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10 June 22
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In an explosive moment in the Jan. 6 Committee hearing, Liz Cheney alleged Rep. Scott Perry and several other GOP House members asked for a pardon to absolve their election tampering
Cheney recalled how, in the build up to Jan. 6., then-President Donald Trump sought to clean House at the Justice Department, which was refusing to help him advance his Big Lie that he’d been deprived of a rightful election victory by fraud and voting irregularities. (Cheney laid out a significant slate of evidence that not only was this a lie, but that Trump and his staff knew that it was a lie.)
As part of the effort to gain compliance from the Justice Department, Trump wanted to install a yes-man, Jeffrey Clark, as Acting Attorney General, in place of Jeffrey Rosen, who refused to meddle in the election results.
That gambit ultimately did not succeed. And Cheney, in her opening remarks, noted that Clark refused to testify before the committee, invoking his 5th amendment protections.
Cheney then alleged that a notable GOP lawmaker had similarly rebuffed the committee about his actions to support the house clearing at DOJ: “Rep. Scott Perry, who was also involved in trying to get Clark appointed as Attorney General,” Cheney said, “has refused to testify here.”
Cheney then dropped a bombshell, suggesting consciousness of guilt — not just by Perry but by other GOP representatives:
“As you will see, Rep. Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after Jan 6. to seek a presidential pardon,” she said. Cheney then added: “Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.”
Rep. Perry and multiple Republicans sought presidential pardons for the roles in trying to overturn the election according to Cheney pic.twitter.com/VDPUnkajfd
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 10, 2022
Merrick Garland has this information.
Is it time to appoint an impartial prosecutor to investigate SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY of those who planned to overthrow DEMOCRACY?
Those who sought a pResidetial pardon or refused to testify defined their own guilt and don't belong in elected office, but prison instead.
Who gave TOURS on January 5?
ROGER STONE conspired. Michael Flynn betrayed his country and still receives a military pension that should be stopped. And John Eastman? Still practicing law?
This is just the beginning and we don't know all who were involved.
When a known political hack like Bill Barr testifies that defines the mental incompetence of a delusional Wannabe Dictator. No one had the courage to invoke the 25th Amendment! That defines cowardice.
60 court challenges were lost because there was NO PROOF!
Rudy GHOULiani was suspended from practicing law as a consequence.
THE BIG LIE! And too many Americans were conned!
Footage was aired of testimony by former US Attorney General Bill Barr saying he had repeatedly told the former president that he had lost the election and his claims of fraud were wrong.
"We can't live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that there was fraud in the election," said the former attorney general.
It's SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY for which they should be prosecuted and prevented from running for election.
Republicans participated in an attempt to overthrow DEMOCRACY!
PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS from a pResident who attempted a COUP?
No one had the sense to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove a deranged, mentally ill misfit from power who cost lives!
Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, led the first hearing on the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (photo: Getty)
Former US President Donald Trump orchestrated last year's Capitol riot in an "attempted coup", a congressional inquiry has heard as a hearing opened into the raid.
Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, said the riot endangered American democracy.
Trump supporters stormed Congress on 6 January 2021 as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden's election victory.
After almost a year of investigation, the Democratic-led US House of Representatives select committee opened on Thursday evening by showing clips from interviews it conducted with members of Mr Trump's inner circle.
The timing was geared to reach huge evening TV audiences across the US.
Footage was aired of testimony by former US Attorney General Bill Barr saying he had repeatedly told the former president that he had lost the election and his claims of fraud were wrong.
"We can't live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that there was fraud in the election," said the former attorney general.
The hearing also featured a recording of testimony by Ivanka Trump, the ex-president's daughter, saying she "accepted" Mr Barr's rejection of her father's conspiracy theory.
And there was an audible gasp in the committee room as Ms Cheney read an account that claimed Mr Trump, when told the rioters were chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged for refusing to block the election results, suggested that he "deserves it".
Before the House inquiry opened on Thursday evening - the first of six hearings expected this month - Mr Trump dismissed it as a "political HOAX".
The former president has been publicly hinting about another White House run in 2024. He continues to peddle unsubstantiated claims that the last election was rigged by mass voter fraud.
The congressional committee is led by Democrats, who formed the panel after Republicans blocked attempts to set up a full independent inquiry. Just two Republicans - the staunchly anti-Trump Reps Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney - are taking part.
