Guantanamo prisoner who died challenged his confinement, was rebuffed by Supreme Court
By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, September 11, 12:34 PM
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Guantanamo Bay prisoner who died over the weekend was well-known in legal circles.

The prisoner’s lawyer identifies him as Adnan Latif, a 32-year-old from Yemen who has been held without charge at the U.S. base in Cuba since January 2002.

Attorney David Remes said Tuesday that Latif’s family has been notified of his death. The U.S. military says he died Saturday and the cause is under investigation.

A judge had ordered Latfi’s release in 2010, saying there was insufficient evidence to support allegations he attended an al-Qaida-linked training camp. A higher court overturned that order. And in June, the Supreme Court refused to hear Latif’s appeal in a decision seen as a major setback to Guantanamo prisoners challenging their confinement.

* Written under duress and published with great difficulty in 2007 by The University of Iowa Press, Poems from Guantánamo is a collection of 22 poems from seventeen of the detainees. A brief biographical statement about each detainee is provided before the poems. As the collection’s editor Mark Falkoff writes, “Many of the men at Guantánamo turned to writing poetry as a way to maintain their sanity, to memorialize their suffering and to preserve their humanity through acts of creation…. Perhaps their poems will prick the conscience of the nation.”

“A Caged Bird”

In 2001, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif was 25 years old when he was detained in Pakistan by security forces there and turned over to the United States military for a $5,000 bounty. He spent the first three years at the Guantánamo detention center in total isolation, enduring physical and mental torture. During this period, Adnan Latif was interrogated hundreds of times and was held without charge or hearing before a judge. Only in 2004, the United States conducted a “status” hearing and attorney Mark Falkoff was finally able to take on his case. As Falkoff writes in the journal of his meetings with Adnan Latif, “…when I first saw the [United States] accusations, I thought they looked serious. But that when I looked at the government’s evidence, I was amazed. There was nothing there.”

To this day, Adnan Latif remains in United States custody, despite the determination of Department of Defense in 2004 that Latif “is not known to have participated in combatant/terrorist training” and a 2007 determination that Latif should be transferred away from Guantánamo Bay “subject to the process for making appropriate diplomatic arrangements for his departure” and just recently, in July of 2010, Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. granted the Habeas corpus petition for Adnan Latif, now 34, and instructed the Obama administration to “take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif’s release forthwith.”

For many years now, Adnan Latif has lived in suicidal despair and is held in the psych ward. According to his lawyer, he sees “death as the only way out.” Adnan Latif once referred to himself as “a caged bird.”

In Search of Affordable Medical Care

As Judge Kennedy writes in his decision: “It is undisputed that in 1994, he [Adnan Latif] sustained head injuries as the result of a car accident and the Yemeni government paid for him to receive treatment at the Islamic Hospital in Amman, Jordan.” However, the treatment was incomplete and Adnan Latif spent the next few years searching for affordable health care. In the Yemen Ministry of Defense’s “Military Medical Decision Form” dated July of 1995, his diagnosis still reported “1) Loss of sight in left eye as a result of eye nerve damage. 2) Loss of hearing in the ears.” And after finding the same health results in another medical report dated August of 1999, the doctors “recommend that he return to the previous center outside for more tests and therapeutic and surgical procedures at his own expense” (our italics).

The vast difference of health care systems in this part of the world lends credibility to Adnan Latif’s need/recommendation to find medical care outside of Yemen. In fact, despite the significant progress that Yemen has made in its health care system, as of 2004 there were only three doctors per 10,000 people. In 2001, Adnan Latif traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where he heard of a charitable health care office of a Pakistani aid worker that might help him. Soon afterwards, he was arrested there. It is important to note that these medical documents were deemed not admissible during Adnan Latif’s “status” hearing in 2004, and yet, with these documents in hand, Judge Kennedy found that the prosecutors did not meet the adequate proof for Adnan Latif’s involvement with al Qaeda.

Hunger Strike for Basic Human Rights

Even with the medical treatment at the detention center being almost nonexistent, the condition of confinement is horrific. The punishment for disobeying even arbitrary disciplinary rules includes solitary confinement, no comfort items, no mattress, no pants, etc. In 2007, Adnan Latif participated in a hunger strike which lasted for over six months. As a result, Mark Folkoff explains, “Twice a day, the guards immobilize Latif’s head, strap his arms and legs to a special restraint chair, and force-feed him a liquid nutrient by inserting a tube up his nose and into his stomach a clear violation of international standards. The feeding, Latif says, ‘is like having a dagger shoved down your throat.’”

In 2008, Latif Adnan lost a Federal Court case for his plea to get a blanket and mattress in his cell. In his decision, Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan reasons, “While the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene gives [Latif] the right to challenge the fact of his confinement, it says nothing of his right to challenge the conditions of his confinement.” With this evidence, the physical and psychological torture perpetrated at Guantánamo is systematically and legally upheld.

We Plead for Adnan Latif’s Immediate Release

Despite the most recent ruling by Judge Kennedy, on August 21, 2010 the United States prosecution filed a report announcing a “serious consideration to an appeal of the Court’s ruling” and wrote: “In light of these important considerations, the Government respectfully requests the Court’s patience as Respondents work toward compliance with the Court’s order without compromising the Government’s sensitive national security and foreign policy concerns or the Government’s ability to seek further review of the Court’s decision.”

Is not 9 years enough patience? As David Remes, one of Adnan Latif’s attorneys, responds, “Why they continue to defend holding him is unfathomable. Adnan’s case reflects the Obama administration’s complete failure to bring the Guantánamo litigation under control.”

More Information

For an article and the journal of Mark Falkoff’s meetings with Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, please follow our links to the documents at www.witnesstorture.org
“Yemeni Psych Patient Ordered Freed,” Miami Herald, July 21, 2010
Transcript of Judge Henry Kennedy Jr.’s court order of release 2010
“U.S. Still Holds Captive Pentagon Wanted Freed in 2004,” Miami Herald, August 17, 2010
United States Prosecution request for time to appeal the court decision, August 21, 2010

Write to Adnan Latif (please send a copy to Center for Constitutional Rights)

Adnan Latif, Internment Serial Number 156
Camp Delta
U.S. Naval Base Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
PO Box 160
Washington, DC 20355 USA

Center for Constitutional Rights
Attn: Liz Bradley
Guantánamo Letter Writing Campaign
666 Broadway, Seventh Floor
New York, NY 10003