OPINION: Artful dodger does himself no favours on David Hicks ...

A recent episode of the ABC's Q&A almost became a battle of the memoirs. John Howard was the sole guest, his appearance fitting very neatly in with his publisher's promotion schedule. Howard was buoyed by audience responses to his mantras about the economy and his gentle pokes in the eyes of Peter Costello and Malcolm Fraser.

Then, out of the blue, David Hicks's face appears via webcam. Contrary to the image Howard and others drew of him as a raving terrorist, Hicks calmly and in a dignified manner posed Howard his question.

Hicks wanted to simply understand why his own government showed indifference to his incarceration and torture at Guantanamo. Hicks also wanted to know what Howard thought of military tribunals. Hicks even ended his question with a polite "thank you". Osama bin Laden would have been pulling his beard out at Hicks's demeanour toward Howard.

It was obvious that Howard was rattled by Hicks's very appearance, let alone by questions Howard avoided for so many years in office. At first, Howard played politician by avoiding the question, instead reminding us of how lucky we were to have a free exchange on an ABC that members of his government tried ever so hard to restrict and intimidate.

Howard also reminded us that there was ...

... a lot of criticism of that book from sources unrelated to me and I've read some very severe criticisms of that book.

No doubt a perceived absence of literary merit may justify an appearance before a military tribunal. Either that, or Howard was praying Hicks's memoirs might end up on the remaindered shelves faster than his own.

Unlike Howard, I prefer to not to judge Hicks's memoirs (entitled Guantanamo: My Journey) until I have actually read them. Based on what I've read so far, Hicks' work is certainly more interesting than another book I've read, one Howard would perhaps prefer and one which actually glorifies a terrorist act - Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Sitting opposite Tony Jones, Howard justified his government's position of allowing Hicks to rot at the Guantanamo gulag for years without trial or charge and where he was tortured. Howard reminded us that military commissions ...

... date a long way into American history ...

... and were not ...

... something invented by the Bush administration.

Indeed. Torture also wasn't invented by the Bush administration. As for history, torture has a much longer one not just in America but indeed the history of all nations. One can only wonder whether in Howard's eyes, Hicks's detention, torture and unfair trial was all part of an historically justifiable package.

Howard went on to blame delays in Hicks' charges and trial on the fact that many civil rights lawyers were busy ...

... fighting the legality and the basis on which the military commissions had been established.

So fighting unjust laws delays (and hence denies) justice somehow. Using Howard's logic, one can only assume that constitutions are a source of grave injustice.

Howard also insisted his government urged the Bush administration to bring on the trial quickly. Rubbish. Howard only did this when he saw it was becoming an election issue, when even his own backbenchers like Danna Vale saw this as becoming a vote drainer.

In a column for The Age in November 2005, Vale described Hicks as ...

... the only Western man with 500 others incarcerated in the worst prison known to the Western world that was especially created outside the Geneva Convention, and with all the ramifications of what that means to those who believe in the rule of law
and the humane treatment of prisoners.

Howard artfully dodged the question as to why he allowed an Australian citizen to be tried before a military tribunal when the US and Britain didn't see such procedure as good enough for their citizens.

Indeed, George W.Bush did not allow American citizen John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" fighter, anywhere near the Guantanamo gulag. British authorities also strenuously lobbied for the release of British detainees.

Danna Vale herself asked these questions:

It has been said that if Hicks is returned to Australia, we have no law under which he can be charged and he would walk free. But why should he not walk free if he has not committed an offence against Australian law. He has already been incarcerated for four years, which is more than some get for rape or murder in our country. How long a sentence is considered enough punishment for a misguided fool and prize dill?

John Howard did not agree with Vale's assessment. He said on Q&A:

I took the view that it was better that someone went before a military commission, given the charges and allegations made against him ... then that they be brought back to Australia and not be capable of being charged.

So if someone accused you of committing an act for which no charge existed in any Australian statute book, the prime minister of Australia would prefer to have you brought before a kangaroo commission to be charged and convicted on the basis of evidence extracted as a result of the torture of yourself and God-knows how many others. Howard somehow reasons this can actually be better for the national interest.

Howard's government valued its Guantanamo citizens as much as the Middle Eastern dictatorships whose citizens shared cells with Hicks. Actually, Howard's attitude toward Hicks was worse.

Countries like Saudi Arabia, Libya and Algeria aren't known for having depoliticised criminal justice systems. Their detainees would probably be just as "lawfully" detained and tortured back home.

Howard was happy to see an alien legal regime imposed on an Australian citizen not by some tinpot dictatorship but by an ally in circumstances where that Australian would have walked free in Australia.

Howard was so keen to please Dubya in his so-called war on terror that he was prepared to sacrifice the human rights and liberty of two Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib. In Habib's case, no charges were ever laid and he was subjected to torture in numerous countries before reaching Guantanamo.

Howard continues to defend the indefensible. Is it any wonder he lost both the election and his own seat?

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals. This column was first published in The Canberra Times.

COMMENT: Why David Hicks matters ...

