[Onthebarricades] Repression, October 2007 - USA

[Andy]

*  LA Police blamed for Mayday carnage in official inquiry

*  Priest imprisoned for small-scale civil disobedience

*  Homeless activism group challenges funeral protest law which could outlaw 
town hall protests

*  Attack on immigrants in Farmers Branch

*  Lawyer barred from Guantanamo client's hearing

*  Eight more wrongly imprisoned men released after long spells in 
Guantanamo


http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hjDApNQ0ekq0tDwkLuq2BmtOADjA

Los Angeles police takes blame for violent May Day protest
Oct 9, 2007
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday admitted it 
used excessive force to disperse a May Day demonstration for immigration 
reform that left dozens injured.
In a report to the Los Angeles Police Commission, police investigators said 
top ranking LAPD officers had "underestimated the size and significance of 
the McArthur Park march," and their men were not properly trained in crowd 
control.
"As the day wore on, there was a breakdown in command" that left officers on 
the ground to their own devices when they were pelted with bottles and rocks 
by protesters.
"As subordinates from various positions in the field made numerous requests 
over the radio that went unacknowledged and unanswered ... officers began to 
make independent decision in efforts to control the crowd," the report said.
Some officers used their batons to strike protesters, while others fired 
rubber bullets inappropriately into the crowd in violation of police 
procedures, the report added.
The investigators determined that 146 rubber bullets were fired and police 
batons were used 100 times during the clash injuring 246 civilians, 
including nine journalists, and that 18 police officers were treated for 
cuts and bruises.
"Officers who struck demonstrators and journalists with rubber bullets and 
batons in an excessive and chaotic effort to clear a May Day rally after 
coming under attack suffered from lack of planning, training and orderly 
supervision," the report said.
In the aftermath of the demonstration, LAPD Deputy Chief Cayler Carter 
resigned and his second in command Commander Louis Gray was demoted.
Some 200,000 people demonstrated in Los Angeles on May 1, as part of a 
national day of action in demand of immigration reform to deal with 12 
million illegal aliens living in the country.
Proposed immigration reform legislation eventually failed to reach a vote in 
Congress.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/19/BAGJOSSUGA.DTL

priests in Arizona protest go to prison
Kevin Fagan
Friday, October 19, 2007
Two Catholic priests who have been longtime activists in the Bay Area peace 
movement started five-month prison sentences this week for breaking the law 
while trying to deliver an anti-torture protest letter to an Army commander 
of Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
The Rev. Louie Vitale, 75, and the Rev. Stephen Kelly, 54, who both live in 
Oakland, were arrested in November as they led a demonstration of 120 people 
at the fort.
The letter the priests were trying to deliver asked the base, which houses 
the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School, to stop conducting training in 
torture methods. Fort commanders deny the practice.
The pair pleaded no contest in U.S. District Court in Tucson on Wednesday to 
one federal count of trespassing and one Arizona state count of failure to 
comply with police orders. They will serve three months in federal prison 
and two months in state prison.
Vitale was pastor of St. Boniface Church in San Francisco for 13 years until 
2005 and is now on staff at Pace e Bene, a peace advocacy group in Oakland. 
This will be his third federal prison term for peace activism. Kelly, a 
Jesuit priest in Oakland, will be serving his fourth such term.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/10/09/funeral_1010_web.html

Group sues to challenge funeral protest law

By BILL RANKIN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/09/07
The Metro Atlanta Taskforce for the Homeless and a Statesboro activist filed 
a lawsuit Tuesday challenging parts of Georgia's funeral protest law.
The law makes it a crime to have a demonstration or assembly within 500 feet 
of a funeral - even if the protest is not directed at or does not disrupt a 
funeral.
"No matter how well intentioned, the law cast a whale-size net that captures 
innocent speakers," said one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, Gerry Weber, 
former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.
Georgia's law was designed to prevent the disruption of funerals, yet it was 
written too broadly, Weber said, noting similar laws in Kentucky and 
Missouri have previously been struck down.
The suit was filed in federal court in Atlanta by the task force and James 
Hood, who has regularly picketed in Statesboro since 1968.
When the Metro Atlanta Taskforce holds its annual Poor People's Day march to 
the Capitol, it passes by two churches and ends across the street from 
another church. If a funeral were held in any of the churches on the day of 
the march, the group would have to cancel its march or be subject to arrest, 
the lawsuit said.
"We've never had any intention of disrupting a funeral," Anita Beatty, 
director of the metro task force, said in a statement. "But Georgia's law 
makes having Poor People's Day at the state Capitol or our protest of 
Atlanta's panhandling law at City Hall a criminal act because a funeral 
happens to be taking place nearby."



