Today's Stories

May 19, 2009

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

May 8-10, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls

Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Steve Niva
Iraq: The Return of the Suicide Bombers

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?

Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers

Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions

Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum

Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods

Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?

Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America

Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?

David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions

Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War

Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War

Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?

Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context

Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers

Robert Fantina
Party of Rush

Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?

Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer

Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us

Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra

Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In: A Vampire Visits a Welfare State

Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names

Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker

Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie: Surprisingly Familiar

Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

May 19, 2009

The Quality of Gitmo "Evidence"

A Prison Built on Lies

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

As the Obama administration prepares to relaunch Dick Cheney and David Addington’s reviled Military Commissions (with claims that they will be used for less than 20 of the 241 prisoners still held), senior officials have been largely silent about the eventual fate of the rest of the prisoners, with the exception of a few recent remarks indicating that they are also thinking of pressing for a form of “preventive detention” for 50 to 100 of the prisoners.

The irony -- that all the prisoners have been enduring a form of “preventive detention” for over seven years -- is apparently lost on the government, which has also maintained a resolute silence in response to a handful of habeas corpus cases (in which the prisoners are seeking to have their cases dismissed by the courts, as mandated by the Supreme Court last June) that have resulted in judges pouring scorn on the government’s supposed evidence.

In an article last week, “Judge Condemns Guantánamo Intelligence,” I analyzed a devastating ruling by District Court Judge Gladys Kessler in the habeas corpus hearing of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed. A Yemeni, Ali Ahmed has always maintained that he was a student, staying in a guest house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and that, when he was seized in a raid on the house, on March 28, 2002, he had no knowledge that the house was, apparently, tangentially connected to the alleged senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. Furthermore, in response to the government’s other allegations, he has also “denie[d] ever going to Afghanistan, training at an al-Qaeda camp, fighting against anyone, or being a member of a terrorist group.”

Authorizing Ali Ahmed’s habeas claim, Judge Kessler demolished the government’s case against him, painting a disturbing picture of unreliable allegations made by other prisoners who were tortured, coerced, bribed or suffering from mental health issues, and a “mosaic” of intelligence, purporting to rise to the level of evidence, which actually relied, to an intolerable degree, on second- or third-hand hearsay, guilt by association and unsupportable suppositions.

This follow-up article looks in depth at Ali Ahmed’s story, and those of the 15 men seized with him in the “Issa” guest house in Faisalabad, with the aim of encouraging the Justice Department to abandon its cases against these other men, either as part of its secretive Executive review of the prisoners in Guantánamo (with its uncomfortable echoes of the Bush administration’s love of Executive decisions made without consulting Congress or the judiciary) or by refusing to contest their habeas cases in the District Courts.

I propose this course of action because the cases against these other men demonstrate a similar reliance on dubious allegations, and a similar “mosaic” of inferences that will not stand up to outside scrutiny, as was noted by Judge Kessler in her ruling, when she wrote, “It is likely, based on evidence in the record, that at least a majority of the [redacted] guests were indeed students, living at a guest house that was located close to a university.”

Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed’s testimony at Guantánamo

Ali Ahmed, who was just 17 years old at the time of his capture (although the Pentagon claims that he was 18), repeatedly explained at Guantánamo that he was seized and held by mistake. His statements were made in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, convened to assess whether, on capture, he had been correctly designated as an “enemy combatant” who could be held without charge or trial, and in the subsequent annual Administrative Review Boards, convened to assess whether he still posed a threat to the U.S. or its allies.

As I have explained at length in my book The Guantánamo Files, and in numerous articles over the last two years, these hearings were monstrously unjust, as they relied on classified evidence that was not disclosed to the prisoners, and also prevented them from having legal representation. In addition, as Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of U.S. intelligence, has explained, based on his involvement in the tribunals in 2004 and 2005, the body responsible for compiling the information to be used as evidence had little or no access to the databases of the relevant intelligence agencies, and, as a result, relied largely on “generic” information that did not specifically relate to the prisoners, and, in most cases, on “information obtained during interrogations of other detainees,” which, as Judge Kessler’s recent ruling confirms, were often made by prisoners who were tortured, coerced, bribed or suffering from mental health issues.