I've just started reading David Hicks' memoirs. I'm upto the part where he travels to Pakistan and spends time with the Tabligh Jamaat, an international Muslim missionary effort founded in India during the early 1940's. So many young Muslims have been with the TJ at some stage or other, myself included.

Hicks has gove to Pakistan after spending some time with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who were fighting with the support of the United States and its NATO alies. Some fruitloops like to claim that the KLA was ome kind of al-Qaeda outfit. That's a bit like saying that the Vatican is a product of the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church.

Cynthia Banham reminds us in a column for the Sydney Morning Herald of why Hicks' memoirs are important. Here are some excerpts.

... Hicks's memoirs are an important development for our democracy.
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Why? The Howard and Rudd governments failed to investigate his allegations of abuse, mistreatment and torture while in US custody. Consequently, this is likely to be our only insight into what happened to him.

I haven't yet read Leigh Sales' book about Hicks so I can't confirm or deny this. Then again, I think Sales' book was published when Hicks was still at the gulag.

As a liberal democracy, the manner in which our government treats Australian citizens, or permits them to be treated by foreign states, in a time of war or national security crisis - or any time - should concern us.

It should concern us unless we are carried away by the hysteria of those who want us to ignore legal obligations and act on our emotions.

But Hicks pleaded guilty in a court, did he not? Certainly that was John Howard's line before two shoes were thrown in his direction in an ABC studio. And what kind of court was it?

... Hicks never got a day in a court to consider his claims - a properly constituted court, which followed accepted rule-of-law procedures ... He was tried by a farcical military commission that the British refused to let its own citizens be subjected to, and that President Barack Obama has denounced as flawed.

The Skaf brothers, Ivan Milat and Martin Bryant had their days before a properly constituted court. Was Hicks ever found to have raped or murdered anyone?

Do yourself a favour and go out and read this book. It's written in such simple language that even Tim Blair might understand it.



Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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VIDEO: Rabiye Kadeer's call to settle remaining Uighur Guantanamo detainees ...

Exiled World Uighur Congress leader Rabiye Kadeer told the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday:

All of the Uighurs in Albania, Bermuda and Palau are living very normal and productive lives -- so we'd be happy if Australia took the four.

Below is a documentary from AlJazeera English showing the experiences of four Uighurs living in Albania.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf






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OPINION: Values blur in good and evil ...

Uncle Sam stands at the top of a flight of stairs, looking more than slightly perplexed. Below him is a windowless chamber its sparse furnishings consist of a lamp, a wooden bench and a closet shaped roughly to the contours of a human body, spikes emerging from its rear wall. A man hangs from the roof, his ankles bound. Below him stand a Caucasian man dressed in a Nazi uniform, a hooded Spanish inquisitor brandishing a sword and a third man in military fatigues and an Arab head-dress.

All three are watching Uncle Sam, inviting him to join them, the third man stating:

C'mon down. Once you take the first step, it's easy.

What I've just described in words is a cartoon by Philadelphia Inquirer cartoonist Tony Auth. It's only now, with debate over the use of torture in the "war on terror", that we're discovering just how deep the Leader of the Free World had descended.

The frequent mantra recited by Western political masters was that we were in a war against terrorists who hated us because of who we are, because of our values. Terrorists despised us for being civilised. They wanted to replace notions such as democracy and the rule of law, which we stood for, with terror and lawlessness. This was a war for civilisation, a fight to defend freedom.

Yet within a mere six months of the 9/11 attacks, top officials of the CIA were happy to flout the rule of law and to breach the very values they claimed to protect. To use the words of North Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, the Bush administration saw the law as a nicety we could not afford.


This new lawlessness incorporated the use of harsh interrogation techniques (read torture) such as waterboarding. In this torture, a prisoner is bound to an inclined board, his feet raised and his head slightly below the feet; then cloth is wrapped over his face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the prisoners gag reflex is activated and he feels convinced he is drowning.

One CIA prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libbi, is said to have been subjected to waterboarding that proved so effective that he provided false evidence of a link between al-Qaeda and the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein which led to the 2003 invasion. Al-Libbi made these fabricated claims as he was terrified of further harsh treatment.

Even if we accepted claims by United States lawmakers that torture was used to protect Americans, al-Libbi's torture was clearly used for political purposes to justify a war the Bush administration was determined to fight even before the first jets hit the World Trade Center. Once evil means are adopted even for seemingly noble ends, the lines between good and evil soon become blurred.

Al-Libbi's treatment is just the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of people have been detained in various US detention facilities, both known and secret, including in Indonesia, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay. Among them were two Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib.

Yet while US media seem almost fixated with the role that Republican and Democrat lawmakers and US government officials played in ordering and executing torture of detainees, few Australian journalists have considered what role (if any) the Australian government may have played or at least what knowledge it may have had of the torture of Australian citizens at Guantanamo Bay.

And yet now the US is reluctant to settle Guantanamo detainees on its own territory. Meanwhile US President Barack Obama is reluctant to release further documents and photos of torture conducted by the CIA for fear it will further inflame tensions. It is this very secrecy which provides a perfect cover for even more abuse.

