In the most serious suicide attempt yet among the Guantanamo detainees, a prisoner in his 20's was found hanging in his cell. Officials would not say whether the man was on life support or would survive, however, the situation was serious enough that his home country (not revealed to the public) was notified.

The latest attempt comes at a time when commanders, grappling with despair among long-held detainees facing neither trial nor charge, are building barracklike compounds for some prisoners as part of a reward system for cooperation with their captors. More than 600 prisoners from 43 countries are now held in seven-by-eight-foot cagelike cells. An undisclosed number of them are under suicide watch.

Vienna Colucci, an international justice specialist at Amnesty International, confirmed the possibility of a link between the prisoners' detention and the suicide attempts.

'Prisoners' limited contact with the outside world and the uncertainty of their futures, combined with other conditions of treatment, may cause severe physical and psychological damage, particularly when imposed long-term or indefinitely,'' she said.

``That prisoners are repeatedly attempting to take their own lives indicates the human cost of the indefinite legal limbo into which they have been thrown.''

Medical personnel at one point last year reported that dozens of prisoners had tried to kill themselves. McWilliams later said fewer than a dozen episodes fit the strict definition of a suicide attempt and that others qualified as ``self-harm incidents.''

None of the earlier suicide attempts resulted in a prisoner's being declared in ''serious condition,'' a military spokesman said, adding that the hanging victim was the only detainee in custody at Guantánamo now in serious condition.

Why are we still holding these men in the absence of criminal charges and so long past the time when they would have divulged any helpful information to their captors if they had it? Given the increasing likelihood that U.S. troops are headed to war in Iraq, aren't we just providing that country's leaders with an excuse to cruelly treat any of our military personnel who are captured? We certainly think so.

Alex Gourevitch of American Prospect exposes Ashcroft's foreigner registration program as perhaps not being mandated by Congress at all. As to whom the program has brought in so far:

To date, the program has not been a complete waste of effort: Martinez points out that it has led to the arrest of "a wife beater, narcotics dealer and very serious violent offenders." But that isn't exactly the same as catching terrorists. And if what we really want is to catch wife beaters, narcotics dealers and violent offenders, the Justice Department should simply require everyone in America to show up and register.

RTWT.

The New York Times today justly takes the Administration to task for its failure to respectThe Right to Counsel in the case of Jose Padilla:

The administration is treating the right to counsel in these cases as an inconvenience and possible impediment to investigators. But under our system of law, all defendants, even alleged terrorists, are innocent until proven guilty. Without access to a lawyer, people thrown in prison on terrorism charges cannot protest their innocence, assert their constitutional right to a speedy trial or otherwise challenge their confinement.

It is always easier for law enforcement if defendants do not know their rights. But the Sixth Amendment provides that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." As the Supreme Court explained in the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963, the "noble ideal" of a fair trial cannot be achieved if a defendant has to face his accusers without access to a lawyer.

The Bush administration should let Mr. Padilla meet with his lawyer, and it should start respecting the right to counsel guaranteed by the Constitution.

A hunger strike by six detained immigrants in a New Jersey jail is entering its second week. The men want to be able to hug their children during visits. If they were transferred to another jail in New Jersey, that could happen--but authorities refuse to transfer them.

"I'm going to keep going until I'm dead or I see my daughter," vowed Saleh Hamza, a Lebanese man whose daughter was born after he was arrested 13 months ago on immigration charges."

These men are not being held for criminal violations. They are in jail for visa and immigration violations in the wake of Sept. 11.

One of the men, a Palestinian, is raising a different issue. He is objecting to his continued detention. He was arrested for not obeying a deportation order. But he is stateless--there is no place for the Government to send him, so they keep him in jail. Despite the fact that in 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Zadvydas v. Davis that the INS cannot indefinitely detain individuals who have been ordered deported, but cannot be removed in the foreseeable future.

The Judge in the case of detained "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla blasted Government lawyers yesterday for creating more obstacles to Padilla's lawyers' ability to meet with him.

The Government has contended that Padilla is an "enemy combatant" and not entitled to meet with counsel. Padilla's lawyers contend he is not a terrorist and has no information to provide the Government.

