A gaunt Mingazov was flown directly into Russia on Wednesday morning from the UAE and dropped at his elderly mother’s doorstep, to her shock and disbelief, according to Yusuf. 

“We still don’t know if he’s safe there or not.”

For years, Mingazov’s advocates, including his family, have warned about the potential for further human rights abuses should he be repatriated to Russia, which he fled in 2000 over persecution of his Muslim faith. Now, his lawyer and son are expressing guarded optimism that he is at least out of solitary confinement in the UAE.

“I hope that Ravil will now be able to live his life in peace, with time to recover among family and friends,” said Gary Thompson, Mingazov’s lawyer.

Yusuf is relieved to be able to speak freely with his father again. “I’m very happy finally that he’s free but at the same time I’m not happy that they’ve done it the way they have,” he told The Intercept. “We still don’t know if he’s safe there or not.”

The Biden administration, the UAE Embassy in Washington, and Russian embassies in the UAE and the U.S. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Mingazov news comes after a tumultuous few weeks for Guantánamo detainees. Last week, three of the four defendants charged for the 9/11 attacks, who remain imprisoned at the base — 30 people remain in total — agreed to plea deals. Amid a firestorm of criticism, the deals were quickly scuttled by the Biden administration, the latest delay in a decadeslong prosecution. A military judge has asked to review the deals, reviving the possibility they may still go through.

In 2016, Mingazov, who was never charged with any crimes, was one of 23 detainees sent by the Obama administration to the UAE, a third country, because they could not be safely returned to their native country. In some cases, the UAE alternative owed to instability or security concerns, as with a raft of Yemeni detainees. In Mingazov’s case, it was a credible fear of persecution and torture. 

Mingazov and his lawyer believed that the secret bilateral agreement negotiated by State Department officials and the UAE would guarantee a life of freedom, reintegration, and rehabilitation within the small Muslim-majority country. The agreement was said to include provision to prevent further transfers to countries where detainees faced certain credible risks like torture, a restriction on repatriation that is backed by international law.

Instead of being provided care, however, all of the men were placed in another Guantánamo-esque prison complex and held incommunicado for years. The UAE eventually expelled all the Guantánamo detainees it had promised to keep to their countries of origin, leaving Mingazov behind as the only former Guantánamo detainee still in the Emirates.

As of Wednesday, Mingazov too was gone.

Multiple human rights organizations and Mingazov’s immediate family have for years sought to block this outcome. Fears escalated last October when Russian and Emirati officials pushed the prisoner to accept a Russian offer of custody. 

Choosing to remain in solitary confinement in the UAE, Mingazov refused to sign documents that would trigger a return to Russia. Now he has been sent without his sign-off, according to his son.

Advocacy groups have been raising public awareness about Mingazov’s situation for years. Nonetheless, he languished in solitary confinement for the entirety of his seven years in the UAE. He had no access to a lawyer, and phone calls to his family were cut off, then denied completely, when he would start to speak about his conditions, his son explained. 

Still, he remained in UAE custody, refusing to be repatriated despite repeated assurances by the Russian ambassador to the UAE that he “would not be persecuted.”

The post Ex-Guantánamo Detainee Forcibly Repatriated to Russia Despite Fears of Torture appeared first on The Intercept.

During the hearing for the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is charged with masterminding the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, Stafford Smith said the government attorneys had failed to release exculpatory information about Nashiri and made false statements in the course of their failure.

Stafford Smith, the lead counsel for Ahmed Rabbani, a former Guantánamo detainee who was tortured by the CIA, made the allegations after being called to the witness stand by Nashiri’s defense team.

“I’ve never, ever, in 40 years reported someone to the bar before this case.”

Stafford Smith testified that the prosecutors had filed a brief that falsely said Rabbani had not recanted his initial testimony because, Rabbani said, it was made under torture. After raising the omission, Stafford Smith said, he felt it was not getting due attention and took the unusual step of reporting the prosecutors to their state bar associations.

“I’ve never, ever, in 40 years reported someone to the bar before this case,” Stafford Smith said in court. “I don’t like doing that, but I felt I was required to.”

In the court motion last year that set off Stafford Smith’s ethics complaints, the Guantánamo prosecutors said they had no knowledge of Rabbani’s recantation or claims the testimony in question were extracted by torture. (The chief prosecutor’s office declined to comment for this story.)

Stafford Smith and Kristin Davis, another attorney from Rabbani’s legal team, told the court that, in the 2018 and 2019 “proffer sessions” to negotiate Rabbani’s release from Guantánamo, the detainee recanted his past testimony, which he told government investigators he made under torture.

The recantation should have been recorded and made available to Nashiri’s defense team under the Brady rule, which mandates the release of exculpatory evidence. A court filing by the prosecution in 2023 showed that this never happened.

Nashiri’s lawyer, Anthony Natale, said in an interview before this week’s court hearing that the prosecutors’ alleged falsehoods and failures to hand over exculpatory materials were indicative of why the Guantánamo military commissions have foundered, yielding no convictions at trial since their creation nearly a quarter century ago.

“The situation,” Natale told The Intercept, “is one of many where the government’s abandonment of our constitutional principles resulted in injustice and delay.”

Recantation

Stafford Smith’s 2023 bar complaints were set in motion by the negotiations five years earlier over Rabbani’s release. Stafford Smith and Davis had agreed to allow Rabbani to cooperate with the FBI in Nashiri’s prosecution in a bid to expedite their client’s release.

In the “proffer session,” the government wanted Rabbani to confirm incriminating statements made in the early 2000s against Nashiri. It was understood among Guantánamo detainees, Rabbani told The Intercept in an interview, that giving testimony about other detainees could help facilitate an early exit from the prison camp.

Related

Collapse of USS Cole Bombing Case Marks Another Failure for Guantánamo’s Military Courts

He said he had seen it happen before, with former Guantánamo detainee, Ahmed al-Darbi, who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2018. Darbi — who was, like Rabbani, identified as a victim of torture by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report on abuses during CIA terror investigations — had been offered the option to testify against Nashiri and took the deal.

That testimony from Darbi, however, was also false, according to Rabbani’s account of conversations with Darbi before either was released from Guantánamo. In the prison, Rabbani had confronted Darbi about falsehoods concerning Nashiri.

“When I scolded him, he responded that he wanted to get out no matter the price,” Rabbani told The Intercept. “I told him that he is involving al-Nashiri in things the latter hadn’t done — and you save yourself, leaving him behind in his predicament that wasn’t of his making.”

Darbi, Rabbani said, expressed contrition: “He showed remorse when it was too late.” (Darbi, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to a role in a 2002 Al Qaeda bombing of a French oil tanker, is currently serving his prison sentence in Saudi Arabia and cannot be reached for comment.)

In 2018, Rabbani’s attorneys were seeking a deal like the one that got Darbi out of Guantánamo, Stafford Smith said in court, but he had cautioned his client not to perjure himself. Rabbani, unlike Darbi, had never been charged with a crime.

Rabbani told The Intercept that, during his interviews with the FBI in 2018 or 2019, he recanted his past statements about Nashiri. Rabbani said he repeatedly raised his torture to the FBI agents and attributed his statements about Nashiri to the torture. Davis confirmed in court Tuesday that Rabbani refused to confirm his past allegations because they were made under torture.

Five years later, the Guantánamo prosecutors announced that they still planned to solicit testimony from Rabbani and potentially call him as a witness. In January 2023, prosecutors filed a pleading claiming they had no knowledge of Rabbani giving exculpatory information about Nashiri.

“The Prosecution has found no information that during the proffer sessions either detainee recanted prior statements or that they made additional allegations their prior statements implicating the Accused were the product of or result of torture,” the pleading says, referencing Rabbani and a second detainee whose statements against Nashiri had come into question.

Related

Their Fathers Were Caught in the 9/11 Dragnet. Guantánamo Came to Define Their Lives.

The prosecutors’ claims of ignorance got under Stafford Smith’s skin. In late February, according to a emails obtained by The Intercept, he wrote to Navy Rear Adm. Aaron Rugh, the head of the prosecution team, alleging that the pleading contained false statements and requesting the signatories’ bar numbers. Rugh responded that he would investigate the matter but did not send the lawyers’ information. (In response to a request for comment, Rugh’s office said, “When matters are pending litigation, it would be inappropriate for the Department of Defense to comment.”)

Stafford Smith found seven of the nine lawyers’ bar numbers and reported them. Six of the complaints use nearly identical language, with slight differences in the introductions and occasional added specifics. A seventh, made later, contains more information and additional allegations. For all but one of the prosecutors, their state bar associations list no public record of discipline; one of the prosecutors has a grievance case listed, but no resolution.

“You certainly understand how serious it would need to be to report someone to the bar?” a prosecutor asked Stafford Smith at the hearing Tuesday.

Stafford Smith replied, “I do, absolutely.”

Torture Testimony

The CIA tortured Rabbani for more than 540 days, according to the Senate torture report. The torture included a stint in a covert American black site in Afghanistan.

Rabbani has described being held in complete darkness for long periods and being subjected to a medieval torture technique known as “strappado”: hanging someone by their bound arms and suddenly dropping them.

Recounting his ordeal later, Rabbani said he gave incriminating statements about Nashiri sometime between 2002 and 2004 while at the black site.

Last August, the Nashiri case at Guantánamo’s military commission was shaken up when the then-judge said an early confession by Nashiri was inadmissible because it was extracted through torture. The ruling dealt a blow to the government’s longest-running death penalty case under the military commissions.

Testimony at the commission hearing on Tuesday, however, indicates that the government’s quest to use evidence obtained through torture from other detainees was well underway when the judge made his decision on Nashiri’s confession — and that the pursuit of torture testimony continues into the present.

Rabbani said that the attempts to use his testimony speaks to a failure to reckon with Guantánamo, torture, and the other excesses of the U.S. campaign against terrorism.

“America does not want to admit the bitter truth of their failure in investigations,” he told The Intercept, “and the practice of injustice and torture that is internationally prohibited.”

The post Guantánamo Prosecutors Accused of “Outrageous” Misconduct for Trying to Use Torture Testimony appeared first on The Intercept.

The May 13 sentencing, on charges made under Algeria’s broad Article 87 anti-terror laws, which can carry the death penalty, came despite assurances from the U.S. State Department that he would be treated “appropriately” and “humanely” after being repatriated after his stint in Guantánamo.

Bakhouch was the most recent Guantánamo detainee to be transferred out of the military prison under the Biden administration, never having been charged with a crime. Bakhouch, his American lawyer Candace Gorman said, was a victim of torture at the hands of the U.S. and slowly deteriorated over his 20 years of arbitrary detention until his release in April 2023.

When Bakhouch first arrived in Algeria, he was immediately taken into custody by Algeria’s internal security forces — a standard and usually brief period of detention for Algerian detainees returning from Guantánamo. Bakhouch was vulnerable, Gorman said, having mentally deteriorated in recent years.

Gorman had warned about possible post-traumatic stress disorder and depression ahead of his repatriation. Nonetheless, Bakhouch was held incommunicado and subjected to intense interrogation with no lawyer present.

“He was interrogated every day of the 12 days — after decades of trauma — was given no help from a lawyer and he was under extreme pressure while being threatened by the interrogators,” Sofiane Chouiter, a Canada-based attorney who is providing legal support to Bakhouch, told The Intercept.

Chouiter, the president of the Justitia Center for the Legal Protection of Human Rights in Algeria, obtained a transcript of the interrogation by the Algerian intelligence services showing that Bakhouch, in the course of the encounter, began agreeing with all the accusations made against him. Bakhouch responded to all the questions with “sure, yes,” Chouiter told The Intercept.

The transcript doesn’t include what Bakhouch told Chouiter was the initial part of the interrogation, when the detainee had denied charges of ties to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

In early October, Bakhouch recanted his testimony before an investigative magistrate and denied the terror charges, Chouiter said. Bakhouch pleaded not guilty at his most recent trial and, in the presence of a judge, again recanted his initial admissions.

“The U.S. responsibility for his welfare did not end when he was transferred to Algeria.”

Being held without contact to the outside world is considered an enforced disappearance and prohibited by international law, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Ben Saul told The Intercept.

“A detainee in custody must be promptly given access to a lawyer and to communicate with family,” Saul said.

Algerian officials admit they did not allow him access to a lawyer or family calls until his 13th day of detention.

“The U.S. responsibility for his welfare did not end when he was transferred to Algeria,” Saul said. “It should be apparent that he should not suffer from any further victimization through the legal system. He has already paid a very heavy price in terms of his health and mental state, and he needs supportive measures of rehabilitation and reintegration, not more punishment.”

State Department “Bullshit”

With a possible end to the Biden administration looming in the next six months, State Department diplomats are running low on time to clean up the legal mess created by an era of rampant arbitrary U.S. detentions and CIA torture.

Thirty detainees remain at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, with 16 cleared for release and awaiting a resettlement deal. A trial for the men accused of plotting 9/11 has not yet begun. And former Guantánamo detainees scattered across the world battle both their mental scars and the stigma of being branded a “terrorist.”

Last July, a report from The Intercept detailed blistering correspondence between Gorman, Bakhouch’s lawyer, and members of the State Department’s Office of Guantánamo Affairs, where she fought to protect her client from the outcome now at hand. Gorman wrote to the State Department that, without help once he landed in Algeria, Bakhouch would be facing grave dangers.

“I fear my client might become homeless — or worse — locked up,” Gorman wrote in one email.

When Bakhouch wasn’t released following the initial interrogation period and found himself in a form of pre-trial detention, Gorman became enraged by what she said were the State Department’s “bullshit” assurances.

“They did not even know Saeed was sent to prison following his 12 days of interrogation. No one at the State Department was watching or paying attention to anything,” Gorman told The Intercept. “Then, the State Department started backpedaling about their role in Saeed’s transfer. They started claiming to me that once Saeed was released their hands were tied.”

Saul, the U.N. special rapporteur, said the U.S. bears responsibility for making sure its assurances are followed through on.

“Diplomatic assurances must always be effective, meaning that they must be accompanied by monitoring and safeguards to ensure they are enforced in practice, not just empty promises,” he said. “The greater the risk in a particular country of serious rights abuses, such as torture or arbitrary detention, the more caution is warranted in the use of safeguards, including whether a transfer should go ahead at all.”

U.S. Opposed Article 87

Bakhouch was eventually released last October, following pressure from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Ahead of the trial last Sunday, a group of U.N. experts that included Saul wrote under the auspices of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that the U.S. assurances were being flouted in Bakhouch’s case.

“His unjustified prosecution, detention on arrival, and imminent likely detention on the basis of these charges contradicts express guarantees by the U.S. and Algeria that he would be humanely treated on return to Algeria,” the experts group wrote. “The U.S. itself has called for repeal of article 87 for its excessive definition of terrorism.”

From his release in October until his recent court date, Bakhouch was living with his family, reunited after 20 years apart.

In safer environs, Bakhouch expressed remorse about panicking and affirming his interrogators’ allegations, Chouiter said, recounting his conversations with Bakhouch.

“They threatened me,” Bakhouch said, according to Chouiter’s recollection. “After I said that I had nothing do with this group and with bin Laden, they told me they would send me to some worse people to get information from me.”

As the court date drew closer, Gorman, Bakhouch’s U.S.-based lawyer since 2005, filed an affidavit which she hoped would sway the judge that he had not been truthful during his interrogation.

The “physical and psychological” torture her client was subjected to in Guantánamo was “so severe,” Gorman said in the affidavit, that she was not allowed to see the full recorded details despite her security clearance. The details she did manage access to, she told the court, included repeated beating while bound, threats of execution, sexual taunting, and humiliation.

“Mr. Bakhouch was not a terrorist,” Gorman wrote in the affidavit.

Why Bakhouch would fall apart under Algerian interrogation lies at the very heart of why Guantánamo and its military court still exists today: torture. Because of false confessions, the U.S. government has repeatedly concluded that torture doesn’t work to produce useful information.

Bakhouch, for his part, has a history of making false statement under the duress of interrogation, Gorman’s affidavit shows. He lied for years about his own nationality to try to get back home more quickly, complicating his case down the line.

The U.N. advocacy and help from lawyers turned out not to be enough. Last Sunday, a worried Bakhouch went before the judge in the afternoon and was led back into prison by evening, according to a source with direct knowledge of events who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

“The fact of the matter is that there are no good options for these men,” Gorman said. “Very few of these men have landed on their feet. Most have been treated as pariahs, whether they are at home or in some random country, because of the U.S. propaganda.”

Bottom photo: Saeed Bakhouch poses for a photo outside the Dar al-Baida court before his trial on May 12, 2024, in Algiers. Courtesy of Justitia Center

The post After Torturing Him, U.S. Breaks Guarantees of Safety to Former Guantánamo Detainee appeared first on The Intercept.

It should go without saying that anyone who thinks he can be president of the United States has a massive ego.