The goal of the committee is to provide a comprehensive account of not only the 6 January riot but the "coordinated, multi-step effort" to "overturn" the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Members plan to produce a report and possibly hold another hearing in September to outline their findings and offer suggestions for reforms to the US electoral process.
Mr Thompson, the committee's chairman and a Mississippi lawmaker, told the hearing: "Jan 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one writer put it shortly after Jan 6, to overthrow the government.
"The violence was no accident. It was Trump's last stand."
Ms Cheney, the vice-chair of the committee and a Wyoming congresswoman, said: "Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen and that he was the rightful president.
"President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack."
At no point did he ask law enforcement services to protect the Capitol, Ms Cheney said, instead it was Mr Pence who did that.
Running just over two hours, the unprecedented prime-time congressional hearing on the Capitol attack was a decidedly mixed bag.
The video evidence of the 6 January events, and the dramatic personal testimony of officer Caroline Edwards, were powerful reminders of the pain and suffering that day.
The extended statement by Liz Cheney - who has put her career in jeopardy with her criticism of the former president - was full of allegations and accusations but overly dense.
An American sitting down to watch the proceedings instead of their regular Thursday night entertainment may have not received the slickly packaged production that was promised.
But if they had forgotten what it was like on 6 January - the desperation and the drama - there was plenty to remind them.
What they do with that reminder, however, remains to be seen.
Caroline Edwards, the first police officer injured in the attack, testified that she was called a "traitor" and a "dog" by the rioters before she was knocked unconscious.
She described later encountering amid the melee a "ghostly pale" Officer Brian Sicknick, who died a day following the attack after suffering two strokes.
"I was slipping in people's blood," Officer Edwards told lawmakers. "It was carnage. It was chaos."
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle," she added.
A British documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, who was tracking the Proud Boys, a far-right group, on the day of the attack, also gave evidence.
He described his surprise at the anger and violence of the rampaging "insurrectionists".
Four people died on the day of the US Capitol riot: an unarmed woman shot by police and the others of natural causes.
More than 100 police officers were injured. Four other officers later died by suicide.
Republicans have dismissed the televised inquiry as a ploy to distract Americans from the political headwinds Democrats face with five months to go until the US mid-term elections.
Opinion polls suggest Democrats may lose control of the House and even potentially the Senate when the nation votes in November.
As Americans grapple with galloping inflation, soaring petrol prices and a baby-formula crisis, US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has seen his popularity with voters dip below Mr Trump's approval rating at the same point in his tenure.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy - who was initially critical of Mr Trump in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, but has since shifted his tone - called the committee a "smokescreen" for Democrats to overhaul voting laws.
House Democrats impeached Mr Trump following the riot, with barely a week left in his presidency. They accused him of inciting insurrection, but he was acquitted in the Senate.
Patrick Lyoya, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was shot in the head on April 4 after a police officer pulled him over for an unregistered license plate. (photo: ABC News)
Patrick Lyoya was shot and killed by a Grand Rapids police officer.
Lyoya, a 26-year-old immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was shot in the head on April 4 after Schurr pulled him over for an unregistered license plate. His death prompted protests throughout Grand Rapids.
Schurr turned himself in and is expected to be arraigned Friday, according to Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker, who made the charging decision. City officials confirmed that Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Winstrom will be filing paperwork before the end of the day for Schurr’s suspension without pay.
"Today is the first day of what I believe to be -- and hope, pray to be -- ultimate justice for Patrick Lyoya," said Lyoya family attorney Ven Johnson in an interview with ABC News. "We've waited 65 days since the date of his death. For this decision, the family has prayed about it, talked about it, and done everything that they know how to do to encourage this."
Lyoya's family told ABC News that they did not expect anything good to come from today, but said the charges gave them "a little bit of hope."
"Our hearts are really broken," said Peter Lyoya, Patrick's father, via a translator. "We lost Patrick but the person who has killed Patrick today is still free, is working, is spending time with his family, is enjoying his family. And seeing all of this is more pain to us and is still breaking our heart."
His father remembers him as a "strong" and "lovely young man."
Civil right attorney Ben Crump said he was "encouraged" by the prosecutor's decision to charge Schurr.
