A few weeks ago, Truthout published an article that examined a number of instances of water torture, including evidence of near-drowning, on prisoners held by the Department of Defense. A second article, with further documentation, including cases other cases of submersion in water and also extreme forms of “water dousing,” will be coming out soon. But not everything can be squeezed into even two articles.

The British press is reporting that ten major human rights and anti-torture organizations have announced they will not be cooperating or participating in the United Kingdom Torture Inquiry, headed by Sir Peter Gibson. The organizations, who sent a letter on August 3 to Sara Carnegie, Solicitor to the Detainee Inquiry, cited a lack of transparency and credibility in the proposed investigation, noting, “Plainly an Inquiry conducted in the way that you describe and in accordance with the Protocol would not comply with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed an appeal for the families of two of the three men who died in mysterious circumstances in June 2006. The U.S. government called it “asymmetrical warfare” by the detainees, who are said to have killed themselves in some belief that would hurt the U.S. government. As bizarre as that theory is, Defense Department investigations found the men committed suicide in a multiple, timed series of three planned suicides.

The WikiLeaks Guantanamo Files database has some significant omissions, not least the misidentification of detainee 990 as someone else. Detainee 990 was really Abdurahman Khadr and a CIA asset sent to Guantanamo to spy on his brother Omar Khadr and other prisoners. Another missing file concerns former U.S. citizen Yaser Hamdi, whose case was famously taken all the way to the Supreme Court.

According to information at the Reprieve web site, “Chadian citizen, Mohammed el Gharani was the youngest prisoner in Guantánamo Bay, arrested when he was just 14. In January 2009, a federal judge ordered his release and he was returned to Chad in June 2009.”

After his release, Gharani told the Miami Herald that after Barack Obama became president, his treatment did not get any better, including being beaten by a rubber baton and tear-gassed. During the years of his detention, he was subjected to solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and suspension from his wrists at least 30 times.

First Gitmo Habeas Case Makes Way To SCOTUS; it will be an important bellwether to see if the Court accepts cert and, if so, what they do with the case.

The Obama administration had been cleared to effect the deportation of cleared Guantanamo prisoner Abdul Aziz Naji by no less than the Supreme Court, who rejected a lower court order blocking the action. What hasn’t been reported thus far is the role of Congress, who was mandated to have advance notice of the transfer. Meanwhile, in Algeria, Naji told the press about torture and the drugging of prisoners at Guantanamo.

The full text of Omar Khadr’s letter to his attorney from Guantanamo, with commentary. “Dennis you always say that I have an obligation to show the world what is going on down here and it seems that we’ve done every thing but the world doesn’t get it….”

Andy Worthington is posting portions of the United Nations’ “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” a detailed, 186-page report issued last February. The UN report was hardly reported by either the U.S. press or the blogosphere, and deserves wide dissemination.

Lt. Col. Frakt, who was the lead defense counsel in the Guantanamo military commissions trials of Mohammed Jawad and Ali al Bahlul, has written an important analysis of the President Obama’s new military commission rules. These rules, released without public comment and only a day before the trial was to start in the case of former child soldier, Omar Khadr, rewrite law in order to prosecute “war crimes”, even where none exist.