AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

had been denied access to judicial remedy
for torture and other human rights violations
incurred while in US custody.
IMPUNITY
No action was taken to end impunity for the
systematic human rights violations, including
torture and enforced disappearance,
committed in the secret CIA detention
programme after 9/11.
In May, the US Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia (DC) Circuit ruled that
the SSCI report into the secret CIA detention
programme remained a “congressional
record” and was not subject to disclosure
under the Freedom of Information Act. A
petition seeking US Supreme Court review of
the ruling was filed in November. Separately,
in late December, a DC District Court judge
ordered the administration to preserve the
SSCI report, and to deposit an electronic or
paper copy of it with the Court for secure
storage. At the end of the year, it was not
known if the government would appeal the
order.
On 12 August, the DC Circuit Court of
Appeals dismissed a lawsuit for damages
brought on behalf of Afghan national
Mohamed Jawad who had been held in US
military custody from 2002 to 2009. During
that time he was subjected to torture or other
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. He
was under 18 years old when taken into US
custody in Afghanistan and transferred to
detention in Guantánamo Bay. 1 The Court of
Appeals upheld a lower court decision to
dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that the
federal courts lacked jurisdiction under
Section 7 of the Military Commission Act
(MCA) of 2006. 2
In October, the US Court of Appeals for the
Fourth Circuit overturned a lower court’s
dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Iraqi
nationals who claimed they were tortured by
interrogators employed by CACI Premier
Technology, Inc. at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
in 2003 and 2004. The Court held that
intentional conduct by contracted
interrogators, which was unlawful at the time
it was committed, could not be shielded from
judicial review.
COUNTER-TERROR AND SECURITY
At the end of the year, nearly eight years after
President Obama made the commitment to
close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility
by January 2010, 59 men were still held
there, the majority of them without charge or
trial. During 2016, 48 detainees were
transferred to government authorities in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde,
Ghana, Italy, Kuwait, Mauritania,
Montenegro, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Senegal,
Serbia and the United Arab Emirates.
In August, the UN Committee against
Torture said that its recommendation to end
indefinite detention without charge or trial,
which amounted per se to a violation of the
UN Convention against Torture, had not been
implemented.
Pre-trial military commission proceedings
continued against five detainees accused of
involvement in the 9/11 attacks and charged
in 2012 for capital trial under the MCA of
2009. The five – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar
al Baluchi and Mustafa al Hawsawi – were
held incommunicado in secret US custody
for up to four years prior to their transfer to
Guantánamo Bay in 2006. Their trial had not
begun by the end of 2016.
Pre-trial military commission proceedings
also continued against ‘Abd al-Rahim al-
Nashiri. He was arraigned for capital trial in
2011 on charges relating to the attempted
bombing of the USS The Sullivans in 2000,
and the bombings of the USS Cole in 2000
and of the French supertanker Limburg in
2002, all in Yemen. He had been held in
secret CIA custody for nearly four years prior
to his transfer to Guantánamo Bay in 2006.
In August 2016, the DC Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled that a decision on his claim,
that the offences with which he had been
charged were not triable by military
commission because they were not
committed in the context of and associated
with hostilities, had to await a final appeal in
386 Amnesty International Report 2016/17