Norway - Misleading coverage when dealing with the release of detainees to the "paradise islands..." [2009-07-17 The Guardian]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/17/sami-al-haj-al-jazeera-guantanamo-bay-journalist

I am not a royalist, for a number of reasons. That said, I hope HMQ does not come as proposed.

The thought of certain people feigning delight, is enough to make me throw up!

"If Mr. Fried is unable to find a home for all of the 40 detainees, the U.S. could face some unpalatable options: keeping the men at Guantanamo beyond Mr. Obama's deadline, releasing them onto US soil, or holding them in the U.S. on shaky legal grounds".

Dear oh dear oh dear. Well - we can't have that can we? That would never do now would it? I mean - politicians would be in an uproar, and we can't have that. Plus - the USA is such a tiny little place, they could never find a couple of square miles to put these people into. Could they?

Not forgetting - the US would be a "less safe place"...if you believe the President that is.

I am delighted at the decision. I think I said elsewhere, that the thought of this Government feigning respect and pleasure at the visit, is enough you make me barf.

Can't wait for any spin on this one. "PLP saddened at news Queen not attending". 

Greetings, alll...

And with less than a post-operative male-to-female gender-variant tongue in cheek, Mike... the makings of Bermuda's first "Oh so gay a scenario!" too...

B+...

US - "I wonder if Bermuda can help," Premier Ewart Brown offered... [2009-08-02 Miami Herald]

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/v-fullstory/story/1167861.html

Sunday, 08.02.09

Emptying Guantánamo prison camps, one deal at a time

Despite the determination of U.S. officials and the goodwill of some foreign nations, President Barack Obama's plan to close the Guantánamo prison camps by January still has a long way to go.

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
CROSENBERG@MIAMIHERALD.COM

WASHINGTON -- On May 20, the premier of Bermuda was paying his respects at the White House when he offered a lifeline to the Obama administration's struggle to find countries for some of Guantánamo's most stigmatized detainees.

"I wonder if Bermuda can help," Premier Ewart Brown offered.

Three weeks later, four former prisoners were smiling, posing for photographers at a Bermuda beach -- a freeze-frame moment capping rare collaboration between a U.S. ally, attorneys and an American administration determined to close the Pentagon's prison camps in Cuba by Jan. 22.

Bermuda's hospitality illustrates how much the administration is relying on outsiders to make good on President Barack Obama's mandate to empty the prison camps at Guantánamo Bay.

And, how the U.S. attorneys who fought the Bush administration tooth-and-nail on its detention policies are now emerging as key partners in the effort to craft safe solutions for some of the men.

A case in point came this past week from the federal courts.

Long before Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ordered the U.S. government to free a young Afghan named Mohammed Jawad, his military lawyers arranged with UNICEF and the Afghan Human Rights Commission to get him education and support, once back home with his mother.

Defense lawyers argue he was 12, not 17, at his capture. They wanted to show an Obama task force that "we had everything in place to ensure a smooth transition to civilian life," said Air Force Reserve Maj. David Frakt.

The post-release program was put together by Frakt, a college professor doing reserve duty, a Marine lawyer who traveled to Afghanistan and a Navy reserves lawyer, a lieutenant commander.

A total of 13 detainees have left Guantánamo since Obama took office. Six were resettled in Bermuda, Britain and France, not their native countries; five went to their homelands of Chad, Iraq and Saudi Arabia; and a Yemeni went home dead, an apparent suicide victim. The 13th went to New York for trial as an al Qaeda co-conspirator.

About 230 remain. Lawyers estimate 50 of them need sanctuary in third countries, for fear of torture if returned home. Also, the federal courts are reviewing the detainees' cases -- and ordering that more be let go.

About 100 Guantánamo captives today are Yemeni. But the U.S. and Yemen can't agree on how to rehabilitate those the U.S. alleges answered Osama bin Laden's call to jihad in their teens and 20s.

It all falls on the State Department to negotiate each repatriation or transfer elsewhere. Ambassador Daniel Fried, who had been responsible for European affairs, heads the effort as special envoy for Guantánamo closure.

