A new policy by the Department of Homeland Security ends the policy of using dogs around detainees:

The U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of Homeland Security, issued a memo to its field offices last month ordering them to refrain from contracting with lockups that use dogs around detainees.

The lockups will still be able to use the dogs to sniff for drugs or other contraband, and to guard regular prisoners who are not being held on immigration charges, said bureau spokesman Russ Knocke.

Long overdue reform, with credit going to immigrants rights groups.

The Passaic County Jail in Paterson is among 81 detention centers nationwide that use dogs, and one of between seven and 10 using them to control federal immigration detainees. There are 200 to 400 such detainees at the jail, which gets $77 per day from the government for housing each inmate.Dogs are used to accompany prisoners being transferred to and from the infirmary, or to break up fights.

The Boston Globe, in this editorial, says that Judge James Robertson's decision Monday to halt the miltary tribunal proceedings at Guantanamo should be cheered by our troops serving abroad:

THE Federal district judge in Washington, D.C., who ruled Monday that the Bush administration has violated US and international law in its handling of Afghan war detainees ought to be thanked by members of the US armed forces all over the world. If they are captured by the enemy, their chances of being treated in accord with the Geneva Conventions will be greater if the United States holds itself to that standard.

The ruling was in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who had not been provided his right under the Geneva Convention to a hearing on his prisoner of war status.

The New York Times supports Judge Robertson's ruling in the Salim Ahmed Hamdan case. First, what happened:

A prosecution before the first American military commission since World War II was halted this week, just as it was getting started, by a federal judge in Washington who ruled that the proceedings lacked the basic elements of a fair trial and violated the Geneva Conventions.

It was the latest in a series of court decisions that have taken the Bush administration to task for trampling on the law in the name of fighting terrorists. The administration should bring its policies into compliance with the law.

The U.S. has signed the Geneva Conventions, which require,

The AP asked, and the Pentagon responded. In an 800 word document, the military has provided details of eight cases of abuse of Guantanamo detainees. The ACLU thinks there is more than is being disclosed:

We're confident that there's more information out there that hasn't been released," said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has obtained nearly 6,000 documents about procedures at U.S.-run prisons. He was in Guantanamo to observe pretrial hearings.

Air Force Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, who represents one of the charged prisoners, will be filing a petition in federal court to dismiss the charges against him, alleging abuse of her client.

Could there be any more reasons not to vote for George W. Bush Tuesday? Here's another one, as set out in this LA Times editorial today, Guantanamo Stonewall:

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 600 foreign terror suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base were entitled to lawyers and the chance to challenge their imprisonment. But in the months since, Pentagon and Justice Department officials have simply acted as if the high court's decision didn't exist, blocking efforts by detainees to meet with their lawyers and insisting on onerous conditions for those meetings.

Last week a federal judge and former federal prosecutor wrote an opinion blasting the Bush administration over its policies at Guantanamo:

Four former Guantanamo detainees, now back in Britain, have filed suit against Donald Rumsfeld and others alleging they were tortured in violation of international law. The suit seeks $10 million in damages for treatment it describes as including

...repeated beatings, death threats, interrogation at gunpoint, forced nakedness and menacing with unmuzzled dogs, among other mistreatment, during more than two years at Guantanamo Bay.

Lawyers for the men held a press conference today.

This is a case about preserving an American ideal — the rule of law," [attorney Eric]Lewis said at a news conference. "It is un-American to torture people. It is un-American to hold people indefinitely without access to counsel, courts or family. It is un-American to flout international treaty obligations."

On a related note, Amnesty International released a report condemning President Bush's response to the 9/11 attacks, which it said has resulted in "an iconography of torture, cruelty and degradation."

Bump and Update: Buzzflash reader commentary on the Rule of Law: Somebelieve in it, some don't.

Congress is concerned, to say the least. John McCain voices his doubts about the policy, and Joe Biden calls for new leadership at the Justice Department.

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Original Post 10/23/04 9:30 om

A newly revealed Department of Justice memo allowed the CIA to secretly remove detainees from Iraq for questioning in other countries. Several experts contacted by the Post said such a policy violates the Geneva conventions:

The treaty prohibits the "[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory . . . regardless of their motive."

The 1949 treaty notes that a violation of this particular provision constitutes a "grave breach" of the accord, and thus a "war crime" under U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice Department draft. "For these reasons," the footnote reads, "we recommend that any contemplated relocations of 'protected persons' from Iraq to facilitate interrogation be carefully evaluated for compliance with Article 49 on a case by case basis." It says that even persons removed from Iraq retain the treaty's protections, which would include humane treatment and access to international monitors.