Regardless of how painful the process may be, the US must take responsibility for the consequences of its inquisition. Yet all we seem to be hearing from Obama is empty rhetoric about how the US does not torture the same rhetoric used by his predecessor. Obama chose Cairo as the location to give his speech to the nominally Muslim world.

Cairo was also the place where Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was sent by the US to have terrorism confessions extracted from him using the most brutal forms of torture. In his memoir My Story: the tale of a terrorist who wasn't, Habib outlined not just his own torture but also the suffering of other inmates also beaten and drugged.

During his Cairo address to an audience of political leaders and diplomats from Muslim-majority states, Obama admitted the US had acted contrary to its ideals by instituting torture. Yet among governments represented were those which will continue to implement the US policy of extraordinary rendition or the secret abduction and transfer of prisoners to countries that will carry out torture on behalf of the US.

The Washington Post reported on February 1, 2009, that Obama issued executive orders allowing the CIA to carry on with renditions. He further allowed the CIA to detain suspects in facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis. America will effectively now outsource Guantanamo-type operations to the generals, sheikhs, colonels, dictators and presidents-for-life who will no doubt torture not just those deemed terror suspects by the US but also domestic political opponents.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recently urged all those involved in the torture process including doctors, nurses, psychologists and lawyers to be pursued and not let off the hook. Australia and New Zealand can play a role in this process, given that both are the only two nations in the Pacific region to have ratified the Convention Against Torture. Yet given the lacklustre performance on the part of John Howard and Kevin Rudd on the treatment of former Australian citizen detainees at Guantanamo, one cannot expect too much from Australia.

Terrorists may hate us for our values, but clearly we don't seem to like our values too much either.

Irfan Yusuf's first book Once Were Radicals about young Muslims flirting with radical Islam was published by Allen & Unwin in May 2009. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Tuesday 7 July 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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POLITICS/COMMENT: Rebuking Rumsfeld ...

GQ Magazine carries an interesting and lengthy feature article profiling former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld through the eyes of his colleagues in the Bush administration. You'd think those working with Rumsfeld would be somewhat more charitable than openly ridiculing him. No such luck for Bush'd war monger.

... in speaking with the former Bush officials, it becomes evident that Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America’s relations with other nations, the safety of our troops, and the response to Hurricane Katrina.

A major criticism of Rumsfeld was his insistence on stalling decisions that had to be made. This had a direct impact on the military tribunals at Guantanamo.

The Department of Justice got a taste of such stalling tactics two months after September 11, when the president issued an order authorizing the establishment of military commissions to try suspected terrorists. Rumsfeld resisted this imposition of authority on his DoD turf. “We tried to get these military commissions up and running,” recalls one former DoJ official. “There’d be a lot of ‘Well, he’s working on it.’ In my own view, that’s cost the administration a lot. Hearings for detainees would’ve been viewed one way back in 2002. But by 2006”—the year commissions were at last enacted—“it’s not so appealing.”

Rumsfeld also wasn't so keen to share access to American intelligence capabilities to its allies including Australia.

Similarly, Rumsfeld delayed the implementation of a 2004 presidential order granting our Australian and British allies access to the Pentagon’s classified Internet system known as SIPRNet. “He always had what sounded like a good reason,” says one of Bush’s top advisers. “But I had a lot of back channels and found out that it was being held up.” It finally took Australian prime minister John Howard forcibly complaining to Bush about the matter in the fall of 2006 for SIPRNet to become accessible.

It's great to see Howard putting his foot down to Bush about something.

VIDEO: Uighurs from Guantanamo settled in Albania ...

Here is the text accompanying this DW European Journal video:

Two years ago, four Uighurs were released from the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay. They belonged to a Muslim minority group in China who had traveled to Pakistan via Afghanistan because they alleged they had suffered human rights abuses in their home country. In 2000, Pakistani police arrested the men and transferred them to US custody and spent years in detention. They found asylum in Albania but life in the foreign country is everything but easy and hopes of reuniting with their families have completely faded.

COMMENT: On CIA doctors and Hippocratic hypocrisy ...

There are medical practitioners. And then there are medico-legal mercenaries. I came across a few of the latter during my brief stint as a plaintiff personal injury lawyer. The amount of compensation my punters got was determined by the extent of their impairment. I’d send my clients for an assessment by anyone of my plaintiff specialists, some of whom wrote reports making whiplash look like paraplegia. The insurers would then have the punter assessed by one of their specialists, who usually wrote reports “proving” an actual paraplegic punter could outrun Cathy Freeman. It was all terribly scientific.

Faced with this competing evidence, the judge usually came up with an assessment in line with what the punter’s treating doctor had to say. After all, the treating doctor had a longer history of working with the patient and hence more able to provide a prognosis. Treating doctors generally give more than a rat’s backside for the punter. Why? Well, for starters they have this code of ethics summarised in the Hippocratic Oath. Secondly, they know breaching the oath compromises their indemnity insurance.

None of this seems to have crossed the minds of medical practitioners overseeing detainees in secret CIA “black site” prisons in 3 continents during George W Bush’s so-called “war on terror”. The Washington Post reported these doctors

... committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture.

