCERPT: Medical workers in Israel have told the BBC that Palestinian detainees from Gaza are routinely kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded, sometimes naked, and forced to wear nappies – a practice one medic said amounted to “torture”.
A whistle-blower detailed how procedures in one military hospital were “routinely” carried out without painkillers, causing “an unacceptable amount of pain” to detainees.
Another whistle-blower said painkillers were used “selectively” and “in a very limited way” during an invasive medical procedure on a Gazan detainee in a public hospital.
He also said critically ill patients being held in makeshift military facilities were being denied proper treatment because of a reluctance by public hospitals to transfer and treat them.
One detainee, taken from Gaza for questioning by the Israeli army and later released, told the BBC his leg had to be amputated because he was denied treatment for an infected wound.
A senior doctor working inside the military hospital at the centre of the allegations denied that any amputations were the direct result of conditions there, but described the shackles and other restraints used by guards as “dehumanisation”.
The Israeli army said detainees at the facility were treated “appropriately and carefully”.
The two whistle-blowers the BBC spoke to were both in positions to assess the medical treatment of detainees. Both asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue among their colleagues.
Their accounts are supported by a report, published in February by Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, which said that Israel’s civilian and military prisons had become “an apparatus of retribution and revenge” and that detainees’ human rights were being violated - in particular their right to health.
Concerns over the treatment of sick and injured detainees have centred on a military field hospital, at the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel.
The field hospital was set up by Israel’s Health Ministry after the Hamas attacks specifically to treat Gazan detainees, after some public hospitals and staff expressed a reluctance to treat fighters captured on the day of the Hamas attacks.
Since then, Israeli forces have rounded up large numbers of people from Gaza and taken them to bases like Sde Teiman for interrogation. Those suspected of fighting for Hamas are sent to Israeli detention centres; many others are released back to Gaza without charge.
The army does not publish details of the detainees it is holding.
SEE ALSO:
Hostages of Israeli revenge in the Gaza Strip: Testimonies of 100 released Palestinian detainees reveal crimes of torture, cruel treatment
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6342/Hostages-of-Israeli-revenge-in-the-Gaza-Strip:-Testimonies-of-100-released-Palestinian-detainees-reveal-crimes-of-torture,-cruel-treatment
Palestinian mothers fear giving birth in Israeli prisons
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240521-palestinian-mothers-fear-giving-birth-in-israeli-prisons/
Israel releases Palestinian cancer patient held without charge for 22 months
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240521-israel-releases-palestinian-cancer-patient-held-without-charge-for-22-months/
Rights expert condemns death of Palestinian doctor in Israeli custody, urges independent inquiry
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/05/1149856