The Pentagon has refused requests of three human rights groups to attend the upcoming military tribunal trials at Guantanamo. The reason given was "limited courtroom seating and other logistical issues.”

In a letter sent last week to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Amnesty International, Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) and Human Rights Watch protested their exclusion from the proceedings and urged the U.S. government to rethink its position.

Despite the Bush administration's promise that the commissions would be open to the public, the Pentagon has refused to grant any of these organizations permission to attend the proceedings. Over the last month, the Department of Defense has responded to written requests from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, with a brief statement that it intended only to provide seating for select members of the press and for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Georgetown Law Professor and civil liberties expert David Cole has an excellent op-ed on the detainees at Guantanamo in Sunday's Los Angeles Times (free subscription required). Here's a snippet:

The Supreme Court recently decided, over the government's objections, to take up legal challenges by the Guantanamo detainees and U.S. citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi. Only after that decision did the Pentagon announce that Hamdi would be allowed to talk to his lawyer, that the juveniles and several others at Guantanamo would be released and that the military would provide annual reviews for those still detained.

The Pentagon no doubt hopes that these initiatives will show that it can be trusted with wholly unchecked authority. But the fact that it made these overtures only when threatened with legal oversight underscores the necessity of the rule of law.

Guantanamo is, in short, the perfect symbol of what the administration has sought generally in the war on terrorism: the authority to act without the constraints of law. The nations of the world are concerned that we want that authority not only on an isolated leasehold in Cuba but in their backyards as well.

The Guardian/Observer has a special report of the five British detainees at Guantanamo who are to be sent back to Great Britain. It's called To Hell and Back.

Lawyers for the detainees are now convinced that the releases were designed to head off growing disquiet in the White House about their cases being heard in the Supreme Court in April. Two of the soon to be released Britons - Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal - were subjects of a petition to the court arguing that Camp Delta, although in Cuba, fell under American jurisdiction and under US law their detention without trial would be illegal. That only leaves an Australian, Mamdouh Habib, as the case's sole remaining active petitioner.

Stephen Watts, a lawyer for the four men, said that he would not be surprised if Habib was either released or put up to a military tribunal before the Supreme Court hearing. 'By doing this the US government can try and show the court there is a proper process going on here or that the case is no longer a live one,' Watts said.

Though it has controlled Guantanamo Bay for years, the US argues that it is sovereign Cuban soil and that it just rents the land under the terms of an agreement reached with the pre-Fidel Castro government in Havana. Castro has always refused to accept the annual US rent payments. As a result of the dispute the US base has fallen into a legal black hole which the prisoners' cases will challenge at the Supreme Court.

'All these releases and other things are designed to preserve what is essentially an American gulag in the Caribbean,' Watts said.

Guantanamo is expanding. Plans are being made to house up to 50,000 Haitian refugees at the military base--the refugees will be detained until they can be sent back to Haiti.

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Detained "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla, who has been held in a military brig for almost two years without charges or access to counsel, finally will be allowed to meet with his lawyer. From the DOD press release :

DoD is allowing Padilla access to counsel as a matter of discretion and military authority. Such access is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent. A similar decision to allow Yaser Esam Hamdi access to a lawyer was announced Dec. 2, 2003.

DoD has determined that such access will not compromise the national security of the United States, and DoD has determined that such access will not interfere with intelligence collection from Padilla, who is a U.S. citizen.

As a U.S. citizen, Padilla is not eligible for trial by military commission under the president’s military order of Nov. 13, 2001. Detention as an enemy combatant is not criminal in nature but is permitted under the law of war to prevent an enemy combatant from continuing to fight against the United States. Under the law of war, enemy combatants may be detained until the end of hostilities.

What kind of restrictions will be placed on Padilla's lawyer? Here's what Frank Dunham, the attorney for Yaser Hamdi, had to say after finally being allowed ot visit his client a few weeks ago:

Frank Dunham, Hamdi's lawyer, said Wednesday that he met with his client for about an hour but the government restrictions were prohibitive. Dunham said he wasn't permitted to ask Hamdi about the conditions of his confinement for the last two years. A Defense Department official sat in on the conversation, which was videotaped and monitored by intelligence officials.

