Abdallah Higazy is a man who has admitted his involvement in the attacks of September 11^th, yet he walks free today. Despite the confession, the FBI discovered that he is innocent and released him. Why did Higazy, an innocent man, confess to involvement in such a horrible crime? He claims that the confession was coerced, and FBI Agent Templeton, who extracted the false confession, does not deny it. Higazy is suing the FBI for coercing the confession.

The Second Court of Appeals recently decided to let Higazy's case move forward and posted the opinion on their website. The opinion on their website does not describe the techniques the FBI agent used to coerce the confession because that information is classified. Where the description of the interrogation would be, it reads "this opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, [FBI agent] Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."

The exact details of the interrogation techniques the FBI and CIA use on suspected terrorists are classified. An unfortunate, yet predictable, effect of maintaining secrecy about how interrogations are conducted is that the secrecy is impossible to maintain if innocent people are released from the prison and allowed to speak about their experiences.

Once questioned, a prisoner has secret information. An innocent prisoner can not be released, or allowed to tell her story, without potentially compromising the secrecy of the interrogation system. The Bush Administration even argued that prisoners held in secret in clandestine CIA-run prisons should not be allowed to speak to lawyers because they possessed the classified information of what was done to them during interrogations. Until a court recently ordered it to stop, the Pentagon has been attempting to silence Guantanamo prisoners cleared for release by 'transferring' or 'repatriating' them to prisons of brutal dictators where they can not tell their stories. So many prisoners have been 'transferred' out of Guantanamo that the population is less than half its previous size.

In addition to the obvious, that secret interrogation techniques might hide torture, secret interrogation techniques make releasing innocents difficult.

The redacted section of the Higazy opinion was accidentally posted on the Second Court of Appeals website, and was copied before they removed it. How Appealing, a legal blog, posted the opinion with the redacted section explaining what techniques produced the false confession. The Court of Appeals demanded that the opinion be taken down because it contains classified information, but How Appealing bravely refused.

We now know the interrogation technique that the state argues needs to be kept a secret for national security purposes: Agent Templeton discussed details about Higazy's family, who live in Egypt, and threatened to have them tortured by the Egyptian authorities if Higazy didn't confess.

Subjects: District Courts | Tortured Evidence | Transfers

In recent weeks, Colonel Morris Davis has added his voice to those of numerous human rights advocates decrying the system of show trials created by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, a law that the survivors of torture at TASSC International have renamed the "Torture Law." Davis is an unlikely candidate to voice such opinions as, until recently, he was the chief prosecutor of military commissions and one of the system's most vocal defenders. Were it not for his recent change of heart he would probably be remembered as a torture apologist and the first prosecutor in modern history to try a child soldier for war crimes.

We came to know Davis through his interviews with the media where he regularly defended the Torture Law and attacked the credibility of survivors. He dismissed claims of torture in Guantanamo as al Qaeda propaganda. (The FBI disagrees.) On the 10^th anniversary of the UN Day in Support of Torture Victims and Survivors, June 26, 2007, Davis published an op-ed in the New York Times defending Guantanamo and the system of Military Commissions.

In addition to publishing his defense of Guantanamo and the Torture Law on the UN Day in Support of Torture Victims and Survivors – an insult to survivors everywhere – Davis mocked those of us who questioned the legitimacy of Military Commissions. According to Davis, we were saying that "if a defendant does not get a trial that looks like Martha Stewart's and ends like O. J. Simpson's, then military commissions are flawed."

He has since learned from experience what the survivors who demand the repeal of the Torture Law could easily see, and retired in anger. He explains his reasons for retiring by saying that he felt he "was being pressured to do something less than full, fair and open." Today Davis's statements sound similar to how ours sounded then. Davis recently said that he "think[s] it's a disgrace to call it a military commission, it's a political commission" designed to produce a predetermined result.

Coming from the former chief prosecutor of military commissions, who spent the final months of his career attacking anyone who would question the justice of the military commissions system, Davis's remarks are devastating to the little credibility that military commissions have left.

Subjects: Guantanamo | Military Commissions | Prosecuting Children

Today all ten Democrats on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, but disgustingly none of the nine Republicans, signed a letter to Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey demanding that he clearly state if he believes waterboarding is illegal. The letter cited numerous sources, including the Military and State Department, stating that waterboarding is, and always has been, a barbaric form of torture.

The only clarification Mukasey gave during his confirmation hearing was to say that "if it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional." And that is probably all he will say. Mukasey was clear about why he won’t clarify his stance on the legality of waterboarding or other forms of torture, such as mock execution and sexual humiliation.

There are people who are using coercive techniques and who are being authorized to use coercive techniques.

Coercive techniques are torture. The people who are using torture are CIA officers and those authorizing torture include the President, Vice President and lawyers in the Justice Department Mukasey hopes to lead.

People in the US government are committing and authorizing torture, terrible crimes against humanity, and Mukasey does not want them to go to jail. In his own words, labeling waterboarding as torture “is going to put their careers or freedom at risk.”

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, one of the last acts of the Republican congress, is what created the insane legal framework where torture can not be prosecuted unless the executive branch labels it torture. Mukasey understands this well; to label what is happening as torture would destroy the legal immunity that the Military Commissions Act created.

Stopping Mukasey’s confirmation is important, and let’s hope the Democrats finally take a stand. But repealing the Miltary Commissions Act is the only way to end the culture of torture and impunity.

