Advisory Board Meeting--April 21, 2005

2006-2007 Steering Committee

Co-Chairs: Reena Arora (reenaarora@nyu.edu) &Amanda Klasing (amk422@nyu.edu)
Vice Chair: Mitra Ebadolahi (mitra@nyu.edu)
Advocacy Co-Chairs: Kristin Connor (kconnor@nyu.edu) & Sarah Fick (sarah.fick@nyu.edu)
Education Co-Chairs: Catherine Sweetser (sweetser@nyu.edu) & Njoki Gatimu (njoki.gatimu@nyu.edu)
Careers Chair: Josh Rosenthal (joshrosenthal@nyu.edu)
Domestic Service Chair: Mimi Franke (mimifranke@nyu.edu)
Outreach Chair: Danielle Posen(danielle.posen@nyu.edu)
1L Coordination Chair: Tafadzwa Pasipanodya (tafadzwa@nyu.edu)
Treasurer: Aaron Meyers (a.meyers@nyu.edu)

CCR's work in Extraordinary Rendition

Center for Constitutional Rights
Prepared by: Sarah Parady, March 2005

Summary of CCR’s work related to detentions,[1] renditions, and disappearances by or at the behest of the U.S. government since Sep. 11, 2001. An overview of CCR’s work in this area is available at: http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/education/september_11/september_11.asp.

> Reports

Detentions:
The State of Civil Liberties: One Year Later. September 2002.
Gives a history of and reviews the legality of the Guantanamo Bay detentions and finds them “arbitrary, incommunicado, and prolonged” and in violation of international humanitarian and human rights norms and laws governing treatment of POWs and preventative detentions.
No longer on CCR’s website; available at http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/excep/ccr.html.

Summary of Recent Court Rulings. March 8, 2004.
CCR staff have summarized court rulings related to the war on terrorism that affect civil liberties, including cases emerging from the Guantanamo Bay detentions.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/september_11th/docs/summaryofcases2-4-04.pdf

Report of Former Guantanamo Detainees (“The Tipton Report”). August 4, 2004.
This is a 115-page report from Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, three of CCR’s clients in Rasul v. Bush and Rasul v. Rumsfeld, on the conditions of their 2.5 year detention at Guantanamo Bay, including sexual and religious humiliation, forcible drug injection, and isolation as long as one year.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/docs/Gitmo-compositestatementFINAL23july04.pdf

> Cases

Detentions:

Rasul v. Bush, 124 S. Ct. 2686 (2004).[2] Filed February 19, 2002; decided June 28, 2004.
The CCR filed habeas corpus petitions in the D.C. District Court on behalf of 2 British and 2 Australian men detained at Guantanamo. The government responded that U.S. courts did not have jurisdiction over the base as it is nominally under Cuban sovereignty. The Supreme Court granted certiorari on the jurisdiction question alone, held that foreign nationals detained in a territory under the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the U.S. government can access U.S. courts, and remanded the cases for consideration on the merits.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/rasul_v_bush/legal.asp

Petition to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Behalf of the Guantanamo Detainees. Filed February 25, 2002; adopted March 12, 2002.
CCR and other groups requested that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHCR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) intervene to demand that the U.S. comply with the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man in its detentions at Guantanamo. The IAHCR issued Precautionary Measures requesting that the U.S. government take "urgent measures" to determine the detainees' P.O.W. status before a competent tribunal as required by the Geneva Conventions. The government and CCR filed several more memoranda, prompting a reiteration by the IACHR of its request one year later, and, on July 29, 2004, a request by that body that the U.S. conduct an investigation into allegations of torture at the camp. Finally, on March 3, 2005, CCR argued before the IACHR in D.C. that the U.S. continues to violate international law at the camp.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/september_11th/sept11Article.asp?ObjID=7lt0qaX9CP&Content=134

Guantanamo Detainee Cases[3]
In July 2004 CCR and several law firms filed 11 habeas corpus petitions in the D.C. District Court on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Each petition alleged that petitioners had never been enemy aliens, members of al Qaeda, or combatants in any context involving the U.S.[4] and thus could not be subject to the Joint Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed by Congress on September 18, 2001, the Executive Order of November 13, 2001, or the laws of war; except the petitioners in Anam, Almurbati and Abdah whose petitions simply say there is no evidence that they were. Each claimed violations of due process, the ICCPR and ADRDM, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Powers clause, as well as suspension of the Writ. All but the petitioners in Begg, Boumedienne, Anam and Abdah claimed violations of the Alien Tort Claims Act and all but the petitioners in Boumedienne claimed violations of the Administrative Procedures Act.

Begg v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01137 (D.C. Cir.). Filed July 2, 2004. Two UK citizens.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/DC%20Dist%20Begg%20Petition%207%202%2004.pdf

Kurnaz v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01135 (D.C. Cir.). Filed July 2, 2004. German resident.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/DC%20Dist%20Kurnaz%20Petition%207%202%2004.pdf

Khadr v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01136 (D.C. Cir.). Filed July 2, 2004. Canadian citizen (age 15 when detained).
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/DC%20Dist%20Khadr%20Petition%207%202%2004.pdf

Benchellali v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01142 (D.C. Cir.). Filed July 6, 2004. Three French citizens.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/Filed_Benchallali.pdf

El Banna v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01144 (D.C. Cir.). Amended July 8, 2004. Three UK residents.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/El-Banna%20First%20Amended%20Petition.pdf

