U.S. Citizen Naji Hamdan Detained and Tortured in the United Arab Emirates

http://action.aclu.org/hamdan

Naji Hamdan is a U.S. citizen and a former resident of Hawthorne,
California, who moved to the U.A.E. in 2006 for business and family
reasons. On August 29, 2008, the U.A.E. State Security forces
arrested Mr. Hamdan in Dubai and detained him incommunicado for the
following three months. On November 26, 2008, one week after his
brother and wife filed a lawsuit against United States officials in a
Washington, D.C. court seeking his release, Mr. Hamdan was transferred
from U.A.E. State Security custody to the Al Wathba prison in Abu
Dhabi. Mr. Hamdan has stated to both his family and to an American
consular official that he was severely tortured during his detention
in U.A.E. State Security custody and forced to confess to crimes that
he did not commit.

His imprisonment appears to have been done at the request of the U.S.
government, and his interrogation, which included severe torture,
appears to have been done with participation of U.S. federal
officials. If the U.S. government requested or participated in his
detention and torture in the U.A.E., the United States government has
violated this U.S. citizen's most fundamental rights. Urge the U.S.
government to urgently intervene to bring Mr. Hamdan home to the
United States, and ensure that he is not prosecuted in the U.A.E.
using evidence obtained through torture.

Mr. Hamdan is the latest victim of the U.S. government's practice of
asking foreign governments to detain and torture terrorism
suspects--including U.S. citizens--whom the federal government may not
detain and interrogate itself under U.S. law. For nearly a decade,
Mr. Hamdan was monitored by the FBI. This surveillance grew more
intense and deliberate in the past two years, resulting in multiple
FBI agents following him in cars, numerous interrogations, difficulty
flying in and out of U.S. airports, and mail interception. This
surveillance culminated in a meeting with two FBI agents who flew from
Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi to question Mr. Hamdan in the U.S. Embassy
there. A few weeks later, Mr. Hamdan was arrested by U.A.E. State
Security forces.

From the Al Wathba prison, Mr. Hamdan's description of the torture and
interrogation he endured makes clear that American agents have been
involved. During the torture and interrogation sessions, the
torturers blindfolded Mr. Hamdan, so that he could not see them.
However, Mr. Hamdan noted that some of the interrogators spoke native
English with an American accent and were not fluent in Arabic. In
addition, the agents interrogated Mr. Hamdan on topics about which
only federal agents could have knowledge. For example, his
interrogators asked him why he acted nervously when he met with the
FBI agents at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi. His interrogators also
asked him in extreme detail about his life and activities when he
lived in the United States, from the time that he arrived in the U.S.
to the time he departed.

Mr. Hamdan also described severe torture. His captors placed Mr.
Hamdan in a refrigerated, underground room and deprived him of almost
all clothing. They severely beat him on his back, legs, head, and the
soles of his feet. They kicked him with their military boots in his
liver area, even after he disclosed that he has a liver condition. On
some occasions, they beat him so badly that Mr. Hamdan passed out for
extended periods of time and believed he would die. On at least one
occasion, they strapped his arms and legs down to an electric chair,
while threatening to use it. During the course of the torture
sessions, the captors threatened his life and the life of his wife and
children. Tell your members of Congress and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice: bring Mr. Hamdan home to the United States, and
ensure that he is not prosecuted in the U.A.E. using evidence obtained
through torture.

Mr. Hamdan's situation is now urgent. If his prosecution is allowed
to proceed in the U.A.E. based on evidence obtained through torture,
Mr. Hamdan will receive a deeply unfair trial and unjust sentence. I
ask that you work to ensure that this U.S. citizen be released and
returned to the U.S., where his rights can be protected. If Mr.
Hamdan has done something wrong, then the U.S. should charge him with
a crime and prosecute him in the United States, where he can be
assured his due process rights.

It is the obligation of the United States government to protect its
own citizens. Yet the United States government violated this U.S.
citizen's most elemental constitutional rights, if it in fact
requested or participated in his detention and torture in the United
Arab Emirates for three months while allowing him to be charged with
crimes based, apparently, on nothing more than "confessions" obtained
through torture.

Tell your members of Congress and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
Mr. Hamdan must be released and brought to the United States. The U.S.
government's role in causing Mr. Hamdan's detention and torture must
be investigated. Click on

https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=1161&page=UserAction

===

U.S. Complicit in American's Detention and Torture in the U.A.E.
By Ahilan Arulanantham, Director of Immigrants' Rights and National
Security, ACLU of Southern California
Fri Dec 12, 2008
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/12/161633/30/877/672395

More than three months ago, a U.S. citizen named Naji Hamdan was
arrested by the State Security forces of the United Arab Emirates
(U.A.E.). He was detained without charges or access to a lawyer until
the ACLU filed a lawsuit on his behalf. He has since been released
into criminal custody in the U.A.E., and reports that he was severely
tortured while in detention, apparently in the presence of American
officials. Throughout, the U.S. government claimed to know nothing
about why he was detained.

