Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama

Exclusive: Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama



Exclusive: Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama
Luke Baker
LONDON
Wed Feb 25, 2009 6:23pm EST
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(Reuters) - Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees.

CUBA

Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.

The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions at Guantanamo, but had concluded that all prisoners were being kept in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

"According to my clients, there has been a ramping up in abuse since President Obama was inaugurated," said Ghappour, a British-American lawyer with Reprieve, a legal charity that represents 31 detainees at Guantanamo.

"If one was to use one's imagination, (one) could say that these traumatized, and for lack of a better word barbaric, guards were just basically trying to get their kicks in right now for fear that they won't be able to later," he said.

"Certainly in my experience there have been many, many more reported incidents of abuse since the inauguration," added Ghappour, who has visited Guantanamo six times since late September and based his comments on his own observations and conversations with both prisoners and guards.

He stressed the mistreatment did not appear to be directed from above, but was an initiative undertaken by frustrated U.S. army and navy jailers on the ground. It did not seem to be a reaction against the election of Obama, a Democrat who has pledged to close the prison camp within a year, but rather a realization that there was little time remaining before the last 241 detainees, all Muslim, are released.

"It's 'hey, let's have our fun while we can,'" said Ghappour, who helped secure the release this week of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident freed from Guantanamo Bay after more than four years in detention without trial or charge.

"I can't really imagine why you would get your kicks from abusing prisoners, but certainly, having spoken to certain guards who have been injured in Iraq, who indirectly or directly blame my clients for their injuries and the trauma they have suffered, it's not too difficult to put two and two together."

FORCE-FEEDING

Following a January 22 order from Obama, the U.S. Defense Department conducted a two-week review of conditions at Guantanamo ahead of the planned closure of the prison on Cuba.

Admiral Patrick Walsh, the review's author, acknowledged on Monday that reports of abuse had emerged but concluded all inmates were being treated in line with the Geneva Conventions.

"We heard allegations of abuse," he said, asked if detainees had reported torture. "And what we did at that point was to go back and investigate the allegation... What we found is that there were in some cases substantiated evidence where guards had misconduct, I think that would be the best way to put it."

Walsh said his review looked at 20 allegations of abuse, 14 of which were substantiated, but he did not go into details. Generally he said the abuse ranged from "gestures, comments, disrespect" to "preemptive use of pepper spray."

Ghappour said he had spoken to army guards who, unsolicited, had described the pleasure they took in abusing prisoners, whether interrupting prayer or physical mistreatment. He said they appeared unconcerned about potential repercussions.

He also saw evidence of guards pulling identity numbers off their uniforms or switching them once they were on duty in order to make it more difficult for them to be identified.

Ghappour said he had filed two complaints of serious detainee abuse since December 22 but received no response from U.S. authorities. In one case his client had his knee, shoulder and thumb dislocated by a group of guards, Ghappour said.

In one of the six main camps at Guantanamo, the lawyer said all the detainees he knew were on hunger strike and subject to force-feeding, including with laxatives that induced chronic diarrhea while they were strapped in their feeding chairs.

"Several of my clients have had toilet paper pepper-sprayed while they have had hemorrhoids," Ghappour said.

Another area of concern was evidence that detainees were being abused on the way to meetings with their lawyers -- sometimes so badly that they no longer wanted to meet with counsel for fear of the beatings they would receive, he said.

"Some detainees are convinced they are going to be locked up there forever, despite the promises to close the camp," he said.

(Additional reporting by Randall Mikkelsen and Andrew Gray in Washington, editing by Mark Trevelyan)


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Obama Threatens Bypass Of Constitution With “Recess Appointments”?

Obama Threatens Bypass Of Constitution With “Recess Appointments”?
By Julie Smith on February 13, 2010, 9:01 am

In what amounts to a political street fight, the Senate Republican minority has pushed Obama hard in its rebuke of the nomination of Craig Becker. Becker, a pro-labor nominee to the NRLB, saw his nomination come to a screeching halt last Tuesday. Republicans, joined by conservative Democrats, defeated an effort to allow the nomination process to move forward. Now the administration is pushing back, indicating a willingness to consider a recess appointment to place Becker at the NRLB and bypass a Senate confirmation vote.


Tit For Tat
Such appointments are not out of the ordinary. Facing stiff Democratic opposition, George W. Bush used a recess appointment to place John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005 after a grueling five month long nomination process. Bush used recess appointments over 170 times during his presidency. While this might raise eyebrows, it should be noted that Bill Clinton made 139 recess appointments during his 8 year tenure.

Time Is On Your Side
The only caveat to making a recess appointment is that eventually the appointee will have to come up for confirmation in the Senate. The Constitution indicates that such an appointment is valid only until the next Senate session ends. In modern times, this usually amounts to a period of up to two years. So it looks like Becker will get a free pass and be seated at the NLRB for quite some time before he actually is confirmed. He can also take comfort in that the Senate rarely rejects confirmation at the end of the nominee’s tenure as a recess appointee.


What might throw a monkey wrench into Obama’s carefully laid out plan is the 2010 mid-term elections. Just suppose Republicans make major gains. That would place any recess appointees facing an uphill battle for confirmation yet again.


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Obama seeks more money for nuclear weapons

Obama budget seeks more money for nuclear weapons research, security

By Sue Major Holmes

President Barack Obama is seeking increased funding for nuclear weapons research and security next year, even as his administration has pledged to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear arms.

The administration on Monday asked Congress for more than $7 billion for activities related to nuclear weapons in the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an increase of $624 million from the 2010 fiscal year.
NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino said more money is needed because the U.S. needs the best nuclear weapons facilities, scientists and engineers, even as it moves toward eventual disarmament.

"This budget is implementing the president's nuclear vision," he said.
NNSA wants a 4.7 per cent overall increase for infrastructure to more than $2.3 billion, including money for major long-term projects to replace aging buildings at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Greg Mello, director of the nuclear watchdog Los Alamos Study Group, said budgets have increased in recent years, but the nation "hasn't seen any increase in weapons activities like this since the early years of Ronald Reagan."

He called the budget "a complete surrender to Senate Republicans," who have argued that stockpile reductions must be accompanied by a modernized nuclear weapons complex.

Los Alamos' budget includes about $225 million for design work for a research building to replace a 58-year-old lab where scientists analyze samples of plutonium and other radioactive materials.

Watchdog groups contend the new building would position the U.S. to build more nuclear weapons, but Los Alamos lab officials have said the facility would replace existing capabilities.

NNSA's budget request includes more than $2 billion for stockpile support activities, a 25 per cent increase, and $1.6 billion for science, technology and engineering, an increase of more than 10 per cent.

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We just mortgaged our children's and grandchildren's future. But who cares, right? As long as we can keep buying flat panel TV's and Frappuccinos today, that's all that really matters.




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