With Trump, it’s obvious. Only an ego the size of a Goodyear blimp could be inflated by the loss of a presidential election. Biden’s ego is jumbo too, but it may be dwarfed by his cluelessness. He thinks he’s the one person who can beat Trump. In fact, he told donors in early December that if Trump were not running — and threatening to bring down American democracy — he’s “not sure” he’d be running either. Biden’s implication is that only Biden can save American democracy.

During the summer both voters and politicians were already publicly worrying that Biden’s age and flagging approval ratings would sink him in 2024. When he announced his run in September, Democratic voices urged him to step aside. James Carville advised his party to “wake the fuck up” and get another candidate.

But almost immediately a consensus formed: It was too late to change horses. In early November, when polls showed Biden trailing Trump in five of six swing states, NBC News repeated the conventional wisdom that too many primary filing deadlines had passed. “Restive though they are, Democrats can’t do much at this stage to give American voters another option.” That opinion was repeated through December.

Few mentioned that this too is a problem created by Biden’s overweening self-confidence. If he stepped aside, the party could anoint someone else or others could throw in their hats, and the primary deadlines would be moot. Some Democrats are still holding out hope. In January, an opinion writer in the Boston Globe begged Biden to “give the speech,” as Lyndon Johnson did when he recognized his looming defeat.

On January 4, a Newsweek analysis concluded: “There is only one presidential candidate that would be able to find a path to the White House if the 2024 election was held today,” and that candidate is Donald J. Trump.

Biden was in a soundproof booth. Or he wasn’t listening.

How strong these egos really are is anyone’s guess. For a psychopath, supposedly unmoved by the thoughts and feelings of others, Trump is remarkably sensitive to slights. And where would he be without his brownshirts? Vox reports that MAGA zealots’ threats of violence against elected officials and their families have silenced any intraparty dissent and likely saved Trump from impeachment. Asked by a researcher what would happen if she spoke out against the ex-president, Pennsylvania Republican state Sen. Kim Ward said, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.” Ward is a Trump supporter.

Biden is working to stoke fear, too, not from himself — he’s a more formidable political player than he gets credit for, but he’s not planning to sentence any of his rivals to death, as Trump has openly fantasized. Rather, Biden is running against (and hoping voters will run from) two perils: one real, the other dubious. The real one is Trump’s trumpeted plan to be a dictator (if only for a day). The other, it seems, is that a younger, more dynamic contender would arise from the party’s left wing, which is too far left for the electorate. If Biden believes he can save democracy, his party must first be rescued. He believes that he, and only he, can do that too. “Biden, for all his flaws, represents a compromise between the activist left of the party and its moderate center,” writes Washington Post columnist Ruy Teixeira.

This race isn’t about policy.

Teixeira also thinks that the Democrats’ “activist contingent” is too radical. Among the wild-eyed proposals that no working stiff, or even college-educated snob, can stomach are Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, he claims. In fact, majorities consistently support government-funded health insurance. The Green New Deal enjoys a 31 percent margin of support, including one-third of Republicans, according to one survey.

This race isn’t about policy. There is no rational political explanation for Joe Biden’s name at the top of the Democratic ticket and Donald Trump at the top of the Republicans’.

Of course, not every man or masculine-identifying person is an egotist. And women can be egotists too. A handful of women have contended for the presidency, starting with the suffragist Victoria Woodhull, who ran in 1862, before women could vote — and, as I’ve said, you can’t run for president if you’re not abnormally confident. Still, those I’ve observed — Shirley Chisholm, Liddy Dole, Hillary Clinton, and the unabashedly left-wing New Ager Marianne Williamson — have not apparently confused qualification with irreplaceability. Clinton won the popular vote and conceded, as the Constitution demands.

But now, thanks in large part to masculine ego, nine months from Election Day, we’ve got two equally despised guys to choose from. With third-party candidates Cornel West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and, potentially, Joe Manchin in the mix, we need another Environmental Protection Act to rid the election of these billowing emissions of toxic masculinity.

“I alone can fix it,” Trump declared, in a preview to his megalomaniacal presidency, at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Less histrionically, Biden feels the same. Neither man will fix it. We know how Trump will wreck it. But Biden can wreck it too by not getting out of the way of someone who might beat Trump. The future of U.S. democracy teeters on two invincible male egos.

What can be done? Prohibiting men from running for office, even for a limited time, is impractical and probably illegal.

That leaves one solution: Biden must be man enough to withdraw.

The post U.S. Democracy Hangs on Two Men’s Egos appeared first on The Intercept.

In recent weeks, 87-year-old Zuhra Valiullina has grown convinced that something even worse could soon happen to Mingazov: He might be forced back to Russia, the country he fled after being persecuted for his Muslim faith.

As all but 30 prisoners from Guantánamo Bay have been released, the notorious detention center has faded from the headlines. But Mingazov’s case — fraught with geopolitics — has drawn an unusual level of public attention. A former Russian soldier and ballet dancer, he fled Russia in 1999 in search of a place where he and his family could live and practice their faith freely. He was picked up in a raid in Pakistan in early 2002, when the U.S. was paying bounty for suspects, according to Gary Thompson, Mingazov’s lawyer. Wrongly suspected of being a foreign fighter, Mingazov was handed over to U.S. forces, held and tortured at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and later transferred to Guantánamo, where he was never charged and should have never been, Thompson said.

During the Obama administration, Mingazov became one of 23 former detainees, most originally from Yemen, who were sent to the United Arab Emirates under a confidential diplomatic agreement with the U.S. State Department. The assurances contained in the secret diplomatic deal allegedly included provisions against being returned to a country where they would face torture, punishment, or irreparable harm. Mingazov told his family that he would attend a six-month residential rehabilitation program in the UAE before being released into Emirati society to restart his life as a free man. Instead, he has been held in extremely restrictive solitary confinement for nearly seven years in the United Arab Emirates, Valiullina told The Intercept.

Two months ago, Valiullina received a rare invitation to travel to the UAE to see her son. It was only the second time she had been allowed to visit him since he arrived there in January 2017, she said. During the August visit, an Emirati official told Valiullina that her son was “free to go” but that only Russia was willing to issue him a passport and accept him on its soil. The official said that her son would need to sign documents that would trigger his repatriation to Russia; the documents, along with assurances that he “would not be persecuted” once back in Russia, would be delivered by Russian Ambassador to the UAE Timur Zabirov on September 23.

The ambassador apparently didn’t show up on that day, but Valiullina and her grandson Yusuf, Mingazov’s only son, fear he could arrive anytime.

“Russia poses a life-threatening danger to my father,” Yusuf told The Intercept. “I implore the authorities in the U.S. and U.K. to intervene and cease the ongoing suffering that he is enduring unjustly.”

Zabirov did not respond to a request for comment emailed to the Russian Embassy in the UAE.

In September, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, issued a dire warning against returning Mingazov to Russia, saying that his forcible repatriation would be a clear violation of international human rights law. “We call on the Governments involved to observe their international obligations, honour the diplomatic assurances provided for resettlement, and take into account the substantiated risks to Mr. Mingazov’s physical and moral integrity, if repatriated against his will,” the U.N. experts said.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights Fionnuala Ní Aoláin called for the Biden administration to intervene, citing the UAE’s previous failures to make good on alleged assurances about Mingazov’s safety. “It’s deeply concerning that an assurance given to the United States appears to be broken without consequence,” Ní Aoláin said in an exclusive interview with The Intercept. “We need a White House, a high-level political intervention. It appears no one is willing to expend that political energy on a former Guantánamo detainee.”

Advocacy groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights, CAGE, and the OHCHR have long campaigned to free Mingazov from detention and prevent his repatriation to Russia. Since 2021, protesters have taken to the street outside the UAE Embassy in Washington to demand his release, most recently last month. There’s even been a petition by members of Parliament in the United Kingdom to bring Mingazov to London to reunite with his ex-wife and Yusuf, both of whom were granted asylum there in 2014.

Last week, Valiullina sent her other son, Mingazov’s older brother, to the UAE to try to intercept the Russian ambassador. She instructed him to rip up any documents provided by Russia. “We don’t believe the Russians at all on this,” she told The Intercept. (The older brother could not be reached for comment.)

A Harrowing Ordeal

In August, at a prison about 125 miles outside of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Valiullina wept when she watched her son arrive with a blindfold over his face, his hands and feet shackled and chained. He had aged rapidly since she had last seen him three years earlier. For the first time, Mingazov was complaining of health issues that were going untreated, she said. The former dancer who performed with the Russian army ballet troupe was now shockingly thin, and his hair had gone completely gray. At one point, she was told that her son could leave anytime but that none of the many countries that had been approached to take him had agreed — except Russia. Disturbed, Valiullina reported these developments to Thompson.

“It’s bizarre that at this point the UAE would say to the mother, ‘Well, Ravil is free to go but he doesn’t have a passport. We’ll have to send him back to Russia then,’” Thompson said. “I mean, it makes no sense. It seems to be a deliberate pretext for the UAE to articulate why they’re sending him to Russia when they know they can’t — they know they promised our State Department they would never do that.”

Thompson says he never saw this coming. The UAE, a key U.S. ally, was supposed to be an end to Mingazov’s harrowing ordeal. Mingazov was thrilled, Thompson said, that he would finally get to live freely in a Muslim-majority country. Instead, his imprisonment was so horrific that he described it as torture in a 2021 phone call to his son. Yusuf recalled his father on the verge of tears, begging for a lawyer. As soon as he said this, the call was abruptly cut off, Yusuf said. It was the last call Mingazov was allowed to make to his son. Now the only person who receives any direct communication from Emirati officials is Mingazov’s elderly mother.

Thompson has not been allowed to speak with his client since Mingazov was released from Guantánamo. Incredibly, Thompson said he must rely completely on Valiullina, who only speaks Russian, to provide him with updates about his client. Valiullina receives her information from a UAE official who she knows only as “Ahmed” and who speaks “broken Russian,” according to Yusuf.

Why the UAE imprisoned the former Guantánamo detainees sent by there by the State Department is a mystery to Thompson. “It just doesn’t make sense why they kept anybody in prison — including the Yemenis. Why don’t they just do what they said they would do? Release him into Emirati society, give him a job, let him live a normal life the same way that many former detainees have in other countries they’ve been sent to in situations where they can’t go home?” Of the 23 former Guantánamo prisoners sent to the UAE, at least 20 were imprisoned there until their repatriation, according to the Associated Press. The Intercept has previously reported on the UAE’s forced repatriation of one of those former detainees, after he was held without access to a lawyer for five years.

“Mr. Mingazov is a twice victim of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. Once while rendered and tortured by the United States at Guantánamo Bay Cuba, and twice while transferred to the UAE by the United States,” Ní Aoláin said. “It is inconceivable that he would be made a triple victim of torture while the United States stands idly on the sidelines.”

“There’s Always a Chance”

While the UAE has proved to be a catastrophic resettlement option for Guantánamo prisoners, Russia would be even worse, Mingazov’s family says. Seven former Guantánamo detainees repatriated to Russia in 2004 were imprisoned again, tortured, and released, only to face harassment, abuse, persecution, and even death at the hands of Russian authorities, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. The U.N. experts noted that Mingazov himself has always feared being returned to Russia, writing that “Ravil Mingazov consistently and vociferously demonstrated and raised his fear of irreparable harm if repatriated to the Russian Federation.”

While Mingazov languished in Guantánamo Bay, legal advocates warned against his repatriation to Russia. The Center for Constitutional Rights wrote in 2009 that he “cannot safely return to his home country because of the risk of torture or persecution. Russia is notorious for its persecution of Muslims and for torture and abuse in its prisons.”

“The diplomatic assurances given to the United States by their allies regarding the treatment of former Guantánamo detainees appear not to be worth the paper they are written on,” Ní Aoláin told The Intercept. “If diplomatic assurances mean anything, they mean that you do not transfer a torture victim to a state where he is at risk of harm. If this is true of U.S. citizens currently detained in Russia, it is equally true of former U.S. detainees who would be transferred there.”

“It’s like Vladimir Putin saying, ‘Trust me,’” Thompson told The Intercept. “It’s just not happening.”

Thompson said he has not heard back from the State Department on what, if anything, is being done to stop this new threat of transfer; his repeated attempts to contact the UAE ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, likewise have gone unanswered. Otaiba did not respond to detailed questions from The Intercept about Mingazov’s detention.

U.S. Bureau of Counterterrorism spokesperson Vincent Picard declined to comment on the terms of the U.S. government’s agreement with the UAE regarding Mingazov’s resettlement or on what is happening with his case now. “Broadly speaking, the U.S. government registers its concern when it is unclear that a former detainee is being treated in a humane manner, and we remain in contact with governments to ensure they uphold their commitments and are prepared to address any issues through appropriate channels,” Picard told The Intercept. “The U.S. government remains interested in ensuring that former detainees are treated in a humane manner and that efforts are undertaken to rehabilitate and integrate them into local communities.”

Yusuf has tried for years to bring his father to the United Kingdom. In 2015, he asked the British Home Office to transfer Mingazov to the U.K. from Guantánamo, but the appeal was denied. With the threat of Russian repatriation looming, some British lawmakers are trying to reunite Yusuf with his father, or at the very least, urgently meet with UAE officials to stop Mingazov’s repatriation to Russia.

“The lack of clarity on this situation is incredibly frustrating,” U.K. member of Parliament Apsana Begum, one of several MPs who called on the country’s home secretary to approve Mingazov’s application for asylum in the U.K., told The Intercept. “The U.K. has to take responsibility for their role in circumstances that have led to a man — who has not been convicted of any crime and is not deemed a risk to anyone’s security — spending the last decades imprisoned in unacceptable conditions. In the name of humanity, this awful injustice must end, and Ravil must be allowed to rebuild his life and recover from the ordeals that he has suffered.”

After all these years, Valiullina’s dream is for her son to be reunited with Yusuf.

“There’s always a chance,” Yusuf said. “My goal is to do everything in my power to see my father’s swift release so that he can begin anew and have a joyful life amongst his loved ones.”

The post White House Faces Calls to Stop Ex-Guantánamo Detainee’s Forced Return to Russia appeared first on The Intercept.

The notorious far-right attorney who helped craft Texas’s bounty-hunter abortion ban, Senate Bill 8, is now attempting to force abortion funds to hand over reams of information on every abortion the organizations have supported since 2021. This includes the city and state where each patient lived, the names of the abortion providers, and the identities of nearly every person who helped the patients access abortion care.

Earlier this month, Jonathan Mitchell — himself not a Texan but based in Washington state — served requests to nine Texas abortion funds and one Texas doctor. The brazen attempt to acquire sensitive information about abortion patients and the funds that assist them is a disturbing turn in the ongoing legal battle over Texas’s six-week abortion ban.

In August of last year, a coalition of abortion funds and doctors filed a class action lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other state officials. The suit, Fund Texas Choice v. Paxton, aims to challenge Senate Bill 8, or S.B. 8, and its devious method of civil enforcement to evade federal court scrutiny. In response, Mitchell, on behalf of the Texas government, is using the legal discovery process to harass those defending reproductive freedoms.

“This is a stunning escalation attacking the free speech and privacy rights of so many people,” Neesha Davé, executive director of Lilith Fund, one of the abortion funds in the case, said in a statement. “We are talking about thousands of people among Lilith Fund’s supporters, followers, donors, clients, and volunteers. It is objectively terrifying to think about what anti-abortion extremists want to do with this personal information and how low they are willing to go to get it. But let’s be clear: under no circumstances will we ever willingly hand over this personal information.”

The abortion funds’ case asks a question of law: whether S.B. 8 is constitutional. Details about abortion fund patrons and their medical procedures have no bearing on this specific legal question. Mitchell and his clients in the Texas government are no doubt aware of this; the discovery requests are an intimidation tactic, in the spirit of the bounty-hunter law itself.

S.B. 8 introduced a novel approach for banning abortion through civil litigation while Roe v. Wade was still on the books. The law permits any private individual, even from outside the state, to file suits against anyone they speculate has “abetted” an abortion. This could include an Uber driver who takes a patient to an appointment or a pastor who has counseled a person on ending a pregnancy. The plaintiff need not even prove that they have been harmed in any way. Those who bring successful suits are promised $10,000, hence the “bounty hunter” moniker. 

While Mitchell has not yet been forced by the court to give reasons for his discovery requests, The Guardian reported, “In past litigation, Mitchell has argued that, in order to sue over the six-week ban, someone must show they have either violated it already or plan to do so in the future.” Discovery could thus be used to undermine the plaintiffs’ standing in the case or to place targets on the backs of abortion “abettors” in S.B. 8 civil suits. 

In response, the abortion funds filed a motion this week for a protective order to keep the names and information of clients and workers private.

“We will never willingly hand over personal information, and we will fiercely protect our staff, donors, volunteers, and supporters,” Maleeha Aziz, acting executive director of Texas Equal Access Fund, said in a statement shared with The Intercept.