"We didn't talk about anything that amounted to a hill of beans because what lawyer would want to ask his client any substantive question with the government sitting there watching?" he said.

Update: Arthur at Light of Reason has more, including the reaction of Padilla's lawyers:

It's so disheartening. They're throwing us a bone, as if we should be thrilled that they can now listen to our attorney-client conversations after my client's been held incommunicado, based on their say-so, for over a year and a half."

One of the detainees at Guantanamo worked as a driver on a farm owned by Osama bin Laden. He has been appointed a military lawyer who says the facts will be on his side during an anticipated military tribunal tiral.

Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan, 34, is now held in isolation at the terrorism prison in Cuba in segregated accommodations for prisoners facing possible military tribunals, said his lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift. ''He fully admits that he was an employee of Osama bin Laden'' from 1997 until the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in 2001. ``But he adamantly denies that he was ever a member of al Qaeda or engaged in any terrorist attack. He worked for Osama bin Laden solely for the purpose of supporting himself and his family.''

....Starting in 1997, Hamdan worked for bin Laden on his farm in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, Swift said, and drove a Toyota pickup truck. He sometimes ferried farm workers to the fields and sometimes transported around Afghanistan the al Qaeda mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Hamdan first went to Afghanistan in 1996, the lawyer said, intending to travel to Tajikistan to join Muslims there fighting former Soviet communists. He never made the trip but found the job with bin Laden that paid $200 a month, a huge sum for a poor Yemeni in impoverished Afghanistan.

''In respect to the prospect of a trial by military commission, he denies that he's a terrorist, al Qaeda or a combatant in the international conflict in Afghanistan. He is a civilian worker who was caught up in the war,'' Swift said.

At the time of his capture, he was alone and driving a borrowed car in a mountainous portion of eastern Afghanistan near Pakistan. He had just evacuated his pregnant wife and daughter to the safety of Pakistan, the lawyer said, and was returning the car.

Hamdan has a fourth grade education. Swift also described the conditions of his client's confinement:

He has been held in solitary confinement, segregated from the other Camp Delta prisoners in a windowless air-conditioned cell and permitted exercise only at night, ``so he never sees the sun.'' He suffers from arthritis, Swift said, which is aggravated by the prison's air conditioning. ''He gets cold, ironic in Cuba,'' he said.

Gee, we feel a lot safer knowing the Pentagon is going after the big guys. Hamdan sounds like a real threat.

Mohammed Ismail Agha was 15 when he was sent from Afganistan to Guantanamo. Here is his story:

[Agha] said he and a friend had left their farming community in search of work when Afghan militiamen stopped them. "They said, 'Come and join us,' but we told them we are poor people, jobless, and we don't want to join the militia, we want to earn money," Agha said. "Then they said, 'You are Taliban.' "

Agha said he was handed over to U.S. soldiers, who first took him to the southern city of Kandahar and then to Bagram, where he was held in solitary confinement. He lost track of his friend, Mohammed Wali, in Kandahar and has not seen him since.

He said U.S. forces interrogated him at Bagram Air Base, north of the capital, Kabul, about whether he was a Taliban supporter. Yet once he reached Cuba, there were few questions.

It turns out, Agha is not bitter about his experience:

"At first I was unhappy with the U.S. forces. They stole 14 months of my life," Agha said. "But they gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons. "For two or three days I was confused, but later the Americans were so nice with me, they were giving me good food with fruit and water for ablutions before prayer." Besides teaching him to read and write English, the military provided books in his native Pashto language and a Quran, Islam's sacred book.

Still, his family did not hear from him for ten months --that's how long it took to for them to receive a letter from him through the Red Cross--they did not know if he was dead or alive. Agha did not get a trial. He was not afforded a lawyer. No charges were ever brought against him.

Surely, if as he says, he was barely questioned after reaching Guantanamo, it should not have taken the U.S. military over a year to send him home. The young Mr. Agha is far more forgiving than we would be if he were our son.