Farmers Branch Pulls in the Welcome Mat
By Megan Feldman
Published: November 1, 2007

Tim O'Hare
Subject(s): illegal immigrants, Farmers Branch, code enforcement
An artist's work is deemed inappropriate and yanked from the walls of the 
public library.
An 82-year-old woman faces jail time because she can't afford to pay $1,900 
in code enforcement fines.
Hispanic activists scramble to educate parents after the city demands the 
names, addresses and phone numbers of every child enrolled in the local 
schools.
Welcome to Farmers Branch. One year after the city council landed in the 
national spotlight for efforts to ban illegal immigrants from apartments and 
declare English the official language, the aging suburb is evoking 
comparisons to Pleasantville, Beaver Cleaver's America or 1930s Germany, 
depending on your point of view.
While the illegal immigration ordinance passed by voters last spring is tied 
up in the courts, the city council is pushing ahead with other measures 
focused on such things as home maintenance, overcrowding and library 
conduct. At the helm of the agenda are Tim O'Hare, the council member who 
forced the immigration issue to the forefront, and his two new allies on the 
council, Tim Scott and David Koch. They say their goals are to protect 
homeowners' property values and ensure residents' safety and quality of 
life. But critics see an all-white, all-male city council hell-bent on 
purging Farmers Branch of any shred of diversity-be it racial, economic or 
philosophical.
"All of these activities seem to be directed toward the Latino community," 
says Travis Carter, who was involved in grassroots efforts to oppose the 
immigration ordinance. "At best, they are not in any way embracing the 
richness and diversity in that community and others like it in Texas. At 
worst, they're trying to take an entire community back in time."
David Koch calls such claims "hogwash." The councilman says the "same cast 
of characters" who opposed the immigration ordinance is vilifying separate 
measures that in any other town would be considered commonplace.
On October 11, as the council considered regulating paint colors on homes 
and discussed barring library access to "entertainment" Web sites such as 
YouTube and regulating library behavior-Koch said at a meeting that noisy 
children and videogames conflict with the council's "conservative and 
traditional values"-Scott sent out a mass e-mail to supporters. "Please 
know," he wrote, "that this city council and the city manager are hard at 
work carrying out the agenda that the voters overwhelmingly endorsed in the 
May election." The capstone of that agenda, which voters indeed supported at 
the polls, was the ordinance targeting illegal immigrants.
In late September, City Manager Gary Greer ordered several paintings removed 
from Manske Library's gallery. Ironically, the works, by Carrollton artist 
Alex Trevino, were inspired by the immigration debate and assembled in an 
exhibit titled "Clash of Cultures." Trevino was not available for comment, 
but he told The Dallas Morning News that the paintings related to personal 
experiences of racism as well as what he considers public resentment of 
Hispanics. One of the paintings showed a lion fighting an eagle, its claws 
and mouth dripping with the lion's blood.
Mayor Bob Phelps said people had complained about the works and that they 
weren't appropriate for children because of violence and nudity. "I think if 
it's offensive it shouldn't be in our library to start with," he said. "I 
heard from a couple people it was freedom of speech, but it's a matter of 
opinion."
Elizabeth Villafranca, a Farmers Branch business owner and activist, says 
the efforts to control self-expression through art, activity or language are 
an example of the council's overzealousness. She recalled that a little more 
than a year ago, council member Ben Robinson suggested banning all foreign 
language materials from the library. In an e-mail summarizing an August 2006 
work session, he wrote: "Remove all foreign language books, CDs and 
periodicals. We should encourage use of the English language, not discourage 
it."
Council member Jim Smith takes issue with a number of the city's recent 
decisions, including the removal of Trevino's art. "I didn't care for it. 
I'm a Remington and Russell guy," he says. But, "I think it's a form of 
censorship." As for efforts to limit the library to local residents, monitor 
activities and deny access to certain Web sites, he says, "I think they 
oughta back off on the library, frankly."
Smith also has concerns about the city's stepped-up code enforcement, 
another of O'Hare's main priorities. Farmers Branch has hired an extra 
enforcement officer, bringing the total to six and making for more efficient 
and frequent inspections. Smith and other critics say poor and elderly 
people are being unfairly impacted. He's trying to work with the city to set 
aside $1,900 in penalties for an 82-year-old woman who can't afford to pay 
the fines because she lives on a fixed income of $1,000 a month, he says. 
There's a warrant out for her arrest. "They tell me the fine is because she 
had a shed in her yard that's not allowed and a light shining into someone 
else's home," Smith says. Meanwhile, the local Rotary Club is seeking help 
for an elderly couple who can't afford to paint their front porch posts as 
required in an enforcement notice.
To Villafranca, the city council seems to be trying to expel not only 
illegal immigrants but anyone it considers "undesirable."
In late September, she and representatives of the Mexican-American Legal 
Defense and Educational Fund were alarmed to find out the city council had 
requested the names and addresses of all children enrolled in local public 
schools, reportedly to address overcrowding in apartments and private homes.
Smith said he considered the request unnecessary. "I hear lots of concerns 
about the number of cars in the driveways-that's a problem," he says, "but I 
don't think the fact someone has four kids in the house with them is much of 
a problem."
Khadr's lawyer barred from Guantamo trial
Jane Sutton
Reuters
Thursday, November 01, 2007

