Dead Guantánamo detainee won, then lost court-ordered release

The detainee found dead in a maximum-security cell at Guantánamo was a long-despairing Yemeni captive with a history of suicide attempts who at one time won a federal judge’s release order, only to see his case overturned on appeal and rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The detention center on Tuesday identified the dead captive as Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, in his 30s, held since January 2002 as prisoner No. 156. He was found unconscious in his cell at the prison’s Camp 5 Saturday afternoon, the military said. Guards and military medical staff could not revive him. He was the ninth detainee to die in the 11 years of the detention center.

The military withheld Latif’s identity while the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service began an investigation and the Obama administration arranged to notify his family as well as Congress of the death.

Latif was not one of Guantánamo’s best known captives. He had never been charged with a war crime, and he was cast at best as an al-Qaida foot soldier in the Defense Department’s own military intelligence assessments obtained by McClatchy from WikiLeaks.

But his lawyers for years portrayed him as a pitiful prisoner — both in the media and in court documents — who frequently tried to kill or harm himself and spent long periods confined to the prison’s psychiatric ward.

A frequent hunger striker,

Guantánamo inmate becomes ninth detainee to die at prison camp

In the weird world of "This could be you", I find myself being very uncomfortable with the facts of "no name or nationality" for what the government deems "none of my business" and passes it off as an acceptable death, that they did everything in their power to prevent.
Why are the detainees still there? The government has declared recently that
al-Qaida is now on the payroll, so then why are we wasting money to keep Guantanamo open?

A former hunger strike prisoner at Guantánamo Bay has died, the US military said Monday, after the man was apparently found unconscious in his cell at the isolated, high-security prison.

The prisoner, whose name and nationality were not released, was found by guards on Saturday and taken to a base hospital, where he was declared dead "after extensive lifesaving measures had been performed," the US military's southern command said in a brief statement.

He was the ninth prisoner to die at the facility since it was opened in January 2002 to hold men suspected of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. The military has said two of those deaths were by natural causes and six were declared suicides.

The death occurred in Camp 5, a section of the prison used mostly to hold prisoners who have broken detention center rules, said navy captain Robert Durand, a spokesman for the prison.

This prisoner had recently splashed a guard with what military officials call a "cocktail," typically a mixture of food and bodily fluids, which is why he was on disciplinary status, Durand said.

He had been on a hunger strike in the past but had resumed eating on

Vladimir Putin: Syria reform 'cannot come with bloodshed'

Welcome back Mr.P.
You are such a refreshing "Voice of Reason".

Speaking in his first full television interview since resuming the presidency, Mr Putin said: “Today some people want to use militants from al-Qaeda or some other organisations with equally radical views to accomplish their goals in Syria. This policy is dangerous and very short-sighted.”

The Russian leader was responding to a host at the Kremlin-controlled RT channel who suggested that western and Arab nations were “sponsoring terrorism” by supporting the rebel coalition, the Free Syrian Army, which was “suspected of hiring known al-Qaeda fighters”.

Do you ever hear any of this wisdom from any of our leaders?
NO!

Mr Putin expressed agreement with the assessment and said: “In that case, one should unlock Guantanamo, arm all of its inmates and bring them to Syria to do the fighting - it's practically the same kind of people.”

He warned against foreign intervention in Syria, saying that “no one is confident” that US troops will have stabilised Afghanistan by the time they withdraw.

“The most important task today is ending the violence," he added. “We must urge all the warring parties, including the government and the so-called rebels, the armed opposition, to sit down at the negotiating table and decide on a future that would guarantee security for all of the stakeholders within Syria.”

U.S. battling CIA rendition case in 3 courts

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/10/BAHQ195SJR.DTL


The Obama administration is fighting on multiple fronts - in courts in San Francisco, Washington and London - to keep an official veil of secrecy over the treatment of a former prisoner who says he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay.


The administration has asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco to reconsider its ruling allowing Binyam Mohamed and four other former or current prisoners to sue a Bay Area company for allegedly flying them to overseas torture chambers for the CIA.

Obama administration lawyers also argued that Mohamed's attorneys had violated secrecy procedures by writing a letter to President Obama, accompanied by a blacked-out document, asking him to disclose their client's treatment. A federal judge ordered Mohamed's lawyers to answer contempt-of-court charges in May that were punishable by up to six months in jail, but has since dropped those charges.

Most recently, a British government lawyer told her nation's High Court last month that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had threatened to limit U.S. intelligence-sharing with Great Britain if the court disclosed details of Mohamed's treatment in Guantanamo.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/10/BAHQ195SJR.DTL#ixzz0NvlE9sSw