Today the Pentagon "transferred" eleven prisoners from Guantanamo to Jordan and Afghanistan. Such "transfers" are not transfers at all, but disappearances designed to hide torture by silencing survivors.

Today's disappearances destroy recent hopes that a court had brought this to an end. Expect more before December 5^th, when the Supreme Court will decide if the prisoners held at Guantanamo have a right to challenge their detention in U.S. court.

Subjects: Guantanamo | Transfers

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

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

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