"The Bermuda thing was unusual and is almost certain not to be repeated," said an administration official with knowledge about the State Department's role. "This is not easy stuff. We have to be methodical and we have to act with dispatch."

The official was allowed to speak to The Miami Herald on condition he not be named.

Said White House spokesman Benjamin LaBolt: "The administration is engaged in a dialogue with our allies around the world about the need to close Guantánamo in order to strengthen our security and take a propaganda rallying cry off the table for our adversaries."

So for the moment, the June 11 transfer to Bermuda was the last success: Four Muslim Uighurs from China, picked up in Afghanistan and held for years at Guantánamo, moved to the British colonial paradise of white sandy beaches.

Since then, Congress has prohibited the use of federal funds for transfers and now requires detailed notification two weeks before future moves.

Bermuda provided the plane that flew the Uighurs to freedom, sparking a brief row with Britain over whether it had been properly informed. Also aboard the Gulfstream jet were White House General Counsel Gregory Craig, State Department envoy Fried and two attorneys from the Boston firm Bingham McCutchen, Sabin Willett and Susan Baker Manning.

Bingham lawyers had for years fought the Uighurs' case in the courts and media while quietly approaching what Willett described as "dozens" of countries to take the men.

None bit. In the process, Willett taught countless journalists how to pronounce Uighur -- wee-ghur.

But other transfer deals that simmered during the Bush years came to fruition once Obama announced plans to close the camps.

Consider Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian made famous because his is the first name on a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on Guantánamo.

Now 42, Boumediene lives in the south of France, an idea that jelled over a March 10 lunch at the French Embassy in Washington.

Attorney Rob Kirsch drank Perrier. Two diplomats drank wine. A tuxedoed waiter served veal while Kirsch told his client's story:

Captured in Sarajevo. Taken to Guantánamo by way of the U.S. base at Incirlik, Turkey. Accused and cleared of an unrealized plot to attack the U.S. embassy in Bosnia Herzegovina. Fought and won the right for all Guantánamo captives to have their cases heard by civilian courts in Boumediene v. Bush.

"In my five years on the case, it was the best working meal I ever had," Kirsch said.

On April 1, he got a call from a French diplomat who said that President Nicolas Sarkozy had agreed to take in Boumediene. Two days later, in Strasbourg, Sarkozy announced after a bilateral meeting with Obama that France would resettle a Guantánamo detainee.

"I was delivering an extremely low-risk, high-profile prisoner and that I thought that would be attractive to President Sarkozy," Kirsch said.

On its own, Boumediene's legal team lobbied France's equivalent of a CIA director, Bernard Bajolet. Bajolet was French ambassador to Sarajevo in 2002, when Boumediene was hustled off to Guantánamo, and had condemned it then.

The French and Algerian governments cooperated to get Boumediene's wife and daughters travel papers to leave Algeria, something that would usually require a husband or father to accompany them. They were in France to greet him May 15.

Kirsch and the captive worked together between Boston and the prison's Camp Iguana to write a formal request to Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

It was all exchanged by computer and shuttled between Boston and Boumediene's barbed-wire encircled wooden hut by prison camp staff, so Boumediene was able to leave Guantánamo with travel papers from the French -- using a photo downloaded from Wikipedia.

"It showed what would happen if they cooperate with the lawyers," Kirsch said of the State Department, "how easily they could get that place emptied."

Earlier this month, an administration official said, a lawyer from the New York Center for Constitutional Rights met special envoy Fried's staffers at the State Department. The law group joined European and U.S. human rights groups in championing the cause of detainees during the Bush administration.

"We could only do so much without the U.S. government working with us," says CCR attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez. "They're a partner at the table now, and I think that's a good thing."

Lawyers from the London-based human rights group Reprieve took two trips to N'Djamena, Chad, in 2007 and 2008, to interest the government there in the case of Mohammed Gharani. His lawyers say he was 14 at capture, and grew his first beard behind the razor wire in Cuba.

Born in Saudi Arabia to guest worker parents, he went to Pakistan as a citizen of Chad to study the Koran. The kingdom didn't want him back even after he was cleared of terror suspicions at Guantánamo.