Given the discovery requests’ total irrelevance to the questions of the case, it’s unlikely that the presiding U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman will force the funds to comply — not to mention that handing over such information could constitute a violation of First Amendment protections. “The First Amendment guarantees the right to associate, speak, and petition the government — it protects the very information Mitchell and his clients wish to obtain,” Lilith Fund noted in a press release.

As the very existence of vigilante laws like S.B. 8 makes clear, threats and intimidation are favored techniques of Texas Republican rule, regardless of whether the right thinks its tactics will hold up in the court of law. And as proven by the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, among other troubling rulings from our activist Supreme Court, Republicans have every reason to believe the law can be bent to their agenda.

“Whether or not the anti-abortion lawyers here are successful or not, the very presence of the inquiry will likely cause chilling effects: Patients, funds, and providers will be continuing to operate in states of uncertainty, unsure if the law will protect them,” Greer Donley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who focuses on abortion and the law, told me. “Patients are leaving their homes in the dark of night to get abortions out of state, telling no one what they are doing, thinking they are committing a crime. They are not, but creating a culture of fear is the point. And it’s horrible.”

The Fund Texas Choice case, even if successful, can’t return robust reproductive care to the vast abortion desert that is Texas. The fall of Roe has ensured that Texas will be a state where abortion is banned, with or without S.B. 8 on the books. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights and health research organization, the average Texan has to travel more than 500 miles to the nearest out-of-state clinic for care.

Assisting with this travel and access to reproductive care is the core work of Texas abortion funds — and the very activities Paxton seeks to criminalize. In February, Pitman temporarily blocked prosecutors in eight counties from pursuing charges against anyone who helps abortion seekers obtain care out of state. This ruling should be made permanent and expanded.

A successful challenge to S.B. 8’s vigilante enforcement mechanism would also be crucial amid the rising tide of similar astroturfed laws. Bounty-hunter bills, including ones that would de facto ban gender-affirming care and drag shows, have been proposed or passed in several Republican-led states. Mitchell’s discovery requests deliver the same message: Those fighting for bodily autonomy will be personally targeted.

The post Texas Anti-Abortion Crusader Demands Abortion Patient Information In Court appeared first on The Intercept.

Revs. Jeff Jones and Dave Dunn at the construction site of Cop City during a direct action in protest of the planned police training compound on Sept. 7, 2023. Photo: Courtesy of The People’s Stop Work Order

Five participants of the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement broke into the construction site of the planned police training compound known as “Cop City” on Thursday morning and chained themselves to a bulldozer. This is by no means the first direct action Stop Cop City protesters have taken to halt construction of the vast facility, but it carries renewed significance just two days after Georgia prosecutors announced extreme and overreaching racketeering charges against 61 other movement activists.

The charges, filed Tuesday under Georgia’s expansive Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, are an effort to chill the movement and paint one of the most resilient anti-racist, environmentalist efforts in history as a criminal enterprise. In response, activists on the ground are choosing solidarity and standing their ground.

The stakes are high. For one, activists want to ensure that Cop City — which would be the largest police training facility in the nation and would decimate crucial forest land in a majority Black community — will never be built. Thursday’s action also makes clear that efforts to criminalize whole social movements will only invite further resistance.

All five protesters, including two Unitarian Universalist clergy members, have been arrested by the DeKalb County Police. “Those five people have been taken into custody and we are working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation regarding charges on these individuals,” the department said in a statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This is just the latest example of Georgia law enforcement treating typical acts of civil disobedience with a heavy-handed, multiagency response.

Police also downed and confiscated a drone belonging to a documentary crew attempting to film the construction site protest, in a possible infringement on press freedoms.

“Despite the repressive tactics of authorities who wish to disenfranchise the community and charge protestors with domestic terrorism and RICO, people of faith will continue to act to resist the militarization of our society,” said Rev. Dave Dunn, who was among those arrested, in a statement released by organizers.

Thursday’s action offers a defiant lesson in how movement participants can choose to respond when faced with state repression — and the efforts by police, government leaders, and prosecutors to crush the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement have indeed been extraordinary.

“The domestic terrorism and RICO charges against protesters are meant to scare us, or else to orient all of our energy and resources around supporting protesters who have been arrested,” Darcy, an Atlanta resident and movement participant told me. Darcy, like many others in the movement, withheld their last name for fear of law enforcement retaliation — an understandable choice, given how weak grounds for arrest and serious charges have been.

“By shutting down Cop City construction today, clergy and students showed that everyday people can take bold actions to block this facility from being built,” they said, “and that our biggest protection against repression is a movement that wins.”

The sweeping, 109-page RICO indictment paints the decentralized and diverse movement as a criminal enterprise, citing social justice activities such as “mutual aid,” writing “zines,” and “collectivism” as proof of criminal conspiracy. Dozens of people named in the indictment also face malicious state domestic terrorism charges, based on flimsy grounds.

Others facing RICO and money-laundering charges did little more than raise and distribute donations to support arrestees and provide materials for engaging in First Amendment activities, like making protest signs. Also named in the indictment are individuals previously arrested on felony charges for handing out flyers that named a police officer connected to the killing of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, a forest defender who was shot 57 times during a multiagency raid on the Atlanta Forest protest encampment in January.

Whether the RICO, domestic terrorism, or other extreme charges stick, the prosecutions alone are chilling. If the Stop Cop City movement has offered a model for intersectional, abolitionist, environmentalist, and diverse anti-racist struggle, the charges participants now face present a blueprint for a totalizing approach to repression.

It is no accident that the RICO indictment lists the start of the alleged racketeering conspiracy as the date of George Floyd’s murder by police — May 25, 2020 — which predates the announcement of plans for Cop City. The indictment is explicit in tracing the birth of the Stop Cop City movement back to the 2020 Black liberation uprisings in order to treat any involvement in these connected struggles as grounds for criminal prosecution.

The activists involved in Thursday’s action delivered what they called “The People’s Stop Work Order” against Cop City construction. In a statement, they noted that activists who have attempted to use official, democratic routes to oppose Cop City have been consistently stymied by undemocratic government actions.

“The construction of this project and the destruction of the South River Forest have continued despite over 100,000 Atlanta residents signing a ballot initiative calling for a referendum on the issue,” organizers said. “The city of Atlanta has fought the referendum with lawsuits and technical obstructions.”

Participants in Thursday’s action engaged in just the sort of activity that the government is attempting to cast as criminal conspiracy with the RICO indictment: civil disobedience with a civil rights movement legacy, especially in Atlanta. In the face of such authoritarian responses, ongoing and widespread movement action that uses a range of protest tactics undermines government and police efforts to delegitimize a popular movement. Solidarity rallies and marches have already been organized in over a dozen cities and towns nationwide.

“As we see in the indictment, the act of mutual aid, the acts of our connectedness, are seen as a threat,” Mary Hooks, an Atlanta-based organizer and activist in the Movement for Black Lives, told me. “But these things are exactly what we need for our safety and what we need in the face of rising fascism.”

“Hopefully today does give hope,” she said. “Afraid? Yes we are, but we will choose courage over fear every day in the face of repression and oppression.”

The post Defying RICO Indictment, Faith Leaders Chain Themselves to Bulldozer to Stop Cop City appeared first on The Intercept.

One misconception about Guantánamo was cleared up before I ever got off the plane. In my mind, everything was the prison. For so long, I associated this place with concertina wire, guard towers, and orange-clad anonymous detainees. In recent years, I’d reported on some of those same detainees, now liberated, and I learned that my prejudices and fears about the vast majority of these men had been unfounded. They welcomed me into the community of brotherhood they had forged, and I was now visiting the place where so much of their lives had been stolen. I pressed my face to the window to see the prison where people I consider friends were tortured.

From the air, I saw security posts along what seemed to be the perimeter of the base, but it obviously wasn’t the prison. “Where the fuck is it?” I thought with increasingly desperate glances out the window of the mostly empty chartered flight. I had a three-seat row to myself, television screens, pillows, blankets, and a full in-flight lunch service. Hundreds of Muslim men had arrived by air decades before to this very airstrip, beaten, shackled, hooded, and pissing all over themselves.

“Just landed,” I texted Mohamedou Ould Salahi on my T-Mobile burner smartphone. “It’s Swain.” A few hours later, Salahi, or “The Mauritanian,” shot back, “Hi. Did they put you in prison?”

I soon learned that just about anything with photojournalistic value was off limits. As Guantánamo has aged, a shift has occurred in what the military wants journalists to cover. Under the current rules, members of the media are brought here to focus on the military commission proceedings at “Camp Justice,” where a very large, very cold, and very classified courtroom has been constructed to deal with the few remaining detainees who were ever charged with decades-old crimes against the United States. Press access to anything outside the court is described as a “courtesy” and subject to arbitrary restrictions.

Salahi, my unofficial tour guide, had always been hooded when taken outside the prison. He had accurately predicted the first day of my trip that my military handler would placate us with little tourist excursions to various parts of the bay, as if we had sailed in on a Disney cruise. “They want you to see McDonald’s and, like, the beach. That’s not where the detainees were held,” he said as we passed voice notes back and forth. “[It’s where] the detainees were held [that] you need to take photos of.”

Over the course of my visit, I checked in with at least five former detainees who collectively spent lifetimes imprisoned here. Most didn’t know about the novel media restrictions. “Did you go to Camp Echo?” Yemeni Sabri al-Qurashi texted me from Kazakhstan. Al-Qurashi has always maintained that he was arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. After 12 years at Guantánamo, he was relocated to a country that has continued to treat him like a “terrorist” and where he has not been granted asylum, despite assurances from the State Department that he would be treated well.

“Ask them to see Camp Delta 2, 3, 4, and Camp 5, and Camp Echo, and Camp 6, and Camp Platinum,” Salahi urged from his new home in Amsterdam.

“You can take pictures of the detainees, but not the face,” said Sufiyan Barhoumi, who was eligible for release from Guantánamo under the Obama administration after all charges against him were dropped but had to wait five more years because Donald Trump halted transfers. He has been struggling to adjust to life as a free man back home in Algeria since April 2022.

“Take pictures of what you can!”

Iguanas fight at the Navy Gateway Inns and Suites hotel.

As recently as 2018, reporters and photographers were allowed into the prison itself. Now, though, media isn’t brought anywhere close to the permanent prison complex that houses the remaining 30 detainees. I was informed that members of the media would not be allowed to photograph even the old Camp X-Ray, the long-abandoned outdoor prison that held the very first detainees. I was shocked, since Camp X-Ray was listed as an approved location under the 2023 media guidelines. This took all locations that were even remotely related to the base’s role as a detention site completely out of play. Denying any new visual documentation of the defunct former facility seemed egregious and irrational, especially following the unprecedented access given to the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, in early 2023. The Biden administration had permitted her to tour the site and interview detainees as an independent investigator, and her findings were published two days after I had arrived at the base.

“This is just another indication that the most consistent thing about Guantánamo is inconsistency,” said former detainee Moazzam Begg, a British citizen who was released from Guantánamo without charge in 2005. Begg is the current director of CAGE, a U.K.-based advocacy group for other victims of the war on terror. “It seems that rules change and guidelines change according to who happens to be in charge. So your frustration as a journalist, I can see — imagine, as a prisoner, where you have to live in that kind of environment, where you can quote the standard operating procedure better than the staff sergeant, but he’ll say, ‘Well, no, we just changed that.’”

“I really don’t understand this treatment,” Salahi fumed over WhatsApp. “If they don’t let you go and see what went on, or at least the place where the torture took place, what do they want? This is complete stonewalling; this makes me really very upset as a victim of that place.”

Salahi wasn’t wrong. The locations I was allowed to photograph were of little journalistic value, and many had been recently documented by a behemoth in the news industry: the New York Times. That photo essay, titled “Guantánamo Bay: Beyond the Prison,” had garnered fervent criticism on social media, in part because it seemed to take a page out of the military’s playbook by ignoring Guantánamo’s sordid, torturous past to focus instead on the similarities between the base and a college campus. Mark Fallon, a former Naval Criminal Investigative Service counterterrorism special agent, explained why the little transparency that had once existed has dwindled to no access at all.

The U.S. government is “hoping to control the narrative about what the American public knows or believes about the prisoners here at Guantánamo Bay, the global war on terror, and some of the war crimes that we committed in the name of the American people, specifically torturing prisoners in violation of U.S. code and international law,” Fallon, the author of “Unjustifiable Means,” told me over a neat whiskey in the courtyard of the Navy Gateway Inns and Suites hotel one evening. He was the testifying witness that week in pretrial proceedings against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the detainee charged in the USS Cole bombing case. Fallon had helmed the original investigation into the Cole bombing, the attack on a U.S. naval ship in the port of Aden, Yemen, in 2000 that killed 17 Americans. Fallon later worked as an investigator at Guantánamo before the CIA’s “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation” program began torturing men with “enhanced interrogation techniques” across black sites — including at Guantánamo — beginning in August 2002. A few months later, Fallon, then deputy commander of the Criminal Investigation Task Force, warned his leadership at the Pentagon that the new behavior he was starting to see at Guantánamo was “the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of.”

“What they try to do is ensure that what is going on here does not impact the contemporary conscience of the American public,” Fallon continued. “Because if it does, there may be greater calls for accountability against those that tortured in our name. And the longer that you can keep that from occurring, the safer, not just [for] the torturers but [for] the torture advocates, the torture lobby. Those who believe that torture should be used as an instrument of national policy are in jeopardy. Their legacies are in jeopardy.”

In truth, I had already started photographing out of spite. The prison might not exist here, but the ugly, cheaply manufactured urban sprawl of late-capitalist America did. Anything especially hideous and uncanny became a target for my lens. “Free candy” written in dust on the back of a white transport van. Dead crabs. A lone foldable chair inside an empty concrete room in the hotel. A grimy carpeted bathroom. Random graffiti tags of the logo of the infamous mercenary company Blackwater. Feral cats.

The tropical heat and general pro-war crime vibes were getting to me, so I started following Salahi’s advice: “Just write about the hotel. Concentrate on that. And eating from McDonald’s. If I was you, I would just do my whole article about the lifestyle. The staff. Just write about that because that’s where you have access.”

There was only one truly American way to forget the crime scene underfoot at Guantánamo Bay and that was to drink. At the Tiki Bar, armed military police stood in pairs while young soldiers, support staff, and visitors to the base all converged under multicolored lights and neon signs to fuel their historical amnesia and try to find someone to go home with. One young man was so wasted that I had to push him off me. Another member of the military, seeing my must-be-displayed-at-all-times press badge, told me he was a “dolphin trainer.” After confiding that he wasn’t allowed to speak to me, he added a gentle reminder that journalists weren’t welcome: “Fuck the media!”

Later in the week, a Navy ship docked at the port, and the sprawling military base was suddenly overrun with sailors looking for something to do on their one night off. That afternoon, our military media escort gave three hitchhikers a ride in our white transport van. I climbed into the middle row of the van as they quietly offered me a “juice” from the backseat. The orange juice bottle contained a mixed Disaronno cocktail. “Oh, y’all have nutcrackers out here?!” I said, reminded of the fruit punch drinks illegally sold at beaches in New York City. No one understood what I was talking about. Still, they asked me to come to the beach with them, and I agreed. They let me keep the secret drink.

We climbed boulders and called insults to each other while swimming in the warm water. That evening, I went to dinner with a colleague at O’Kelly’s, an Irish pub run by Jamaican staff where the best thing on the menu is fajitas. There, I ran into the three men again. The group swelled, and more men gathered around our table, ordering an obscene number of Jell-O shots. As the only age-appropriate and single woman in the entire bar, I was assailed with brazen pickup lines. One man offered to go in the bathroom and take an unsolicited “dick pic” to send me. I tried to make a joke out of it: He didn’t need to go all the way to the bathroom since I had a disposable flash film camera I had bought at Guantánamo’s only store. To my horror, he snatched the camera, held my gaze, and shoved it down his pants. The flash went off. The entire table erupted with howls of laughter. Suddenly, the 21+ wristband I’d been given at the door, with the sexual assault hotline number printed on it, made more sense.

The constant humidity reminded me of my childhood in Sarasota, Florida, only 700 miles across the Caribbean from Camp Delta. Consumed with anxiety, I was barely sleeping. Court started early each morning. The defendant, al-Nashiri, opted out of attending the pretrial arguments all week, so we never saw him in person. The sleep deprivation, and the disconnect between physically being at Guantánamo but not seeing any prisoners or prison cells, was slowly chipping away at my sense of reality.

But I still had a job to do. I was reduced to begging the public affairs officer, Lt. Cmdr. Adam Cole, to at least take me on a drive-by of the detention center and Camp X-Ray. After spending countless hours together, he seemed committed to letting me photograph as much as possible, as I had arrived with a large DSLR and the job title of “photo editor.” While I was ostensibly there only to cover the al-Nashiri pretrial hearings, Cole recognized that journalists have other interests, especially if it’s the first time they’ve come to the base. I wanted to photograph as many of the permissible “b-roll” locations as possible.