Nevertheless, the transcripts of these hearings are often the only means by which we know anything about the prisoners at Guantánamo, and in his most recent publicly available review (made available by the Pentagon four months ago, and dating from 2007), Ali Ahmed made it clear that, after five years in Guantánamo, he was still struggling to understand why he was being held, as the following exchange makes clear:

Presiding Officer: Can you tell us why you were arrested?

Detainee: I learned about why after I was arrested. They told me that this house is for the al-Qaeda and the Taliban … They told us after we were arrested in the house and in the interrogations.

Presiding Officer: Do you have any idea why they would think that?

Detainee: I do not know.

After refuting the allegations against him, it was unsurprising that, when Ali Ahmed was given the opportunity to make a statement, he delivered the following plea:

Detainee: What is the main accusation against me that kept me here for five years? What is the main accusation? Is it my travel to Pakistan? Is that an accusation? True, I went during a very difficult situation, but is that an accusation that would keep me here for five years?

The following exchange then took place:

Presiding Officer: The purpose of this board is for an administrative review. To determine whether you should be released, transferred, or continue to be detained. Your status as an enemy combatant has already been determined.

Detainee: I don’t even know why they made that decision when I don’t have a problem with Americans. I’ve never fought Americans, I’ve never fought anybody. I’ve never ever participated in any wars, any, anything else. Why would I be an enemy combatant?

Presiding Officer: We understand and take your statements on board and will consider those in our decision.

Detainee: I know an enemy combatant is someone who participates in the war and helps the war, or someone who is a threat and dangerous to the United States, but I was 17 years old, I’ve never done anything. [W]hat makes me dangerous to the United States at that time?

Although the review board had no response to Ahmed’s questions, the officers involved refused to approve his release from Guantánamo, and it has taken another two years, and the Supreme Court ruling granting habeas corpus rights to the prisoners last June, for him to be able to test the government’s allegations against him in a court of law, and to secure the resounding legal victory that was delivered by Judge Kessler last week.

Even so, it should be noted that judges do not actually have the power to order the government to release prisoners, even if, as in Ali Ahmed’s case, they have established, “by a preponderance of the evidence,” that he should never have been detained in the first place, because of a truly disturbing appeals court ruling in the case of 17 Uighurs at Guantánamo (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province), which took place in February, after the government dropped its claims that they were “enemy combatants,” and a District Court judge ordered their release into the United States. As lawyer Jana Ramsay explained, two judges -- although ostensibly dealing with the right of the Uighurs to be admitted into the U.S. -- stated that “the due process clause does not apply to detainees at Guantánamo,” because it is “not sovereign territory of the United States,” and that “the right to be released” was not “a necessary corollary to unlawful detention or compensation for such detention.”

The stories of the other prisoners seized with Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed

Moving beyond Ali Ahmed’s story, an analysis of the stories of the 15 other men seized in the raid on the “Issa” guest house -- mostly Yemenis, and mostly aged between 18 and 24 -- reveals that the majority of them have also maintained, throughout their long imprisonment, that they never set foot in Afghanistan, never trained or fought with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and had no connection whatsoever with terrorism. This analysis also reveals that the government’s allegations against them rely, for the most part, on similar witnesses and a similar “mosaic” of intelligence as those dismissed so comprehensively by Judge Kessler in Ali Ahmed’s case.

Although one of the 15, Ali Abdullah Ahmed al-Salami, was one of three prisoners who died in Guantánamo in June 2006, apparently by committing suicide, nine of the surviving 14 prisoners have maintained that they were students at Salafia University, run by the vast missionary organization Jamaat-al-Tablighi, two have stated that they traveled to receive medical treatment, and another, Fahmi Ahmed, said that he went to Pakistan to buy fabrics, taking money that he had borrowed from his mother, but explained that he actually spent most of his time “like a wild man,” drinking and smoking hashish. Another young man, Mohammed Hassen, was not even living at the house, and was caught up in the raid after visiting for dinner and staying the night, and two others -- a Russian and a Yemeni -- arrived at the house just two weeks before the raid.

