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Press Release PRESS RELEASE June 19, 2006 I'll Make Hicks A UK Citizen: Lawyer Penelope Debelle THE US military lawyer assigned by the Pentagon to defend accused terrorist David Hicks is willing to personally swear Hicks in as a British citizen at Guantanamo Bay to facilitate his release. Following Britain's acceptance of Hicks' right to citizenship, Major Michael Mori, a US marine, said he had the authority to administer oaths and would see Hicks swear loyalty to Britain and the Queen. "David could be sworn in in the next week — that's what should happen," said Major Mori, who saw Hicks at the military base in Cuba a week ago. "But will the (US) Department of Defence do it? That's the real question." Major Mori is pessimistic that Hicks' future will be resolved quickly. "I just think the US is trying to delay Hicks becoming a Brit because they know Britain's position on the (military) commissions," he said. Under an agreement that has resulted in the release of nine British nationals from the Guantanamo Bay prison, Hicks could be released and would gain immediate British consular access and protection. Major Mori said the US would be reluctant to see that happen. "For 4½ years the US has been controlling every aspect of David's life and they will continue," he said. "The Australian Government has no control and the British Government has some influence, but it really comes down to the US." Major Mori sticks by his assessment of the punitive conditions in which Hicks is being held. He said Hicks, a convert to Islam, was a well-behaved prisoner who had been doing well until his sudden return to isolation. Hicks is in a concrete room with a steel door for 22 hours a day. In the two hours outside his cell he can shower and use a recreation area. Major Mori scoffed at the suggestion Hicks, who is studying year 11 subjects with the assistance of the Australian consul, benefited from a reading room. "There's nothing there, it's a joke," he said. "There is a little desk and a chair that you are chained to." Hicks was at his lowest point, Major Mori said. The small table and plastic chair obtained for him by the Australian consul had been confiscated. "They are saying it's like a US maximum-security prison and that is absolutely true, and it is used in the US for death- row inmates," he said. http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=14660 SOURCE: The Age Father Demands Guantanamo Suicide Probe By AHMED AL-HAJJ 1 Associated Press Writer SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - The father of a Yemeni detainee found hanged in his Guantanamo cell said Sunday he will only receive his son's body for burial once an international investigation is launched into the death. Salah al-Aslami, 28, and two Saudi inmates committed suicide in separate cells at Guantanamo on June 10, using their sheets and clothing as nooses and leaving notes, the U.S. has said. The body of the Yemeni detainee, whom U.S. prison authorities identified as Ali Abdullah Ahmed, arrived in Yemen Thursday and is being kept in the state-run Revolution Hospital in the capital San'a. ``The United States should have sent the autopsy report with the body, which didn't happen,'' Mohammed Abdullah al-Aslami, the father, told reporters Sunday. ``This reinforces the doubts that my son Salah committed suicide. My son died under torture,'' he added, urging that Guantanamo be closed. A Yemeni Foreign Ministry official earlier said that the U.S. autopsy was expected to arrive no earlier than June 30. The al-Aslami family's lawyer, Mohammed Nagi Alaw, told journalists Saturday that Yemeni authorities have not conducted an autopsy to determine the cause of death, as the family had requested. Alaw said earlier that Yemeni authorities said they would do an autopsy but did not give a date. On Friday, Yemeni clerics told worshippers that al-Aslami had died a ``martyr'' and blamed the United States. The father told The Associated Press earlier this week that his son was captured in Afghanistan in 2003. The three suicides have fueled demands in the United States and abroad to close the prison, where more about 460 detainees captured in the war on terror are being held, some of them for years without charge. http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=14658 SOURCE: The Guardian Evictions Raise the Tension Level at Guantánamo Todd Sumlin/Charlotte Observer Col. Michael Bumgarner, commander of the Guantánamo prison; the photographer was later banished. By JULIE BOSMAN Last Wednesday, after spending four days reporting from the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three newspaper reporters and a photographer were ordered off the island by the Pentagon. But it is not clear why they were banished. The journalists, from The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald and The Charlotte Observer, left Guantánamo after reporting on the suicides of three prisoners. The Charlotte Observer said its reporter, who was originally assigned to write a profile on a military commander at the base, may have obtained too many details about the military's response to the suicides, leading the Pentagon to impose new restrictions on reporters. Others have suggested that the decision was a bureaucratic tussle between the public affairs office at the Pentagon and military commanders on the base. The Pentagon said it removed the reporters in an attempt to level the field with other reporters who had been denied access to the base after the suicides. The decision prompted protests from several lawyers representing prisoners and from Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for journalists. 2 But the abrupt expulsions also reflect the continuing tensions between the military personnel who oversee the base, which has served as a prison camp for suspected terrorists since early 2002, and reporters who are trying to gather information in the highly secure environment. Journalists have complained that they are banned from interviewing detainees, that their movements around the base are tightly controlled and that they receive little information from public affairs personnel. "Everybody would like unfettered access, come and go as you please, talk to everybody you want to, but that's not what this is," said Dave Wilson, the managing editor for news at The Miami Herald. "We understand that and have tried to work with it." Reporters who visit Guantánamo are usually reluctant to criticize the military publicly because it controls their access to the base. Once there, reporters are paired with "minders," who organize and restrict their movements and escort them around the grounds. The latest skirmish between the military and the press began June 10, when the Pentagon announced that three detainees had hanged themselves in their cells. A group of reporters already had been planning to travel to Guantánamo on a military plane from Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, to cover the scheduled hearing of an Ethiopian detainee on June 12. But after the suicides, the Pentagon quickly canceled the hearing and the reporters' flight. Two reporters, Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald and Carol J. Williams of The Los Angeles Times, who were traveling by a different route, were also notified by the Pentagon on June 10 that the hearing had been canceled and they were no longer authorized by the Pentagon to visit the base. But they requested authorization from the prison's commander to visit anyway. Permission was granted, and they boarded their small commercial flight as planned. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Cynthia Smith, said it was unfair for those three reporters to be allowed at Guantánamo when others had been denied access. "We want to be fair and impartial," Ms. Smith said. "We couldn't just give them an exclusive." One reporter, Michael Gordon of The Charlotte Observer, and Todd Sumlin, a photographer for the paper, were already on the base, preparing a profile of Col. Michael Bumgarner, a prison commander and a native of Kings Mountain, N.C., near Charlotte. Rick Thames, the editor of The Charlotte Observer, said the Pentagon was unhappy with articles Mr. Gordon had filed, including an account of a morning staff meeting on June 12 led by Colonel Bumgarner. Mr. Gordon had quoted Colonel Bumgarner as telling the staff, "The trust level is gone," referring to the detainees. "They have shown time and time again that we can't trust them any farther than we can throw them." Mr. Thames of The Observer said, "We can't be certain, but we believe the Pentagon was uneasy with close-up access to the operations of the prison at a time of crisis," adding, "Clearly, they were at odds over this." Ms. Rosenberg of The Miami Herald said it was difficult to report from Guantánamo but that occasionally it was possible to obtain useful insights. "When you're there, you actually get to make requests and sometimes speak directly to people who work in the camps, who make decisions, who carry out investigations and who give you the information that is not distilled," she said. "I think the art of reporting at Guantánamo is to ask for interviews and get interviews with people who can talk about the jobs they're doing." Ms. Smith, the Pentagon spokeswoman, said that there had been no change in Pentagon policy regarding the media and that reporters from three overseas news organizations — Deutsche Welle, Le Parisien and The Times of London — are to visit this week. http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=14656 SOURCE: New York Times Doctors Begin Autopsy of Guantanamo Prisoners DUBAI - Saudi doctors are to conduct tests on the remains of two Saudi nationals alleged to have committed suicide in Guantanamo Bay prison to ascertain the exact cause of death, the Arab News reported Sunday, citing a Saudi official.
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