All my photography had to be completed before Thursday afternoon, when we had our operational security, or OPSEC, review. An extensive list of “protected information” meant that my extremely tightly cropped photographs had to be viewed by various military public affairs officers, or PAOs, and security officials prior to publication.

An Army military police soldier allows a photograph while questioning me outside Camp Justice at Guantánamo Bay on June 27, 2023.

By now, I had already experienced how quickly photographing at Guantánamo could go south. Forgetting myself in the intense midday sun outside the media center, I grabbed my Canon and pointed it straight up at the sky. I wanted to get a silly photo of a familiar raptor — a turkey vulture — soaring overhead. As I lowered the lens, remembering where I was, it was already too late. Men, one with a gun strapped across his chest, had quickly closed in, surrounding me, to ask where my PAO was — I shouldn’t have been using my camera without him there. Stunned, I asked, “Can I take a photo of the gun?” before confessing I had been a bad girl and pleading with them to not tell my new friend Cole that I’d unwittingly broken the rules.

With the OPSEC review looming and my sanity slipping, I climbed into Cole’s transport van for one last photo excursion. We would drive by Camp X-Ray on our way to the Skyline overlook, which offered a scenic view over the sprawling base below. “No photos,” Cole reminded.

I could barely see anything. It was far below us, and the van climbed steadily, hardly slowing down. “There it is,” Cole said. A few minutes later, we stood high above the bay at dusk. Dark clouds swirled like smoke overhead as a gentle rain began. Unable to see through my drenched glasses, I took them off and the landscape blurred even more. I felt myself starting to cry. I had come all this way to see the reality of Guantánamo Bay, only to find myself blocked at every turn.

It’s always embarrassing to be in tears as a woman in a professional setting. I tried to regain my composure, overwhelmed and frustrated to be denied a true view of a place that defined my country’s abject moral failure. I thought I understood a little of how slowly the years had gone for the prisoners. A week here was an eternity, but two decades wasn’t long enough for the military to come to grips with what it had done. There was Guantánamo, still open, still making the same mistakes. Defeated and demoralized, I’d never been more professionally disappointed. Standing atop that hill, I felt as if I were watching Sisyphus’s boulder — the journalist’s goal of getting the American public to care about Guantánamo — roll back down to the bottom. 

Cole had explained that it wasn’t his decision to nix Camp X-Ray, but rather the Naval Station Guantánamo Bay PAO Joycelyn Biggs who had decided it was off limits. Biggs was stressed. “The entire Navy is short staffed,” she told me on a phone call when I asked her about it. “Every single photo that you take, someone in my office has to look at it and vet it. That is work hours. That is resources that are being diverted from my office.” She wanted me to understand that I wasn’t her problem, that I was there to cover the court: “Anything that you do outside of [military commission] trials is a courtesy.”

For all of Biggs’s concerns that allowing photos of Camp X-Ray would lengthen the OPSEC review, I had to laugh when the entire process for all three journalists visiting that week took just over 10 minutes. What a strain on resources. Everyone crowded around as Biggs’s deputy flipped through my photos.

“What is this?!” Cole asked about a clear plastic tube.

“It was in the lighthouse bathroom,” I replied.

“And you just took a picture of it?”

“Of course.”

“And you wanna publish it? And you’re gonna be like ‘They use this [to] torture people?’” Cole asked. It did remind me of the painful nasogastric tubes they had used to force-feed hunger striking detainees. But I laughed and said that he had just given me a perfect quote for the photo’s caption.

“I hate you,” Cole said.

Despite my irritations, a kind of nostalgia emerged when I described the sights, sounds, smells, and frustrations of this visit to my formerly imprisoned friends.

“When you describe to me every corner, all the details of GTMO, I feel like I am with you,” Barhoumi said in a voice memo. “I feel like I never left this place.” When I complained about the lack of access and general censorship, he could relate. “I feel you,” he told me. “It depends on who is in charge, that’s my experience. You have to have a big heart because they will piss you off. Just use your wisdom and keep going.”

After only a week, I was ready to leave. The constant monitoring and prescreening of my images had been invasive. To decompress, I sat at the marina near the hotel at sunset and watched the sky fade from blue to black as the eerie red glow of the dock’s flood lights spilled into the green water like blood.

I tried to imagine a distant future when former detainees could visit this place as free men and when, perhaps, Guantánamo would become a monument for national reflection. I hoped that they, too, would one day watch the sun slowly sink beneath the wide-open sky and make peace with the place that had permanently derailed their lives. “I would love the place to be converted to a museum, just like Robben Island. I would volunteer and work sometime,” Salahi told me. “I think the former detainees should run it.”

My plane back to Washington, D.C., took off late one afternoon from the empty Guantánamo runway. I looked out the window for a final chance to see the prison. I thought about the remaining 16 men there who have been cleared for release but are still waiting for their own liftoff. I wondered what the rest of their lives would look like. I thought again of al-Qurashi and the paintings he’d made while imprisoned here. His painting of a wooden ship fighting to stay afloat in rough seas stuck me as a metaphor for this place.

What an injustice it was, I thought, that so many of the men who had suffered needlessly here still weren’t truly free. In a perfect world, former detainees would see this prison close. They would be exonerated, get an apology, receive reparations, and find help with rehabilitation. They would be allowed to visit the McDonald’s and the beaches and watch the dusk settle over the crystalline water that teemed with life.

Cuba faded into the distance through the small window. I never did see the prison, just as those detained there had never seen anything of Guantánamo beyond their bars. And apart from the handful of obscure photos that manage to survive OPSEC review, they probably never will.

The post Censorship Has Never Been Worse at Guantánamo Bay appeared first on The Intercept.

That’s exactly what happened. Almost immediately after Bakhouch landed in Algiers, he passed through the usual interrogation process for former Guantánamo detainees in Algeria. After a two-week period of detention and interrogation, he appeared before a judge in early May. The judge told Bakhouch that his story did not match the information the U.S. provided, Gorman explained to The Intercept.

“He was being stripped of all of his rights,” Gorman said. Bakhouch was sent into pretrial detention and, for nearly three months, he has been held under brutal conditions. His hair and beard were forcibly shaved; he has been physically assaulted; and he has been deprived of his Guantánamo-issued medications to treat his injured heel. Now, human rights groups are alleging that Bakhouch is facing severe abuses in detention.

“If anyone had ever given me any hint at the State Department that they have no authority once he steps off the plane, I would have put the brakes on.”

As the Biden administration works to end America’s “forever wars” abroad, the State Department ramped up efforts to release the remaining 16 Guantánamo prisoners who were never charged with any crime and have been cleared to leave the prison. (In total, 30 detainees are still at Guantánamo.) Since Joe Biden assumed office, a slow but steady stream of these prisoners have quietly left the prison’s infamous gates. Like Bakhouch, they are all followed by a vexing question with few answers: Who, ultimately, is responsible for deciding what their freedom means?

Re-imprisoned in Algeria, Bakhouch is only the latest in a string of former Guantánamo detainees facing rights abuses after repatriation or placement in third countries. The question of responsibility over his well-being has pitted the State Department against human rights advocates who contend that his condition meets no viable definition of freedom.

“If anyone had ever given me any hint at the State Department that they have no authority once he steps off the plane, I would have put the brakes on because I know Saeed trusted that I wouldn’t let him go unless I was assured that he would be treated right,” Gorman told The Intercept. “And so the fact that they are now claiming that there’s nothing they can do and that this is a different country and we have no control over that — then why the fuck are you telling me you have their assurances.” (The State Department did not provide comment on this story by publication time.)

In June, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, published a detailed report on rights violations related to the U.S. detention at Guantánamo. Among other abuses, Ní Aoláin found that transfers of detainees to foreign countries had resulted in their own human rights violations. Among other complaints — torture, arbitrary detention, and disappearances, in some cases — she found in 30 percent of documented cases, the released detainees were not given proper legal status by the recipient countries.

“In these harmful transfers, facilitated and supported by the United States,” the U.N. report said, “there is a legal and moral obligation for the U.S. Government to use all of its diplomatic and legal resources to facilitate (re)transfer of these men, with meaningful assurance and support to other countries.”

As men continue to be released from the prison at Guantánamo, Ní Aoláin told The Intercept that she “continues to be deeply concerned about the robustness of the U.S. Government’s non-refoulement assessment and the protection of human rights for those who have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to countries of nationality or third countries.”

Human Rights Letter

In a desperate effort to draw attention to Bakhouch’s enduring incarceration, the Center for Constitutional Rights, or CCR, published an open letter with signatories from the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and other nongovernmental groups, urgently pressuring the State Department to intervene. The letter, published Wednesday and shared exclusively in advance with The Intercept, alleges that the U.S. provided the Algerian government with harmful and unfounded allegations about Bakhouch’s past — information that led to his detention — and that Bakhouch is imprisoned under severe conditions which violate international law. (The Algerian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.)

“Despite being transferred out of Guantánamo on the basis that he no longer posed a significant risk to the United States,” the letter says, “Mr. Bakhouch was told by the Algerian lawyer assigned to represent him in trial that the United States provided the information to the Algerian government that led to them charging him with having sworn allegiance to Osama Bin Laden.”

“This allegation is woefully unfounded,” the letter continues, “and we are deeply troubled by the fact that Mr. Bakhouch is being detained on this basis and enduring abuse in Algerian custody, purportedly in part because of false or incomplete intelligence information from the United States.”

The CCR-led letter is addressed to Ambassador Tina Kaidanow, who heads the State Department office responsible for transferring men out of Guantánamo Bay. Kaidanow was appointed in August 2022 and has been repeatedly criticized in the past for failure to respond to botched resettlement deals. Most of the deals were not of her own making; she inherited a mess of released detainees in crisis — some have been re-incarcerated and tortured, forcibly repatriated, or denied legal asylum status.

With only her office to appeal to for assistance, lawyers and human rights advocates are growing increasingly concerned that, irrespective of the deals’ authorship, the struggling former prisoners have no diplomatic support from the State Department.

Now, with Bakhouch’s immediate and brutal re-incarceration, Kaidanow appears to be helming her own botched deal. 

State Department Assurances

Emails from Kaidanow and her staff at the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism to Gorman, which were obtained by The Intercept, show a pattern of vague reassurances, incompetence, and general disregard.

After Bakhouch’s release was approved but before he was transferred out of Guantánamo, he languished simply because the staffer who needed to sign his papers was unaware that was a part of their job responsibilities, Gorman learned from a phone call with Anand Prakash, a policy adviser to the Office of the Special Representative for Guantánamo Affairs. Prakash, she said, apparently found the mishap funny, leading Gorman to become more concerned that the State Department staff wasn’t taking her concerns for Bakhouch’s well-being seriously. 

“With no family to help Mr. Bakhouch this will be a very difficult transition and I fear my client might become homeless — or worse — locked up.”

“With no family to help Mr. Bakhouch this will be a very difficult transition and I fear my client might become homeless — or worse — locked up,” Gorman wrote to Prakash. “Please let me know what you can about assistance that will be offered to Mr. Bakhouch.”

Prakash, who was unable to provide details of the diplomatic agreement with Algeria, replied, “I can assure you we will work to ensure that he is given appropriate and humane treatment upon return.”

On May 7, Gorman informed the State Department’s Guantánamo desk that her client had not been released as she had expected; instead, he had been re-imprisoned. “This is very distressing for us to hear – it’s not the outcome we expected when we repatriated Saeed to Algeria, and we are taking steps to find out exactly what happened,” Jessica Heinz, a staffer in the Guantánamo Affairs office, replied a day later. “I assure you we are looking into this and will take the steps necessary to ensure Saeed is in a good place post-release.”

As the month of May unfolded and Bakhouch sat in prison, Gorman repeatedly emailed asking for updates and more information — missives that went largely unanswered. By the end of the month, the veteran lawyer had received no updates or new information on the circumstances of her client’s imprisonment from Prakash or Heinz.

Fed up with the apparent inattention to the issue, Gorman eventually escalated and fired off a heated email to Kaidanow herself. Gorman pleaded for immediate help, pointing to Bakhouch’s severe mental health struggles with PTSD and depression. “I recognize your concern,” Kaidanow wrote back. “We and our colleagues in Algeria are doing everything we can to ascertain what the status of Mr. Bakhouch currently is and what his ultimate disposition will be. We take every precaution possible to ensure that detainees will be effectively rehabilitated once they are returned, but we cannot prevent the receiving country from acting according to their own laws and procedures.”

Bakhouch’s Mental Health

The letter from CCR to Kadainow raised the State Department failure to fully reckon with Bakhouch’s mental health issues. It was a point Gorman repeatedly emphasized prior to her client’s release from Guantánamo. The State Department staff writing the emails obtained by The Intercept at no point specifically acknowledge Gorman’s repeated concerns over Bakhouch’s mental well-being.

“Before his transfer, the State Department was made aware of a medical opinion about Mr. Bakhouch’s mental trauma and diagnosis of PTSD and depression related to his torture and detention, and that his U.S. attorney communicated concerns about his reintegration in Algeria to your office several times,” the letter says. “Unfortunately and alarmingly, these concerns seemed to have been disregarded at best and weaponized at worst now that Mr. Bakhouch is in custody in Algeria.” 

Concerned that Bakhouch had no family support in Algeria, Gorman continually asked about adequate resources to make sure he did not become homeless after repatriation. In one email, Prakash suggested Gorman reach out to Reprieve and the International Committee of the Red Cross — two nongovernmental groups that work with former detainees and human rights issues — to help Bakhouch readjust to life in Algeria.

At one point before Bakhouch’s release to Algeria, Gorman requests information on what assistance the State Department planned to give her client. “Could you please tell me if our government has made any arrangements with the Algerian government to help settle Mr. Bakhouch when he arrives back in Algiers?” she asked.

“There’s not a whole lot I can share re the specifics of our bilateral arrangements,” Prakash wrote in an email, “but I can say we are working to ascertain what the host gov can provide after transfer, and I can assure you we will work to ensure that he is given appropriate and humane treatment upon return. As you likely know, our standard agreements include reference to humane treatment.”

In the emails reviewed by The Intercept, Kaidanow invokes her commitments to personally ensure that each transfer goes smoothly with a focus on “reintegration and rehabilitation.”

Sufyian Barhoumi, another former Guantánamo detainee who was repatriated to Algeria in early April 2022, said those words mean “nothing at all.” Barhoumi and his lawyer, CCR’s Shayana Kadidal, said they have not been contacted by either the U.S. or Algerian governments. Barhoumi said nongovernmental organizations too, including the ICRC and Reprieve, had been unable to offer him assistance.

“We do not take part in the transfer of detainees, nor can we discuss individual cases,” an ICRC spokesperson said in a statement received after publication. “While the ICRC is aware that States normally negotiate security treatment assurances before a transfer, the ICRC does not play a role in these discussions, or any agreements reached. However, we continue to urge detaining authorities in any State to consider the importance of adequately addressing the humanitarian issues related to any transfers that take place.”

“In the course of Reprieve’s Life After Guantánamo work,” Reprieve’s U.S. joint executive director Maya Foa wrote to The Intercept, “we have consistently seen how hard it is for men subjected to this appalling mistreatment over many years to escape further persecution — whether repatriated or transferred to host countries. For many men, the abuse follows them forever; the stain of Guantánamo does not disappear once they are transferred.”

“Arbitrarily detaining so many men without trial has indelibly stained the USA’s reputation as a country founded on the rule of law,” Foa said. “Rehabilitation, reintegration, and reparation for all the men is the direct responsibility of the U.S. Government.” (Reprieve U.S. is a signatory on the letter sent Wednesday to Kaidanow.)

With no income or resources, Barhoumi said he feels stuck and alone: “I just need to start my life.”

State Shirking Responsibility

Gorman has continued to try to spur the State Department into action on Bakhouch’s behalf. Nearly two full months after Bakhouch was imprisoned in Algeria, Kadainow finally replied with specifics, saying she had “a chance” to speak with relevant diplomatic colleagues.

“Our Ambassador in Algiers was informed that Mr. Bakhouch is being charged under Algerian law for membership/affiliation with a foreign terrorist organization, which is a serious crime under Algerian law,” Kaidanow wrote. “He is currently under pre-trial detention while his case is under review by the Court d’Instruction, which will ultimately decide whether to bring him to trial or dismiss the charges and release him. The information regarding his case is still sealed.”

“Closing Guantanamo is not just about policy, it’s about people — the people who’ve been detained and tortured by the United States.”

Kaidanow added, “We continue to assert our interest in his humane treatment and legal rights in a variety of high-level settings.”

The U.S. — and Kaidanow’s — position seems clear: Algeria is responsible for what they now intend to do with their citizen. The U.S. has no further responsibility beyond asking them to honor their commitment to human rights.

For CCR, the lack of direct intervention is unacceptable, but there is little to do but continue to advocate for more care.

“Closing Guantanamo is not just about policy, it’s about people — the people who’ve been detained and tortured by the United States, and the obligations that the U.S. government has to them because of this,” said Aliya Hussain, CCR’s advocacy program manager. “These international law obligations continue even after the men are transferred to other countries, and they are unequivocal, which the Special Rapporteur makes clear in her recent report.”

