Keeping him safe by keeping him in solitary

[joshwriting]

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/25/parhat-combatant-solitary/

So, the SCOTUS ruled. Now, these folks get to contest the decision to keep them locked up in Guantanamo, right?

Well...

Gitmo Detainee’s Lawyer ‘Not Allowed To Tell Him’ He’s No Longer An ‘Enemy Combatant’»

Nearly two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that detainees held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to habeas corpus and can thus challenge their detention in civilian courts, a U.S. Court of Appeals dealt another blow to the Bush administration’s detention policy.

The appeals court ruled that the Pentagon improperly designated Huzaifa Parhat, an ethnic Uighur Chinese national, an “enemy combatant” after being swept up by the U.S. military in Afghanistan in 2001 and then sent to Guantánamo Bay, where he has been held since.

Despite the ruling, Parhat has yet to see any of its benefits. In fact, he doesn’t even know about it. Parhat’s lawyer told CBC radio’s As It Happens last night that Parhat is currently being held in solitary confinement and “has no idea” the appeals court ruled in his favor because, he added, “I’m not allowed to tell him”:

DEREK STOFFEL, CBC HOST: Mr. Willett, what’s your client’s reaction to this ruling?

SABIN WILLETT (PARHAT’S LAWYER): Boy what a great question that is because my client doesn’t know about this ruling because I’m not allowed to tell him. […] He’s sitting in solitary confinement today. He has no idea what’s happened as far as I know.

There is more to the story, and both the video and a transcript of the interview.

I am not surprised. I am, however, appalled.

Comments

[joshwriting.livejournal.com]

By the way, I now know why he is in solitary confinement.

All of the Uighurs are kept in solitary - it's their standard everyday treatment. Roughly 80% of the prisoners are kept that way:

The Red Cross, the only independent monitoring organisation allowed to inspect the detention facilities at Guantánamo, has described conditions at Camp Echo as 'extremely harsh'. Prisoners are kept in their windowless cells for 23 or 24 hours a day, and - in the absence of any natural light whatsoever - fluorescent lighting is kept on 24 hours a day.

Or, conversely, Guantánamo, a military spokeswoman said, does not have solitary confinement, only "single-occupancy cells."

A six foot by 8 foot cell, but not solitary at all. And I am sure that the lack of sun and leaving the lights on almost all the time are merely happenstance.

The Seton Hall study found that 55 percent of the detainees are not suspected of having committed any hostile acts against the United States and that 40 percent of the detainees are not affiliated with al-Qaida. Eight percent are listed as having fought for a terrorist group, and 60 percent are merely accused of being "associated with" terrorists—the lowest categorization available. They confirm that 86 percent were captured either by the Northern Alliance or by Pakistan "at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies." They quote a flier, distributed in Afghanistan at the time of the sweeps that reads: "Get wealth and power beyond your dreams ... You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces catch Al Qaida and Taliban murderers. This is enough money to take care of your family, your tribe, your village for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books."

The Bush administration has repeatedly described these men as "the worst of the worst."

Your arguments about "this case" remind me of nothing more than the arguments made by schools insisting that there was nothing wrong with how they were dealing with special education classes.

[joshwriting.livejournal.com]

classes students