Sign Petition to Free Guantanamo Prisoner Fayiz al-Kandari

Supporters of Guantanamo prisoner Fayiz al-Kandari have a petition to Attorney General Eric Holder posted at the PetitionSite.com. It urgently calls upon the United States government "to immediately release Fayiz al-Kandari to the care of the Kuwaiti government."

Like a number of idealistic Muslims, Fayiz al-Kandari was caught up at a young age by the suffering of Muslims in the war in Bosnia. He became very active in charity work, and this work led him to Afghanistan. Originally from a well-to-do Kuwaiti family, Fayiz was captured in 2001, becoming one of a number of Arabs sold to the Americans in Afghanistan for bounty money. He has been imprisoned for more than eight years.

Andy Worthington describes what happened next:

In Guantánamo, Fayiz al-Kandari’s refusal to accept that “there is no innocent person here” has marked him out as a particularly resistant prisoner — and resistant prisoners are given a particularly hard time. Over the years, he has been subjected to a vast array of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which, as Lt. Col. Wingard described them, “have included but are not limited to sleep deprivation, physical and verbal assaults, attempts at sexual humiliation through the use of female interrogators, the “frequent flier program,” the prolonged use of stress positions, the use of dogs, the use of loud music and strobe lights, and the use of extreme heat and cold.”

Despite all this, he has not been “broken,” and has been able, unlike Fouad al-Rabiah and numerous other prisoners, to resist making false confessions about his own activities. He has also refused to make false confessions about the activities of other prisoners, despite being offered many opportunities to do so, and despite being told about others who have made false allegations against him.

Al Kandari's attorney, Major Barry Wingard, has made clear that the evidence against his client is based on far-fetched hearsay evidence. Wingard has been outspoken in his criticism of the Guantanamo military commissions and the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and other inhumane types of treatment.

What follows is from the petition website. You can go sign the petition immediately by clicking here.

Free Fayiz al-Kandari to the Care of the Kuwaiti Government Now!

Fayiz al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti citizen, has been a detainee in Guantanamo since 2002 after being captured by Pakistani forces and sold into US custody. Despite over 400 interrogations, suffering through endless hours of torture, including but not limited to beatings, sleep deprivation, threats and forced stress positions, the US government has failed to gather any of the coveted information that this treatment was ostensibly designed to garner. Furthermore, the US government has not produced any evidence against Fayiz al-Kandari aside from hearsay accusations of other Guantanamo prisoners and unidentified Afghanis, evidence which, under any other circumstances, would not be allowed in court.

With this in mind, we urgently call upon the United States government to immediately release Fayiz al-Kandari to the care of the Kuwaiti government. Kuwait has made various requests for the repatriation of Mr. al-Kandari which have been refused by the United States on the basis of concerns with Kuwait's ability to monitor and rehabilitate previously returned citizens. In response Kuwait has poured enormous resources into vastly improving the monitoring of returned citizens as well as building a multi-million dollar rehabilitation centre. In consideration of these efforts on the part of Kuwait, combined with the length of Mr. al-Kandari's detention without trial, the questionable nature of the evidence against him and his continued and passionate insistence on his innocence, it is unquestionably incumbent upon the United States Department of Justice, the State Department and the Office of the President to negotiate and arrange with the Kuwaiti government for the return of Fayiz al-Kandari to Kuwait immediately.

For further background information regarding Fayiz al-Kandari, please see these posts by Lt. Col Barry Wingard, the military defense lawyer for Fayiz: Barry Wingard - No Justice Today at Guantanamo - washingtonpost.com http://wapo.st/gsuzX5 and http://www.truth-out.org/nine-years-too-long65253

ACLU to Fight for Release of "Enemy Combatant" Tribunals Transcripts; Fayiz al-Kandari Loses Habeas Appeal

From a new ACLU press release:

ACLU In Federal Appeals Court Thursday To Argue For Release Of Guantánamo Detainee Statements

Tribunal Transcripts Would Provide Critical Testimony About Bush Torture Program

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union will be in court Thursday to argue that the government should release transcripts in which 14 prisoners now held at Guantánamo Bay describe abuse and torture suffered in CIA custody.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to obtain uncensored transcripts from Combatant Status Review Tribunals used to determine if Guantánamo detainees qualify as "enemy combatants." In October, a federal court ruled that the government can continue to suppress the detainees' testimony about the abuse they suffered in CIA custody. The ACLU is asking the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reverse that decision.

More information about the case is available online at: www.aclu.org/national-security/csrt-foia

Oral arguments in American Civil Liberties Union v. DOD, a FOIA lawsuit seeking the release of transcripts from Guantánamo Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

Ben Wizner of the ACLU National Security Project will argue the case. Other attorneys on the case are Jameel Jaffer, ACLU Deputy Legal Director, Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project and Arthur B. Spitzer of the ACLU of the National Capital Area.

WHEN:
Thursday, September 23, 2010
9:30 a.m. EDT

WHERE:
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
333 Constitution Ave. NW
Washington, D.C.

On a related note, see Andy Worthington's excellent article on Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s outrageous decision to deny Fayiz Al-Kandari his habeas petition. The decision itself has not been published. As Andy wrote:

... the authorities have refused to accept al-Kandari’s account of his activities, even though a cursory glance at the allegations against him demonstrates that, of the 20 allegations against him, 16 are attributed to an unidentified “individual,” and only one — a claim that he “suggested that he and another individual travel to Afghanistan to participate in jihad and … provided them with aliases” — came from al-Kandari himself (and has been refuted by him).

The paucity of evidence is so extreme that, after his Combatant Status Review Tribunal in 2004 (a deliberately one-sided process designed to rubber-stamp the men’s prior designation as “enemy combatants”), the tribunals’ legal advisor made a point of dissenting from the tribunal’s conclusion that he was an “enemy combatant,” stating:

Indeed, the evidence considered persuasive by the Tribunal is made up almost entirely of hearsay evidence recorded by unidentified individuals with no first hand knowledge of the events they describe.

As researchers at the Seton Hall law School noted, in a major analysis of the CSRT documentation, entitled, “No-Hearing Hearings” (PDF, p. 34), “Outside of the CSRT process, this type of evidence is more commonly referred to as ‘rumor.’”

Although these “rumors” were sufficient for the Pentagon to regard him as a prisoner of such significance that he was put forward for a trial by Military Commission in October 2008 (which has not been revived under President Obama), it is difficult to escape the conclusion that, inside the prison, he is regarded as a threat not because of what he is supposed to have done prior to his capture, but because of his attitude in detention.

The fact that the majority of the allegations against him were made by other prisoners is largely a testament to his own resistance. As one of Guantánamo’s least compliant prisoners, he has not fought back physically, but has refused to make false confessions implicating himself or others, as so many others have done under duress (and as the judges in the District Court have been exposing in other habeas petitions).

See the whole article, and while you're informing yourself, bookmark Andy's ongoing series describing "Who are the remaining prisoners in Guantánamo?