latest news

Haneef team given immigration documents

June 17, 2008

Lawyers for former terrorism suspect Mohamed Haneef have been provided with more than 250 immigration department documents.

The lawyers are appealing to the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Brisbane for access to documents after the immigration department withheld them from release under freedom of information laws.

Dr Haneef's legal team plans to provide the documents to the judicial inquiry into the handling of their client's case.

Immigration department lawyers told the tribunal they could not release about 15 documents being sought by Dr Haneef's lawyers because they either contain national security information or advice to former immigration minister Kevin Andrews.

They argue the release of the documents would not assist the public.

The hearing continues.

ABC 16 June 2008

The Court of Appeal has ordered that Victorian man Jack Thomas must be retried on terrorism-related charges.

The 35-year-old Werribee man will be retried on charges that he accepted funds from a terrorist organisation and possessed a falsified Australian passport.

His convictions on both counts were quashed in 2006.

But the Crown argued he made admissions during an interview with the ABC's Four Corners program and should be retried.

The defence said the Crown knew about the interview during the first trial, and thus it could not be deemed fresh evidence.

But the Court of Appeal has rejected the defence submission.

His legal team is considering a High Court appeal.

Mr Thomas was not in the court for the finding, but his mother and brother were.

They did not comment.

Easier to say that Guantanamo should be closed than to work out how

Date: June 14 2008

William Glaberson
THE Guantanamo Bay cells will not close any day soon.

But the Supreme Court's decision has stripped away the legal premise for the remote prison camp that officials opened six years ago in the belief that American law would not reach across the Caribbean to a US naval station in Cuba.

And without that, much will change.

The decision gave prisoners the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts, meaning federal judges will have the power to check the Government's claims that the 270 men still held there are dangerous terrorists. That will force officials to answer questions they have long deflected about evidence despite international criticism and expressions of support, from the President, George Bush, down, for closing the camp.

Some cases are likely to result in court orders freeing detainees. The Government said yesterday that its prosecutions before military commissions at Guantanamo would continue, but habeas corpus suits resulting from the justices' decision are certain to complicate the 19 war crimes cases under way.

Just as important, some lawyers said, defending scores of cases would be a huge burden for the Government, and increase pressure inside the Bush Administration to send prisoners home.

Prisoners' lawyers have long said that the Government will not be able to justify the detention of many of the men. Pentagon officials, on the other hand, have maintained that classified evidence establishes that many of them are dangerous. The federal courts will now have the power to sort through those assertions.

Court ruling won't halt military trials

Date: June 14 2008

Anne Davies in Washington
THE Bush Administration will press ahead with military trials at Guantanamo Bay, says the US Attorney-General, Michael Mukasey, despite a Supreme Court ruling that prisoners could challenge their detentions before a civilian judge in the United States.

The Supreme Court, striking another blow to President George Bush's case for trying terrorism suspects in military courts, ruled on Thursday that inmates held at the military base in Cuba were entitled to protections provided under the US constitution.

But Mr Mukasey said the Administration would not halt the military trials. "I think it bears emphasis that the court's decision does not concern military commission trials, which will continue to proceed," he told reporters in Tokyo.

He was disappointed that it might "result in hundreds of actions challenging the detention of enemy combatants [being] moved to federal district court".

Lawyers for an alleged plotter of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and for Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, said they would use the ruling to argue that charges against their clients should be dismissed.

Navy Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer said he would try to stop the first scheduled war-crimes trial, of Hamdan, scheduled to start on July 14. "The entire legal framework under which Mr Hamdan was to be tried has been turned on its head," Commander Mizer said.

The ruling has also ignited a flashpoint in the presidential campaign, after the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, and his Republican rival, John McCain, sharply disagreed on the court ruling and its likely impact on the fight against terrorism.

upreme Court: Guantánamo Detainees Have Constitutional Right to Habeas Corpus
CCR, Co-Counsel Win Landmark Case
Contact: Press@ccrjustice.org
Washington, DC — In one of the most important human rights cases of the decade, the Supreme Court of the United States held today, in a 5-4 decision, that the men imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay have the constitutional right to habeas corpus.

One of the oldest and most basic legal protections, habeas corpus affords the incarcerated the right to stand before a judge and confront the charges presented against him or her. The Center for Constitutional Rights has been sending habeas counsel to represent the prisoners at the base since winning the first Guantánamo case, Rasul v. Bush, in 2004, and applauds today’s decision.

“The Supreme Court has finally brought an end to one of our nation’s most egregious injustices,” said CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren. “By granting the writ of habeas corpus, the Court recognizes a rule of law established hundreds of years ago and essential to American jurisprudence since our nation’s founding. With habeas you never would have had these men – so many of whom have been cleared of any wrongdoing – locked up and abused because no court was watching. In those cases, the government will now have to put up or shut up: it will have to show an impartial judge enough evidence to justify detention. This six-year-long nightmare serves as a lesson in how fragile our constitutional protections truly are in the hands of an overzealous executive.”

June 13, 2008
NEWS ANALYSIS
Detention Camp Remains, but Not Its Rationale

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
The Guantánamo Bay detention center will not close today or any day soon.

But the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday stripped away the legal premise for the remote prison camp that officials opened six years ago in the belief that American law would not reach across the Caribbean to a United States naval station in Cuba.