On December 4, Judge Michael Mukasey ordered the Government to allow Padilla to meet with his lawyers. He ruled that Padilla had the right to bring a habeas corpus petition to challenge his detention. The challenge will be limited to the issues of whether the Government had some evidence to support its finding that Padilla was an enemy combatant, and whether events subsequent to his detention rendered that evidence irrelevant.

Despite the Court's Order, the Government still has not allowed Padilla to meet with his counsel. At the hearing today, the Government said allowing such a meeting would jeopardize national security. The Judge didn't buy it and neither do we.

We don't see how allowing Mr. Padilla to meet with his lawyers and have a hearing on the legality of his continued detention is a threat to national security. On the other hand, keeping Padilla in indefinite detention without charges, without access to counsel and without an opportunity to be heard is a threat to the Bill of Rights and the civil liberties of all Americans.

The matter was continued until January 29.

A Florida immigration court has granted political asylum to two Haitian men. That's two of the more than 200 Haitians who have been detained since October when their freighter ran onto some ground off Biscayne Bay.

The Haitians have sought political asylum "because of their allegiance to a coalition group opposing Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide....Most of the initial asylum requests from the group of Haitians who arrived Oct. 29 have been denied. The Haitians have had their asylum hearings fast-tracked and found it difficult to get legal representation to help them steer through the process. "

But last week a group of Catholic Bishops wrote to President Bush decrying the continued detention of the Haitians. The Bishops asked the Presidents to allow the immigrants to remain free while waiting for a decision on their asylum requests. In the letter, the Bishops charged it was "indefensible and inequitable" to detain Haitians automatically and deny them access to legal representation. The Bishops contend the Government has failed to articulate ... a "security-based rationale for the continued detention of those who seek only freedom for themselves and their children from political persecution and human rights violations in Haiti."

Last December, President Bush signed an Executive Order declaring a new policy that all immigrants arriving in the U.S. illegally by ship would be detained pending final decisions on their asylum claims. All except Cubans, who under a law passed in 1966, are allowed to remain in the community, with relatives or sponsors. The Executive Order allows the INS to continue to detain the Haitians even after an immigration judge has ordered them released on bail. The Government says it detains Haitians as a deterrent to others in Haitai trying to make the journey to the U.S. Critics attack the discriminatory treatment, asking why Haitians must remain in jail while Cubans are allowed to remain at liberty.

The Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center has been providing legal services to the Haitians and others for the past six years. The Government gives them four booths at the Miami Krohn Detention Center in which to meet with clients. Recently the Government took the booths away from the Group, leaving the immigrants with no legal counsel.

We agree with the Bishops that the detention of Haitians is "unfair and morally reprehensible." The Bishops charged in a press statement that "the federal government, through the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, has failed to articulate a compelling moral or security-based rationale for the continued detention of those who seek only freedom for themselves and their children from political persecution and human rights violations in Haiti."

The Haitians have a friend in Florida Senator and potential Democratic presidential nomination contender Bob Graham., who is an outspoken critic of the Administration's policy toward them.

We hope the latest two releases of Haitian asylum seekers marks a change of policy that will be extended to the remaining detained Haitians.

(link via Jim Cappozola of Rittenhouse Review.)

[note: we did the research for this on Lexis late last night and apparently didn't save the source news articles - hopefully we didn't copy directly from them, and if we did, we're sorry--if we did and anyone sends us the source article, we'll edit and provide proper attribution.]

[comments now closed]

Fresh off its win in the Hamdi case, the "Bush administration asked a federal judge in New York last night to reverse his decision allowing a Jose Padilla, the man suspected in a plot to detonate a radioactive bomb, access to a lawyer to challenge his detention as an enemy combatant."

"In a new court filing, the government disclosed that Mr. Padilla has been under interrogation by military personnel for several months. The government said letting a lawyer into the process "would threaten permanently to undermine the military's efforts to develop a relationship of trust and dependency that is essential to effective interrogation." That could "set back his interrogations by months, if not derail the process permanently."

This is what we mean when we say, with respect to constitutional rights, give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

Although it's still early, our vote for editorial of the day goes to the Virginia Pilot for Liberty in Limbo in the Norfolk Brig, and its sharp rebuke of the decision of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Yaser Hamdi case:

Americans who fear government abuse of power should be concerned by the constitutional no man's land in which Yaser Esam Hamdi finds himself. A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the government can hold indefinitely a U.S. citizen arrested overseas in wartime, without any constitutional protections, if the military merely declares him an ``enemy combatant....''