A 43-page report by the International Committee of the Red Cross quoted one medical officer even telling an inmate: “I look after your body only because we need you for information”.

Another detainee told ICRC he was made to stand with his arms shackled overhead for a period of 2 to 3 months! Other forms of torture included waterboarding as well as being threatened with sodomy, HIV infection and electric shocks. Believe it or not, the CIA Director Leon Panetta is insisting that “no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished”.

Legal guidance? What lawyer would advise doctors to breach fundamental medical ethics? Perhaps the same Defence Department lawyers mentioned in the 2008 book Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law by international lawyer and academic Philippe Sands QC. Those lawyers joined with neo-conservative politicians to produce the 2002 Acton Memo signed by Donald Rumsfeld. The Memo enabled interrogators at Guantanamo Bay (and later at Abu Ghraib) to lawfully commit acts of torture in violation of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

And so the US and its allies (including Australia) fought a war to defend our values using methods that threatened our values. Go figure.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Become the evil you wish to see defeated ...

Mahatma Gandhi once said: "Be the change you want to see". But in George W Bush's so-called "war on terror", the extreme opposite applied. At Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram Airbase and in secret CIA torture facilities across the world, it was (and quite possibly remains) a case of: "Be the evil you want to see defeated".

Each and every account I have read from former Guantanamo detainees describes some of the most gruesome (or, as recently released Briton Binyam Mohamed describes it, "medieval") forms of torture. In Mohamed's case, the torture took place in Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan and Guantanamo over a period of seven years. Being some six feet tall, Mohamed lost one quarter of his body weight. He now weighs a mere 57 kilograms.

Here's a sample of Mohamed's treatment before he even set foot on Guantanamo soil:

*In Morocco, he spent 18 months being deprived of sleep, severely beaten and had his genitals cut with a scalpel.

*In Afghanistan, he was kept in a small black hole in prison, beaten, strung up and subjected to extremely loud music.

Combined with his treatment at Guantanamo, it all reads like something out of an al-Qaeda or Taleban guidebook (minus the beheadings).

Mohamed's lawyer reports Mohamed confessed "to anything those inflicting that treatment on him wanted him to say". Who knows how many things Mohamed confessed to? Former Australian Guantanamo detainee Mamdouh Habib also tells in his memoir about signing confessions after repeated torture and beatings.

Despite their confessions, both were released without any charges being laid. As if to underscore his complete innocence, Mohamed was released as soon as he arrived in London.

What makes all this even more scandalous is that Britain's own security agencies may have collaborated with the Americans in Mohamed's torture. At the very least, MI5 were likely to have been aware of his treatment.

Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the world that those held at the Guantanamo Bay facility were "the worst of the worst". Yet as Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc and An Oral History of al-Qaeda's Leader, co-writes:

... only five percent of all detainees at Guantanamo were ever apprehended by US forces to begin with ... Almost all of the detainees were turned over to American forces by foreigners, either with an axe to grind, or more often for a hefty bounty or reward. After U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, a reward of $5,000 or more was given to Pakistanis and Afghans for each detainee turned over.

Trial by ordeal should have been left in the Middle Ages. Our failure to do so means we have handed medieval forces of terror a moral victory they simply don't deserve.

First published in Crikey on 25 February 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Karadzic v Guantanamo Bay detainees: two very different trials...

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver, has just been found guilty of war crimes at a military tribunal held at Guantanamo Bay. He could face life imprisonment after a jury of six US military officers selected by the Pentagon found he had transported two surface-to-air missiles in his car which would be used against US forces during their invasion of Afghanistan.

Prosecutor Colonel Laurence Morris was quoted as saying: "We are confident that we can try cases to the highest standards of justice."

Justice? What kind of justice? Did Hamdan have access to all the evidence used to try him? Who was this evidence obtained from? How was it obtained?

In his recently published book, Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law, international law professor Phillipe Sands QC exposes unethical Defense Department lawyers joining forces with neo-conservative politicians to produce the Acton Memo. This document, signed by Donald Rumsfeld on 2 December 2002, enabled interrogators at Guantanamo Bay (and later at Abu Ghraib) to lawfully commit acts of torture in violation of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

Only a week ago, al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj was released after over six years at the Guantanamo facility. Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, first detained at age 16, remains in custody. He wasn't the only prisoner sent to Guantanamo as a minor. This 2006 list of detainees shows a number aged in the early 20s who must have been minors when they first arrived at Guantanamo.

Compare this to the procedures used to detain and try Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who led the 1990s war in Bosnia that resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Bosnians of all denominations and that included the establishment of concentration camps and gang-rape of tens of thousands of women. In the town of Srebrenica alone, over 7,000 men and boys were slaughtered.

Karadzic is being tried by a UN War Crimes Tribunal. There have been no suggestions of torture at this tribunal. None of the evidence will be withheld from Karadzic, and he will be free to engage lawyers if he wishes. Compared to the cages in which many Guantanamo detainees (including David Hicks) were kept, Karadzic's prison cell looks more like a 5-star hotel.

