UK: Charges to be reinstated against “betrayed” Guantanamo prisoner?
01 November 2008
On 16 October the US Justice Department dropped the key charge against the last British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, Binyam Mohamed (30), which alleged that he was involved with US citizen, Jose Padilla, in a plot to explode a “dirty bomb” in the USA (Padilla never faced charges in relation to the bomb plot because his status as a US citizen merited him the right to appear at a court under civilian jurisdiction where he was convicted of separate offences). Binyam has denied any connection with terrorism, including the so-called “dirty bomb” plot, and says that any confessions he made were extracted under torture. Five days later Reprieve, the charity which has supported the human and legal rights of prisoners detained unlawfully at Guantánamo Bay, announced that:
the US military has dropped all charges against Mr. Mohamed in his proposed trial by Military Commission at Guantanamo. Last night the so-called Convening Authority, Susan Crawford, dismissed all charges without prejudice.
However, this glimmer of hope was short-lived as the military has now informed Reprieve that they will place further charges after the US presidential election.
In early October Binyam, in statements released through
The Independent newspaper as he awaited trial in front of a Military Commission, spoke of his “betrayal” by the British government over its refusal to release evidence that would have demonstrated his innocence, (see
Statewatch supplement August 2008). He told the newspaper that MI5 agents were lying about their knowledge of his capture in Pakistan in May 2002 and the CIA’s rendition flight to Morocco in July 2002, where he was horrifically tortured for 18 months before being taken to Afghanistan and detained and abused for a further nine months in the notorious “Dark Prison”, near Kabul.
UK government lawyers have refused repeated requests from Binyam’s representatives to co-operate, arguing that they have no legal responsibility to do so. This led Binyam’s lawyers to sue the government, arguing that information was needed to mount an effective defence, which resulted in a judicial review in July. The review concluded that the Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, was “under a duty” to disclose information to Binyam’s lawyers; this was “not only necessary but essential for his defence” because the Foreign Secretary had accepted that Binyam had “established an arguable case” and that, until his transfer to Guantanamo:
he was subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States” [and was also] subject to torture during such detention by or on behalf of the United States.
In response to the judicial review, Binyam made the following statement on 11 August:
I have learned that the UK has refused to give my lawyers information to help me prove my innocence – and that the UK has taken the position in court that I will get all the information I could possibly need through the rigged military courts, or through the “habeas” process.
How can they possibly be taking this position? Lord Steyn himself called these commissions “kangaroo courts” years ago, and he was exactly right. And I understand the official UK position to be that the commissions were unfair, and illegal, and that Britons should never be forced to go through them.
So how, then, can they say that the very people who tortured me, rendered me, and now want to try me in a kangaroo court will just hand over the evidence of their own criminal acts? For the UK to say this is naïve, at the best, and a betrayal, at worst.
And as for habeas – I have been here for over six years, and I have yet to see a single scrap of proof come out of habeas. Why should I, or the UK, think it will be different now?
The UK has spoken to me. The UK knows, I believe, what I go through every day. The UK should understand that no person could withstand this kind of treatment for much longer. To leave me in these conditions and, to add insult to injury, to defend the rigged process I am facing here is a disgrace. I hope the UK government will reconsider its position before it is too late.”
Two weeks after the US dropped the charges against Binyam Mohamed in October, the British government eventually plucked up the courage to refer the case to the Attorney General to investigate potential prosecution of those who rendered him for torture. Meanwhile the US military has informed Reprieve that they plan to charge Binyam again “after the [US presidential] election.” While president-elect Obama has described Guantanamo is a “sad chapter in American history” and stated that the military tribunal system has not worked, his advisors are said to be working on a plans for more “special courts” which will remove those cases deemed sensitive from the protections of civilian law.
Currently, there are around 250 detainees still incarcerated without trial in the infamous gulag. At least 50 of these people have been cleared by the US for release, but because of their branding as terrorists and subsequent removal from the protection of the law, they now face further persecution as terrorists in their countries of origin. The US refuses to allow these victims of their justice system into the United States but has been unable to find anyone else to take them. In October US district judge Ricardo Urbina said that 17 Uirghur prisoners, cleared for release from Gunatanamo by the military in 2004, should be released and sent to the USA as there was no evidence that they were combatants or a security risk – they are still in limbo at Guantanamo Bay.
To date two men have been pronounced guilty by the US military court system. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a 40-year-old Yemeni national, was deemed “guilty” of material support for terrorism but innocent of conspiracy charges and sentenced to five and a half years: it is a measure of the US concept of justice that, even if he had been acquitted on all counts, the US government had reserved the right to hold Hamdan indefinitely. In early November Al Hamza al-Bahlul (39) from Yemen was convicted by nine military officers on 35 charges and sentenced to life in prison; the so-called “evidence” against him went unchallenged as Bahlul refused to call witnesses or to stage a defence after being refused permission to defend himself.
Robert Verkaik “Briton held in Guantanamo hits out at ‘disgraceful’ UK Government” The Independent 10.9.08;
Reprieve News release “In a plea from Guantanamo, Binyam Mohammed talks of “betrayal” by the UK” 12.9.08;
Reprieve “US Justice Department drops “dirty bomb plot” allegation against Binyam Mohamed”;
Reprieve press release “US Military Drops Guantanamo Charges Against British Resident Binyam Mohamed” 23.10.08.