The Richmond-based panel included possible Supreme Court nominee J. Harvie Wilkinson III. It said that because the Constitution empowers the executive branch to wage war, the judiciary must defer to the military when cases like Hamdi's arise..... (emphasis is our's)

As justification to jail Hamdi indefinitely, the government relied on a meager two-page statement from a mid-level Defense Department appointee not even present at Hamdi's capture. Hamdi has not seen -- and now cannot see -- the evidence against him. Nor will he be allowed a chance to present his version of the facts, or even contest that he was an enemy combatant in the first place....

In this ill-defined, undeclared war, some of our freedoms will likely be sacrificed to ensure our collective security. But Americans have always been able to look to the courts for reason, fairness and defense of liberties. With this decision, the judiciary has abdicated its duty to act as a check on executive branch power in wartime. File this away: The government can now label someone an enemy combatant, imprison him indefinitely and never have to defend or justify the accusation.

Update: Best of the Blogs (The Daily Dish Digest) picks up on this Pilot editorial, and about “possible Supreme Court nominee J. Harvie Wilkinson III, asks, ”Would a sitting judge sell out his country’s hard-earned freedoms and whore himself for a chance to play the Big Room? You bet your ass, Red Ryder."

Ashcroft's goal to clear the immigration appeals board's backlog has resulted in members deciding cases and issuing deportation orders in minutes, a process that is being assailed by critics.

"A Justice Department overhaul of the immigration appeals system, often the last stop for people fighting deportation, has prompted a barrage of unusually fast rulings rendered without explanation -- and an outcry about noncitizens' rights to due process."

The Board of Immigration Appeals hears the cases of foreigners who contend they face torture, death or other "travails" if they are returned to their home country".

The 23 member board reviews the cases of 220 immigration judges around the country. There is a backlog of 56,000 cases, and Ashcroft has decreed it must be current by March 25.

"In turn, immigrants are appealing to the federal court system in unprecedented numbers, creating another backlog, The Times found in a survey of federal appellate courts. "Immigrant advocates say the speedup is the latest in a series of actions compromising the rights of noncitizens in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks."

T. Alexander Aleinikoff, a law professor at Georgetown University and former Immigration and Naturalization Service general counsel said "We are already seeing results: Many, many cases are decided at a speed that makes it impossible to believe they got the scrutiny a person who faces removal from the United States deserves."

"The Justice Department also plans to cut the Board of Immigration Appeals in half -- from 23 members to 11 -- once the backlog is reduced, even though Ashcroft had expanded the board in 2001."

"The pending cutback has focused acute pressure on individual board members to process cases swiftly. Ashcroft has said that productivity -- broadly, the number of rulings each board member makes -- is one of the factors he will consider in determining who stays on the board."

Human Rights Watch ( HRW), based in New York, has written to President Bush, urging him to investigate allegations that suspected al-Qaeda and Taleban detainees are being tortured. Here are their allegations and the text of the letter.

The letter says that immediate steps must be taken "to clarify that the use of torture is not US policy." The group says that otherwise the Bush administration risks criminal prosecution in almost any national criminal court.

At issue are the CIA's "stress and defense" techniques that include "keeping prisoners "standing or kneeling for hours" while hooded or wearing spray-painted goggles, holding them in "awkward, painful positions" and depriving them of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights."

"Diane F. Orentlicher, a professor of international law at American University, said she believes the CIA techniques are a clear violation of international law. She noted that the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 1978 that the use by British forces in North Ireland of five similar techniques -- hooding, forced standing, deprivation of sleep, subjection to noise and deprivation of food and drink -- were not torture. But, Orentlicher said, the European court found that such methods were "inhuman and degrading," and therefore illegal under various treaties. "One way or the other, it's clearly prohibited," she said."

The letter is a reaction to last week's Washington Post article which we wrote about at length here.

For our post on the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute which Bush refused to sign thereby preventing the U.S. from participating in the promulgation of the Court's rules, go here.