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=fc0cb427-de17-4435-b3ec-f\563af9617d2

MIAMI - A civilian lawyer for the only Canadian terrorism suspect held
at Guantanamo said yesterday he had been barred from his client's
hearing at the U.S. base next week because of a dispute with military
defence lawyers.

The Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney, said he was prevented from visiting
Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who is accused by a U.S. military war crimes
tribunal of throwing a grenade that killed one American soldier and
wounded another during a firefight at an alleged al-Qaeda compound in
Afghanistan in 2002.

Mr. Edney said the ban came after he disagreed with and publicly
criticized the U.S. military lawyers appointed to defend Mr. Khadr,
who was 15 years old and severely wounded when he was captured. He is
now 21.

"It's certainly not in Khadr's best interest," Mr. Edney said by
telephone. "It's a violation of the accepted right to counsel. They
obviously don't want me speaking to Khadr before the arraignment."

Military defence lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The detention camp that opened in 2002 at the Guantanamo naval base in
Cuba holds about 330 non-Americans accused of links to al- Qaeda or
associated Islamist militant groups. So far, just one person has been
convicted in the war crimes trials, and that was the result of a plea
bargain.

The dispute among Mr. Khadr's lawyers came to light as the U.S.
military prepares to resume the widely criticized tribunals.

In June, the proceedings screeched to a halt when military judges
threw out the charges against Mr. Khadr and Yemeni prisoner Salim Hamdan.

The judges said they lacked jurisdiction because the two defendants
had not been designated "unlawful enemy combatants," as required under
the 2006 law that authorized military tribunals for foreign terrorism
suspects.

The distinction was crucial, the judges said, because international
law requires other types of trial for "lawful enemy combatants."

A newly convened military appeals court ruled that the judges
themselves had authority to decide whether defendants were "unlawful"
combatants and reinstated the charges.

A hearing was scheduled at Guantanamo for Nov. 8 to take up Mr.
Khadr's case.

Another is planned in December for Mr. Hamdan, who is accused of
driving and guarding al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Mr. Hamdan's
legal challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court forced the government to
scrap its first Guantanamo trial system.