At its recent Big Ideas Forum, the Centre for Independent Studies asked five prominent speakers to talk about "Protecting the Legacy of Freedom: The Ideas of The Enlightenment in the 21st Century".

Not a single speaker mentioned the Guantanamo gulag or Radovan Karadzic. Sitting through that spectacle of self-congratulatory pomposity, I couldn't help but think of Mahatma Gandhi's response when asked what he thought of Western civilisation: "I think it would be a good idea".

We live in a world where terror suspects are kept in secret prisons and gulags and tried by military commissions, while war criminals are afforded civilised treatment and a fair trial. Perhaps Gandhi was right all along ...

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Thursday 7 August 2008.

OPINION: Western civilisation? What a good idea that would be ...

A journalist asked Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Western civilisation. Gandhi responded: "I think it would be a good idea."

This English-trained Indian barrister knew a thing or two about Western civilisation. He knew European colonial powers had claimed credit for many great ideas - religious pluralism, the rule of law and human rights.

Gandhi also knew that these ideas often weren't practised by their preachers. Before India achieved independence, Western civilisation had produced the Holocaust and the mass murder of Japanese civilians via two atomic bombs.

Gandhi also knew a thing or two about jihad. As a young lawyer practising in South Africa, Gandhi was given a copy of the Koran by a Gujarati Muslim client, as well as a first-class train ticket. After boarding the train, Gandhi was removed from the first-class carriage for being a coolie. This Hindu sat on the platform and opened up the Koran. He found verses calling on him to wage jihad, a just struggle, against oppressors.

From these verses was born the Natal Indian Congress and the anti-apartheid struggle. Prominent people of all faiths, including Muslims, supported that struggle.

Many were killed, tortured or imprisoned by the apartheid regime. One of them, Dullah Omar, was appointed by Nelson Mandela to be South Africa’s first post-Apartheid Justice Minister.

One wonders what Gandhi would think today of the abuse of the jihad verses by terrorists from groups like al Qaeda, who combine Islamic theology with the worst excesses of European nationalism to produce something resembling national socialism.

Muslim theocratic extremists abandoning terror and fighting real jihad? Now that would be a good idea.

While Bin-Ladin sits in his cave pontificating about conspiracies between "Crusaders" and "Jews" (and even "Hindus") to kill Muslim civilians, his followers are murdering innocent Muslim civilians across the world. Each week, a suicide terrorist in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or some other Muslim country takes place, killing at least as many civilians as the 7/7 London bombings. It’s no coincidence that the first victim of the 7/7 London bombings was a devout British Muslim girl named Shahara Islam.

Of course, hypocrisy and double standards don't just exist in the Islamic world. The bin Ladens of the West, neo-conservative leaders who have the blood of Afghan and Iraqi innocents (not to mention American and allied soldiers) on their hands, are also throwing their principles out the door.

The treatment of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay is a classic example of where Western civilisation is becoming little more than abstraction. In his recently published book Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law, international law professor Phillipe Sands, QC, exposes unethical Defence Department lawyers joining forces with neo-conservative politicians to produce the Acton Memo.

This document, signed by Donald Rumsfeld on December 2, 2002, enabled interrogators at Guantanamo Bay (and later at Abu Ghraib) to lawfully commit acts of torture in violation of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

The Canadian Government was recently ordered by a court to release video footage of one of its citizens, Omar Khadr, being interrogated at Guantanamo Bay. It isn't exactly pleasant viewing.

Khadr was 16 at the time the footage was filmed in 2003. He was 15 when first captured in July 2002 during a US raid in which his father was killed. After being shot in the back, he was taken to the notorious Bagram Air Base, where he was often brought to interrogation on a stretcher and denied pain medication. Canadians didn't have much sympathy for this child soldier.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Khadr's brother is currently before a Canadian court fighting US attempts to have him extradited to face terrorism charges. Stephen Harper's conservative Government is showing as much disdain for Khadr as former PM John Howard showed towards Australian detainees David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib. Khadr's lawyers hope release of the video may change all that.

Should a person accused of committing terrorism offences when a child be kept in such conditions? Some say that Khadr, whose father allegedly had strong links to al Qaeda and was a fundraiser for the terrorist network, is still dangerous. These people might like to view the video of Khadr's interrogation and watch this boy pleading for Canadian interrogators to help him.

They might also remember that he hardly had a choice in growing up in a household where his father espoused radical views, even encouraging Khadr's brother to become a suicide bomber. One can hardly expect a child to recognise his father's charities were in fact funding extremist groups.

No adult, let alone a teenager, should have to spend years in a steel mesh cage at Guantanamo Bay undergoing brutish forms of interrogation and detained without charge or trial until years have elapsed. The criminal justice systems of all civilised nations treat child defendants differently to adult ones.

When some Western countries condemn the likes of Robert Mugabe but are happy to commit human rights abuses against their own civilians, they simply confirm what Gandhi suspected all along - that Western civilisation perhaps really is just a good idea.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer. An edited version of this article was first published in the New Zealand Herald on Tuesday 22 July 2008.



Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

CRIKEY: The 9/11 accused deserve a fair trial

If I argued that those arrested for online child p-rnography deserve a fair trial, would anyone accuse me of being an apologist for child p-rnography?

If I suggested that a former senior cop charged with drug importation deserved a fair trial, would anyone accuse me of being an apologist for drug trafficking?

But if I suggested that the five men charged with being responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington deserve a fair trial, I’d be labelled by some as an apologist for terrorism.

Indeed, some would look at the name my parents gave me, the city I was born in and other factors completely beyond my control and cast a host of aspersions.

It’s as if no-one having the same combination of ethno-religious factors died on that fateful day in New York or Washington.

What would these people say if someone named Stephen David argued that the al-Qaeda five deserve a fair trial? In fact, Colonel Stephen David is Chief Defence Counsel for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Wallid bin Attash and Mustapha al-Hawsawi. David says that the process used to try these five defendants ...

... is a fundamentally flawed process … Our nation deserves better than this.

Here's an excerpt from AFP's report as appearing in today's The Australian:

All dressed in white and without handcuffs, the five - including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, which killed about 3000 people - were seated at a table with their military defence team.

Khalid, a Pakistani, and his alleged co-conspirators Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Wallid bin Attash and Mustapha al-Hawsawi all face the death penalty if convicted by the military commission on the US base on Cuba.

Charges against them include conspiracy, murder, attacking civilians, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property, terrorism, and material support for terrorism.

The men appeared relaxed as they chatted in Arabic, waiting for the start of the hearing, atwhich the charges will be read by judge Colonel Ralph Kohlmann.

The judge opened the military commission by saying the Government would consider any statements by the five as confidential because of their detentions in secret CIA prisons.

"Any statement by any of the detainees is presumptively classified," Colonel Kohlmann said.

That meant there was to be a 20-second delay before the defendants statements were broadcast by video to the nearby purpose-built press room, to allow prosecutors to cut sensitive information.

At the start of proceedings, Khalid threw out his defence team and said he would represent himself, before adding that he wanted to be sentenced to death and become a marytr.

All the suspects were arrested between 2002 and 2003, and transferred to the controversial base on Cuba in 2006, allegedly after spending years in secret CIA prisons ...

The military tribunals have been mired in controversy since they were established by President George W. Bush at the end of 2001. In 2006, the US Supreme Court ruled they were illegal, but then Congress adopted a new law allowing for them to be re-established and for indirect witness statements or testimony won under duress to be submitted as evidence.

Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, legal adviser to the military commissions, said the defence team had been granted "extraordinary" rights.

But he noted that if they suspects were acquitted, the they could still continue to be held until the end of the so-called "war on terror".

Defence Counsel Colonel Stephen David should be glad I’m not one of the judges. I’m convinced of the guilt of at least 2 of these men, having read the masterful work of journalists Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding called Masterminds Of Terror: The Truth Behind The Most Devastating Terrorist Attack The World Has Ever Seen.

Fouda was chief investigative reporter with Al-Jazeera who spent 48 hours with both Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a secret Karachi location. Fouda includes in the book the full transcript of his interviews with RB & KSM as well as RB’s own written justification for the attacks.

These men followed a demented politicised theology that was more anarchic than monotheistic. Some may wonder why it is that more Muslims than non-Muslims die from attacks by terrorists like KSM. Why don’t these men make exceptions for their own kind?

The reason is simple – according to al-Qaeda theology, virtually all Muslims are infidels, and the blood of an infidel (including my blood) can be spilt with impunity. Unless Yosri Fouda is making it all up, these men are guiltier than sin.

Yet still they deserve a fair trial. Evidence should be obtained without the use of torture in secret locations. Due process, not kangaroo court process, must be applied. If fair trials can be granted to suspected war criminals, surely they can be granted to terror suspects.

We hear it time and again from chest-beating politicians – the terrorists hate us because of our values. By denying terror suspects a fair trial, we are showing we hate our values at least as much.

An edited version of this piece was first published in the Crikey daily alert for 6 June 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Who knew what (and when) about Habib's torture?

ASIO head honcho Paul O'Sullivan told a Senate Hearing that Australia expressed its opposition to Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib being sent by the US to Egypt after he was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 - The Age and The Australian report the story today.

Here's an excerpt from Natalie O'Brien's report of the story in The Oz:

The current head of ASIO, Paul O'Sullivan, revealed during a Senate estimates hearing yesterday that his predecessor, Mr Richardson, was personally involved in discussions with the US State Department and the intelligence community about the "hypothetical" possibility of Mr Habib being taken to Egypt.

"The director-general of ASIO informed the US authorities that it was not the Australian government policy position to engage in practices of rendition," Mr O'Sullivan said.

Documents tabled in federal parliament last week revealed the rendition was discussed at a meeting in Canberra on October 23, 2001, between senior officials from the Prime Minister's office, ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney-General's Department, and they agreed "that the Australian government could not agree to the transfer of Mr Habib to Egypt".

Mr O'Sullivan said yesterday it was Mr Richardson, who is now the Australian ambassador in Washington, who conveyed that message to the US Government.