"While the road to justice for Patrick and his family has just begun, this decision is a crucial step in the right direction," Crump said in a statement to ABC News. "Officer Schurr must be held accountable for his decision to pursue an unarmed Patrick, ultimately shooting him in the back of the head and killing him – for nothing more than a traffic stop."
Body camera video showed Schurr shouting at Lyoya to "get back in the car" at the beginning of the footage, which was released nine days after the shooting.
Schurr can be heard asking Lyoya if he spoke English and then demanding that Lyoya show his driver's license. Lyoya turned to a passenger in the car and started to walk away from Schurr.
The officer grabbed Lyoya and struggled with him before Schurr eventually forced him to the ground and shouted, "Stop resisting," "let go" and "drop the Taser." Police said Lyoya had grabbed at the officer's stun gun during the altercation.
The body camera was deactivated during the struggle, according to police.
Lyoya was then shot in the back of the head, according to both an independent autopsy report backed by Lyoya's family and the Kent County medical examiner.
"He's on his hands and knees facing away from the officer. There are so many other things the officer could have done instead of pulling his gun out and shooting him in the back of the head," Crump told ABC News in April.
The Grand Rapids Police Officer's Association had issued a statement in April which said, in part: "Officer Schurr, and all police officers, took an oath to serve the community by enforcing laws and protecting the public. A police officer has the obligation to protect themself, fellow officers and the community in often volatile situations. Police officers are often required to march into episodes that turn dangerous for the officer and members of the public.
"As tragic as this case is all the way around, we feel a thorough review of this entire situation will show that a police officer has the legal right to protect themselves and community in a volatile dangerous situation such as this, in order to return to his/her family at the end of their shift," the GRPOA said.
Claire Atkin (left) and Nandini Jammi founded the nonprofit group Check My Ads, which aims to defund disinformation online. Now, they have launched a campaigned aimed at Fox News' online empire. (photo: Jon McMorran)
The group, Check My Ads, is hoping the success it has had in stripping advertising dollars from right-wing provocateurs including Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck and Dan Bongino will give it momentum as it attempts to confront a powerful media empire.
On Thursday, the outfit announced a new campaign directed at Fox's website and its popular YouTube channel calling on the public to pressure online ad exchanges to stop doing business with Fox. It comes just as the House committee investigating the Capitol riots kicks off a series of hearings focused on violence that unfolded on Jan. 6.
Former marketer Claire Atkin, who co-founded Check My Ads, argues that Fox "encouraged and supported" the attack on the Capitol.
"Advertisers have said over and over again, 'We don't want to fund violence,' so it's shocking that Fox News is still receiving these ad dollars," she said.
Mikel Ellcessor, the group's chief operating officer, points to Fox News star Tucker Carlson's sympathetic portrayal of the Capitol rioters and Carlson's documentary series "Patriot Purge," which promoted conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, falsely suggesting the violence was instigated by left-wing activists and calling the rioters "political prisoners."
"What happens on Fox News television helps fund all of their digital properties," he said. "You don't get to claim that your hands are free and clean when you put a dollar into the Fox News operation."
In a statement, Fox News dismissed the campaign as an effort at censorship, saying "There's no greater threat to democracy than the effort to silence free speech."
The network said it takes pride in "featuring more dissenting viewpoints on the major issues facing the country than our cable news competitors."
The push by the left-leaning activists comes amid growing calls from online advertising watchers for there to be more transparency and accountability in the complex industry that is digital advertising, an ever-growing segment of the economy in which an estimated $521 billion was spent last year.
Exposing the "ATM of the disinformation economy"
Instead of calling for a consumer boycott, Check My Ads took a novel approach: apply public pressure on the hidden engines of the online advertising world: ad exchanges.
The exchanges, operated by companies like Google and Verizon but also a collection of smaller firms, are kind of the middlemen between a company trying to place an ad and a website.
Often the exchanges have content rules that say they will not place ads on sites that promotes the overthrow of the government or glorifies violence.
When the group pointed out to exchanges that some sites they are doing business with violate their own rules, the exchanges acted. An exchange called Freewheel dropped Steve Bannon's Real America's Voice; another exchange called OpenX blocked Glenn Beck's the Blaze; Google severed ties with Dan Bongino's website. In all, the group estimates that the campaign has cut off millions of dollars from sites spreading disinformation.
"Ad exchanges have set a line, they set a standard for how their publishers should operate. We are just saying, 'You need to uphold your own standard,'" said Atkin, who says her group is going after the "ATM of the disinformation economy."