[link via Left i on the News]

From Human Rights Watch:

“The United States is doing the right thing by returning three former child soldiers home for rehabilitation," said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “But other child soldiers are still detained at Guantanamo. They are also entitled to rehabilitation and special protection too, but aren’t getting it."

....The Department of Defense has confirmed that an unspecified number of other children, aged 16 and 17, are also detained at Guantanamo. In contrast to the three who were released, these children are not segregated from the adult population, and are not receiving education or rehabilitation assistance. International law generally defines children as all individuals under the age of 18.

“The United States is bound by law to provide rehabilitation for any former child soldiers within its jurisdiction," said Becker. “Rehabilitation does not happen in a cell in Guantanamo."

Here's what the U.S. should be doing:

International standards recognize that children under the age of 18 are a particularly vulnerable group, and are entitled to special care and protection because they are still developing physically, mentally and emotionally. These standards include certain key principles, including the use of detention only as a measure of last resort, the separation of children from adults, the right of children to maintain contact with their families, and the right to a prompt determination of their case. In addition, treaties binding on the United States recognize the special situation of children who have been recruited or used in armed conflict, and their rights to prompt demobilization, and rehabilitation and reintegration assistance.

bq. In cases where children are believed to have committed war crimes, they can be formally charged and should be provided with counsel and tried in accordance with international standards of juvenile justice.

Three teenagers held for more than a year at Guantanamo Bay have been freed. Details of their conditions of confinement are here. [Hat tip to Kitt, thanks.]

Update: The AP reports on the release. The three were younger than 16.

"The detention of children as 'enemy combatants' and their interrogation without even the basic safeguards to which they were entitled was a significant violation of human rights," William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A., said in a statement. "The release of these children is long overdue, but does not let the U.S. off the hook for continued violations of the rights of hundreds of other detainees."

The ACLU has filed its first complaint with the UN alleging that 9/11 suspects have been mistreated:

In the complaint, filed on behalf of 13 people arrested under federal authority shortly after the attacks, the ACLU asked the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to declare the treatment towards the immigrants to be "arbitrary" and the U.S. policies to be a violation of international law.

.....The ACLU is alleging that of the more than 750 immigrants detained mainly on immigration law violations within the first year after the attacks, many were not immediately told of the charges they faced, were denied access to attorneys and were not given "meaningful judicial review of their confinement."

From the ACLU press release:

We are filing this complaint before the United Nations to ensure that U.S. policies and practices reflect not just domestic constitutional standards, but accepted international human rights principles regarding liberty and its deprivations," said Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU, at the Geneva press briefing.

"With today's action, we are sending a strong message of solidarity to advocates in other countries who have decried the impact of U.S. policies on the human rights of their citizens," Romero added. "The ACLU will go where it must to seek justice for the men who were unfairly detained and deported by the U.S. government after September 11."

You can read the complaint here.

The families of British residents detained at Guantanamo plan to take their fight to the US--with the help of the ACLU:

Politicians, campaigners and lawyers joined relatives of the prisoners to launch the Guantanamo Human Rights Commission at the House of Commons. A delegation will travel to Washington in March to lobby politicians and raise awareness of the detainees' plight with the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union.

There are 9 Briton and 3 British residents among the 660 detainees at Camp Delta. Another 11 are from a variety of European countries, including France, Sweden and Germany.

We also want to keep mentioning that there are three 13 to 15 year olds being held at the camp, as well as an unknown number of 16 to 18 year olds.

Salim Gherebi is a detainee at Guantanamo. Last month, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case involving his brother that courts can consider petitions filed by detainees because the United States ''possesses and exercises all the attributes of sovereignty'' on the base. Salim has now brought his own lawsuit against President Bush and other federal officials, seeking $1.1 billion in damages for violating his consitutional rights. He is represented by Stephen Yagman of Los Angeles.

Since the 9th Circuit decision conflicts with a D.C. appeals court decision ruling the opposite way, the issue may well hit the Supreme Court. If it turns out Guantanamo detainees can sue, perhaps Mr. Gherebi has a case.