Habib is of Egyptian origin. He speaks fluent Arabic. Why would Australia object to a short holiday in the home country? Because the Howard government knew that Habib was going to be tortured.

They also knew about the Bush administration' s practice of extraordinary rendition - the outsourcing of torture to another country which lacks the strict laws against torture that would (at least in theory) enable a detainee to bring action under US law.

Habib's torture is mentioned by former British Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg in his memoir Enemy Combatant. He tells of a detainee who had been kidnapped by Indonesian security services and sent to Egypt where he was ...

... held in a tiny room and interrogated brutally for three months before being handed over to the Americans.

That detainee told Begg of ...

... the screams of another man [Habib] from a room nearby.

Begg himself recalls Habib as ...

... a man who was often made to stand but kept fainting and dropping to the floor.

Back in November 2005, hardly 10 months after Habib was finally released from Guantanamo, the Washington Post reported at great length of ...

... a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe.

The report is lengthy and well worth reading in full. Here's more from the report.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

Even the Washington Post admits it engaged in self-censorship over the issue.

The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

But it isn't just foreign governments helping the CIA by providing venues for its gulags. In their 2006 book Torture Taxi: On The Trail Of The CIA's Rendition Flights, AC Thompson and Trevor Paglen mention that even commercial airliners are contracted to transport suspects to and between CIA prisons.

The Oz reports:

The Prime Minister's Department told estimates last night it had no record of whether then prime minister John Howard was advised of the situation.

If ASIO knew but Howard didn't, on what basis would ASIO communicate Canberra's displeasure to the United States over Habib being the subject of extraordinary rendition?

At the very least, one can say that the Howard government's insistence on blindly supporting the Bush administration' s foreign policy agenda was often at the expense of Australian citizens.

Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen, spent years being abused and tortured in Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan and then Guantanamo. After all that, he was released without charge. Whether the Australian government was complicit in all this remains to be seen. But the fact remains that someone in Canberra knew in advance what would happen to Habib.

An edited version of this story was first published in the Crikey daily alert for 27 May 2008.


Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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BLOG: Tim Blair's Saturday morning rant ...

Far-Right blogger Tim Blair has now been given space on the Daily Telegraph website. At 4:59am on Saturday 17 May 2008, Blair expressed his displeasure with an article yours truly wrote for The Age.

I'm not exactly sure why anyone would wake up at 4:59am to express one's support for torture, kangaroo courts and politically motivated prosecutions. No, I'm not talking about Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria or any other tin-pot Middle Eastern regime. I'm talking about Guantanamo Bay.

Blair, of course, supports Guantanamo Bay-style punishments. He probably also supports the US policy of extraordinary rendition. Blair is quite happy to see anyone suspected of criminal offences being beaten senseless, having dogs attack their testicles and other similar forms of punishment. Throw out the Magna Carta. Throw out the Geneva Convention. Throw out the Rule of Law. The only law that counts is Blair's Law.


And on what basis does Blair support Guantanamo internment?

Say what you will about Gitmo, but unlike Khadr’s father the guards there aren’t known for encouraging prisoners to blast themselves to death.

So it really doesn't matter what guards do, as long as they don't teach you to become a suicide bomber. I'm so glad that the NSW Department of Corrective Services doesn't follow Blair's Law.

Blair continues ...

Rather than whining over this, Muslims would do better to end mistreatment of children by their own families.

As if it's just a Muslim thing. As if all those Australians who complained about the treatment of (arguably ex-Muslim) David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay were just a bunch of whining Muslims.

My article mentions The Age newspaper, Dick Smith and an American film maker criticising Guantanamo internment. Clearly, all these people are just whining Muslims. Maybe one of them should change his name to Dick bin Smith.

One of Blair's few sane readers, a chap named Rod Blaine, had this to say ...

Tim, I agree with you that Khadr pere is a piece of work, but Yusuf’s point about Khadr fils still stands. We’re not talking about a David Hicks or a John Walker Lindh who, in his 20s, goes and seeks out a new family amongst the jihadists on the other side of the world. “Obey your father and mother” is a principle that, all else being equal, it’d be good to drill into more teenagers (Exhibit A: Corey Worthingless); unfortunately the downside is that now and then the father is a Khadr or a John Deaves, and parental authority is abused.

I disagree with Irfan Yusuf at times, but for all that he is a moderate, largely sensible, credible Muslim (ie, won’t be written off as an apostate like Manji or Hirsi Ali) who is committed to the Western liberal democratic process. Committment to the process is the vital point of agreement: we can disagree over the policy results later. Zinging him with “gotchas” won’t answer the substance of the point he makes.

Obviously Sheik Rod is just another whining Muslim. Meanwhile, Daniel Lewis injects some logic into the debate with this beauty:

I believe Irfan Yusuf still lives with his parents.

What a devastating refutation. And true to form, Daniel's buddy ElCid is as usual promoting his own Final Solution - turning Muslims into compost.

El Cid replied to RebeccaH
Sat 17 May 08 (11:36am)
We both know it ain’t gonna happen, Lady Rebecca.

If not “mistreated”, it’s “humiliated”, if neither of the above two, it’s “Islamaphobia”.

