[Ppnews] Six Years Late, Court Throws Out Gitmo Case

[Political Prisoner News]

June 25, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington06252008.html

The Meaning of Parhat vs. Gates


Six Years Late, Court Throws Out Gitmo Case

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

In the history of legal challenges to the Bush 
administration’s assertion that it can hold “War 
on Terror” prisoners indefinitely without charge 
or trial, Parhat v. Gates has just joined a trio 
of Supreme Court verdicts -- Rasul v. Bush 
(2004), Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) and Boumediene 
v. Bush (twelve days ago) -- as significant challenges to executive overreach.

In a one-page ruling in the case of Hufaiza 
Parhat, a Uighur (a Muslim from the oppressed 
Xinjiang province of China), the US Court of 
Appeals in Washington “held invalid a decision of 
a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that 
petitioner Hufaiza Parhat is an enemy combatant.” 
The court also “directed the government to 
release or transfer Parhat” (or, more worryingly, 
“to hold a new Tribunal consistent with the 
Court’s opinion”), and also “stated that its 
disposition was without prejudice to Parhat’s 
right to seek release immediately through a  writ 
of habeas corpus in the district court, pursuant 
to the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush.”

The verdict has been a long time coming. When 
Guantánamo opened in January 2002, the prisoners, 
who had been designated as “enemy combatants” on 
capture, were deprived of all rights until the 
Supreme Court ruled in Rasul that they had 
statutory habeas corpus rights. This ruling paved 
the way for the prisoners to meet with lawyers to 
build habeas cases, but in the meantime the 
administration subjected the prisoners to 
administrative reviews -- the Combatant Status 
Review Tribunals (CSRTs) -- which prevented them 
from having legal representation, relied upon 
secret evidence that could have been obtained 
through torture or coercion, and, as former 
insider Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham explained last 
year, were, in complete contrast to the purpose 
of Rasul, essentially designed to rubber-stamp 
their prior designation as “enemy combatants” without rights.

In a further blow to Rasul, Congress was 
persuaded to pass the Detainee Treatment Act 
(DTA) in 2005, which removed the prisoners’ 
habeas rights, and limited any review of their 
cases to the Circuit Courts (rather than the 
Supreme Court), apparently preventing any 
independent fact-finding to challenge the 
substance of the administration’s allegations, 
and mandating the judges to rule only on whether 
or not the CSRTs had followed their own rules, 
and whether or not those rules were valid. Since 
last summer, when the Supreme Court agreed to 
hear Boumediene, the DTA cases have been on hold, 
as the lower court judges awaited the Supreme Court’s verdict.

Given these limitations, the verdict of the DC 
Circuit Court judges is nothing short of 
astonishing. The full details are not yet clear, 
as the Court also noted that “the opinion 
contains classified information that the 
government had initially submitted for treatment 
under seal,” and that “a redacted version for 
public release is in preparation,” but, as the 
Los Angeles Times noted, “those familiar with the 
panel’s decision 
 said it suggested that other 
judges might follow its lead and challenge the 
government’s underlying reasons for keeping 
detainees like Parhat in military custody for so long.”

Underlining the triumph of the verdict, but also 
the long injustice that preceded it, Parhat’s 
lawyer, Sabin Willett, said, “It is a tremendous 
day. It is a very conservative court, but we 
pressed ahead and we won unanimously. But Huzaifa 
Parhat is now in his seventh year of imprisonment 
at Guantánamo Bay, and he doesn't even know about 
this ruling because he's sitting in solitary 
confinement and we can't tell him about it. 
That's what we do to people in this country -- we 
put them in solitary confinement even when they are not enemy combatants.”

This is no exaggeration on Willett’s part. 
Twenty-two Uighurs were originally held in 
Guantánamo, and all but four were, like Hufaiza 
Parhat, seized by enterprising Pakistani 
villagers, who were no doubt eager for the 
substantial bounties offered by US forces for 
“al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects.” It has been 
established beyond a doubt that these 18 men had 
fled persecution in China, and were eking out a 
meager living in a run-down hamlet in 
Afghanistan’s eastern mountains, when they were 
bombed by US forces following the invasion of 
Afghanistan in October 2001, and subsequently 
fled to Pakistan, where they were seized and transferred to US custody.