At what point do U.S. officials holding foreign detainees and prisoners cross the line between acceptable interrogation techniques and torture? It seems to us that the U.S. is operating under an "end justifies the means" philosophy--trying to justify tactics that anyone with an ounce of humanity would know amount to torture--under the rubric that the terrorist threat to Americans is so potentially catastrophic that such treatment is necessary.

We're not buying into the argument. We find these tactics to be a gross violation of human rights. They are also dangerous to our own servicemen and women: If we treat the citizens of other countries this way, why won't these other countries retaliate with similar or harsher treatment when they capture members of our military?

Quoting from today's Washington Post article, U.S. Decries Abuse But Defends Interrogations :

"Those who refuse to cooperate inside this secret CIA interrogation center are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, according to intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation methods. At times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights -- subject to what are known as "stress and duress" techniques. Those who cooperate are rewarded with creature comforts, interrogators whose methods include feigned friendship, respect, cultural sensitivity and, in some cases, money. Some who do not cooperate are turned over -- "rendered," in official parlance -- to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture has been documented by the U.S. government and human rights organizations."

The Bush Administration has been non-forthcoming about how it interrogates its prisoners. "But interviews with several former intelligence officials and 10 current U.S. national security officials -- including several people who witnessed the handling of prisoners -- provide insight into how the U.S. government is prosecuting this part of the war."

"The picture that emerges is of a brass-knuckled quest for information, often in concert with allies of dubious human rights reputation, in which the traditional lines between right and wrong, legal and inhumane, are evolving and blurred."

"While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary. They expressed confidence that the American public would back their view. The CIA, which has primary responsibility for interrogations, declined to comment."

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists."

We aren't talking about Guantanamo Bay here. "In contrast to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where military lawyers, news reporters and the Red Cross received occasional access to monitor prisoner conditions and treatment, the CIA's overseas interrogation facilities are off-limits to outsiders, and often even to other government agencies. In addition to Bagram and Diego Garcia, the CIA has other secret detention centers overseas, and often uses the facilities of foreign intelligence services."

"Free from the scrutiny of military lawyers steeped in the international laws of war, the CIA and its intelligence service allies have the leeway to exert physically and psychologically aggressive techniques, said national security officials and U.S. and European intelligence officers." Like sending prisoners to countries where torture will be inflicted. Like sleep deprivation, which even the U.S. Department has acknowledged is torture.

"The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the authoritative interpreter of the international Convention Against Torture, has ruled that lengthy interrogation may incidentally and legitimately cost a prisoner sleep. But when employed for the purpose of breaking a prisoner's will, sleep deprivation "may in some cases constitute torture."

"The State Department's annual human rights report routinely denounces sleep deprivation as an interrogation method. In its 2001 report on Turkey, Israel and Jordan, all U.S. allies, the department listed sleep deprivation among often-used alleged torture techniques."

We really encourage you to read the whole article--we take great issue with national security officials who say the American public would back their techniques. Kharma. What goes around comes around.

We've reported on the new regulation requiring men from various middle eastern nations to register with the Government by this past Monday.

500 - 700 California men who voluntarily appearied at the required location to register and have their fingerprints taken were arrested by the INS sparking major protests in California where the arrests were heavier than other places in the country. In Los Angeles, 25% of the men who showed up were arrested.

The rally against the arrests drew approximately 3,000 protesters, some with signs saying "What Next? Concentration Camps?" and "Detain Terrorists not Innocent Immigrants."

"Many of those arrested, according to their lawyers, had already applied for green cards and, in some instances, had interviews scheduled in the near future. Although they had overstayed their visas, attorneys argue, their clients had already taken steps to remedy the situation and were following the regulations closely."

"One attorney, who said he saw a 16-year- old boy pulled from the arms of his crying mother, called it madness to believe the registration requirements would catch terrorists. "

"His mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going to come home -- she is losing her mind," said attorney Soheila Jonoubi, who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting to determine the status of her clients. Jonoubi said the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband, the boy's stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence, the lawyer said."

A 16 year old who entered this country lawfully is permanently separated from his parents who are legal residents? That makes us sick to even think about. What country is this? We don't recognize it as America. But we can tell you whose country it is: Bush and Ashcroft's.