ACLU's diary :: ::
A few weeks before his arrest, FBI agents from Los Angeles flew to the
U.A.E. and interrogated Mr. Hamdan at the Embassy for several hours.
This interrogation and the subsequent arrest were only the latest
episodes in a two-year period during which the FBI intensively
surveilled Mr. Hamdan.

Mr. Hamdan's description of the torture and interrogation he endured
strongly suggests that American agents have been involved. Although
his captors blindfolded him, his interrogators spoke native English
with an American accent and were not fluent in Arabic. In addition,
the agents interrogated Mr. Hamdan on topics about which only federal
agents could have knowledge, such as a meeting he had with FBI agents
at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi. His interrogators also asked him in
extreme detail about his life and activities when he lived in the
United States.

After his transfer into criminal custody, Hamdan told both his family
and the U.S. consular officer who visited him that he had been
severely tortured: repeatedly beaten on his head, kicked on his sides,
stripped and held in a freezing cold room, put in an electric chair
and made to believe that he would be electrocuted, and held down in a
stress position while his captors beat the bottoms of his feet with a
large stick. During this horrific process he said whatever the agents
wanted him to say, and those statements may now be used against him in
a criminal trial in the U.A.E.

We believe that Mr. Hamdan is the latest victim of the U.S.
government's practice of asking foreign governments to detain
terrorism suspects whom the federal government cannot itself detain
and interrogate under U.S. law — a practice known as "proxy
detention." By asking other countries to detain on our behalf, the
U.S. government apparently believes it can avoid the constraints of
the U.S. Constitution, allowing federal agents to interrogate
individuals held in secret, incommunicado detention, without charge or
access to a lawyer, and subject to torture. The countries we partner
with, like the U.A.E., typically have poor human rights records and
weak protections against prolonged arbitrary detention. Although our
government has revealed very little about the proxy detention program,
it has been documented by groups such as the NYU Center for Human
Rights and Global Justice.

In a perverse way, the government's proxy detention program represents
a logical response to the Supreme Court's rulings in the Guantanamo
cases. The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the government's
attempt to create a law-free zone at Guantanamo, ruling most recently
in Boumediene v. Bush that people in U.S. custody must be able to go
to court to challenge their detention. In Naji Hamdan's case, the Bush
administration appears to have sidestepped the court by asking a
foreign government to detain on its behalf.

The ironic twist in this case is that Naji Hamdan was more than
willing to talk to FBI agents. He voluntarily submitted to their
interrogation several times over the last few years, including meeting
them at the U.S. Embassy in the U.A.E. just a few weeks before his
arrest. Apparently these conversations revealed no evidence sufficient
to allow the FBI to charge him. But instead of accepting that they had
made a mistake — as the government has done far too often in terrorism
cases over the last several years — they appear to have asked the
U.A.E.'s security forces to imprison him so that they could
interrogate him free of the constraints of U.S. law. In doing so,
American officials would have known that the U.A.E. State Security
forces regularly torture those whom they detain. (Amnesty on the
U.A.E.'s torture record is here.)

Our country owes better to its own citizens. The ACLU's habeas
petition asks the government to correct its error by seeking Naji
Hamdan's release. In addition, we ask the court to order the
government to reveal the nature of its involvement in his detention. I
hope the courts will step in to correct this grave injustice.
Obviously if Hamdan has done something wrong, he should be charged
with a crime. But the basis for those charges cannot be statements
obtained under torture. If there is no evidence against him, he should
be released. Our government owes him nothing less.

===

Torture, 2008
12 December 2008
http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2008/12/torture-2008.html

As many of us look forward to a new administration that will move away
from the unlawful and immoral practices of rendition and torture, Naji
Hamdan reminds us that we've yet to make a clean break from the
torturers of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret detention centers in
unnamed locations. If his lawyers' allegations are true, Naji Hamdan
holds the dubious distinction of being one of a few U.S. citizens
known to have been detained and tortured abroad at the behest of his
own government. Hamdan, pictured at left with his daugher Noor, was
born in Lebanon and became a naturalized U.S. citizen after moving
here to attend college on a scholarship. In 2006, Hamdan, his wife,
and their three children, all of whom are U.S. citizens, moved to the
United Arab Emirates primarily to avoid the drugs and other problems
prevalent at the high school their son would soon attend in Los
Angeles, but also due to Hamdan's frustration with the FBI scrutiny to
which he'd been subject since 9/11.