If the State Department doesn’t follow up and enforce diplomatic assurances, the assurances are worthless, Hussain explained. “How they respond to Mr. Bakhouch’s situation in Algeria will signal how much oversight and advocacy they are willing and committed to undertaking to ensure the success of future transfers.”

Update: August 1, 2023
This story has been updated to include a statement from the International Committee of the Red Cross made after publication.

The post Despite U.S. Guarantee, Guantánamo Prisoner Released to Algeria Immediately Imprisoned and Abused appeared first on The Intercept.

At the core of the report is the problem of inexplicable indefinite detention. “Arbitrariness pervades the entirety of the Guantánamo detention infrastructure — rendering detainees vulnerable to human rights abuse and contributing to conditions, practices, or circumstances that lead to arbitrary detention,” the report says. Life beyond Guantánamo, for some men, is just another Guantánamo. Those who cannot be repatriated are instead sent to a “third” country like Kazakhstan, where former detainees have been met with more arbitrary detention, Ní Aoláin found.

The special rapporteur highlighted Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates as two countries of “egregious” concern where men have been sent to another form of prison. “In Kazakhstan former detainees effectively remain under house arrest and are unable to live a normal and dignified life due to the secondary security measures put in place post transfer,” she wrote. In the UAE, Ní Aoláin found “multiple former detainees were subject to arbitrary detention and torture, and one remains detained in incommunicado detention.”

The U.N. investigation found that the men released from Guantánamo in resettlement deals have not been given proper legal status by their host countries in 30 percent of documented cases. This lack of asylum risks “precluding them and their families from access to certain public benefits, health care, education, as well as foreign travel, or a path to citizenship, all of which are fundamental entitlements under international human rights law.”

Early this year, an investigation by The Intercept revealed that former Guantánamo prisoner Sabri al-Qurashi had been left without legal status since his relocation from Guantánamo to Kazakhstan in late 2014. Over nearly a decade in Kazakhstan, his treatment has only gotten worse, and he has become increasingly desperate. “I have no official status, no ID card, no right to work or education, and no right to see my family,” al-Qurashi said. Without a basic ID, he is unable to send or receive money, packages, or mail. When he wants to leave his apartment, he must call the Red Crescent office and ask for his assigned chaperone to accompany him. Since being freed, he has not been allowed to reunite with his family or his wife in Yemen, in conflict with the State Department’s negotiated resettlement deal, which was supposed to provide stability and possible family reunification.

“You have no rights,” al-Qurashi said he was told by Kazakh authorities. He was not allowed to press charges against a man who attacked him in the street, leaving him with permanent facial paralysis.

Now Muhammad Ali Husayn Khanayna, the only other former Guantánamo prisoner in Kazakhstan who is still alive, has come forward about his living conditions. “Soon, I will complete 10 years under the arbitrariness of the Kazakh government in a remote city for no reason,” he told The Intercept. He confirmed that he, too, has never been given documentation of residence, an ID, or his passport. “They treat us as if we were criminals who entered the country without their choice,” Khanayna said. Both al-Qurashi and Khanayna told The Intercept that Kazakh officials threatened to send them back to Yemen. “We were handed over by the American government to the militias of Kazakhstan,” Khanayna said. “Not a government that has international law or a law that protects the citizens.”

The U.N. report calls for the situation of the men “arbitrarily detained” in Kazakhstan, the UAE, and any other country with a “serious violation of human rights” to be “urgently addressed.” The U.S. should facilitate their resettlement again in a new host country, Ní Aoláin argues.

“There is a legal and moral obligation for the U.S. government to use all of its diplomatic and legal resources to facilitate (re)transfer of these men, with meaningful assurance and support to other countries,” she concludes.

A State Department representative previously told The Intercept that the U.S. government does not agree with the characterization that it has a “legal and moral” obligation to the resettled detainees. “Once security assurances have expired, and pending any specific renegotiation of assurances, it largely falls to the discretion of the host country to determine what security measures they continue to implement,” Vincent Picard said when asked for comment on the former detainees in Kazakhstan.

As al-Qurashi and Khanayna have been stuck in stateless purgatory for nearly a decade, some of the recommendations of the U.N. report come far too late. The report strongly recommends that for all resettlements and repatriations, “a formal and effective follow-up system be established as part of the remedial obligations owed by the U.S. government.” Had a system like that been in place when they were transferred, the Guantánamo detainees in Kazakhstan could have received some assistance. In 2015, they told VICE News that their mistreatment began as soon as they stepped off the plane in the former Soviet country.

“This was a mistake by the Americans in the beginning, and the Americans will not be able to change our situation inside this country,” Khanayna told The Intercept. “They only have to get us out of here.” He said he would prefer to be transferred to an Arab country like Qatar because it has a reputation of treating Guantánamo prisoners well.

“The Kazakh government is a criminal government. It has treated us like animals,” al-Qurashi said in response to the new U.N. findings. “I’m hurting from my heart.”

The post Released Guantánamo Detainees Are Still Being Denied Human Rights, U.N. Report Warns appeared first on The Intercept.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis in the early years of the war would pass through interrogation and detention sites where CIA agents, military intelligence, military police, private contractors, special operation, and ordinary soldiers inflicted abuse that no longer gets cloaked by euphemisms: It was torture.

The photos released from Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 — showing humiliated, naked men leashed like dogs, electrocuted, beaten, piled in pyramids, with smiling military service members laughing and giving a thumbs-up over their bodies — gave the first public glimpse into a secret sprawling torture apparatus from Afghanistan to Cuba.

When the scandal broke, though, senior officials painted Abu Ghraib as a singular incident, the work of “a few bad apples.” President George W. Bush told the press, “We do not torture.” Even when word of the CIA’s secret prison network came to light, Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, continued to double down on their Geneva convention violations.

As is the American playbook, those in the highest seats of power, who played dumb while making torture a matter of policy, evaded any accountability. No criminal court indictments, no personal or professional repercussions, no travel restrictions, and no sanctions would flow up the chain of command. Mostly low-ranking soldiers at Abu Ghraib, Camp Nama, and beyond bore the brunt of blame. Eleven U.S. soldiers faced criminal convictions for torture at Abu Ghraib and a few more faced disciplinary actions — all the “justice” for Iraqi torture victims that the American military could muster.

“If the U.S. is truly ever interested in rectifying the horrific violence that it unleashed on Iraq, it could start by apologizing to and compensating the survivors of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison,” Maha Hilal, the director of the Muslim Counterpublics Lab and author of “Innocent Until Proven Muslim,” told The Intercept. “Until it does, U.S. gestures towards justice in any capacity will remain symbolic and disingenuous.”

Defense contractors, complicit and involved directly with interrogations and torture, walked away unscathed. The only payout so far in a civil suit was made by a firm that provided translation services at the prison; the company paid out a $5 million settlement with hundreds of Iraqis represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights in a historic case. Now, 20 years later, CCR has another ongoing lawsuit against CACI — the security firm that the four former Abu Ghraib detainees on the suit accuse of directing their torture — in a bid to bridge “the accountability gap” between U.S. military members and private contractors. (CACI denies the allegations.)

“High-level Bush administration officials have not been held accountable for the lies and the murderous violence that they subjected the Iraqi people to.”

“Like all legal cases, this is just one tiny piece of the horrors of the invasion and the occupation which displaced and killed many thousands of Iraqis,” Baher Azmy, legal director of the CCR, told The Intercept. “High-level Bush administration officials have not been held accountable for the lies and the murderous violence that they subjected the Iraqi people to. So, this is just one small part of the legal story.”

After 15 years of litigation, no trial date has been set for the ongoing case against CACI; Azmy said CACI has delayed the trial with a series of failed attempts to get the case dismissed. “But our clients are still here,” he said. “Miraculously, they still believe in the U.S. justice system and still want to tell their story to a U.S. jury.”

Most of the men detained across Iraq following the invasion were innocent, according to a Red Cross investigation. Military intelligence officers estimated, to the International Committee of the Red Cross, that 70 to 90 percent of the “persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq” had actually been arrested by mistake.

“I believe that achieving justice begins with revealing all the details about the torture and acknowledging them on the part of the United States, then giving reparations to the survivors who were tortured unjustly, for no reason,” Salah Hasan, a plaintiff in the CCR suit who survived Abu Ghraib, told The Intercept on the eve of the Iraq War’s anniversary.

A producer for the news channel Al Jazeera, Hasan was arrested in November 2003 and taken through various detention sites under U.S. custody, hooded and bound, before landing, with another Al Jazeera journalist, at Abu Ghraib. There, Hasan was stripped naked, kept standing and hooded, and restrained for endless hours. Over almost two months, he reported being kicked, beaten, deprived of food, and locked naked, in complete isolation for most of his imprisonment.

“Many years have passed since I got out of Abu Ghraib prison and today, and tomorrow, as yesterday, the name Abu Ghraib still raises many things in the soul: horror, fear, and anxiety,” Hasan said. “Even now, my children ask me about the details, but I can’t tell them for two reasons: The first is that the story is painful for me and the second is that I don’t want my children to suffer because of me.”

Consequences

More photographs of Abu Ghraib were eventually released more than a decade after the scandal first became public. An American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit forced the Pentagon to hand over more evidence of the abuses suffered by Iraqis; the additional 198 photos, selected to be released, were “the most innocuous of the 2,000 that were being withheld,” the ACLU wrote.

Censorship of this sort — to cover up American crimes, in this case specifically of torture — has played out time and time again. Just as we don’t have the full picture of what happened in Iraq, we also have never seen the full report of the Senate investigation into CIA torture. The ACLU National Security Project slammed the Pentagon for the continued suppression of evidence:

To justify its withholdings, the government cites a general fear that exposing the misconduct of government personnel may incite others to violence against Americans and U.S. interests. The problem with this argument is that it gives terrorists the power to determine what Americans can know about their own government. No democracy has ever been strengthened by suppressing evidence of its own crimes.

What the U.S. government can get away with is still influenced by the continuously set precedents of torture without justice.

“Though the Obama administration’s policy was to look forward,” Yumna Rizvi, a policy analyst for the Center for Victims of Torture, told The Intercept, “the reality is that the lack of accountability has created an inability to move forward and essentially paralyzed the U.S. on many issues, including those related to the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo detention facility.”

“The legacy of the torture program is one that continues to haunt,” she said. “We’re seeing this currently with the Pentagon’s effort to block evidence of Russian war crimes with the ICC” — International Criminal Court — “because it may open doors for the ICC to prosecute Americans. The U.S. cannot move in the world like it once did; it cannot espouse the principles of human rights, justice, and accountability.”

Reflecting on the 20-year anniversary of the invasion of his country, Hasan explained that he has seen his everything — the law, health, education, politics, and people — change for the worst since the invasion. Torture in Iraqi prisons is an endless story that continues until today, he said.

“The United States of America should reconsider its policies, and at the very least, clean up the mess left behind,” he said. “The U.S. must admit that it deceived the Iraqi people. But it is clear this is not in its consideration at all.”

The CCR-led fight for a modicum of justice from private contractors in Abu Ghraib may finally head to trial this year, Azmy hopes. Hasan, and the other former prisoners, have been waiting 15 years for a chance to testify before a U.S. court. “I have found it my duty not to keep silent about crimes of human rights violations,” he told me. “If justice is achieved, it will be a step along the way to correcting mistakes — I hope that other steps will then follow.”

The post Iraqis Tortured by the U.S. in Abu Ghraib Never Got Justice appeared first on The Intercept.

The public report provides insights into the investigative process undertaken by the court, identifies a number of inadequate security controls, and provides recommendations to remedy the problems. That means the report is doubly instructive for would-be future leakers: It provides both a list of successful operational security techniques leakers may have employed to evade detection, as well as, thanks to the recommendations, forward-looking lessons on pitfalls to avoid in the future.

Investigative Dead Ends

The investigation team used a number of techniques to attempt to identify the leaker, all of which proved to be dead ends.

They examined all available printer logs but found that Court printers have limited logging capabilities. The team also investigated email logs to determine if anyone had emailed the opinion draft to a third party; while staff had emailed copies of the draft to others on staff, there was no evidence that the opinion draft was emailed to anyone else.

The investigation looked not just at court-issued devices, but also at call and text records as well as billing statements of employees’ personal devices. Though the team reported that the court’s logging was rudimentary and thus did not yield any results that could identify a leaker, the key takeaway for future leakers is that much like organization-provided devices, personal devices should likewise not be used in the service of leaking. Instead, the principle of one-time use should be adopted: Temporary devices should be safely acquired and used for acquisition and dissemination of leak materials, after which the device should promptly be disposed of by secure means.

Court investigators paid particular attention to reviewing the legal search histories conducted by staff, aiming to “determine whether an employee might have researched the legality of disclosing confidential case-related information.” Notably, the investigation team obtained this legal search history “directly from the service providers.” Though it’s not clear which search providers were examined, the report could be referring to subscription databases like LexisNexis, highlighting the fact that leakers should be careful to avoid using third-party services, as a leak investigation may seek to obtain records from them. The report doesn’t state whether the investigative team subpoenaed the service providers, whether the providers shared the search histories without a subpoena, or whether investigators were able to view the histories through internal means like staff or administrative accounts, or invoices from the search providers that could include itemized search terms.

The report said investigators reviewed “the statements and conduct of personnel who displayed attributes associated with insider-threat behavior — violation of confidentiality rules, disgruntled attitude, claimed stressed, anger at the Court’s decision, etc.” In other words, as I predicted when the investigation was launched, the team deployed “sentiment analysis” tactics to attempt to identify disaffected staff (though this line of inquiry ignores the possibility that the draft may have been leaked by someone who supported the opinion). It is thus important for leakers to not display discontentment, either publicly or privately (including via “private messages,” which may not be particularly private).

The investigators sought to determine whether they could identify any connections between court staff and journalists, particularly anyone affiliated with Politico, which first published the draft opinion. This is why it’s important not to have visible contact with reporters; avoid following them on social media and access their contact information ideally using a separate disposable device, or at least not using organization-supplied hardware.

Though investigators analyzed the digital images of the opinion draft published by Politico, comparing it to copies obtained from court photocopiers and printers, they were unable to find anything of “evidentiary value.” In addition to not using company-provided or otherwise trackable devices when producing copies, would-be leakers should consider even going so far as to introduce errant stray markings that may lead investigators down dead ends.

The report mentions that the team analyzed an unspecified “item relevant to the investigation” for fingerprints. While they did find fingerprints with outside assistance, they were unable to match them to “any fingerprints of interest.” The report is curiously vague as to what the item of interest was; it could, for instance, be a rogue USB stick that was found to contain a copy of the opinion. Given that it’s not entirely unusual for leak investigations to sweep for physical prints as well as digital ones — Elon Musk, in his leak investigations at Tesla, also reportedly lifted fingerprints from printouts found near a photocopier — leakers should be careful not to leave any fingerprints when accessing or handling any sensitive materials.

Future Measures

The report makes it a point to state that the detailed recommendations on how to improve court policies and practices will only be shared with the justices and court officers in a private annex, because releasing them to the public “could unwisely expose Court operations and information to potential bad actors.” Nonetheless, the public report does provide a broad list of recommendations that are instructive for future leakers.

The team’s primary finding is that “too many personnel have access to certain Court-sensitive documents” and that there is an “inability to actively track who is handling and accessing these documents.” Though the recommendations from this finding are likely in the private annex, we can assume that the team may suggest the court implement more stringent access controls and tracking mechanisms.

The tracking mechanisms may involve detailed audit logs of which users viewed, copied, printed, or otherwise interacted with a given file, as well as uniquely watermarking versions of files to identify the owner of a given copy of a document, should it be leaked. There are a variety of ways to uniquely fingerprint a document, ranging from modifying the spacing of paragraphs, words, or characters to making slight modifications to the syntactic or semantic structure.

The report also found that “there are inadequate safeguards in place to track the printing and copying of sensitive documents” and that the court should “institute tracking mechanisms using technology that is currently available for this purpose.” Such technologies could include everything from detailed print histories, which log document name and size as well as username and IP address, to a Machine Identification Code embedded as a series of microdots or other watermarks on a printed page, which can identify the source printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.

With those tracking mechanisms in place, a leaker would need to avoid printing or photocopying documents using organization-provided hardware. To err still further on the side of safety, if physical copies need to be made, a device that can be linked to the leaker, like a home printer, should be avoided, and instead a device should only be used for the purposes of producing the leaked document (whether via printing or taking a photo) and then promptly and safely disposed of.

The court investigators may have failed to identify the source of the leaked opinion draft, but their report does help future leakers better protect their own identities.

The post How to Leak From the Supreme Court appeared first on The Intercept.

“It is long past time for both a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security, and a meaningful reckoning with the full scope of damage that the post-9/11 approach has caused,” the letter says.