The shadowy world of online ad exchanges
Websites peddling disinformation generate more than $2 billion in advertising revenue each year, according to an analysis by NewsGuard and ComScore.
Check My Ads says their goal is not just to take that money out of circulation, but to shed new light on just how the shadowy world of online advertising operates.
Some 90% of online ads are generated through an automated process, as opposed to being directly placed by a company.
Industry insiders call this system "programmatic advertising," which basically means it is automated by computer software, according to Joshua Lowcock, an executive at the marketing and media agency UM.
"It's like a stock exchange," Lowcock said. "When you visit a website, there are multiple advertisers bidding on you in a real-time auction."
How it works: Exchanges strike deals with publishers and put together massive lists of websites on which it can place advertising. The exchanges also hammer out contracts with companies hoping to reach a desired audience. Every time someone visits a site, in the matter of a millisecond, there are competing bids for your attention taking place on an ad exchange and the winner serves up an ad to you.
Problems arise, however, when a company's ad appears in surprising places, which is not uncommon.
"You may be unaware of where your messages are showing up and what content your brand is living next to," said Jon Klein, the former president of CNN who now works in digital media. "It's the nightmare of most responsible marketers."
Exchanges also tend to have content guidelines. Google, which operates the largest ad exchange, has rules that state it does not place ads on sites that make claims that are "demonstrably false," or could "undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process."
Lowcock said an exchange's inventory of websites is so vast and always growing that enforcing its rules is sometimes impossible.
"Often what we find is that when an exchange signs up a publisher, it adheres to the exchange's own monetization policy, but we often find that they don't," he said.
Ellcessor of Check My Ads argues that if exchanges were following their own guidelines, they would ban Fox News' online empire.
"Now all we're doing is we're saying, 'why is Fox News, and specifically Fox News.com getting a pass?'" he said.
Taking on Fox News is an uphill battle
Convincing ad exchanges to blacklist Fox, the nation's top-rated cable news network, will be an uphill battle. For one thing, it may be hard to prove that Fox News itself is doing anything that explicitly violates the exchanges' rules.
Former CNN executive Klein said Fox News has mastered the art of going right up to the edge of a line with its boundary-pushing and often inflammatory programming.
Another factor will be that the corporations that control the major exchanges may be hesitant to isolate Fox, fearing a backlash from conservatives.
Even if the campaign is successful, it would not come anywhere close to kneecapping Fox. About 95% of Fox's profits come from its cable division, so sacrificing online ads would barely put a dent in the company financially.
But Check My Ads staffers remain optimistic, saying the campaign is about more than depriving Fox of money. They maintain it is also focused on attacking Fox's legitimacy and stirring a larger advertising-wide conversation about who is financially supporting Fox, said the group's cofounder Nandini Jammi, who was also behind the social media activist organization Sleeping Giants.
"We can do more than just complain and be sad and tweet and share with each other that we're sad about where Fox News has taken us as a country," Jammi said. "We can actually fight back."
FOX NEWS = FAKE NEWS is bundled for cable consumption.
If you have CABLE, you are subsidizing FAKE NEWS and other right wing disinformation sources.
FOX NEWS promoted the conspiracy theories responsible for the BUFFALO MASSACRE.
Thucker Carlson promoted ANTI-VAX DISINFORMATION that caused how many unnecessary hospitalizations and death? That's not NEWS!
excerpt:
Even if the campaign is successful, it would not come anywhere close to kneecapping Fox. About 95% of Fox's profits come from its cable division, so sacrificing online ads would barely put a dent in the company financially.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C, April 26, 2022. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)
The legislation follows investigations showing that aerospace company TransDigm made millions in excess profits off military contracts.
In February 2019, the Pentagon’s inspector general revealed that contractor TransDigm Group overcharged the military by at least $16 million — with margins up to 4,451 percent — for various aircraft parts over a two-year period. A second investigation released in December 2021 showed that the same company cheated the government out of another $21 million by pricing items at up to 3,850 percent more than the reasonable cost.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., will introduce companion legislation Thursday to leverage Congress’s oversight powers and rein in contractors’ price gouging, The Intercept has learned. The Stop Price Gouging the Military Act is timed to coincide with talks on the annual defense policy bill, which is currently undergoing markup in the Armed Services committees. Both Warren and Garamendi are committee members.