“To the extent that Guantánamo exists to hold detainees beyond the reach of U.S. courts, this blows a hole in its reason for being,” said Matthew Waxman, a former detainee affairs official at the Defense Department.

And without that, much will change.

The decision granted detainees the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts, meaning that federal judges will now have the power to check the government’s claims that the 270 men still held there are dangerous terrorists. That will force officials to answer questions about evidence that they have long deflected despite international criticism and expressions of support, from President Bush on down, for closing the camp.

Some cases, though no one can be sure how many, are likely to result in court orders freeing detainees. The government said Thursday that its prosecutions before military commissions at Guantánamo would continue, but habeas corpus suits resulting from the justices’ decision are certain to complicate the 19 war crimes cases under way, giving detainees’ lawyers a vehicle to try to stop those proceedings.

Just as important, some lawyers said, defending scores of cases will be a huge burden for the government, most likely increasing pressure inside the Bush administration to send detainees back to their home countries.

Abandonment of Habib is a tale of shame

Date: June 7 2008

Alan Ramsey
Mamdouh Habib is the Sydney bloke who came to Australia from Egypt 24 years ago, married the daughter of Lebanese migrants, fathered four children, became an Australian citizen and opened a cleaning business and a coffee shop in Lakemba. He spent years under surveillance by Australian security, travelled to Pakistan in July 2001, was picked up there three months later, flown secretly to Egypt by the Americans for "interrogation" in November 2001, transferred in chains to the US military's Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in May 2002, and released and flown home in January 2005.

At no time was Habib, a devout Muslim, ever charged with anything.

Kerry Nettle is the 34-year-old NSW Greens senator elected in 2001, who has spent the better part of five of her six years in the Senate trying to learn what the Howard government knew about Habib's detention in Pakistan in 2001 and his subsequent illegal "rendition" to Egypt for six months by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The Senate two days ago completed its latest round of estimates hearings. What Nettle learned from persistent questions to senior bureaucrats was the former government and its advisers knew everything and did nothing for Habib in Egypt or to protest to Washington.

I wonder if, in the time-out room of their souls, the former government's doughty little foot soldiers of freedom feel the odd shiver of embarrassment or shame.

The extent to which Messrs Howard, Ruddock and Downer were prepared to subvert some sacred principles might have brought normal mortals unstitched. But by all appearances they have kept their chins up and their rectitude unexamined.

The principle that they nearly wrestled to the ground and choked to death was that of the "fair trial".

As they abandoned David Hicks, an Australian citizen, to the spectacularly bogus "judicial" regime at Guantanamo Bay, we were told repeatedly that our fears were baseless, that the system the Americans had devised for the detainees there was fairness itself.

A cacophony of government claqueurs in the media cried their approval of that patent nonsense.

But the nonsense has been laid bare, with the military commissions system that plea-bargained with Hicks now in crisis and probably forever unworkable.

The military prosecutors themselves are saying Ruddock's and Downer's entirely "fair" trial system is unfair. Here are the most recent developments.

The Pentagon has dropped its military commission charges against the alleged 20th 911 hijacker and al-Qaeda terrorist Mohamed al-Qahtani. This man was branded the most evil of the evil; a member of the Guantanamo six, whose high-profile trials were to be a key plank in the Republicans' war-on-terror salvation.

What has become clear is that torture and torture-lite have blown up the al-Qahtani case. This bad boy was so bad that he was delivered a diet of sexual humiliation, attack dogs, stress positions and sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation, where have we heard about that before?

On 13 June, at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, award-winning journalist Leigh Sales addressed the difficult case of David Hicks and its implications for the global war on terror.

Now that Mr Hicks is back in an Australian prison, what lessons should we take from the drawn-out saga?  What has this case taught us about how the US and its allies are fighting the war on terror?  How are America’s detention policies (and in particular the facility at Guantanamo Bay) affecting that country’s international standing?  How is US public diplomacy faring?  And what does the Hicks case say about the state of the US-Australia alliance?

To listen to the podcast click here mp3

John Howard and Lord Downer should not be permitted to get away with the lies they fed us about the infamous American military commission set up to try David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay. While I think of it, add Philip Ruddock to the list.

Time and again these three wise monkeys assured us this commission would see justice done. It would be fair and proper in every way, conducted with scrupulous regard for the rights of the accused. "We are satisfied that the rules that have been established for the military commission will deliver a process which is consistent with the criminal justice system in our country," Howard assured the nation back in August 2004.

A year later, Lord Downer was equally firm. "We have examined very carefully the structure of the military commission," he huffed, with his usual fatuous air of wounded innocence. "We believe that the appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure that the trial is a fair trial."

At about the same time Ruddock felt able to announce, with bottomless understatement, that while these military commissions were "not precisely the same as our civilian courts dealing with criminal matters", they were nonetheless "an appropriate medium" for trying Hicks and his fiendish ilk.

The final nail in the coffin of their deceit was hammered home this week by Colonel Moe Davis, the US Air Force lawyer who had been the hapless prosecutor in the Hicks farce. Giving evidence under oath at the so-called trial of Osama bin Laden's former driver, Davis came clean. He admitted that the commission process had been politically driven from Washington and rigged for convictions.

And as he later told Time magazine: "There is no question they wanted me to stage show trials that have nothing to do with the centuries-old tradition of military justice in America."