The Anonymous Victims of Guantánamo

Eight More Wrongly Imprisoned Men are Quietly Released
By ANDY WORTHINGTON
06/10/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/print.php?id=21939

Hot on the heels of the release of Mohammed al-Amin, a Mauritanian
student who was just a teenager when he was kidnapped for a bounty
payment on a street in Pakistan over five years ago, the Pentagon has
released another eight detainees -- six Afghans, a Libyan and a Yemeni
-- thinning "the worst of the worst" at Guantánamo from 778 men to
just 335.

Of the six Afghans released, the identities of three are unknown. This
is hardly surprising, as the Department of Defense never reveals the
names of those it releases, and the media long ago abandoned turning
up in Kabul to welcome back another bunch of farmers, shopkeepers and
Taliban conscripts from their brutal and surreal sojourn in a small
corner of Cuba that is forever America. Of the 163 Afghans released
since Guantánamo opened (out of a total of 218), a dozen of those
released in the last few years have not been identified, and these
three look like remaining just as anonymous.

To compensate, however, the three Afghans who have been identified
represent a microcosmic cross-section of the ineptitude of the US
military and the Pentagon during the two years that followed the
US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, consisting of a
pro-US, anti-Taliban military leader, another man who was arrested
after his house was bombed, and another who was seized while walking
in the street.

The pro-US military leader -- one of several dozen actively
pro-American Afghans held at Guantánamo over the years -- is Sabar Lal
Melma. 40 years old at the time of his capture, Melma was the military
aide to Haji Roohullah, the commander of a long-standing anti-Taliban
militia based in Kunar province, which was aligned with the Northern
Alliance. Roohullah, who was also described by Ghulam Ullah, the head
of education in Kunar, as "a national religious leader," had fired the
first salvo against the Taliban in Kunar after the US-led invasion,
and as a result of his anti-Taliban credentials and his support for
Hamid Karzai, he was rewarded with an important position in the
province's post-Taliban administration, and was also made a member of
the Loya Jirga, the prestigious gathering of tribal leaders that
elected Karzai as President in June 2002. Betrayed by a rival ­
probably Malik Zarin, the head of the rival Mushwani tribe, who had
ingratiated himself with the Americans and was using them for his own
ends ­ Roohullah, Melma and eleven others were seized by US forces in
August 2002 and taken to the US prison in Bagram airbase for
questioning, where they were accused of being part of an Islamic
extremist group and helping al-Qaeda fighters to escape from Tora
Bora, even though they had had numerous meetings with senior American
officials and had offered support for the Tora Bora campaign.

Although the others were subsequently released, the Americans decided
that both Roohullah and Melma had sufficient intelligence value to be
transferred to Guantánamo in August 2003. According to an Associated
Press report, they believed, despite overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, that Roohullah "had strong links with Middle Eastern
fighters in Afghanistan, particularly Saudi Arabians like Osama bin
Laden," and thought it significant that he was a follower of the
Wahhabi sect of Islam. In his tribunal, Melma pointed out the
injustice of imprisoning him with members of the Taliban: "The only
thing I want to tell you that is so ironic here is that I see a Talib
and then I see myself here too, I am in the same spot as a Talib. I
see those people on an everyday basis, they are cursing at me ... They
say, 'See, you got what you deserved, you are here, too.'"
Astonishingly, though Melma has now been released, Haji Roohullah
remains in Guantánamo, with no immediate prospect of release.

The man who was taken to Guantánamo because his house was bombed is
Mohibullah, from Uruzgan province, who was just 21 when he was
captured. Woken in the night by the sound of firing, he went into his
compound and fired three warning shots into the air to ward off what
he thought were burglars. Soon after, an American plane dropped a bomb
on his compound, injuring him, and he was captured by Special Forces
the following morning. "I never worked with the Taliban, or talked
with them or ate with them," he told his tribunal at Guantánamo. "I
was a bus driver." Two years ago, in an attempt to secure his freedom,
he wrote a habeas corpus petition, without the help of a lawyer, in
which he explained more about the circumstances of his capture, noting
that he was severely injured when his house was destroyed, but that
when the Americans, who admitted that the bombing might have been a
mistake, took him away, claiming that they were going to treat his
wounds, he was transported to Guantánamo instead. "Now it has been two
and one-half years that I have been detained here and I do not why,"
Mohibullah wrote. "Even the interrogators have still not told me what
my crime was and why they detained me."