Boumedienne v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01166 (D.C. Cir.). Filed July 8, 2004. Two Bosnian residents/Algerian citizens.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/september_11th/docs/Boumediene%20_HabeasPetitionDCDist_7_9_04.pdf

Anam v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01194 (D.C. Cir.). Filed July 15, 2004. Fifteen Yemeni citizens.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/Yemeni%20Petition.pdf

Almurbati v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01227 (D.C. Cir.). Filed July 22, 2004. Three Bahrainian citizens.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/Bahraini%20petition.pdf

Abdah v. Bush, No. 1:04-CV-01254 (D.C. Cir.). Filed July 27, 2004. Fourteen Yemeni citizens.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/Abdah%20Habeas%20Petition%2004-1254.pdf

On January 31, 2005, the District Court held under Rasul v. Bush that all petitioners in the above cases (minus Boumedienne and Benchellali),[5] and those in several other Guantanamo habeas petitions filed simultaneously by other groups, could proceed with Fifth Amendment due process claims and some with claims under the Third Geneva Convention, and that the Combatant Status Review Tribunal proceedings established to try Guantanamo detainees were unconstitutional on due process grounds for failing to provide notice of the evidence against detainees or access to counsel to combat it, and in some cases also for reliance on testimony obtained under duress and for vagueness in the definition of “enemy combatant.”
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/september_11th/docs/JudgeGreenRulingonmotionstodismiss013105.pdf

Rasul v. Rumsfeld, No.?. Filed Oct. 27, 2004.
Four British detainees at Guantanamo (including the 3 petitioners in Rasul v. Bush who issued the “Tipton Report”) sue Secretary Rumsfeld, the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and officers responsible for Guantanamo and their treatment there on a command responsibility theory for their wrongful detention and torture in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo, alleging violations of due process, the 8th Amendment, ATCA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Geneva Conventions. The complaint alleges that none were ever part of any terrorist organization and never took up arms the United States.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/september_11th/docs/Rasul_v._RumsfeldComplaint_October_26octfinal.pdf

Renditions:

Arar v. Ashcroft, No. CV-00249-DGT (E.D.N.Y.). Filed January 22, 2004.
CCR sued the U.S. government under the Torture Victim Protection Act, the Fifth Amendment, and international law for torturing Canadian citizen Maher Arar by rendering Arar to Syria where he was tortured. The government responded by asserting its state secrets privilege (what's that mean - extraordinary) and Arar was released on October 5, 2003. (add info on CCR’s request for canadian gov't investigation)?
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=vRQgEt97ZX&Content=318

ACLU, CCR et al. v. Department of Defense et al., blah. Filed June 2, 2004.
"According to the lawsuit, the failure to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the same groups more than six months ago constitutes a deliberate and unlawful withholding of information from the public." **look at ACLU to see if anything came of this, make sure some docs were released b/c of this FOIA as I assert below
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=UmaKNh6eJq&Content=379

> FOIA Requests

Detentions and Renditions:

October 7, 2003. CCR, the ACLU, and medical and veterans’ groups asked in this request for documentation of torture or cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees in U.S custody around the world, or of renditions of detainees to countries known to use torture. This was the first FOIA request about possible torture of detainees. As of February 2, 2005, a federal judge had ordered the CIA to release certain of these documents and others had been released and are available on the ACLU’s website.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=aVAbsiUdvT&Content=295
http://www.aclu.org/Files/OpenFile.cfm?id=13963
http://www.nyclu.org/torture_foia_pr_020205.html

Disappearances:

December 21, 2004. This request attempts to unearth information about so-called “ghost detainees” held by the U.S. anywhere in the world, including secret sections of Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Air Base; Camp Cropper in Baghdad; Britain’s Diego Garcia Island; and a facility in Jordan. It asks for all records related to the identity, location, authority over, and treatment of detainees held by the U.S. Departments of Defense, Justice and State, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/september_11th/docs/GhostDetaineeFOIA.pdf

> Miscellaneous

May 13, 2004. CCR sent an open letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee from two of its clients in Rasul v. Bush, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, describing the abusive interrogation techniques they had experienced while in custody at Guantanamo Bay, including short-shackling, nudity in from of women, strobe lights, cold air, loud music, dogs, and physical force.
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/docs/ltr%20to%20Sentate%2012may04v2.pdf



[1] This summary does not include CCR’s extensive work relating to detentions within the U.S., including immigrant “sweeps” and mass detentions post-9/11, cases of individual immigrant detainees, or the Hamdi and Padilla “enemy combatant” cases.
[2] The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia combined Rasul v. Bush (a habeas petition on behalf of three detainees) with Habib v. Bush (a habeas petition on behalf of Mr. Habib), both brought by CCR, after the D.C. Circuit found that it lacked jurisdiction in both cases. At the Supreme Court level, the cases were heard together with Al Odah v. United States.
[3] CCR coordinated the post-Rasul move to assert detainees’ rights in court, but some other defense teams filed cases independently, including:
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, No. 1:04-CV-01519 (D.C. Cir.). Filed ???, decided Nov. 8, 2004., Al odah, Parachi, (13 cases overall?)
[4] The petitioners in all of the July 2004 habeas petitions make these claims. Some make additional, stronger claims such as never having been a combatant of any kind; never having been a member of Taliban forces; not being a member of such forces at time of arrest; never having been so much as affiliated with any terrorist group; never having voluntarily joined such a group; etc. Besides differences in individual history, these are the primary differences between the claims and should be reviewed more carefully where they will be material. Petitioners were arrested and held in varying locations around the world before Guantanamo.
[5] I can’t figure out why these cases were not included.