Actually, Islamaphobia is a damn good word to describe this THING.

Frothing at the mouth and their bite, infects others.

Next article, The Compost Solution.

Yes, you read it correctly. Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, who owns at least a 7% stake in News Corporation, should be turned into compost. I hope Stephen Mayne uses the next News Limited AGM to ask Sheik Rupert bin Murdoch whether he supports such sentiments being expressed in one of his newspapers.

ElCid puts finishing touches on Muslim compost heap.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

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CRIKEY: Where's the outrage over Sami al-Hajj?

African-American comic and anti-racism activist Preacher Moss frequently uses a joke about black men and the American justice system.

The black man is always complaining that he can't get a fair trial in America. The Muslim says, 'We can't even get a trial.'

Perhaps he was making a reference to Guantanamo Bay detainees. Certainly I'm not aware of any Columbian FARC terrorists being kept there.

Last September, Crikey reported on the fate of Sami al-Hajj, a Sudanese national who worked as a photo-journalist for al-Jazeera. Al-Hajj had been detained at Guantanamo Bay after being picked up at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in December 2001. He was delivered to the Americans by immigration officials. You can read about the whole gruesome story here.

Well, it turns out that al-Hajj was released from Guantanamo with eight other detainees a few days ago. He wasn't charges with any offence, and had been on a hunger strike during the final 16 months of his seven year internment.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof compares al-Hajj's treatment at Guantanamo to that of NYT reporter Barry Bearak by Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe. Bearak was:

... not beaten, but he was infected with scabies while in a bug-infested jail. He was finally brought before a court after four nights in jail and then released.

He then cites al-Hajj who said:

In Guantanamo, you have animals that are called iguanas ... that are treated with more humanity.

Let's hope al-Hajj finds the strength to write about his experiences, following the lead of former British detainee Moazzam Begg and German detainee Murat Kurnaz. An excerpt from a translation of Kurnaz's book (originally written in German) can be read here. Al-Hajj has, however, drawn some sketches depicting the brutish life of Guantanamo detainees.

News Limited papers have rightly complained of the treatment of Fiji Times managing director Evan Hannah. Kevin Rudd has described Hannah's treatment by the Fiji government as a "reprehensible attack on human rights." New Zealand PM Helen Clark has made similar remarks. I agree with both of them.

But seriously, where were they when another journalist was kept at Guantanamo Bay? And was Hannah tortured whilst by the Fijian regime whilst in custody for seven years? Was he repeatedly bashed and denied even basic medical care?

If deportation to one's home country is an attack on human rights, it's the sort of attack I'm sure more Guantanamo detainees could well do with. They could also do with some advocacy on their behalf from the so-called free world.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Tuesday 6 May 2008.



Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: They should hang their heads over the Hicks farce ...

Even after David Hicks was released from Guantanamo Bay in a hasty fashion, allegedly conservative cultural warriors like Gerard Henderson and Andrew Bolt kept telling us: Don't have sympathy for this man. He's pleaded guilty so he must be a nasty terrorist!

Now, they should hang their heads in shame. All daily broadsheets are reporting former Guantanamo chief prosecutor US Air Force Colonel Mo Davis' claims that the entire military tribunal process has been a farce. According to Davis, evidence was obtained through prisoner abuse (i.e. torture), and the trials were subject to direct political influence.

Indeed, The Oz reports Davis as saying

... politicians had forced him to prosecute Hicks ... if it had been his choice, Hicks would not have been charged because the case against him was not serious enough.

In other words, Hicks should have been released without having to enter any plea.

Yet former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer kept insisting to us that Hicks would be afforded a fair trial. Indeed, the Howard government were pushing for the Hicks trial to be brought forward.

Essentially, they were pushing for an Australian citizen to be pushed through a kangaroo court system subject to political influence and where evidence was obtained using torture. Clearly the former government didn't regard the fate of an Australian citizen to be of any great importance.

Luckily for the Commonwealth, Hicks continues to instruct his legal team that he doesn't wish to litigate and just wants to get on with his life. Hicks' father says that Hicks is "not ready for anything yet". We can only hope that Hicks will reveal to us the true horror of the Guantanamo experience in a future book.

But just because there aren't any more Aussies at Guantanamo doesn't mean that we should stop making a fuss. Crikey has already reported the tragic case of an al-Jazeera journalist who continues to languish there. Canadian Omar Khadr, a child soldier when taken into US custody in Afghanistan, continues to be ignored by Canada's conservative government.

And the Alex Gibney film Taxi To The Dark Side which tells the story of an Afghan taxi driver beaten to death in US custody, asks some tough questions about the use of torture in the war against terrorism.

As more Australians lose their lives in this war, our government also needs to start asking some tough questions. If Western nations like Australia don't speak out about human rights abuses of our allies, what moral basis will we have to criticise other countries (such as China and Saudi Arabia) for their human rights abuses?

The time has come for the United States to close its Guantanamo Bay prisons and to end extraordinary rendition. Australia is among America's closest allies. We are perfectly positioned to impress upon our ally the self-defeating nature of fighting terror with torture.



Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf