Prime Minister Tony Blair has made a secret plea to George Bush to return the four British detainees being held at Guantanamo.

The Guardian has seen court papers revealing the prime minister's direct plea to Mr Bush. They form the government's formal defence to a legal action brought by lawyers for two of the remaining prisoners seeking a court order compelling Britain to formally demand their return. The government's defence states: "The United Kingdom government is continuing to seek the return of the four remaining prisoners and the prime minister has made a di rect request to President Bush to that effect".

In no uncertain terms, Britain has criticized the plans for military tribunals:

Last night the attorney-general Lord Goldsmith said the military tribunals planned by the US at Guantánamo Bay broke international standards. In a speech made after months of talks with US officials, Lord Goldsmith said the right to a fair trial was inviolable. "We in the UK have been unable to accept that the US military tribunals proposed for those detained at Guantánamo Bay offer sufficient guarantees of a fair trial in accor dance with international standards," he said.

Newly available records show that a "flurry" of suicide attempts at Guantanamo began three months after Major Gen. Geoffrey Miller took over the prison camp in November, 2002:

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller took over as commander at Guantanamo in November 2002 after interrogators criticized his predecessor for being too solicitous for the detainees' welfare. Between January and March 2003, 14 prisoners at Guantanamo tried to kill themselves, according to Pentagon figures. That's more than 40 percent of the 34 suicide attempts by 21 inmates since the prison was opened in January 2002.

Miller is now in charge of all military-run U.S. prisons in Iraq, a job he took after news broke of beatings and sexual humiliations last fall at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Another case of "Meet the new boss....?" Here's the link to the full text of the Geneva Conventions and Protocols--in html, not pdf.

Remember when Dick Cheney told the world that the captives at Guantamo represented "the worst of a very bad lot?" Guess what? It wasn't true. The New York Times reports that the Adminstration's dangerousness claims as to the Guantanamo detainees were seriously exaggerated:

...an examination by The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided. In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful — some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen — were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings.

Time Magazine reports that a federal class action has been brought in California on behalf of former detainees.

One plaintiff, identified only as Neisef, claims that after he was taken from his home on the outskirts of Baghdad last November and sent to Abu Ghraib, Americans made him disrobe and attached electrical wires to his genitals. He claims he was shocked three times. Although a vein in his penis ruptured and he had blood in his urine, he says, he was refused medical attention. In another session, Neisef claims, he was held down by two men while a uniformed woman forced him to have sex with her. "I was crying," said Neisef, 28. "I felt like my whole manhood was gone." The class action also claims that detainees were raped in prison. On June 6, Neisef was released, after a U.S. civilian told him, he says, that he had been wrongly accused by informants. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirms that a prisoner with Neisef's ID number was released on that date, and TIME has obtained a copy of his release order. But the Pentagon would not comment on the specifics of Neisef's account.

by TChris

If Iraq ever becomes truly sovereign, will the Iraqi government try to hold Donald Rumsfeld accountable for this? Will President Bush?

Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held “off the books” — hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else — in possible violation of international law.

The Pentagon claims that it's entitled to hold prisoners in secret if they pose a threat. A dubious claim at best, but just silly in this case. The detainee was no longer being interrogated and had been returned to Iraq where he became "entirely lost in the system." You'd think the Pentagon would do a better job of keeping track of prisoners it deems a threat.

The Pentagon confirms that the detainee has been held since October, but the International Red Cross wasn't notified and the detainee wasn't given an identification number as required by the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld's hands-on approach to this detainee invites inquiry into his degree of involvement in the prisoner abuse scandals. At the very least, Rumsfeld's arrogant disregard of international law invites inquiry into his fitness to hold his job.

Two military lawyers in particular deserve great praise for their vigorous defense of their clients: Lt. Commander Charles Swift and Major Dan Mori.

The New York Times reports on Lt. Commander Charles Swift [link via Cursor]:

The New York Times profiles a military lawyer who is aggressively defending a Yemeni man being held at Guantanamo: ''I had expected that if we were going to use these tribunals, we were going to start with some very hard-core Al Qaeda members," says Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift. "Yes, he had driven for bin Laden, but how did that make him a criminal?''

Major Dan Mori represents Dan Hicks, an Australian at Guantanamo who will face a military tribunal.

Michael Isakoff of Newsweek writes of the impending Jose Padilla decision in the Supreme Court:

Justice Department lawyers, fearing a crushing defeat before the U.S. Supreme Court in the next few weeks, are scrambling to develop a conventional criminal case against “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla that would charge him with providing “material support” to Al Qaeda, NEWSWEEK has learned.

We fear another move. We fear Bush may amend his executive Order that says military tribunals apply only to non-citizens. If he does, then the Government could move Jose Padilla to Guantanamo and try him in a military tribunal proceeding, without any federal court protections.

This is what we need to be guarding against.

Nat Hentoff's new column in the Village Voice is Hoaxing the Supreme Court --it's on the Government's attempt to sway the high court with information recently released about Jose Padilla, while Padilla and his lawyers remain gagged. Hentoff does not believe James Comey. He thinks Comey is trying to influence Justice O'Connor:

I do not believe Mr. Comey. I believe this last-minute Hail Mary plea was in fact aimed at the most powerful woman in the country. During Supreme Court oral arguments in the Padilla and Hamdi cases, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor seemed likely, as often happens, to be the fifth and deciding vote, and of all the justices, she was the most conflicted as to how to rule. Will the government strategy backfire because the sudden fusillade against Padilla was so transparently an attempt to manipulate the Supreme Court?

by TChris

It's common for cases to be tried in the court of public opinion, but the trial that matters takes place in a courtroom. The government wants the court of public opinion to find Jose Padilla guilty, but doesn't want to present its evidence in a real court.

Deputy Attorney General James Comey on Tuesday ... presented his indictment of Padilla -- complete with vivid descriptions of terror plots Padilla failed to execute -- as part of a public relations blitz to justify holding Padilla and other American citizens as "enemy combatants" in the war on terrorism. Comey said intelligence during interrogations of Padilla and other suspected terrorists justifies the decision not to criminally charge Padilla, and proceed with a normal prosecution, after he was arrested two years ago at the Chicago airport.

Comey brags that the government's strategy succeeded in getting Padilla to talk, while a defendant who was charged and given a lawyer might have exercised his right to remain silent. It's a sad day when a prosecutor thinks justice is served by violating the Constitution.

"Dirty Bomb" Suspect and Bush administration-labeled "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla is now talking, according to recently unclassified military documents. The documents say Padilla admitted training at an al-Qaeda camp and having dealings with al-Qaeda members:

Additionally, the Defense Department summary of Padilla's activities claim Padilla admitted that he was "first tasked with an operation to blow up apartment buildings in the United States with natural gas by [Mohammed] Atef," alleged to be Osama bin Laden's second in command.

Under pressure to explain its indefinite detention of a U.S. citizen as an "enemy combatant," the Justice Department outlined Padilla's alleged al Qaeda training in Afghanistan and contacts with the most senior members of the terrorist network, his travel back into the United States and preparations to rent apartments and set off explosives.

So why didn't the Government charge Padilla with a crime instead of holding him in a military brig without access to counsel for more than two years? Here's what Padilla's lawyer has to say:

Law Professor Eric Muller of Is That Legal? reports that Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is asking Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to investigate the Department of Justice's misrepresentations to the Supreme Court at oral argument in the cases of uncharged detainees Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla.

The misrepresentations concerned Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement's responses to Justices' questions about the U.S. use of torture. Eric has put up Conyer's letter here. (pdf)

Via Phil Carter at Intel Dump:

The Defense Department announced the creation of a new administrative system today which will periodically review the status of detainees being held at Guantanamo bay to see if they merit further detention in America's war on terrorism. The U.S. has come under fire from international law critics for some time, because it has no 'competent tribunal' established in accordance with Art. V of the 3rd Geneva Convention for the review of prisoner status at this facility. The DoD release doesn't explicitly say this process will fit that bill, but it seems obvious to me that it is intended to do so.

We join Phil in wondering what took so long.