The Press Release from our partner in struggle, Witness Against Torture:

OVER 80 ARRESTED AT U.S. SUPREME COURT

DIRECT ACTION TODAY DEMANDED SHUT-DOWN OF GUANTANAMO AND AN END TO TORTURE AND INDEFINITE DETENTION

WASHINGTON, DC – Early this afternoon, at least 80 activists organized by Witness Against Torture delivered a message to the U.S. Supreme Court demanding the shut-down of the U.S. prison at Guantánamo and justice for those detained. About 40 activists were arrested inside the Court building and another 35 on the steps. The arrests, for demonstrating without a permit, followed a solemn march from the National Mall of 400 persons that included a procession of activists dressed like the Guantánamo prisoners in orange jumpsuits and black hoods. They were part of an International Day of Action that was endorsed by a broad and unprecedented coalition of over 100 groups and that included 83 events around the world.

The International Day of Action launches a concerted campaign to Shut Down Guantánamo. For more information, please visit www.witnesstorture.org.

Inside, a member of Witness Against Torture delivered a letter to the nine Supreme Court justices regarding Al Odah v. United States and Boumediene v. Bush, the two cases brought by Guantánamo detainees that the Court is now considering. They also delivered a writ of habeas corpus for each of the 275 current detainees. Other activists attempted to unfurl a banner inside the Court building but were prevented from doing so by police, who began arresting them and shut the front doors to the building. Another group then started reading the names of the Guantánamo prisoners, but were prevented. They then sat down and started chanting, “Shut it down!” prior to being arrested.

At approximately the same time, about 25 activists dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods representing the men imprisoned at Guantánamo knelt on the steps of the Court building with hands before them and bowed heads, the position detainees in Guantánamo are often required to assume; others unfurled a banner on the steps. They were arrested as well. Each arrestee had entered the building without ID, and was taken into custody under the name of one of the Guantánamo prisoners.

“This group brought the names of the victims of Guantánamo right to the Supreme Court,” said Elizabeth McAlister, a member of the Jonah House community in Baltimore and the mother of one of the persons arrested inside the Court. “The Court has listened and listened to the views of the imprisoned, but has not heard them.”

Outside the Court, advocates read testimonies and names of prisoners, performed street theater, and handed out information. One performance was a simulation of waterboarding, one of the most controversial torture tactics used at Guantánamo and other U.S. detention centers.

January 11, 2008 marks six years of detention without hope of release for nearly 300 men at Guantánamo. “Lawyers are working hard to bring the cases of the prisoners into the courts,” said Susan Crane of Witness Against Torture, who was arrested in today’s action. “But lawyers can only do so much. These prisoners, who have been illegally detained, tortured, abused, and kept from their families for years, are not even able to communicate openly with their lawyers. That’s why we were here today to appeal to the Supreme Court justices to stand up now and end this abuse.”

Witness Against Torture is calling on the U.S. government to:
* Repeal the Military Commissions Act and restore Habeas Corpus;
* Charge and try or release all detainees;
* Clearly and unequivocally forbid torture and all other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, by the military, the CIA, prison guards, civilian contractors, or anyone else;
* Pay reparations to current and former detainees and their families for violations of their human rights; and
* Shut down Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and all secret CIA detention facilities.

About Witness Against Torture
Tomorrow's action is the latest by Witness Against Torture, which came into being in December 2005 when a group of 24 friends walked to Guantánamo to visit the prisoners – an action following the nonviolent tradition of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. Upon returning to the U.S., they continued the work with public education and community outreach, networking and resource sharing, and acts of nonviolent civil resistance to draw attention to the plight of prisoners in Guantánamo and victims of the war on terrorism everywhere.

*** PROFESSIONAL, HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS AVAILABLE AT RESISTANCEMEDIA.ORG, OR BY CALLING (202) 270-6665 ***

Subjects: Campaign | Grassroots | Guantanamo | Supreme Court

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

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

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