Following a slow trickle of transfers out of the facility under the Biden administration, 35 men remain imprisoned today. Over the last two decades, 779 men and boys passed through the catastrophic prison. Of those who remain there today, 20 are eligible for transfer out of indefinite detention; three are awaiting judgment from six different government agencies, known as the Periodic Review Board; three more have been convicted; and nine are involved in pre-trial hearings in the flawed military commission system. The case against accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators is ongoing and has not yet reached trial.

In the post-9/11 era, torture with impunity at CIA black sites, the failed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, drone strikes, botched raids across a global battlefield, domestic surveillance of Muslims, and the incalculable loss of civilian life in the Middle East have defined America’s quest for national security. But Guantánamo Bay, and its earlier iteration as a detention facility for Haitian refugees in the ’90s, “is the iconic example of the abandonment of the rule of law,” the letter argues.

“The world knows detainees were tortured, [as well as] the heinous methods, names of those who approved and participated, and that videotapes of torture were deliberately destroyed; yet not a single person has been held accountable,” Yumna Rizvi, policy analyst for CVT, told The Intercept. “The fact that all those complicit remain free, [and that] some even describe what they did without fear of prosecution, is astounding. The U.S. has lost its credibility for human rights, justice, and accountability.”

Renewed pressure and calls for the prison to finally be closed are only the beginning of ending the injustice, argues CAGE’s Mansoor Adayfi. “We need to see compensation, acknowledgement, and an apology for what happened to us,” Adayfi, a former Guantánamo prisoner, told The Intercept. “This is part of closing Guantánamo.”

The post More Than 150 International Organizations Call on Biden to Close Guantánamo on 21st Anniversary appeared first on The Intercept.

Al-Qurashi lived the nightmare of languishing in a cage as a detainee at the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He never expected he’d be living in another version of a cage after he was released in 2014. For nearly a decade, he has found himself stuck in Kazakhstan. Promises once made to him of starting a life and starting a family after Guantánamo have now been all but shattered. His life now feels like one of permanent purgatory as he holds no form of basic identification at the mercy of the Kazakh government. With no hope or patience left, al-Qurashi is now threatening a hunger strike.

“Truly, my life now is just as bad as w­­hen I was in Guantanamo, and in many aspects even worse. At least there, I knew I was in prison and that I would get out one day,” al-Qurashi wrote in an account shared with The Intercept, which is set to be published by CAGE, a group that advocates for “war on terror” victims and detainees. “Now I’m living as if I’m dead and being told I am free when I am not.”

“Now I’m living as if I’m dead and being told I am free when I am not.”

When al-Qurashi met with representatives from Kazakhstan’s government while still at Guantánamo, he was optimistic about being sent to a new strange home. He agreed to a secretive resettlement deal negotiated by the U.S. State Department.

Unable to return to Yemen because of the country’s instability, al-Qurashi said he was offered a good life elsewhere. His understanding, and that of his legal team, was that, after living under some restrictions for two years, he would be a free man, with all the same rights as Kazakh citizens. It is a Muslim country, he was told, and he would be treated as a member of society. Instead, he said now he finds himself without the most basic needs.

“I have no official status, no ID card, no right to work or education, and no right to see my family,” al-Qurashi said. “I have been married for eight years, but my wife is not allowed to come and live with me.”

Al-Qurashi lives under conditions that are in stark contrast to the stability that the State Department had tried to guarantee in his deal. “The United States’ goal in resettling former Guantánamo detainees was to create conditions for these men to integrate into their new societies and give them the opportunity to start a new life in a manner that protected the security of the United States,” a former State Department official familiar with the Obama administration’s efforts to transfer Guantánamo detainees told The Intercept. “Among other things, successful resettlements entailed housing, access to medical care, educational opportunities, the ability to work, and the opportunity to start or reunify with their families.”

In an interview with The Intercept, al-Qurashi said that he has been repeatedly told over the years that his wife and other family are not allowed to visit, much less join him, from Yemen because he is “illegal.” He said he was told, “You have no rights.” According to a message viewed by The Intercept, the Red Crescent Society is currently negotiating with Kazakh officials for al-Qurashi’s wife to finally be allowed a brief first visit. “We are waiting for a reply. I will keep you informed,” an International Committee of the Red Cross representative working on al-Qurashi’s behalf texted him in late October. Al-Qurashi hasn’t heard anything since.

A spokesperson for the State Department said that once security agreements around resettlement expired, responsibility for treatment of the former detainees fell to the host governments. “Repatriation or resettlement of former detainees is a carefully negotiated process between the United States and receiving countries based on mutually reached security and humane treatment assurances. While security assurances are time-limited, assurances related to humane treatment do not expire,” said Bureau of Counterterrorism spokesperson Vincent Picard in a statement. “While host governments are encouraged to consult with us, the U.S. government does not exercise any sort of custody over the treatment of resettled individuals. We encourage all host governments to exercise their responsibilities humanely and with consideration of appropriate security measures.” (The Kazakh Embassy to the U.S. did not respond to a request for comment.)

For al-Qurashi to have gone so long without even documentation of his identity, in defiance of the diplomatic efforts of the State Department, is something his legal advocates never imagined.

“Ultimately, he never received proper identification to be a documented individual in the country, and that poses problems in any country,” Greg McConnell, al-Qurashi’s pro bono counsel, said. “That’s something that was never appropriately fulfilled in the way that we understood it would be by the Kazakh government.”

Following the broken promises, al-Qurashi now feels that no one cares about him. With the ICRC financing his apartment, food, and even a place to paint, al-Qurashi worries that Kazakh officials may ask, “What more could you possibly want?” For al-Qurashi, though, the new life he signed up for was one where his wife could join him, and they could build a home together. His existence now, he said, is sustained by aid, but it isn’t really life at all.

“Of course, I try not to give up,” he said, “but everything is against me.”

On a call one afternoon in late fall, he asked me where I was sitting. “It’s a little backyard, like a garden,” I said, panning the laptop around my ground-floor, concrete yard in Brooklyn.

“Oh, I’ve got a garden too,” he said. “Let me show you.” He walked through a stark apartment and plunges the camera into the saddest-looking attempt at an indoor herb garden I’ve ever seen. Small green seedlings of basil and mint fight for life in a halved plastic water jug. A big laugh follows, his face transformed by a joyful moment of self-deprecation. A few weeks later, all the plants were dead.

For years, al-Qurashi has tried to keep himself sane by painting; his illustrations are sophisticated and conceptual, and his talent, discovered at Guantánamo, is immense. The power of escape afforded by making art, however, has diminished lately. “Even drawing, which is the best thing in my life, and I love it — I’m no longer enthusiastic about it,” he told me.

Al-Qurashi opened up about his youth in a series of interviews. Born in Saudi Arabia to Yemeni parents, he spent all his youth in Hafar al-Batin, doing odd jobs for vendors at the market so he could run home with 10 or 20 riyals in his pocket after school. With dreams of becoming a “rich man,” he began selling perfume oils in the Saudi markets in his mid-20s. Eventually, he took a trip to the wholesale factories in Pakistan, his first such solo visit. That’s when the 9/11 attacks happened. In a desperate attempt to leave the country while security forces were rounding up foreigners, al-Qurashi was grabbed in a raid of the apartment he was staying in.

“It is in my nature that I forgive even those who have wronged me.”

At the time, the U.S. government was doling out up to $5,000 to Afghan warlords and to the government of Pakistan for capturing suspected members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban and turning them over. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, 86 percent of the men jailed at Guantánamo were sold for a bounty. Al-Qurashi had no idea he was about to join hundreds of men handed over to American intelligence by Pakistani officials.

At the American makeshift prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, al-Qurashi said he was stripped naked, shaved, intimidated with dogs and deprived of water, warmth, and basic dignity. The worst day of his life, he said, was the flight to Cuba. He waited for his captors to realize their mistake, but the day never came. Through brutal interrogations, hunger strikes, and solitary confinement, he maintained his innocence.

Al-Qurashi said he feels no bitterness about what happened to him, even expressing gratitude for the friends he’s made along the way. I asked if he forgave the people who tortured him. “Of course,” he responded without hesitation. “It is in my nature that I forgive even those who have wronged me.”

Another Prison

By the end of 2014, three Yemenis, including al-Qurashi, and two Tunisian men arrived in Kazakhstan from Guantánamo Bay — the first and last group to be sent to the former Soviet country. The destination may seem odd, but Kazakhstan is majority Muslim and could address the U.S.’s security concerns about a handoff. Harsh treatment, intensive surveillance, and harassment started immediately, as documented in a Vice investigation shortly after the men arrived.

Al-Qurashi and Lotfi bin Ali, a 6-foot-8 Tunisian, were first placed along the Russian border in Semey, a small city in the shadow of the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapon testing site. The men expected to be welcomed in a Muslim country, but instead they found outward hostility.

Al-Qurashi struggled to learn Kazakh from a non-Arabic-speaking teacher, in a city that mostly spoke Russian. Lotfi, at the time, couldn’t find a winter coat that fit his huge frame.

Bin Ali frequently spoke to reporters about his conditions in Kazakhstan and, perhaps because of the embarrassing media reports, was resettled again in Mauritania, along with fellow Tunisian, Adel Hakimi. Never having returned home to Tunisia, bin Ali died on March 9, 2021, after struggling to find adequate medical treatment for heart disease.

“The State Department didn’t even pretend to give a shit,” said Mark Denbeaux, bin Ali’s former lawyer. “All they wanted to do was get people out of Guantánamo. They dumped them in Kazakhstan and didn’t care what happened.”

Another former Guantánamo detainee shipped to Kazakstan — Asim Thabit Al Khalaqi, a Yemeni without documented health problems — died four months after the transfer from a sudden severe illness. Friends and family allege medical malpractice and say his body was never returned to Yemen or properly buried.

Al Qurashi, too, now struggles to find adequate medical care for an injury he sustained three years ago, when a man violently assaulted him on the street. Struck in the face and left with nerve damage, he was told after the attack that he could not report the incident or have any sort of day in court. The police said al-Qurashi, because of his lack of status in the country, did not have standing to bring charges. His treatment for the partial facial paralysis is ongoing — he’s been given acupuncture and a jar of blood-sucking leeches — but he needs a complicated surgery that he is afraid to have performed because of how he’s been treated so far.

In addition to leaving his body in peril, the Kazakhs authorities’ approach to al-Qurashi has left him virtually unable to make meaningful social contact with those around him, he said.

“I have no basic dignity or freedom to move even in the streets around my apartment,” al-Qurashi explained in the CAGE account. “The government harasses anyone I get in contact with which makes it impossible to socialize. The government deters people from associating with me by telling us that we are terrorists and dangerous. Because of not wanting to put anybody in harm, I have stopped attempting to integrate with locals.”

Because of his lack of identification, al-Qurashi is unable to do basic things like send and receiving money, packages, or mail. He is unable to work. When he wants to leave his apartment, for instance to go fishing nearby, he must call the Red Crescent office and ask for his assigned chaperone to accompany him. Sometimes the wait is days long. He cannot leave his neighborhood, let alone drive or travel outside Kyzylorda, his open-air prison. “I exist in life, but I do not live it,” al-Qurashi told me.

The experience echoes those of other former prisoners speaking out against the relentless stigma of life after Guantánamo. “When they leave Guantánamo, it’s not as if they’re exonerated, it’s not as if the United States says that they’re innocent or that they were wrongfully detained,” said Maha Hilal, author of “Innocent Until Proven Muslim” and a scholar of the effect of the so-called war on terror on Muslims. “And so, obviously, they leave Guantánamo with the stigma of ‘terrorist’ on their back.”

Al-Qurashi said, “I have been treated like a terrorist since the day I stepped off the plane here.”

Of the five detainees sent to Kazakhstan, only al-Qurashi and Muhammad Ali Husayn Khanayna, who declined to comment, remain today in Kyzylorda.

Top/Left: A painting Sabri al-Qurashi made while imprisoned at Guantánamo shows a man in a bottle floating in the ocean, waiting for help, in 2014. Right/Bottom: A 2018 oil on canvas painting by Sabri al-Qurashi of a ship struggling in the sea. Al-Qurashi says he often paints boats caught in strong waves because he identifies with how it feels to be alone in the middle of an ocean. Illustrations: Sabri al-Qurashi

Whose Responsibility?

When the Obama administration ended, so, too, did the diplomatic effort of the State Department working with men cleared for release from Guantánamo. The Trump administration disbanded the office responsible for the resettlements, then called the Special Envoy for the Closure of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facilities. Former Guantánamo prisoners were left with no support to hold their host countries to account for mistreatment. The men cleared for release from Guantánamo remained in prison as President Donald Trump canceled all outbound transfers.

Once the two-year deal between a host country and the State Department expired, there was no longer a means for maintaining that the hosting countries would treat the resettled detainees with basic human rights, said Martina Burtscher, a fellow at the human rights group Reprieve who works on Guantánamo issues. (“Once security assurances have expired, and pending any specific renegotiation of assurances, it largely falls to the discretion of the host country to determine what security measures they continue to implement,” said Picard, the State Department spokesperson.)

The complete collapse in communication and lack of diplomatic pressure allowed host countries like Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Senegal to do whatever they wanted with the resettled detainees — including imprisoning them and, in the case of Senegal, forced repatriation to Libya.

“This is not the solution the U.S. wanted, but [it happened] because of lack of care and lack of resources,” Burtscher said. “I understand that they need to empty Guantánamo. But they also have a responsibility to follow up.”

“They implanted these men in countries where they have no family, no friends, no connections, don’t speak the language, have nothing,” she continued. “The very least they can do is make sure that they have a solid legal status.”

“They implanted these men in countries where they have no family, no friends, no connections, don’t speak the language, have nothing. The very least they can do is make sure that they have a solid legal status.”

After Joe Biden assumed the Oval Office in 2021, the State Department created a desk with a mandate similar to the old special envoy, now the office of the Senior Representative for Guantánamo Affairs. Tina Kaidanow was appointed in August.

For resettled men like al-Qurashi, the appointment makes them no less desperate for their host country’s mistreatment to radically change. Through his lawyer, Greg McConnell, al-Qurashi sent a message to Kaidanow asking for help in his case. “Please, I’m asking you to review my case,” al-Qurashi wrote. “If I stay in Kazakhstan, I must be given the right to live and work as a free man, have legal status, be able to travel, and be allowed for family visits. If this is not possible in Kazakhstan, please, help [me] be relocated to another country where I can live as a free man.”

As al-Qurashi’s advocates continue to request legal status for him in the country, al-Qurashi said the only offer on the table from Kazakh officials is a trip back to Yemen — an offer that may violate the international law of nonrefoulement, Burtscher said. He has so far refused, the stigma of being branded an Al Qaeda terrorist by the U.S. potentially making him a target for various factions in the Yemeni civil war.

The State Department’s new office could conceivably intervene — should they make it a priority over transfers of detainees out of Guantánamo — and negotiate for al-Qurashi to be transferred to a more hospitable country.

Al-Qurashi, however, said he would stay in Kazakhstan if the authorities give him legal residence and allow his wife to live with him. “If I were given my freedom and rights, I could achieve so much more here,” he told me.

So far, the new State Department office has seemed slow to act. “Having the ambassador named is helpful and that certainly shows some level of commitment from the Biden administration,” McConnell said. “I have yet to really hear anything meaningful from them about what’s happening to remedy this situation. They’re very polite, very appreciative, and absorb a lot of information — and I get nothing back — and that hasn’t changed in a long time.”

Mansoor Adayfi, another Yemeni that was formerly held in Guantánamo, said nothing will happen without meaningful U.S. moves. “His case needs the U.S. government to get involved again to fix the problem. And either they need to talk to Kazakhstan to guarantee legal status, so he can see his wife, be able to get permission to work and live legally, like anyone else,” Adayfi said. “Or they should send him to a better country so he can build his life.”

McConnell said, “This was something of their making. It’s failed. And they need to help rectify it.”

The post Sabri al-Qurashi Has Lived Without Legal Status in Kazakhstan Since His 2014 Guantánamo Release appeared first on The Intercept.

Insofar as abortion was on the ballot in yesterday’s midterm elections, abortion won. In all five states where ballot measures asked voters to decide the fate of abortion access, voters chose to protect or enshrine abortion rights. In North Carolina, Republicans failed to win a veto-proof legislative supermajority, ensuring that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper maintains the ability to block abortion bans. And without the feared “red wave” sweeping Congress, GOP plans for a nationwide abortion ban are thwarted — for now, at least.

Abortion, however, was only on the ballot to a degree.

We got here because of the far right’s proven record of entrenching minority rule.

For decades, well-funded Christo-nationalist organizing yielded restrictions on reproductive freedoms in dozens of states, culminating in the fall of Roe. The result is that abortion access in vast swathes of the country has been abysmal to nonexistent, even prior to the Supreme Court’s felling of Roe.

In light of Tuesday’s election results, it’s important for us to remember that just because the far right achieved success in implementing these restrictions, their pro-natalist agenda has never been a reflection of the popular will. Instead, their victories are a reflection of a powerful minority’s ability to enforce their desires into policy, law, and practice.