Subjects: Immunity | Justice Department

TASSC International, and the Campaign to Repeal the Torture Law, would like to thank Cesar Maxit of RVLTN Design for designing this ad, which will run in SOA Watch's program for the vigil at Fort Benning:

Subjects: Campaign | Grassroots | TASSC International | TortureLaw.org

One year ago today, President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, the Torture Law.

As we did then, we gathered outside the White House for a symbolic funeral procession, mourning the death of our basic civil liberties. This year we were joined by our partner in struggle, Amnesty International.

Hopefully next year we will have repealed the Military Commissions Act, stepped out of the dark shadow of torture, and won't have to mourn at yet another symbolic funeral.

Photos From This Year

Photos From Last Year

Subjects: Campaign | Grassroots | President Bush | TASSC International

Last week Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an injunction preventing the Pentagon from 'transferring' a prisoner, Mohammed Abdul Rahman, from Guantanamo to his native Tunisia.

Such 'transfers' are not transfers at all, but disappearances to hide torture by silencing survivors.

Judge Kessler’s injunction is a welcome sliver of hope that courts will finally limit the Adminstration’s torture operation in Guantanamo."This is the first time," Mr. Rahman's attorney Joshua Denbeaux told the Washington Post, "that the judicial branch has exercised its inherent power to control the excesses of the executive as to treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The executive has now been told it cannot bury its Guantanamo mistakes in Third World prisons."

But Mr. Denbaux might have overstated the value of the case. The injunction applies only to Mr. Rahman and only until the Supreme Court decides if the prisoners held at Guantanamo will be allowed to file habeas corpus petitions in US courts.We can hope, though, that other judges follow Judge Kessler’s courageous lead.

The United States has never charged Mr. Rahman with a crime. Why, then, can’t he file a petition for habeas corpus? Because the Military Commissions Act stripped him of the right to challenge his detention in US courts.

Thus, he could be detained forever or transferred anywhere, without our courts ever considering whether he violated any law or was held in violation of United States or international law.

Judge Kessler issued the injunction because she found that Mr. Rahman could face “irreparable harm” if he is transferred to Tunisia — it would do him little good if he ultimately is allowed to challenge his detention if he is already being held and tortured in Tunisia (the two Guantanamo prisoners already transferred to Tunisia claim to have been tortured upon arrival).

Over 400 prisoners have already been 'transferred' or 'repatriated' out of Guantanamo, many into prisons of dictators that regularly practice torture and are not known for giving prisoners a fair trial.

These transfers have one purpose: to silence Guantanamo prisoners. We cannot try them, for if we do that a court may find them innocent. And if they are found innocent, they might talk about what we did to them.

So we transfer them to torture chambers around the world, confident that men such as Mr. Rahman will not be able to tell their story from a cell in a prison in Tunisia.

Subjects: District Courts | Guantanamo | Supreme Court | Transfers

Former President Carter describes the Military Commissions Act on CNN yesterday:

The United States tortures prisoners in violation of international law, former President Carter said Wednesday.

"I don't think it. I know it," Carter told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights," Carter said. "We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused."

Carter also said President Bush creates his own definition of human rights.

Subjects: Language | Miscellaneous

The First Set of Disappearances Were Called Extraordinary Renditions

While extraordinary renditions were the sanitized words the US Government, and, sadly, the media, used to label the disappearances, there was nothing extraordinary about them.

The CIA used the same tactics that survivors of torture everywhere have come to know all too well. Without an arrest, without charges, in darkness or in shadows, people were disappeared, drugged, hooded, and sent to a clandestine prison where they were tortured.

After denying the existence of CIA-run secret prisons for years, the Bush administration now claims to have closed them. As always the case when governments disappear people, we may never know what happened to all of the prisoners. We do know that at least some of the prisoners were transferred to DoD custody and sent to Guantanamo.

The Second Set of Disappearances Are Being Called 'Transfers' and Are Happening Now

If extraordinary renditions were the sanitized words used to describe the first set of disappearances, transfer and repatriation are the sanitized words being used to describe the second set of disappearances.

Yesterday, the Department of Defense 'transferred' eight more prisoners from Guantanamo to governments where torture and indefinite detentions are common. According to the DoD, six prisoners (the Pentagon uses the sanitized term 'detainees') were 'transferred' to Afghanistan, one was 'transferred' to Libya and one to Yemen.

Languishing in those countries’ prisons is an unfortunate fate for men that the US Government has already held for years, likely tortured, and is only releasing now because prosecutors lack any evidence to prove their guilt. As with all disappearances, authorities have refused to release even the names of the prisoners.

These eight are the latest in a series of transfers – disappearances – as the government attempts to escape from the legal pit it climbed into while attempting to bypass the Geneva Convention and US Constitution. So deep in the dark hole of torture, the only option they see is to keep digging.

Much like the Military Commissions Act, the law created to govern Guantanamo, the 'transfer' and 'repatriation' of prisoners is designed to look good on paper. DoD press releases state that 'the transfer is a demonstration of the United States' desire not to hold detainees any longer than necessary.' 

But, much like the Military Commissions Act, the transfers continue a system of disappearances and torture. Much like the Military Commissions Act, the transfers are a PR stunt that hides torture and denies survivors any hope of ever telling their story and seeking justice.

The men 'transferred' yesterday may never see a day in court. They may never get to tell their stories. Along with the Military Commissions Act – the Torture Law – we must demand that the second set of disappearances comes to an end.

Subjects: Guantanamo | Language | Transfers