The author of the draft opinion was Jack L. Goldsmith, former director of the Office of Legal Counsel. This is the same office that drafted the now infamous "torture memo." If ever there was a time to clean house in the Justice Department, this is it.

Now the truth comes out. There was indeed an ongoing battle between the Pentagon (Rumsfeld), the State Deparment (Condi Rice) and the Justice Department (Ashcroft) over the Administration's planned military tribunals at Guantanamo. And who would have thought it was John Ashcroft complaining the planned trials were unfair?

A year later, with no trials yet in sight, some officials at the highest levels of the Bush administration began privately venting their frustration about both the slow pace of the Pentagon's new courts and the soundness of their rules. Attorney General John Ashcroft was especially vocal.

"Timothy McVeigh was one of the worst killers in U.S. history," Mr. Ashcroft said at one meeting of senior officials, according to two of those present. "But at least we had fair procedures for him."

For once, Ashcroft is right. Trials in federal courts are fair. Timothy McVeigh did not get a perfect trial, but he did get a fair one, with unlimited access to counsel, a Judge who granted almost every defense request for additional funds for lawyers and experts, access to law enforcement reports (except those not revealed by the FBI until shortly before his death,) a jury to decide his guilt and punishment and government-funded appeals.

Those detained at Guantanamo and classified by Bush as "enemy combatants" have been dealt the short end of the stick: trial by military judges, no right to appeal, severely limited access to counsel and to see the evidence against them and monitoring of attorney-client communications.

Particularly grievous is the fact that many of the detainees were not terrorists at all, but men whose guilt was assumed because they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many had been sold to the Taliban and had never raised a weapon or made a threat against the United States. Yet, they were transported across the world to Guantanamo and confined in conditons that would likely have resulted in successful habeas motions had they been in America's prisons instead of in Cuba.

The Pentagon guys were the baddies.

We provided them with only the information that we, in our arrogance - or the arrogance of our leadership - thought they needed," one former Pentagon official said.

This interview with Yaser Hamdi judge Robert Doumar is very well-worth reading, particularly for his thoughts on the Government's actions in the case.

Doumar still wonders whether Hamdi is telling the whole story. “There’s no question that Hamdi was accompanying the Taliban, nor did he deny accompanying the Taliban,” he said. Still, he bristles at the thought of the government stripping citizens of their basic constitutional right to access the courts. “We would be destroying the very foundation of our society,” Doumar said.

“They were trying to set a precedent that would have given them unlimited power,” he added. “And that’s a scary prospect.”

[link via Steve at the SW Virginia Law Blog. ]

A federal judge in Washington has rejected the Government's attempt to intrude on the attorney-client relationship of Guantanamo detainees.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected the government's proposal for audio and video monitoring and for a review of notes taken at the meeting because it would undermine the attorney-client relationship.

"The court is acutely aware of the delicate balance that must be struck when weighing the importance of national security against the rights of the individual," she said in the 25-page ruling.

"However, the government has supplied only the most slender legal support for its argument, which cannot withstand the weight of the authority surrounding the importance of the attorney-client privilege," she concluded.

For the first time, employees at Guantanamo have come forward and in interviews with the New York Times, contradicted claims of the military on whether there was harsh or coercive treatment of detainees.

Many detainees at Guantánamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases.

The people, military guards, intelligence agents and others, described in interviews with The New York Times a range of procedures that included treatment they said was highly abusive occurring over a long period of time, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators.

The Times goes on to describe some of the abusive treatment to which the detainees were subjected for as long as 14 straight hours at a time.

"It fried them,'' the official said, explaining that anger over the treatment the prisoners endured was the reason for speaking with a reporter.

Here's how the Times describes its sources:

The new information comes from a number of people, some of whom witnessed or participated in the techniques and others who were in a position to know the details of the operation and corroborate their accounts.

Those who spoke of the interrogation practices at the naval base did so under the condition that their identities not be revealed. While some said it was because they remained on active duty with the military, they all said that being publicly identified would endanger their futures.

Kudos to the guards for speaking out.

Yaser Hamdi, back home in Saudi Arabia after three years in a military brig in South Carolina, is speaking out. He asserts his innocence. He says the military knows he's innocent--otherwise they would never have let him go.

Hamdi was interviewed on CNN Thursday. He says he is not bitter. Here's the transcript of the interview. Check out that smile, is he glad to be home or what?

Here's more.