On a return trip to the United States a few months later, Hamdan was
placed under intense FBI surveillance. Then, early this year, Lebanese
intelligence officers detained Hamdan at the Beirut airport,
interrogating and physically abusing him. In early August 2008, two
FBI agents who had flown in from Los Angeles interrogated Hamdan for
several hours at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi. About three weeks
later, U.A.E. State Security Forces took Hamdan from his home and held
him incommunicado for three months. Despite tearful pleas from his
wife (and subsequent evidence that U.S. Embassy officials were made
aware of his detention the day it happened), U.S. consular officials
didn't visit Hamdan in detention until mid-October. A month later,
Hamdan's wife and brother filed a habeas corpus petition in D.C.
court, claiming that the U.A.E. was holding Hamdan at the behest of
the U.S. government.

Within a week, Hamdan was transferred from State Security custody to a
prison in Abu Dhabi, and was charged with terrorism-related offenses.
Last week, Hamdan was finally allowed to call his brother from prison.
His stories were horrifying; Hamdan's captors kept him in a freezing
underground room, where they beat and tortured him. Not only was
Hamdan denied medication for his liver condition, but his torturers
specifically beat him in the location of his liver. Hamdan's torturers
beat him on the soles of his feet, subjected him to sleep deprivation,
and tortured him so severely that he often passed out from the pain.

Hamdan's wife and brother insist "that he's never had any terrorism
involvement or been charged with any crime despite the longtime FBI
scrutiny." His wife continues, "Naji hates war. He hates what happened
on September 11. He hates terrorism." The case is eerily reminiscent
of the U.S. government's treatment of Maher Arar, the Syrian-Canadian
who was rendered from JFK Airport to Syria, where he was brutally
tortured. We've posted about the Arar case here and I've written about
it here; after a Canadian commission of inquiry found that Arar had no
connection to terrorism, Condoleeza Rice admitted that the U.S.
government "didn't handle his case as it should have been." For those
of us who had hoped that our government had learned its lessons and
cleaned up its act, the Hamdan case is a sad reminder of how far we
have to go. And for Naji Hamdan and his family, the outrageously
senseless violence that destroyed their sense of security in their
home, faith in their government, and trust in humankind will stay with
them forever.

===

U.S. Citizen Severely Tortured While Detained in the United Arab
Emirates at the Behest of the United States

From: ACLU Online [mailto:ACLUOnline@aclu.org]


An American man detained in the United Arab Emirates at the behest of
the U.S. government was released from State Security custody -- where
he was detained incommunicado in a secret location -- and has been
transferred to a prison in Abu Dhabi after suffering severe torture.

Naji Hamdan's transfer came only one week after lawyers for the ACLU
filed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. government was responsible for
his detention.

On December 2nd, Naji Hamdan, who lived in the Los Angeles area for
more than two decades, was allowed a phone call to his brother, Hossam
Hamdan, a resident of Los Angeles. Hamdan reported to his brother that
officials transferred him to a regular prison on November 26 and that
his captors routinely beat him and kept him in a freezing underground
room during his months-long detention by State Security forces. The
torturers kicked him with their military boots in the location of his
liver, knowing that he has a liver condition. On some occasions, they
beat him so badly that Mr. Hamdan passed out for extended periods of
time and believed he would die. On at least one occasion, they
strapped his arms and legs down to an electric chair, while
threatening to use it.

Hamdan's description of the torture and interrogation he endured makes
clear that American agents have been involved. Although blindfolded by
his torturers, Hamdan reported that some of the interrogators spoke
native American English and were not fluent in Arabic. In addition,
the agents interrogated Hamdan on topics about which only U.S. federal
agents could have knowledge, such as a meeting he had with FBI agents.

The news of Hamdan's transfer comes after the ACLU filed a habeas
corpus petition in federal district court in Washington, D.C.,
alleging that the U.A.E. detained Hamdan at the behest of the U.S.
government. Last week, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered the
government to respond to the petition.

Hamdan, who was born in Lebanon, lived for more than two decades in
the Los Angeles area, where he ran an auto-parts business and helped
manage the Islamic Center of Hawthorne, a mosque and community center.
In 2006, he decided to relocate his family and business to the U.A.E

Hamdan's detention in the U.A.E. was the culmination of years of
surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). This
summer FBI agents traveled from Los Angeles to the U.A.E. to question
Hamdan further. Approximately three weeks later he was detained by
agents of the U.A.E. state security forces.

Hamdan's brother and others who know him from his activities at the
Islamic Center of Hawthorne have all said that he is a peaceful family
man who would never support violence.

If the U.S. government requested or participated in his detention and
torture in the U.A.E., the United States government has violated this
U.S. citizen's most elemental constitutional rights.

>>Take action: Tell your Members of Congress to help in the release of
Hamdan. Click on

https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=1161&page=UserAction