Warren and Garamendi’s legislation is long overdue: The recurrence of price gouging was already well known for years before the 2019 report. In May 2011, a Defense Department inspector general audit found that aerospace giant Boeing made about $13 million in excess profits off helicopter spare parts that it sold to the Army. But the more recent scandal unleashed new demands to crack down.
TransDigm built its empire using an unsavory business model to buy up smaller contractors that had monopolies on the supplies they provided to the military, guaranteeing the larger company’s ability to magnify returns. What’s more, TransDigm was able to reap its gains while complying with the weak laws Congress enacted at the behest of corporate interests, wherein a company can get away with hiding cost data from the government during contract negotiations. The revelation was an indictment of lawmakers’ duties to safeguard the government’s wallet.
In January, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, convened a hearing to probe TransDigm’s profiteering, insisting that “Congress must act to empower contracting officers when they are negotiating with greedy contractors like TransDigm.” She released a “discussion draft” of planned legislation to force companies to submit uncertified pricing information if the government requests it.
Maloney has yet to introduce a final bill, however. This year, she faces a tough reelection in a member-on-member primary against fellow New York Rep. Jerry Nadler — in the wake of redistricting, the two members now share a district home to many Wall Street executives who are likely to resist any reform. Without legislation from Maloney, Warren and Garamendi’s proposal is likely Congress’s best shot to improve the law.
Maloney’s office did not reply to a request for comment.
“For far too long, military contractors have been price gouging the Pentagon to make fatter profits, and American taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill,” Warren told The Intercept in an emailed statement Thursday. “The end result is a military budget that is way too large. We need some basic rules on the road to prevent military contractors from price gouging.”
The problem is especially relevant now, Warren has argued, as corporations are likely exploiting anticipated inflation growth to unfairly raise their prices. Lawmakers and defense officials are simultaneously using the decreasing value of the dollar to demand an ever-increasing military budget.
“There’s no question that inflation is raising costs across the country, but we’ve also seen big companies taking advantage of inflation to jack up prices and to pad their profit margins,” she said at an April 7 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “That is a particular problem in industries with lots of consolidation. The defense industry, which had 51 major companies competing for defense contracts 30 years ago, today has five. That is concentration. Price gouging by defense contractors has been a big problem for a long time.”
The industry that provides spare aircraft parts has a steep lack of competition: For many of TransDigm’s deals with the Defense Department, it was the only bidder. The new Stop Price Gouging the Military Act would require a company to share pricing data with the government if it is the sole supplier to submit a proposal on a contract.
Currently, under what’s known as the Truth in Negotiations Act, companies only have to disclose costs during negotiations if the expected value of the contract is more than $2 million. In TransDigm’s case, many of its deals were valued at less than $750,000 — the previous threshold for disclosure until Congress raised it to $2 million in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.
As contractors have lobbied for less oversight, Congress “has opened the door,” making it difficult for government contract officers to access necessary pricing data, Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, told The Intercept. To illustrate the dynamic, he posed: “Would you buy a car without a sticker price on it?”
Defense suppliers also take advantage of lax aspects of the law by claiming that their items are “commercial” goods, allowing them to avoid or delay sharing costs with the government under policies intended to enhance Pentagon relations with the private sector.
“Turns out that there is a major hole in the acquisition contracting laws that a company does not have to disclose its costs if the item is commercial,” Garamendi told The Intercept. “There is no definition for commercial that makes any sense, and so companies routinely say, ‘It’s a commercial item, and therefore I don’t have to disclose.’”
The new bill aims to strengthen the meaning to ensure that contractors that exclusively sell their goods to the Defense Department can’t bypass sharing cost data. The provision is based on a proposal that the Pentagon made in 2012 but that was shot down in Congress. In the years since, the government has instead made it easier for companies to avoid pricing accountability when selling items to the military.
While the Stop Price Gouging the Military Act takes steps to address excess profits, it is not a complete fix. Earlier this year, POGO — which has long called on Congress to better regulate defense contractors — identified a list of problems with Maloney’s draft bill, calling the approach “Contract Pricing ‘Whack-a-Mole.’” Warren and Garamendi’s legislation resolves some, but not all, of the oversights the watchdog group identified.
POGO noted that the government often doesn’t require contractors to issue refunds, even though the Truth in Negotiations Act offers that opportunity. Further, the government doesn’t have the authority to suspend vendors from business deals if they do not comply with price-sharing requirements.
Rather than compelling this authority, Warren and Garamendi’s bill seeks to protect the government’s interests in other ways, such as by linking payment with performance and mandating that contractors reveal changes in their costs, gross margins, and pricing strategies to the Defense Department — similar to disclosures made by publicly traded companies.
“We wanted to offer a ‘carrot’ with the proposed legislative pilot that would tie payments to performance,” Garamendi’s office said in an email to The Intercept. “We thought that these provisions, along with the commercial item definition changes, would be comprehensive and had a chance of being passed.”
POGO, a nonpartisan organization, has written extensively about these issues, as well as the infamous F-35.
Do you see a single Republican clamoring to cut social programs, CHILD TAX CREDITS, slash Social Security even addressing PENTAGON WASTE?
"In February 2019, the Pentagon’s inspector general revealed that contractor TransDigm Group overcharged the military by at least $16 million — with margins up to 4,451 percent — for various aircraft parts over a two-year period. A second investigation released in December 2021 showed that the same company cheated the government out of another $21 million by pricing items at up to 3,850 percent more than the reasonable cost."
"Warren and Garamendi’s legislation is long overdue: The recurrence of price gouging was already well known for years before the 2019 report. In May 2011, a Defense Department inspector general audit found that aerospace giant Boeing made about $13 million in excess profits off helicopter spare parts that it sold to the Army. But the more recent scandal unleashed new demands to crack down."
Majid Khan was due to be released on 1 March, his lawyers say, but continues to be imprisoned despite Biden's goal to close the detention centre. (photo: unknown)
Majid Khan was due to be released on 1 March, his lawyers say, but continues to be imprisoned despite Biden's goal to close the detention centre
Lawyers for Majid Khan, a Maryland resident who admitted to being an al-Qaeda courier, filed the habeas petition on his behalf in a federal court in Washington, arguing that the US has an obligation to resettle him somewhere, based on his cooperation with authorities.
In 2012, Khan pleaded guilty to multiple charges and agreed to cooperate with authorities in other investigations, including the case against the five men being held at Guantanamo who are charged with planning and providing logistical support for the 9/11 attacks.
He was issued a 26-year sentence which was mostly symbolic, given the plea agreement and his time already served. He was due for release on 1 March.
"The government's failure to transfer Majid after serving his sentence makes the military commissions system utterly pointless," Katya Jestin, co-managing partner at Jenner … Block and one of Khan's lawyers, said in a statement.
"Why have a trial and sentencing, let alone plead guilty and cooperate with the United States, if you aren't released at the end of your sentence? It's a failure of policy and may have larger programmatic consequences for the government.”
Khan, 41, became the first former prisoner of the CIA's clandestine overseas prison network to openly testify about his treatment there. He says he was waterboarded, sexually abused, suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, and subject to sleep deprivation for days.
"I thought I was going to die," he told the jury last year.
'Guantanamo's cruel absurdity'
Khan immigrated to the US with his family in the 1990s, graduated from a Baltimore suburb high school and held a telecommunications job in the Washington DC area.
In 2002, during a family trip to Pakistan, he encountered relatives with ties to al-Qaeda and admitted he "went willingly" to the militant group.
After being captured in 2003, he was transferred to a number of CIA black sites before he was sent to the Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006 for trial. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to charges that included conspiracy, murder and providing material support to terrorism.
The sentencing was the most recent case in the slow-moving military commissions process at Guantanamo Bay, where two out of the nearly 800 people sent to the prison were convicted, while another 10 are awaiting trial.
Khan's continued detention is a sign of the prison's longevity, with Biden's promise to close the prison being held back by the more than 30 detainees that remain in the prison to this day.
"Mr Khan's situation is a perfect example of Guantanamo’s cruel absurdity - he accepted his punishment and served his time, but is now worse off than he had been because not only is he still there, but also some in the government apparently think he doesn’t need to talk to his lawyers anymore now that his criminal case is finished," Scott Roehm, director of the Centre for Victims of Torture (CVT), told MEE in a statement.
Yumna Rizvi, a policy analyst at CVT, told MEE: "It is outrageous that the government continues to detain Majid Khan, who cooperated with the government for 10 years, pled guilty, and whose sentence ended three months ago.