The third Afghan -- the one who was captured in the street -- is
Azimullah. Just 20 years old at the time, he explained to his tribunal
in Guantánamo that he was captured near a madrassa (religious school),
where he was studying. He was accused of acting "as a guide to a group
of individuals attacking the Salerno Fire Base" (a US base), but he
said that he didn't know anything about this group, or about
allegations that they had "weapons, surveillance equipment (cameras
and binoculars) and radios," or that he "met with an Arab man and an
Afghan man who gave him money prior to the attack." Asked about the
circumstances of his arrest, he said that he was walking towards the
village with a man named Salim, whom he did not know previously, but
whom he had met "on the way going to the village," when a group of
Afghan soldiers "saw us and arrested us." He explained that he was not
told why he was arrested at the time, but that "when they took me to
the base," where he was handed over to the US military, "they told me
that I attacked them and that I did this and this."

The story of the released Libyan, Abu Sufian Hamouda, is rather more
complicated. Hamouda, who is 48 years old, was a refugee from his
homeland. According to the US military's "evidence," accumulated over
the last five years, he had served in the Libyan army as a tank driver
from 1979 to 1990, but was "arrested and jailed on multiple occasions
for drug and alcohol offenses." Having apparently escaped from prison
in 1992, he fled to Sudan, where he worked as a truck driver. In an
attempt to beef up the evidence against him, the Department of Defense
alleged that the company he worked for, the Wadi al-Aqiq company, was
"owned by Osama bin Laden," and also attempted to claim that he joined
the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant group opposed to the
rule of Colonel Gaddafi, even while admitting that an unidentified
"al-Qaeda/LIFG facilitator" had described him as "a noncommittal LIFG
member who received no training."

After relocating to Pakistan, Hamouda apparently stayed there until
the summer of 2001, when he and a friend crossed the border into
Afghanistan, traveling to Jalalabad and then to Kabul, where Hamouda
found a job working as an accountant for Abdul Aziz al-Matrafi, the
director of al-Wafa, a Saudi charity which provided humanitarian aid
to Afghans, but which was regarded by the US authorities as a front
for al-Qaeda. Over the years, dozens of Guantanamo detainees were
tarred as terrorists because of their associations with al-Wafa. The
majority have now been released, but one of those who remains in
Guantánamo, little-known and barely reported, is al-Matrafi, who was
kidnapped on a flight from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia in November 2001.

It's difficult to ascertain whether there is any truth in the
allegations that al-Wafa was a front for al-Qaeda. According to the
"evidence" against Hamouda, "Members of the Taliban would frequently
visit the al-Wafa office in Kabul and had dealings with the director
of that office," which was hardly surprising, as the Taliban was the
government at the time. Less clear is the claim that, according to
various accounts, including a statement allegedly made by Hamouda,
"the director of the al-Wafa office was connected to al-Qaeda and knew
Osama bin Laden." Even setting aside the dubious circumstances under
which this "confession" was produced, other detainees have claimed
that bin Laden was actually suspicious of al-Wafa, because of its
Saudi links.

What's apparent, however, is that Hamouda's involvement with the
organization centered on its humanitarian work, as another
"allegation," which actually had nothing to do with terrorism, made
clear. In the "evidence" presented for his Combatant Status Review
Tribunal, under factors purporting to demonstrate that he "supported
military operations against the United States or its coalition
partners," it was stated that, while working for al-Wafa, he traveled
to Kunduz "to oversee the distribution of rice that was being guarded
by four to five armed guards." In Guantánamo, it seems, even the
distribution rice can be regarded as a component in a military operation.