So Reprieve lawyers traveled to Africa. "The pitch was, 'This is a national of yours. He's never been charged with a crime," recalls attorney Zachary Katznelson. "He's been abused . . . racially abused, psychologically abused, physically abused, cut off from his family. He's the only Chadian national there and he needs your help."

Chad eventually contacted the State Department and asked for his return, says Katznelson.

But it didn't go quietly. The young man made headlines when a prison-approved family phone call to an uncle turned into a recorded chat with an al Jazeera reporter -- the only broadcast interview with a detainee in the prison camp's history. The military says captives can't talk to journalists, citing the Geneva Conventions.

The tactic made some lawyers wince. But Guantánamo attorneys have long argued their clients cases in the media, especially during the years when the Bush administration blocked them from the courts.

A father-and-son team from Boston, Michael Mone and Michael Mone Jr., worked with Irish-American contacts, Amnesty International and lobbied parliament members and media in Ireland to get their client's dossier before the Foreign Office in 2007.

The son traveled to Dublin in June 2008 and told government representatives from the foreign and justice departments that Uzbek Oybek Jabbarov, 31, wanted to leave Guantánamo to become a sheep herder in Ireland.

"We knew Ireland would be a good place for Oybek. We worked very hard to lay the groundwork with the Irish government. They have a strong commitment to human rights. We knew he'd be treated fairly," Mone Jr. said.

"Plus, he speaks English. There's no language barrier."

Irish diplomats interviewed detainees at Guantánamo and announced last week that it had agreed to take in two men, reported to be from Uzbekistan. Now it's up to the State Department's Fried to seal the deal.

"He's The Closer," Mone said. "And God love him."

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Related Content:

In-depth Guantánamo coverage
http://www.miamiherald.com/guantanamo/

After Guantánamo | What's Next?
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/guantanamo/globe/v-fullstory/story/1015895.html

Obama outlines plans for Guantánamo detainees
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/v-fullstory/story/1059440.html

Obama still deciding how to prosecute 9/11 accused
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/v-fullstory/story/1064986.html

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Copyright 2009 Miami Herald Media Co.

Bermuda - The Go-Between: Interpreting Life in Bermuda for Freed Gitmo Prisoners... [2009-08-05 WSJ]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124943066488606293.html

AUGUST 05, 2009

The Go-Between: Interpreting Life in Bermuda for Freed Gitmo Prisoners
Ms. Abbas Speaks Uighur but Translates More Than Words; Explaining Al Sharpton

By PAULO PRADA

HAMILTON, Bermuda -- Rushan Abbas climbed the stone steps of Camden, the official residence of Bermuda's premier, earlier this summer and led three island newcomers into a stately receiving room where the Rev. Al Sharpton was waiting.

"Thank you for your valuable time," said Ms. Abbas, after interpreting Rev. Sharpton's greeting to the three men into Uighur, an obscure language of central Asia.

Being Uighur Muslims from western China -- and having spent the past seven years as prisoners at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- the men really had no idea who the American civil-rights activist is.


Rushan Abbas

The task of explaining many such mysteries to the freed Uighurs has fallen to Ms. Abbas, a 42-year-old former office worker and mother of three in Fresno, Calif. Since 2002, her rare combination of language skills, passports and Uighur activism has made Ms. Abbas the primary link between Guantanamo's Uighur detainees and a world far removed from the Afghan hamlets where they were living just before the U.S. military captured them early in its hunt for al Qaeda.

The men say they were passing through the region at the time after fleeing China, where Uighurs, a people of Turkic descent, have long been an oppressed minority. In early July, clashes between Uighurs and residents from China's Han majority led to 197 deaths in Xinjiang province, which is home to most Chinese Uighurs.

Ms. Abbas had never worked as an interpreter before Sept. 11, 2001. She has since gone from a sales job in California, through the barbed wire of Guantanamo, to the private jet that Bermuda chartered to retrieve the Uighurs after the U.S. government freed them June 11. In the process, Ms. Abbas, a native Uighur and a naturalized U.S. citizen, went from helping the Defense Department interrogate prisoners to working for their release.