The election results are nonetheless a major victory, earned not by the Democratic mainstream but by the reproductive justice organizers fighting on the front lines. Voters in Vermont, California, and Michigan approved ballot measures to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions. Voters in Montana rejected a misleading and pernicious fetal personhood bill, and in deep-red Kentucky, voters defeated an attempt to ban all abortion in the state.

None of this means we can rest easy. We got here because of the far right’s proven record of entrenching minority rule. The popularity of abortion we saw on display Tuesday only provides some relief. What was true before the elections remains true now: We still need to fight for reproductive freedom for all.

Surprise and relief at the Kentucky result echoed reactions to a ballot victory in Kansas last summer, when voters in the red state turned up in great numbers to keep abortion protections in that state’s constitution. The Kansas result served as a rebuke to the GOP agenda, but also to a Democratic establishment that had for years entertained anti-abortion candidates as a route to win in red states.

The midterm abortion rights victories should likewise galvanize Democratic leaders to fight hard for abortion access, confident in the knowledge of its popularity.

I’m not holding my breath. Even with control of both houses of Congress, Democrats have failed to codify nationwide abortion access; they will have even less power in the likely event that Republicans take back Congress with narrow margins. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim suggested Democrats should thus use their lame-duck session while still in power to codify abortion rights, but it would be out of the party’s fangless character, to say the least.

President Joe Biden’s executive branch has roundly failed to offer federal remedy to abortion seekers and providers in the wake of Roe’s fall. Strategists looking ahead to 2024 might advise Biden to take further popular executive actions, including on abortion rights, but any such efforts will be limited in scope.

We’ve not seen the end of the Democratic Party’s compulsion to kneecap its progressive flank, even when voters overwhelmingly support progressive measures. Just look at how popular Medicare for All is, and yet Democratic leadership won’t take it seriously.

These midterms also further clarified the ways establishment punditry conjures the myth of the “average American” and their concerns to the disadvantage of real, living people in this country.

Pollsters and political analysts were clear that, despite widespread anger over the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, midterms voters were not prioritizing reproductive rights. Economic concerns would rule the day, we were told. The professional predictors and commentators failed to appreciate that reproductive rights are also an economic issue, and that the fight for bodily autonomy is not a distraction.

Voters en masse reject outright abortion bans. Republicans may, however, keep doing what they’ve done for years — chipping away at abortion access until the restrictions become de facto bans. The strong electoral successes of Christo-fascists like Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida and J.D. Vance in his Ohio Senate race give us every grounds for continued concern. The Christian far right will continue to wield disproportionate power; Republicans embrace minority rule.

Reproductive justice will also not be attained by simply reinstating a pre-Dobbs status quo, in which abortion was all but banned in dozens of states.

It would be a mistake to read Tuesday’s referenda on abortion access as evidence of mass support for the reproductive freedoms we need. Beyond protecting limited abortion rights, the struggle continues for a holistic framework of reproductive justice, for which Black feminist organizers have fought for decades. We are far from achieving the total decriminalization of all abortion; free, unrestricted abortion on demand; the recognition of abortion as a social good; and robust resources for those who want and choose to make babies.

As establishment Democrats now turn their eyes to 2024, our focus must remain on the front lines: by the side of anyone seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy, and those working within and against the law to help them do so.

The post Midterms Show Republican Anti-Abortion Agenda Relies on Minority Rule appeared first on The Intercept.

Republican legislative attacks on transgender children over the last two years have reached such intolerable levels of barbarism, it’s hard to imagine that further cruelty would be possible. But on Tuesday, a group of Michigan Republican state representatives continued to push the envelope, introducing a bill that would see parents and medical professionals face potential life in prison for providing gender-affirming care to a minor.

House Bill 6454 seeks to change the very definition of child abuse to explicitly apply to anyone who “knowingly or intentionally consents to, obtains, or assists with a gender transition procedure for a child.” The language applies not only to gender-affirming surgery — which is very rare for teens — but also to hormone treatments and puberty blockers. If found guilty, parents and medical professionals could face a maximum life sentence of 25 years for assisting a minor in obtaining care that has been deemed, again and again, medically necessary by every major pediatric institution in the country. Providing or helping with such treatment would be penalized as child abuse in the first degree, a classification more severe than those for causing intentional or neglectful harm to children.

Republicans hold a narrow majority in the Michigan House, and they are expected to throw full support behind the bill — although if the state’s Republican-held Senate passes it too, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is likely to veto. (In November, Whitmer faces a reelection challenge from Trump-endorsed right-wing commentator Tudor Dixon, who lags behind the incumbent by about 11 points in recent polls.) Beyond barring the provision of new treatment, the legislation also mandates that trans teens in the state who are currently receiving gender-affirming medical care would be forced to stop their treatments and undergo compulsory medical detransition, with potentially deadly psychological consequences.

For refusing to torture trans kids, then, parents, caregivers, and doctors could spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Nationwide, GOP politicians now walk in lockstep to promote their eliminationist agenda against trans youth and adults. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott in February issued a directive to state agencies — bending the law to the Republican will — to assert that gender-affirming health care constitutes child abuse and that those who provide it or support children in accessing it should be investigated as potential abusers. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has been duly terrorizing families with such investigations ever since. Hundreds more bills taking direct aim at the lives of trans kids and adults are moving through statehouses at a chilling pace.

While the Michigan bill hardly stands alone, it is notable for the extremity of punishment proposed. It is already a felony to provide gender-affirming surgery to minors in Alabama; other forms of gender-affirming treatment, like puberty blockers and prescribed hormones, were covered by the same law but blocked from felony enforcement by a federal judge. Gender-affirming care is banned, but not deemed felonious, in Arizona; and in Arkansas, a ban was passed into law but is currently blocked by a crucial court order.

In Congress, far-right extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is pushing a searing model like Michigan’s. In August, she introduced the first piece of federal legislation, co-sponsored by a whopping 40-plus House Republicans, to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors nationwide. That law, too, would make providing such care a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

As I’ve noted numerous times, the ubiquity of these anti-trans legislative assaults is no sign of some grassroots concern echoing nationwide. Anti-trans panic has been manufactured, top-down, by think-tanks like the Promise to America’s Children coalition, which disseminate model legislation to Republican state lawmakers. It’s a deeply cynical electoral strategy playing on illegitimate conservative concerns, but no less profound an ideological war for that fact.

Fascistic pro-natalism has always, necessarily, gone hand in hand with the organized elimination of oppressed populations.

There’s no inconsistency in the GOP championing “parental choice” on most every issue aside from a parent’s choice to love and support a gender-nonconforming child. “Parental choice” was only about parenting as an institution — the nuclear family — for reproducing the right’s Christo-nationalist order. When a parent’s choice is that schools not teach the brutal realities of U.S. white supremacist history, or the existence of gay people, parent’s choice is sacred. To produce the wrong kind of child, meanwhile, is deemed criminal — alongside the refusal to produce a child from a pregnancy. Fascistic pro-natalism has always, necessarily, gone hand in hand with the organized elimination of oppressed populations. There can be no doubt that these anti-trans efforts are genocidal.

The GOP has made clear that it will not stop or temper its assault on the very existence of trans people. For this reason, it is all the more critical for liberal media organs to reject and counter the outright falsehoods of Republican anti-trans claims and to actively support trans kids. Trans children are not new, and more than two centuries of scientific research have challenged the validity of gender and sex binaries.

A recent New York Times story correctly stressed that the (very, very few) trans teens who do receive gender-affirming “top surgery” have their lives immensely improved. Regret is exceedingly rare — especially considering that almost all medical interventions, from back surgery to cis women’s breast enhancements, carry a risk of regret — and the number of surgeries and hormones provided to cis teens far surpasses the number of those provided to their trans peers. Most trans young people in America, keep in mind, have neither the resources nor the support to access the care they need in the first place.

Yet even though the facts and content of the Times piece spoke strongly for gender-affirming treatment, the feature was hinged on and infused by the notion of trans youth as some impending site of risk. “Small studies suggest that breast removal surgery improves transgender teenagers’ well-being” the story notes, before adding, “but data is sparse” — thus framing the piece around uncertainty from the outset.

Those who would oppose the right’s fascist, eliminationist agenda must do better. The stakes for the lives of trans kids are too high for such unwarranted equivocation. As historian Jules Gill-Peterson, author of “Histories of the Transgender Child,” put it, “We need to really learn to say we want trans children. Not that we want all children to be trans. But when children tell us they’re trans, we are happy. And we are happy with that as an outcome.”

The post Michigan’s New Anti-Trans Bill Threatens Care-Providing Parents With Life in Prison appeared first on The Intercept.

When a ceasefire on Sunday night ended a three-day Israeli offensive in the Gaza strip, over 350 Palestinians were wounded and 46 were dead, including 16 children, according to Palestinian officials. Media coverage in the U.S. was mainly led by photographs of smoke-filled skies or Gazans walking amid piles of rubble. While the photos were accurate and recent, the safety of selecting these images, rather than graphic ones, effectively portrayed a reality for American audiences far removed from what had truly unfolded on the ground.

To look at the totality of images that are made during a news event is an experience most Americans, with the exception of photo editors in newsrooms, rarely experience. As the Palestinian death toll climbed over the weekend, images from photojournalists based in Gaza poured into massive databases like Getty Images and AP Images. A quick search for “Gaza” on Getty Images, for example, returns hundreds of recent photographs, a near-endless grid of brutality from the last week.

In many images, children killed by Israeli bombs are displayed prominently. These images show funerals, the faces of the deceased uncovered, their bodies held aloft and marched through the streets. In some photographs, mourners are seen taking their own images of the bodies on their cellphones — proof of what horrors have occurred.

These graphic images are arrayed, on photo databases, next to the nongraphic images that are almost always selected for publication by U.S. news organizations: Rockets flying through the sky at night, quiet moments of children surveying the damage done to their homes, and black smoke rising over the horizon.

In Gaza, photojournalists routinely photograph within hospitals and morgues. This access to urgent care facilities, rare in the United States, provides an opportunity for journalists to directly document the wounded and dead. On Getty Images, images of children’s bodies, wrapped in white fabric, piling up at the morgue are abundant and uncensored. While shocking and deeply upsetting, they do show very clearly what bombing dense residential areas produces.

“I can still see the grieving people weeping after their homes were destroyed,” Palestinian photojournalist Hosam Salem told The Intercept. “I can’t handle it anymore. Even after these three days of Israeli attacks are over, I have become more drained than before. In Gaza, there are no stories that can give us life; all we can say is how death has taken our lives and the lives of those around us.”

Yet these images are not the defining feature of the unequal conflict in which no Israelis were killed. Instead, they are rarely published at all.

“In general, the majority of coverage by international and American media is weak and often does not show scenes where innocent women and children were killed,” Soliman Hijjy, a Palestinian visual journalist working in Gaza, told The Intercept.

In the case of one of the 16 children killed, 5-year-old Alaa Qaddoum, one report, in the New York Times, included a photograph made after her death. This was the exception, though the photo was not featured prominently; it was placed near the end of the article. Other outlets, from the Washington Post to NBC News, did not publish the image, even as they mentioned the girl’s killing. What we are left with is, in essence, a sanitized and avoidant understanding of world events as newsrooms uniformly opt for images that do not include any graphic content. Social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, have enforced this shift away from publishing depictions of violence by implementing “sensitive media” policies that discourage newsrooms from prominently displaying images of atrocities — lest they lose page views.

Journalistic Malpractice

There is no consensus on how to deal with images of intense violence. Individual newsrooms make decisions on a case-by-case basis, often after sorting through troves of images filed to major distribution platforms where none of the images are blurred or censored. On Getty Images, only within the caption information is there sometimes an “editor’s note” warning the viewer about what they’re already looking at: “Image depicts death.” Most media outlets, including this one, issue an editor’s note or content warning before surprising viewers with depictions of graphic violence.

It is not just Palestinian bodies that are erased from mass media accounts of massacres; school shootings in America have become visually defined by makeshift memorials and candlelit vigils rather than graphic images, and the same is true for the bloodshed that occurs overseas. But there are exceptions. When Russia attacked Ukraine earlier this year, visual documentation of Russian atrocities began to dominate the news cycle. The crimes by Russia were so shocking that, in a rare move, the New York Times printed an especially graphic image by photojournalist Lynsey Addario on its front page. Addario called the paper “brave” for publishing her evidence of war crimes.

Critics have noted a stark contrast in global interest in the suffering of the Ukrainian people as opposed to the suffering of others, as well as the ways in which the Russian invasion was covered, factually, as an unprovoked act of aggression, rather than a more generic “conflict” — the kind of framing used for not just Israeli attacks on Palestine, but in other war zones too. This week, for instance, there were more “graphic” images in the Washington Post depicting a massacre that took place earlier this year in Bucha, Ukraine, than were published of the dead in Gaza over the weekend.

Sanitizing Israeli Crimes

The problem with the representation of Palestinian life and death goes well beyond the images selected to tell the story. Palestinians — and many foreign observers — have long condemned the international media for sanitizing Israeli crimes and deferring to Israel’s narrative. In a letter signed by more than 500 journalists following yet another Israeli bombing campaign on Gaza last year, the authors (including several Intercept reporters) argued that coverage of Israel and Palestine regularly amounts to “journalistic malpractice.”

“The asymmetry in context does not just extend to the language we use; stories tend to disproportionately amplify Israeli narratives while suppressing Palestinian ones,” the group wrote. “Obfuscating Israel’s oppression of Palestinians fails this industry’s own objectivity standards.”

“We don’t want anything more than for people to know the facts. We don’t have a complicated narrative.”

Ahmed Abu Artemah — a Palestinian writer and human rights activist who in 2018 was one of the organizers of the “Great March of Return,” a peaceful protest movement by the fence separating Israel from Gaza — told The Intercept that Israel operated on the assumption that they would have an ally in most of the international media.

“This is complicity,” Abu Artemah said. “We don’t want anything more than for people to know the facts. We don’t have a complicated narrative. Our demand is only that people watch the facts, watch the reality, see the footage of what’s happening.”

Across newsrooms, the safe choices of showing an abstracted violence (calm moments of smoke and rubble) over overt violence (death, injury, or mourning) fall in line with the framework of the coverage itself, which in Gaza’s case regularly downplays the impact of civilians in favor of a narrative about Palestinian militancy — even as the same kind of militancy is depicted as resistance in Ukraine.

Mohammed Mhawesh, an independent Palestinian journalist and researcher based in Gaza, argued in an interview with The Intercept that coverage of the latest Gaza assault, which Israeli officials admitted was “pre-emptive,” focused almost exclusively on Israel’s ostensible justification for the attack rather than its impact. And even though the majority of victims were not engaged in acts of resistance, the portrayal of Palestinian resistance, he added, stands in stark contrast with that of the Ukrainian people.

“For the past months, newspapers and websites and social media have been filled with stories of Ukrainian resistance and heroism, stories about soldiers blowing up bridges to delay the approach of Russian tanks and sacrificing themselves in the process. We have seen civilians attacking armed vehicles with whatever they have, and common people receiving weapons training and digging trenches,” Mhawesh said. “And yet, if any of these stories took place in Palestine rather than Ukraine, they would of course not be perceived as acts of heroism and resistance. They would only be classified and condemned as terror.”

Mhawesh stressed the comparison was not intended to diminish the resistance of the Ukrainian people, but to “uphold the right to resist the occupation and military invasion of any land, by any nation.”

The post Americans Rarely See the True Face of Israel’s Bombing of Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.

“They don’t like the fact that we don’t accept any corporate money. They don’t like that I speak the way that I speak because I came from this community and I sound like my community. They don’t love the fact that, instead of being what they call dignified, I show up as a protestor, that I’ve been on the frontlines forever,” Bush told the crowd at her election-night speech. “But our work isn’t based on what they like. Our work is based on what folks need.”

A former nurse and activist, Bush gained prominence locally as the Black Lives Matter movement took to the streets in 2014, after Ferguson police shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. Since her election to Congress in 2020, Bush has pursued a confrontational style of politics that has rallied activists but has often put her at odds with party leadership, becoming one of the only congressional Democrats willing to say “defund the police,” and bucking party leadership in a row over decoupling an infrastructure bill from a wider progressive agenda.

Bush riled St. Louis’s old guard two years ago by unseating longtime Rep. William Lacy Clay, the scion of a political family. This year, in her first primary challenge as an incumbent, that old guard came gunning for Bush in the form of state senator and minority caucus whip Steven Roberts Jr.

Roberts was fond of saying that St. Louis voters had “buyer’s remorse” over Bush, including in remarks to Fox News on Monday. St. Louis Democrats, who broke for Bush by a margin of more than 2-to-1, appeared to disagree.

Himself the son of an influential St. Louis businessman and former alderman, Roberts was the face of a campaign that leaned on a pair of outside groups with eyebrow-raising ties — including one linked to his campaign treasurer and business parter, and another funded by Clay and a company linked to Roberts’s father. Despite the influx of outside spending, Bush carried an overall financial advantage. While she raised and spent well over $1 million to secure her reelection, Roberts raised less than half a million, including a $135,000 loan from himself.

Roberts faced scrutiny over public accusations of sexual assault by two women. Both women reported their accusations to the police, but Roberts has denied both allegations, settled lawsuits with both women, and was never charged. In the weeks before Roberts launched his congressional campaign, someone using an IP address on the grounds of the Missouri state Capitol repeatedly removed information about both allegations from his Wikipedia page.

If Bush’s primary was about securing the gains progressives have made in recent election cycles, Kunce’s campaign represented a progressive movement on offense. But his efforts fell short Tuesday night, as Busch Valentine claimed 43 percent of the vote to Kunce’s 38 with 90 percent of ballots counted.

A Marine veteran and former policy wonk at the American Economic Liberties Project, a D.C.-based anti-monopoly advocacy organization, Kunce centered his pitch on his ability to regain ground with disaffected working-class voters that the Missouri Democratic establishment is rapidly losing. By embracing calls for universal health care and swearing off corporate PAC money, he tried to recreate a populist progressive model that has fueled the surprisingly resilient careers of Midwestern senators like Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.

His opponent was in many ways the perfect foil. An heir to Anheuser-Busch fortune, Busch Valentine came under fire for her past participation in the “Veiled Prophet Ball,” a white supremacist ritual that had for years been protested by advocates for racial equality.

Throughout the race, Busch Valentine’s knowledge of the issues and commitment to Democratic priorities were called into question. She botched an interview with Missouri’s largest newspaper — which endorsed Kunce — and, in a widely shared video, stumbled when asked about her thoughts on the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United, which she had earlier campaigned on overturning.

Though Kunce outraised her at first, Busch Valentine relied on her personal wealth for an influx of funding as the race neared its end, finishing with almost $5.9 million — $5.3 million of which she gave to her own campaign. Kunce raised just under $5 million.

In November, Busch Valentine will face Michigan Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who on Tuesday won the Republican primary, a race characterized by the leading candidates’ pursuit of “Make America Great Again” credibility.

Schmitt’s victory is a repudiation of Missouri’s Republican former Gov. Eric Greitens, who was seen as the frontrunner for the nomination in June but floundered in the final weeks of the race as the value of his MAGA credentials appeared insufficient to protect him from his unseemly reputation.

While Schmitt campaigned on his defense of the former president as Missouri’s top prosecutor — citing lawsuits he backed that aimed to force the reinstatement of Trump-era immigration and climate policies — Greitens had long seized on the belief that he was Donald Trump’s unspoken choice.

The former president called the disgraced former governor — who resigned in 2018 amid a variety of criminal investigations, including one for sexual misconduct — “tough and smart” last month, and Trump’s future daughter-in-law, Kimberly Guilfoyle, served as a national co-chair for Greitens’s campaign. Schmitt’s campaign, meanwhile, benefited from support among the Missouri Republican establishment, which sponsored a slate of GOP-backed ads highlighting Greitens’s past scandals in the final weeks of the race.

Schmitt also focused more of his messaging on his fierce opposition to abortion rights — which appears to have worked among a constituency celebrating the death of Roe v. Wade. His office joined an amicus brief in the case that eventually overturned the abortion rights established in Roe. (In neighboring Kansas, which also held elections Tuesday, voters rejected an amendment that would have allowed state lawmakers to further restrict abortion rights, which are currently protected by the Kansas Constitution.)

In a sign of Trump’s central role in the Missouri GOP primary, the former president dealt a death blow to the candidacy of a one-time frontrunner, U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, by endorsing against her last month, though he did not say who his choice would be. In a bizarre move on Monday, Trump made his final endorsement in the race: “ERIC” — last name not specified.

“I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds, much as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections,” Trump said in a press release, “and I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”

In a fitting conclusion to a contest marked by groveling to the former president, both candidates rushed to lay claim to Trump’s ambiguous endorsement in the final hours of the race.

Correction: August 3, 2022, 3:43 p.m. ET
This story previously misstated Trudy Busch Valentine’s total campaign funds and has been updated to reflect her final fundraising total.

The post St. Louis Voters Keep Cori Bush as Missouri Democrats Choose Anheuser-Busch Heir appeared first on The Intercept.

Other conservative pro-Israel groups with deep ties to AIPAC — like Democratic Majority for Israel, Urban Empowerment Action PAC, and Pro-Israel America PAC — also made substantial financial investments in Michigan races. The right-wing Israel lobby spent over $10 million altogether across the state’s 11th, 12th, and 13th congressional districts, far outpacing any other interest group or the fundraising from the candidates themselves.

The campaign to defeat Levin marked a significant escalation in AIPAC’s push to quell criticism of Israel from Jewish members of Congress. “I’m really Jewish,” Levin told MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan last week, “but AIPAC can’t stand the idea that I am the clearest, strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for a simple proposition: that there is no way to have a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people unless we achieve the political and human rights of the Palestinian people.”

Levin’s was the marquee race Tuesday night, a rare primary between two sitting members in the Oakland County-based 11th District. Due to redistricting, Levin and Stevens both found themselves choosing between the 11th District and the neighboring 10th District, a Trump-leaning seat based in Macomb County. Both ultimately chose the 11th, leading to accusations of carpetbagging against Levin, whose current constituent base is largely within the 10th, and a series of still-unanswered questions about whether Stevens has been truthful about no longer living in the 10th District.

While the race was originally slated to be a typical moderate-versus-progressive affair, pro-Israel groups signaled early in the election that Levin — a self-proclaimed Zionist, former synagogue president, and scion of a prominent Jewish political dynasty — was one of their primary targets this cycle. AIPAC ultimately spent over $4 million in ads and mailers attacking Levin and boosting Stevens, and Stevens received over half a million dollars in bundled donations from AIPAC-aligned conduit PACs. Emily’s List, an establishment group that backs women candidates who support abortion rights, also spent over $3 million to elect Stevens.

AIPAC’s attacks on a candidate who is widely hailed as the most progressive Jewish member of the House brought responses from a suite of progressive organizations — most notably J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that spent $700,000 on ads in the district, which criticized AIPAC for backing election-denying Republicans.

In an email to members of the Michigan Jewish community earlier this year, former AIPAC President David Victor declared that Levin was “the most corrosive member of Congress to the US-Israel relationship.” He contrasted Levin with Muslim members of Congress who have criticized Israeli human rights abuses — saying Levin, as a self-identified Zionist Jew, was “more damaging than Rashida Tliab [sic] or Ilhan Omar.” 

A few minutes south of the 11th District, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, arguably the most vocal defender of Palestinian rights in Congress, appeared poised to fend off a fierce primary challenge of her own against Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey, nearly tripling Winfrey’s share of the vote. Winfrey’s bid drew headlines thanks to a massive initial fundraising haul and a pledge of support from a political action committee that claims to represent “a broad coalition of Black and Jewish” leaders, but receives most of its funding from hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb.

Despite the fact that Tlaib trounced a well-funded primary challenger in 2020, her opponents hoped a redistricting process would leave her vulnerable. But as the primary progressed, there was little sign Winfrey had made inroads in the district, which is anchored in western Detroit and contains prominent Muslim American communities like Dearborn. Even her backers seemed to recognize Winfrey’s long odds; the PAC funded by Loeb fell short of its pledge to spend over $1 million on her candidacy, instead ultimately spending just under $700,000.

In a third race, in Michigan’s 13th District, an open-seat brawl pitted AIPAC’s newly minted election machine against a purportedly progressive self-funder and a laundry list of other candidates. Adam Hollier, a state senator, received over $4 million in outside support from AIPAC. But that massive assistance was dwarfed by the over $5 million that entrepreneur and state Rep. Shri Thanedar spent to fund his own bid. Thanedar ultimately was declared the winner of the contest with only 28 percent of the vote on Wednesday morning, the clear beneficiary of a fractured field. His win is a blow to AIPAC, but it also leaves Detroit without a Black representative for the first time in over 50 years.

Hollier, who also received over $1 million from the cryptocurrency-aligned Protect Our Futures PAC, was the early favorite among Detroit observers, but late polls showed him struggling to break away from a crowded field. He also struggled to overcome the name recognition Thanedar had built in the area after his unsuccessful run for governor in 2018. Despite losing handily statewide, Thanedar won the city of Detroit in that race.

While Thanedar was purportedly the most progressive candidate vying for the 13th District — his campaign website endorses key progressive planks like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal — his decision to self-fund his run and his prior donations to Republican candidates appear to have alarmed progressive organizations, which overwhelmingly steered clear of endorsing his candidacy despite his lead in pre-election surveys.

Update: August 3, 2022
This story has been updated with new election results.

The post AIPAC Defeats Andy Levin, the Most Progressive Jewish Representative appeared first on The Intercept.

The oil and gas industry’s plan to convince the world to switch from natural gas to hydrogen made from natural gas is being upended by an unexpected cause: economics.

As the climate emergency has gotten more and more impossible to ignore and the world has started moving away from natural gas, the industry has hyped a new technology: so-called blue hydrogen. Blue hydrogen produces no carbon emissions when burned or converted into electricity, but the main component in producing blue hydrogen is methane, the most potent greenhouse gas.

It isn’t currently possible to produce clean blue hydrogen on a commercial scale, and it is important to acknowledge the risks of trying. But the market is also playing a role in pushing oil and gas away from this dangerous endeavor.

A major argument against transitioning fully off fossil fuels and toward clean energy like green hydrogen — a clean form of hydrogen made with renewable energy — has been that we can’t afford it. But the market logic is now changing, due to the rapidly falling costs of producing renewable energy, which is 75 percent of the cost of making green hydrogen. At the same time, the cost of producing green hydrogen is also falling quickly, while natural gas prices have risen around the globe.

This has resulted in a situation no one predicted: In Europe, green hydrogen is now cheaper than liquefied natural gas. And oil and gas companies, in turn, are increasingly investing in green hydrogen instead of using methane to produce blue hydrogen.

This is a remarkable development. As recently as September 2020, oil major Shell was making the case that “blue hydrogen can help create the demand and transport networks for hydrogen whilst green hydrogen costs fall.” In an article this month in the New Statesman that claimed green hydrogen wasn’t viable, Bethan Vasey, energy transition manager for Shell’s Upstream U.K. division, stated that blue hydrogen technology was “ready for deployment at scale now.” Meanwhile, Shell just announced that it is building the largest green hydrogen production facility in Europe. Shell could have built a blue hydrogen facility, but it chose green.

The industry has worked hard for more than a decade to sell the idea that natural gas is a clean fuel that can reduce emissions and help address fossil fuel-driven climate change. As The Intercept reported in 2019, the American Petroleum Institute paid to place sponsored content in the Washington Post making this argument.

Yet this argument was not true, and thankfully, increasing evidence that methane emissions must be quickly reduced has led to a coalition of countries signing the Global Methane Pledge. At a November 2021 event highlighting the pledge, President Joe Biden stated that “one of the most important things we can do in this decisive decade is — to keep 1.5 degrees in reach — is reduce our methane emissions as quickly as possible.”

Indeed, the world is facing a methane emergency. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with over 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years that it is in the atmosphere. When the climate impacts of the methane emissions associated with natural gas production and distribution are included, natural gas can be as bad as coal for the climate. Methane has contributed approximately 40 percent of total global warming to date.

In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that global methane levels had increased at a record pace in 2021. There is no chance of slowing global warming if methane emissions aren’t reduced quickly. Betting the planet’s future on increasing methane production to make blue hydrogen, which is not a clean fuel, could have disastrous consequences.

The natural gas industry knows that renewable energy poses an existential threat to its business, as it is now significantly cheaper to produce electricity with solar power than it is to build new gas power plants. The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that most new power generation being built in the U.S. is renewable, not gas, and that this is reducing the amount of gas used for power generation, a trend that is expected to continue. As natural gas started losing market share to lower-cost renewables, the industry came up with a way to repackage methane in a supposedly clean form: blue hydrogen. And it’s being pitched as oil and gas’s potential savior. Last September, I reported on an industry conference presentation titled “Hydrogen and Carbon Capture: Will they save the natural gas industry?”

However, for blue hydrogen to actually be a clean fuel, its production would need to have almost no carbon dioxide or methane emissions — two very unlikely outcomes. Even proponents of blue hydrogen admit that methane emissions are a challenge. For blue hydrogen to be considered clean, emissions for methane production would have to be between 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent of the total methane produced.

Hydrogen is often considered a clean fuel because it emits no carbon dioxide when burned or when converted into electricity in a fuel cell. This is the reason for the current hype around the potential for a clean hydrogen economy. Yet most of the world’s hydrogen is currently produced from methane and is known as gray hydrogen. The production of gray hydrogen contributes 2 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions and also contributes to methane emissions. Green hydrogen, on the other hand, is derived from water and clean electricity, resulting in no carbon dioxide or methane emissions.

Blue hydrogen can be clean — if it’s able to restrict its methane emissions and successfully capture 95 percent of the carbon emissions from producing the hydrogen. On paper, it could be a relatively clean fuel if this were achievable, but in the real world, it isn’t.

Carbon capture has failed to come close to 95 percent capture rates in commercial facilities, and the natural gas industry produces large amounts of methane emissions both through its normal operations and frequent leaks. Blue hydrogen also requires that the captured carbon be stored indefinitely without leaking. There is little evidence that this is possible on a large scale.

Blue hydrogen can be clean — if it’s able to restrict its methane emissions and successfully capture 95 percent of the carbon emissions from producing the hydrogen. That isn’t achievable.

And even if it was achievable, it would be costly. As Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., stated last year, “I’d love to have carbon capture, but we don’t have the technology because we really haven’t gotten to that point. And it’s so darn expensive that it makes it almost impossible.”

A study from Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, and Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, found that the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of blue hydrogen were “quite high” and concluded that “the use of blue hydrogen appears difficult to justify on climate grounds.” Howarth and Jacobson noted that their analysis assumed that captured carbon could be stored indefinitely, which they admit is an “optimistic and unproven assumption.”

In March, a study found that methane emissions in New Mexico’s Permian Basin exceeded 9 percent — 90 times higher than the 0.1 percent goal. In June, the Washington Post reported that another analysis found that methane emissions in the Permian had increased 47 percent from a year earlier. The U.S. oil and gas industry has proved that it has no ability to produce methane with emissions rates under 1 percent, and 0.1 percent is simply not plausible.

The industry knows that if it can’t get the world hooked on hydrogen made from methane, it faces a declining market due to economic competition from renewable power. In April, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis released a report that suggested gas-fired power peaked in the U.S. in 2020 and would begin to decline as it is replaced with cheaper renewable power. Until recently, the argument was that green hydrogen was too expensive, so blue hydrogen was necessary. Without that argument, there is no reason for blue hydrogen to exist.

Hydrogen Europe, a trade group for the hydrogen industry, includes many members that are supporters of blue hydrogen, like oil and gas company Equinor. Recharge reported that at the recent Eurelectric Power Summit, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, CEO of Hydrogen Europe, stated that “blue hydrogen doesn’t sell, it’s too expensive.”

Until recently, the argument was that green hydrogen was too expensive, so blue hydrogen was necessary. Without that argument, there is no reason for blue hydrogen to exist.

Like Shell, other major oil companies are also going big on green hydrogen instead of blue, with planned multibillion-dollar investments in Australia and India. This week, oil company BP agreed to a joint venture with renewable power company Iberdrola to build several large green hydrogen production facilities in Europe.

The green hydrogen industry is certainly benefiting from the recent huge increases in the price of natural gas, which is likely a new normal for global natural gas prices. However, with the low cost of renewable power combined with rapidly falling prices for the electrolyzers used to make green hydrogen, it was inevitable that green hydrogen would be cost-competitive with methane-based hydrogen at some point in the near future. A potential added boost for the green hydrogen industry is the just-announced Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which includes production incentives that Recharge reports would make U.S. green hydrogen the cheapest type of hydrogen in the world. This should lead to a rapid increase in investment in the U.S. green hydrogen industry.

Clean hydrogen will be needed to decarbonize the global economy. The first priority is to replace the existing gray hydrogen production, which would effectively eliminate carbon emissions equivalent to the whole country of Germany. Hydrogen is also likely to be necessary to decarbonize the steel industry and shows promise in shipping and aviation — all very emissions-intensive industries.

If investment decisions were made simply based on the need to reduce carbon dioxide and methane emissions, blue hydrogen would never be an option. The reality is that most investments continue to be made with the intention to make money, not to save the world. That is why blue hydrogen isn’t getting attention from global investors: It isn’t a smart investment.

For a long time, the fossil fuel industry had a rock-solid argument that it could provide the cheapest energy. As the current energy inflation crisis clearly shows, that era is over, and the push for blue hydrogen should end with it.

The post Oil and Gas’s Pivot to Blue Hydrogen Is Falling Through appeared first on The Intercept.