PROTESTS MARK FIVE-YEAR GUANTANAMO BAY PRISON ANNIVERSARY
By Carol J. Williams MIAMI

Los Angeles Times
2007/1/13

From Kuwait to the Cuban countryside to the Miami military headquarters
that commands Guantanamo Bay, opponents of the Pentagon's indefinite
detention of terrorist suspects on Thursday denounced the offshore
prison that opened five years ago.

Protesters dressed in orange jumpsuits demonstrated outside
U.S. embassies throughout Europe, and rights activists marked the
date with demands for the release or trial of the remaining 395 men
at the prison in southern Cuba.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan led a dozen protesters on a march from
the Cuban city of Guantanamo to the locked back gates of the naval
base, where they chanted for an end to the detention of so-called
enemy combatants.

"Gitmo prison is a source of shame, no more torture in our
name!" shouted Sheehan and the others allowed into Cuba for a rarely
permitted visit to the remote Cuban military area.

Among those who made their way to the little-used northeast gate
was Taher Deghayes, who held a photograph of his detainee-brother,
Omar Deghayes.

Deghayes' mother, Zohra Zewawi, accompanied Sheehan's group to
Cuba and told news agencies covering the pilgrimage that her son
had been tortured and blinded in one eye since being imprisoned in
September 2002. Also with the protesters was British citizen Asif
Iqbal, 25, whose three years in U.S. custody and subsequent release
without charges was the subject of the 2006 documentary "The Road
to Guantanamo."

Base authorities said they had no contact with the protesters.

"Today is a typical workday here at GTMO. We have no purview or
interaction with protesters. Wherever they are protesting in Cuba, it's
not near us," said Col. Lora Tucker, spokeswoman for the Joint Task
Force operating the prisons. "I can tell you that we are detaining the
right people in Guantanamo, we are detaining them legally, ethically
and humanely."

In Washington, more than 100 protesters were arrested after they
entered a federal courthouse wearing T-shirts with slogans such as
"Stop Torture" and "Shut Down Guantanamo." Their permit authorized
an outdoor protest.

Demonstrators dressed like Guantanamo prisoners also turned out by
the dozens in front of U.S. embassies in Greece, Denmark, Britain,
Hungary, Germany, Turkey and Italy.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the
Center for Constitutional Rights appealed for restoration of the
prisoners' right to habeas corpus -- the ability to challenge their
detention in U.S. courts that was stripped by the Military Commissions
Act passed by Congress in September.

"The idea that you can indefinitely detain people, give them no
access to their families or initially lawyers, never charge them and
torture them in an offshore penal colony, should be absolute anathema
to any civilized country in the world," said Michael Ratner of the
New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Amnesty International USA Executive Director Larry Cox condemned
Guantanamo as "a symbol around the world for human-rights abuse and
for wrong-headed policies enacted in the name of the war on terror."

Pentagon officials have said 60 to 80 of the men imprisoned at
Guantanamo are likely to be tried in the military tribunals being
set up at the base.

Khalid al-Odah, whose 29-year-old son, Fawzi, has been a prisoner at
Guantanamo since Feb. 16, 2002, said, "The American administration
should just put our boys in an independent court, try them if they
have any charges, otherwise set them free. This is the simple demand
from me as a father."

A retired Kuwaiti air force pilot, the elder al-Odah said in
a telephone interview from his homeland that his son was doing
humanitarian relief work in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border
when Pakistani bounty hunters captured him and handed him over to
U.S. troops in Kandahar for reward money offered for suspected Taliban
or al-Qaida figures.

David Cynamon, a Washington attorney representing al-Odah and three
other Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo, believes mounting international
condemnation has U.S. authorities scrambling to reduce the detainee
population. About 100 Guantanamo prisoners were sent home last year,
and at least 80 still in custody have been cleared by annual reviews
for release or transfer.

In the five years since the first 20 blindfolded and shackled men were
escorted off a military cargo plane, Guantanamo has become a source of
foreign policy discord for Washington. Newly elected U.N. Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday added his voice to appeals for an
end to what critics consider to be flagrant human-rights abuses.

"I understand that today is the fifth anniversary of Guantanamo's
prison," Ban said at a news conference in New York. "Like my
predecessor, I believe that prison at Guantanamo should be closed."