"She got into this expecting vicious, throat-slitting terrorists," says Sabin Willett, a Boston lawyer who helped free the Uighurs. "Now she's helping to demythologize those men."

After the Uighurs were released, Ms. Abbas spent two weeks easing their transition. Now, after a recent move from Fresno to Washington, D.C., she is on standby to fly to Palau, in case a deal is finalized with the Pacific island nation to accept 13 remaining Guantanamo Uighurs.

"I have to explain almost everything," says Ms. Abbas. The visit from Rev. Sharpton, she explained to the men and to a fourth colleague who didn't make the meeting, was a show of support for Bermuda's government, which had caught political flak for accepting them.

In addition to interpreting, Ms. Abbas coordinated everything from meals to visits from Bermudan lawyers and government employees who are helping them find homes, English classes and work. On Monday, the Uighurs began jobs as landscapers at the state-owned Port Royal Golf Course.

Associated Press
Ex-detainee Abdullah Abdulqadir, left, with interpreter Rushan Abbas in June.

As they settled in at the oceanside guesthouse where they first arrived, Ms. Abbas baked bread, fried flounder, and made halwa, a sweet confection. "She's our translator, our assistant, and our chef," says Abdullah Abdulqadir, 30, the most jovial of the four men.

Ms. Abbas was born in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province and the city where the recent violence erupted. Her father, a scientist, befriended an American researcher who invited Ms. Abbas to study in the U.S. once she had finished a biology degree at Xinjiang University. In 1989, she moved to Prosser, Wash., studied plant pathology at Washington State University, fell in love with a professor and married. Over the next seven years, Ms. Abbas had three children, became a U.S. citizen and grew active in Uighur-American circles.

In 1998, when U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia launched a Uighur language service, Ms. Abbas became the sole female voice on the channel, communicating world news to western China and other Uighur areas. In 2000, she quit radio to work in sales for an exporter of animal feed.

Then, as she recalls it, one Saturday morning a few months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the phone rang. "I've been looking for you for weeks," the voice on the line said.

It was an executive at Titan Corp., now owned by L-3 Communications Corp., which was providing interpreters for the U.S. military. The company needed her in Guantanamo, where a small group of captured Uighurs had recently been shipped.

Three weeks later, she was in Cuba, in fatigues, interpreting the interrogation of a Uighur detainee. After the interview, the detainee told interrogators he would like to speak with Ms. Abbas. "You are Rushan Abbas," the prisoner said. He and others recognized her voice from Radio Free Asia.

A U.S. government official said that some of the Uighurs before their capture lived at times in suspected terrorist training camps. Investigators, though, never had enough evidence to prove they were indeed "enemy combatants," the official said.

Frustrated with what she describes as fruitless and repetitive interviews, Ms. Abbas resigned from her Guantanamo post in 2002, and returned to another sales job in California.

In early 2003, the military transferred the Uighurs to a medium-security portion of Guantanamo. Since then, the U.S. has been unable to free most of them. They can't return to China, where the government considers them separatists. China has warned other countries not to accept them.

In 2005, a group of U.S. law firms launched a pro bono effort to free the Uighurs, but had trouble communicating with the detainees. "Get Rushan," one of the detainees told the lawyers.

Over the past three years, Ms. Abbas made more than 20 trips to Guantanamo. She left her job and $65,000 salary and now free-lances for the law firms.

Last October, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. must release the 17 Uighurs who remained at Guantanamo. The four in Bermuda were going to be sent in May to live in Virginia, but local and state officials protested.

Once Bermuda accepted them, Ms. Abbas helped the men understand that they would no longer be treated as prisoners. "I thought we would still be wearing shackles," says Salahidin Abdulahat, 32, recalling their surprise when they stepped into the chartered jet and saw couches, a phone and a microwave.

Before leaving Bermuda for home, Ms. Abbas made sure the Uighurs had some things they needed to adjust to a free life in the West. "I really liked the Wii," said Mr. Abdulahat, boasting how well he played a virtual bowling game the men had in their final week at Guantanamo. Ms. Abbas interpreted. Within seconds, a Bermuda government worker across the table was on the phone pricing gadgets.

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Write to Paulo Prada at paulo.prada@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

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©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.