Captured in Islamabad, after fleeing from Afghanistan following the
US-led invasion, Hamouda was held for a month by the Pakistani
authorities, and was then handed over to the Americans, who began
mining him for the flimsy "evidence" of terrorist activities outlined
above. Earlier this year, he was cleared for release, and, despite
misgivings on the part of his lawyers, stated that he was prepared to
return to Libya, even though what awaits him may not be any better
than what he was suffered over the last five years. Perhaps, as one of
Guantánamo's truly lost men, he has decided that, if he is to spend
the rest of his life in prison for no apparent reason, he would rather
be in Libya, where his wife and his family might be able to see him,
than in Guantánamo, where, like every other detainee, he was more
isolated from his relatives than even the deadliest convicted mass
murderer on the US mainland.

The last of the eight, Ali Mohammed Nasir Mohammed, was 19 years old
when he was seized by Pakistani soldiers and delivered to the US
military in December 2001. Slightly evasive in his tribunal, he said
that he went to Afghanistan to "look around to see how the people were
doing," and added, "In my imagination I thought I was going to see
many centers with a lot of guards in them and I would see a lot of
Muslims. I would find out how the Muslims were worshipping and what
they do." He admitted, however, that he attended a training camp for
40-45 days and also admitted that he had worked for the Taliban,
although he said that he had worked only in the kitchens or as a guard
behind the front lines, and had not participated in military
operations against the US-led coalition, telling his tribunal, "I have
never shot one bullet in my life." After escaping from Afghanistan by
passing through the Tora Bora region to reach Pakistan, he was
captured by Pakistani soldiers after asking directions to the Yemeni
embassy.

What makes his story unusual is that, once the Pentagon had decided
that it was not worth holding onto a cook for the Taliban who clearly
knew nothing about al-Qaeda, confusion over his identity prevented his
release for 16 months. Back in May 2006, as the Washington Post
described it four months ago, "He got a checkup. His photo was taken,
as were his fingerprints. He was measured for clothes and shoes, then
offered a meeting with the Red Cross. As the Pentagon tersely put it
later in an e-mail to his attorneys: 'Your client has been approved to
leave Guantánamo.'" However, as his lawyer, Martha Rayner, explained,
"He never went home." "Stuck," as the Post article went on, "in a
limbo of mistaken identities, bureaucratic inertia and official
neglect," his case was "an indictment of a system, still cloaked in
the strictest secrecy and largely beyond accountability, in which a
man who face[d] no charge and no sentence remain[ed] deprived of the
freedom he was granted" in May 2006. "It's a lovely illustration of
what happens when there's no oversight of the jailer," Rayner noted,
acutely.

The Washington Post article went on to describe what had happened to
prevent Mohammed's release for 16 months. Although he was born in
Saudi Arabia and had been living there before his all-advised trip to
Afghanistan, he was regarded as a Yemeni, under both Yemeni and Saudi
law, because his parents are from the Yemen, where they still live,
and Mohammed had a Yemeni passport and grew up there. What particular
confused matters was the fact that the US military regarded Mohammed
as a Saudi, and while the Saudi authorities washed their hands of him,
and the Yemeni government said that it was "unaware of his case," he
languished in Guantánamo for another 16 months, imprisoned in Camp
Six, where even cleared detainees are held in solitary confinement,
until a new arrangement could be made.

As these eight men finally leave Guantánamo after five years or more
in US custody without charge or trial, their cases clearly do nothing
to salvage the administration's reputation for illegal incompetence.
And it can only get worse. Of the 335 detainees still held in
Guantánamo, the government has admitted that it only intends to put
forward around 80 for trial by Military Commission. Of the remaining
255, at least 70, like the men just released, have been cleared for
release (some for two years or more), and despite the administration's
blustering this summer that it intended to hold dozens of others
indefinitely because, in another revolutionary legal twist, they are
too dangerous to be released, but not dangerous enough to be charged,
it now seems inevitable that they too will eventually be given their
freedom. Even if the 80 proposed trials go ahead, which is extremely
unlikely, it must surely be impossible for the architects of this
disaster to claim that an 11% success rate is sufficient justification
for the moral, ethical, judicial, and financial cost of an operation
that has been manifestly revealed not as the triumphant prison wing of
the "War on Terror" but as an inept, cruel, degrading and ultimately
failed experiment.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's
Illegal Prison' (to be published by Pluto Press in October 2007).

He can be reached at: andy @ andyworthington.co.uk