In hearings at Guantánamo, several of the men have pointed out that they were told shortly after their capture that they had been seized by mistake. Mohammed Tahir, one of the Yemeni students, explained,

The army translator and the interrogator from the Pakistani intelligence said, “yes, all of what this man said ... about his story in Pakistan is correct, and therefore that is why we are going to give him back his passport that we took” ... I was really surprised that the American intelligence refused all of these proofs and they said no. “We still need him,” they said, and then they took me.

Another Yemeni student, Emad Hassan, who stated that he was near the end of a seven-month trip to the university to study the Koran when he was seized, said that, while in Pakistani custody, “the person who was in charge came and told us we didn't have anything to worry about,” and that “our sheet was clean.”

Fayad Ahmed, also a Yemeni student, told his tribunal four years ago that he had recently been told in Guantánamo that he would be released. “The interrogator and the investigator about a month ago that met with me told [me] that there was nothing against me and that I am an innocent man and should [be] released,” he said.

Of the two prisoners who said that they had traveled to Pakistan to receive medical treatment, Abdul Aziz al-Noofayee, a Saudi, said that he went to receive treatment for a back problem, and Mohammed Salam, a Yemeni, said that he went for treatment on his nose. After explaining that a “generous person” paid for his trip, the following exchange took place, which demonstrated a cultural gap between the US military and Muslims from the Gulf:

Tribunal Member: I don't know your culture very well, but ... in our culture people just don't step up and say, “I'll pay for the trip for you.”

Detainee: In our culture, in Islam, there is such a thing ... Indeed, it is an obligation for any Muslim who is rich to pay for someone who is poor.

Despite the protestations of these prisoners, the authorities at Guantánamo have persistently claimed that Jamaat-al-Tablighi was “used to mask travel and activities of terrorists” -- even though this allegation has never been regarded as legitimate outside Guantánamo -- but what should be troubling the Justice Department right now, after Judge Kessler’s ruling, is the extent to which the cases against these other 15 men rely, as with Ali Ahmed, not on confessions made by the prisoners themselves, but on statements made by other prisoners which appear to be just as dubious as those derided by Judge Kessler.

The weakness of the supposed evidence

To give just a few examples, the transcripts of the most recently publicly available ARBs (from 2007) include the sweeping statement that “Students at Salafia University are encouraged to fight in the Jihad against the West,” and, to cite just one case, Emad Hassan, who denied ever being in Afghanistan or attending a training camp, “was identified as an al-Qaeda recruiter and travel facilitator who help ‘fund other individuals’ travel’ to Afghanistan,” as “a member of al-Qaeda who swore bayat [an oath of loyalty] to Osama bin Laden,” and as “one of 50 men” at the al-Farouq training camp in Afghanistan, who were identified as bin Laden’s bodyguards.

In the case of Mohammed Hassen, who was only visiting the house when he was seized (and who is one of only two of the “Issa” guest house prisoners to be cleared for release after a military review), the allegations in the previous round of ARBs consisted of precisely three allegations: that “An individual who was in Afghanistan identified [him] as a fighter who traveled between Kandahar and Khost, Afghanistan,” that “A student who trained at al-Farouq identified [him] as a Yemeni who trained at al-Farouq,” and that “A senior al-Qaeda operative noted that a photo of the detainee may be a Yemeni and that he may have seen him at one point ‘inside,’ meaning Afghanistan.”

In the case of Abdul Aziz al-Noofayee (also cleared for release after an ARB, but, like Hassen, still held), the only allegations were that “A senior al-Qaeda operative stated that [he] attended the Khaldan camp in approximately 1997,” and that he “was captured with a Casio F-91W watch,” allegedly “used in bombings that have been linked to al-Qaeda and radical Islamic groups with improvised explosive devices” (and this, believe it or not, is an allegation that has been leveled at dozens of prisoners over the years).

In some of the other cases, no allegations whatsoever have been made publicly available beyond the “guilt by association” of staying in the guest house, and although in a handful of cases the government claims to have secured confessions that the men “admitted to fighting with enemy forces,” doubts about the circumstances in which these confessions were produced indicate that, under scrutiny in a court, even these allegations may be less clear-cut than they appear. As a result, I hope to have demonstrated, as I stated at the start of this article, that the Justice Department would be well advised to abandon its cases against these other men before it suffers similar defeats in future habeas hearings.

The bigger picture regarding false allegations

Moreover, the Justice Department also needs to take a long, hard look at the information it is relying on as evidence in numerous other cases. With one exception, the identities of the four unreliable witnesses in Ali Ahmed’s case were redacted by the government, but enough evidence is publicly available, from the statements of released prisoners, to demonstrate that the coercive techniques that were widely used at Guantánamo between 2002 and 2004 (and derived from the U.S. military’s SERE program) caused numerous prisoners to make false confessions in order to bring an end to their suffering.

In addition, further publicly available information also demonstrates that certain witnesses at Guantánamo -- whether through torture-induced fear, in one case, or bribery, in others -- made false allegations against dozens of their fellow prisoners, which, crucially, are still used by the government as part of its supposed evidence.

The first example to surface in public -- who appears to be one of the men whose testimony was dismissed by Judge Kessler, and by another judge in the case of another prisoner, Mohammed El-Gharani -- was described by Corine Hegland in February 2006, in an article for the National Journal. Hegland described how, in the tribunal of a Yemeni prisoner, Farouq Ali Ahmed, his personal representative (an officer assigned in place of a lawyer) had discovered, by investigating his case files, that a key allegation against him had been made by a prisoner described in an FBI memo as a notorious liar. In another case, of a Syrian prisoner, Mohammed al-Tumani, the personal representative discovered that this same prisoner had made false allegations against 60 of his fellow inmates, placing each of them in Afghanistan before they even arrived in the country.

The prisoner who made all these false allegations is Yasim Basardah, who was cleared for release after a habeas review six weeks ago. Profiled in the Washington Post in February, a disturbing picture emerged of a man who, “with other informers,” lives in a group of cells away from the other prisoners. As the Post described it, “he has received a CD player, chewing tobacco, coffee, library books and other perks, according to court documents,” including a video game console, even though the man described by some officials at Guantánamo as their “star witness” has, in the opinion of other officials, been the subject of “reservations about [his] credibility” since 2004.

As the Post’s article made clear, Basardah is not the only liar whose false confessions have infected the government’s “evidence.” An Iraqi, repatriated in January, was also well-known in Guantánamo, as is Abdul Rahim al-Ginco, a Syrian “rescued” by U.S. forces from a Taliban jail. Tortured by al-Qaeda operatives, because they thought he was a spy, al-Ginco suffers from severe mental health problems (and may also be one of the witnesses dismissed by Judge Kessler), but although he has renounced some of his false confessions, others remain, locked forever in the case files of the prisoners, with no way of challenging them except in a court.

Most importantly, however, false allegations are not the exclusive preserve of a handful of industrious informants. As I mentioned above, almost any prisoner could be persuaded to make up false stories when they could no longer bear the grueling interrogations, or the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” to wear them down, and, as the few examples of the Faisalabad guest house prisoners cited above also indicate, the case files are also littered with allegations made by “senior al-Qaeda operatives” -- individuals like Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other “high-value detainees” who were held (and tortured) for years in secret CIA prisons before their transfer to Guantánamo in September 2006, and others, like Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who died in a Libyan prison last week, who were held in a network of secret prisons and proxy prisons around the world.

In all these prisons -- and in Guantánamo, and in the prisons in Afghanistan -- prisoners were shown what Chris Mackey, the pseudonym of a senior interrogator in Afghanistan, referred to in his book The Interrogators as the “family album,” which featured photos of other prisoners. And from all these places, therefore, it is difficult to see how much of the “evidence” against the prisoners can be anything other than a tissue of lies, extracted using the same techniques of torture, coercion, bribery, and the exploitation of mental illness that Judge Kessler identified in the case of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk

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