Despite cynical attempts to portray them as 
separatist “terrorists” with links to al-Qaeda 
(which was part of a deal between the US and 
China to prevent Chinese opposition to the 
invasion of Iraq), US forces knew from at least 
2003 that none of the men posed a threat to the 
US or its interests, that they only had one enemy 
-- China -- as they had all insisted repeatedly, 
and that they had no connection whatsoever with the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

And yet the Uighurs’ stories demonstrate some of 
the more egregious flaws in the tribunal system 
at Guantánamo. Although their stories were 
identical, some of the men were judged to be 
“enemy combatants,” while others were cleared for 
release. This infuriated the administration to 
such an extent that, in the cases of at least two 
of the men, Anwar Hassan and Hammad Mohammed, 
further tribunals were convened, on the orders of 
Matthew Waxman, the deputy assistant secretary of 
defense for Detainee Affairs, which reversed the 
earlier verdicts. Hassan’s lawyers, Angela Vigil 
and George Clarke, noted that, “contrary to the 
government’s suggestion,” the change of 
determination between the first and second CSRTs 
was not based on “additional classified 
information,” (of which there was none) but was, 
instead, based solely on “communications” from 
Waxman “pressing for a reversal” of the first CSRT determination.

Although the administration pandered further to 
Chinese pressure by allowing Chinese 
interrogators to visit the men (and in some cases 
to threaten them) at Guantánamo, they drew the 
line at returning them to certain torture in 
their homeland. In May 2006, after trawling the 
world for suitable host countries, Albania was 
prevailed upon to accept five of the men, but the 
rest -- Hufaiza Parhat included -- remain in 
solitary confinement, as Sabin Willett noted, 
even though they are not “enemy combatants,” and never have been.

The following exchange comes from Hufaiza 
Parhat’s CSRT, which took place nearly four years 
ago. In it, he explains why he left his homeland, 
why he is opposed to Chinese rule, and why he is 
a supporter rather than an opponent of the United 
States. Sadly, although the Circuit Court’s 
ruling in Parhat v. Gates is legally significant, 
it cannot wipe away the scandal of Parhat’s 
horrific and ongoing isolation in Guantánamo, and 
nor can it provide him with a new home. Perhaps, 
as another of his lawyers, Susan Baker Manning, 
explained (in the Washington Post’s words), “the 
best option is to release them to the United States.”

An excerpt from Hufaiza Parhat’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Detainee: They are saying that we are against the United States. Is that right?

Tribunal President: Yes.

Detainee: That is not true because from the time 
of our great-grandparents centuries ago, we have 
never been against the United States and we do 
not want to be against the United States 
 Also, 
I can represent for 25 million Uighur people by 
saying that we will not do anything against the 
United States. We are willing to be united with 
the United States. I think that the United States 
understands the Uighur people much better than other people.

The reason we went into Pakistan was because in 
China there is torture and too much pressure on 
the Uighur people. Lately they have laid off the 
Uighur people from their jobs 
 and filled all 
the jobs with immigrant Chinese.

The Uighurs have families and need support to eat 
and if we don’t do something then how are we 
going to live? If they (fellow Uighurs) wanted to 
go and farm they would have to pay a lot of 
taxes. If they can’t pay the taxes, they would take away their property.

So many people are without an education because 
they (the Chinese) are asking too much money for 
an education. Now there are a great number of 
young people on the streets with no education. 
The Uighur people only have the privilege of 
having two children. If a female gets pregnant 
with a third child, the government will forcibly 
take the kid through abortion.

Lots of Uighur people are so poor that we can’t 
afford to eat meat weeks to months at a time. 
Turkistan [the Uighurs’ name for their homeland] 
has a lot of natural resources and they (the 
Chinese) don’t use one or two percent of it for 
Turkistan. They take the majority of the 
resources day and night to the mainland in China. 
If they torture us everyday and pressure us too 
much, then what are we going to do? How are we 
going to live? In the future, what will the next 
generation do? How will they survive? That is why 
I left my country to try to get something, get 
back and liberate my people and get our country 
independence 
 That is the reason we went to Afghanistan.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the 
author of 
'<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745326641/counterpunchmaga>The 
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 
Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published 
by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/>www.andyworthington.co.uk

He can be reached at: 
<mailto:andy at andyworthington.co.uk>andy at andyworthington.co.uk




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