"The military jury at his sentencing hearing wrote what happened to him was a stain on the moral fiber of the United States; so is continuing to hold him, while also apparently severely restricting his access to his lawyers."
We must restore our largely broken relationship with nature if we are to ensure the planet's future - and our own. (photo: iStock)
We must restore our largely broken relationship with nature if we are to ensure the planet’s future – and our own
Animals are vital to the functioning of the biosphere in innumerable ways. Their interactions with plants, fungi and microbes sustain the conditions on which we, along with all other life, depend. For example, the great whales that sit at the pinnacle of marine food webs are linked to some of the most fundamental processes that shape conditions in our world. They eat other marine creatures, including krill, and in the process take nutrients from deeper water to be released via their faeces into the ocean, where they fertilise blooms of planktonic algae.
As the plankton grow, they extract carbon from the atmosphere and release oxygen as a byproduct, keeping carbon dioxide concentrations in check and replenishing oxygen at a level that sustains animal life. Those same photosynthetic plankton, powered by sunshine, are at the base of the food webs that feed the rest of marine animal life, including fish and, ultimately, whales. Some plant plankton also release a gas called dimethyl sulphide, an important contribution to cloud formation, which sustains freshwater security on land.
Tropical rainforests are another vast and vitally important system that removes carbon from the atmosphere. While we tend to think first of their trees, these complex ecosystems are held together by pollinating insects, a kind of animal glue. The myriad plants that inhabit these moist, warm forests are nearly all pollinated by bees, wasps, ants, butterflies and beetles (and some by birds and bats). Rainforest plants produce fruits, animals eat them and, in the process, move seeds around the forests.
Pollinator and seed-dispersing relationships are a key, if undervalued, aspect of the carbon cycle and the climatic stability necessary for human societies and economic wellbeing. Rainforests also play a vital role in global water security, working as colossal pumps, pouring billions of tonnes of evaporated water into the atmosphere every day – 25bn from the Amazon alone. In the air, that water travels in what have been called “sky rivers”: streams of vapour that can deposit rainfall thousands of miles away, watering croplands that sustain food for humans. It is easy to miss the fundamental role of animals, large and small, in enabling all this.
Many creatures also have more specific values for us. Most of the food plants we grow are dependent on animal pollination, mostly by wild insects. In recent decades, we have become obsessed with chemical pest control, but songbirds, bats and beneficial insects such as ladybirds bring billions of dollars worth of value each year in controlling aphids, caterpillars and other insects that consume or spoil crops.
New drugs to treat HIV infection have been derived from frogs that live in forests and eat insects; butterflies’ wings have inspired more efficient photovoltaic technology. This reminds us how natural selection offers solutions to many of the challenges we face.
Our relationship with animals also has a bearing on our exposure to disease. For example, before a steep decline in the 1990s, there were about 40 million vultures in the Indian subcontinent, playing a vital ecological role in clearing up rotting carcasses. Then the population crashed – traced to the widespread use of the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac to treat livestock. As a result, the 12m tonnes of flesh these birds ate each year was available for other scavengers. India’s feral dog population rocketed as the vultures declined, which led to thousands more deaths from rabies.
The more we learn about the relationships between humans and other life on Earth, the more it is apparent that we are embedded in a web of connections that have fundamental bearings on our wellbeing and security. In our modern disconnected society, this truth is too often overlooked. The value of animals is conceived as first and foremost transactional, either in terms of market prices or utilitarian value (for example, as food).
If our civilisation is to survive and thrive, we must shift our collective perspective away from being primarily a self-centred species, with demands that must be met and interests that must be served, to seeing ourselves as part of a wider natural system in which we have responsibilities towards other lifeforms. This is not only an ethical agenda but a question of survival, for if we wish to continue living on Earth, our life-support systems must be protected and repaired.
One way to address the crisis of perception is to foster reconnection with the web of life that sustains us. For many people, especially those in urban areas, meaningful contact with nature can be rare. Solutions can be found, for example, through teaching about nature in schools; creating allotments where people can grow food; fostering wilder spaces for recreation in and around cities; and encouraging active transport outside with walking and cycling routes in green settings.
We humans are as much creatures of nature as the birds and bees. Remembering that in our day-to-day lives will help to restore our largely broken relationship with the rest of creation and benefit not only animals, but us too.
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