Hundreds of Danish veterans and supporters staged a silent march on Jan. 31 from the historic Kastellet fortress to the US Embassy in Copenhagen as part of a “No Words” mobilization to protest recent US rhetoric that organizers said demeans Denmark’s combat contributions alongside American forces.

Organizers also linked the march to the status of Greenland, upholding the right of self-determination for the Danish island territory. Recent demands by President Donald Trump for US annexation of Greenland, and comments seeming to question the courage of Danish soldiers, have stirred a sense of betrayal for many in Denmark, particularly those who fought alongside US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The march gathered at the Monumentet for Danmarks Faldne (Monument to Denmark’s Fallen) inside Kastellet, began with one minute of silence before departure, and concluded with five minutes of silence at the embassy. Organizers advised attendees to wear their service medals and stated that flags and banners were welcome.

In published remarks, organizers stated that 52 Danish flags bearing the names of Danes killed in US-led post-9-11 operations would be planted in front of the embassy following the march. Participants then faced the embassy in silence to honor the fallen.

In an English-language address prepared for delivery outside the embassy, organizers recalled how Denmark “immediately” joined the international response after the invocation of NATO Article 5 following the World Trade Center attacks. Over 27,000 Danish soldiers served in US- and NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, with over 200 wounded and 52 killed. Denmark’s Armed Forces separately noted that 44 Danish soldiers died in Afghanistan while serving in NATO-led missions.

Greenland is governed under Denmark’s 2009 Act on Greenland Self-Government, which recognizes Greenland native inhabitants as a “people” under international law, with a right to self-determination, and sets out procedures for any future change in status. The march invoked core international law constraints, including the UN Charter prohibition on threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of states, and the centrality of self-determination to the international system.

In a Jan. 14 statement, UN experts urged the US to respect international law and Greenland’s right to self-determination, warning that rhetoric suggesting plans to “take” or control the territory undermines the UN Charter and international order. Protesters similarly accused the US of failing to respect alliances and the rule of law, emphasizing Denmark’s sacrifices in post-9-11 coalition missions and Greenlanders’ right to determine their political future.

Denmark and Greenland leaders have adamantly rejected US designs on the territory following the US appointment of a special envoy to Greenland in December. Last month, President Trump threatened tariffs on EU and Nordic countries that do not support his efforts to annex Greenland, but has since walked back his threat.

From JURIST, Feb. 2. Used with permission. Internal links added.

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The Migrant Operations Center at the Naval Station Guantánamo Bay was originally opened in 1991 to hold Haitian migrants, and predates the detention camp established at the base after the events of 9-11 to hold “illegal enemy combatants.” Guantánamo gained a grim reputation during the years it was heavily used to hold “enemy combatants” after 9-11, becoming known for what rights groups called extralegal and inhumane conditions. Since then, especially through efforts under the administrations of presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the number of detainees held there has dwindled to 15.

The new plan for the Migrant Operations Center comes amid the Trump administration’s harsh crackdown on undocumented immigrants living in the US. This will be the first mass-deportation to Guantánamo since Trump signed an executive order on his first days in office ordering the secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Guantanamo to full capacity. The center can hold up to 30,000 detainees. Trump’s executive order and the newly released documents indicate that the facility will be used to hold undocumented migrants temporarily until they are transferred to their countries of origin.

Politico and the Washington Post reported that this plan has only come together in the last few days, and may be subject to change. Also at issue is a class-action lawsuit pending in Washington DC, Luna Gutierrez v. Noem, in which civil rights groups are calling for the courts to declare holding immigrants at Guantánamo illegal and unconstitutional. The lawsuit cites 10 immigrant detainees who experienced conditions such as insufficient food and rodent infestations at Guantánamo Bay.

From JURIST, June 11. Used with permission.

Photo: Spc. Cody Black/WikiMedia via Jurist

After being captured near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, al-Yazidi was assigned Internment Serial Number 38, and became one of the first detainees held at Guantánamo when the facility opened in 2002. According to a 2007 assessment by the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO), he was considered a representative of al-Qaeda in Tunisia. Additionally, al-Yazidi fought in Bosnia and maintained extensive connections with high-ranking members of al-Qaeda, such as Osama bin Laden. The assessment described him as a high-risk detainee. However, these assessments were repeatedly called into question by national security and intelligence agencies, as well as federal courts in his habeas corpus petitions, due to their reliance on claims from other detainees, some of whom may have provided information under coercion or to curry favor.

In 2005, al-Yazidi was sentenced in absentia by a military court in Tunisia under the country’s 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law for his suppose involvement with a terrorist organization. The court issued a 20-year prison term, along with additional years of administrative surveillance and the revocation of his civil rights. Since his transfer to Guantánamo on Jan. 11, 2002, al-Yazidi has been regarded as one of the most dangerous prisoners, known for his hostility toward prison guards. Under former president Barack Obama’s administration, al-Yazidi was placed on a list of detainees who could not be prosecuted, making him eligible for release. However, his repatriation to Tunisia remained unresolved for years, as the security situation there was deemed unsuitable for his return. Despite this, al-Yazidi consistently refused to be transferred to any other country.

The Defense Department’s news release stated that 26 detainees remain at Guantánamo Bay, with 14 cleared for transfer, three for review, seven before military commissions, and two convicted.

From JURIST, Jan. 1. Used with permission.

Note: In the nearly 23 years the Guantánamo detention center has been operating, a total of 780 prisoners have been held there. Nine men have died at the facility, and the two convicts being held there are among a total of eight detainees convicted by military tribunals, with four of those convictions later overturned. (Reprieve, NYT)

Photo: Spc. Cody Black/WikiMedia via Jurist

In the letter, prosecutors wrote:

In exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three Accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet, and to be later sentenced by a panel of military officers.

The deal immediately provoked controversy, spurring US lawmakers to demand answers from the White House, which denied any involvement in, and actively distanced itself from, the negotiations.

Austin then intervened, writing to in a letter addressed to Susan Escallier, a retired brigadier general serving as Convening Authority for Military Commissions:

I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009. Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself.

In the military prosecutors’ letters to victims’ families, they addressed the controversial nature of a plea deal in such a case, stating:

We recognize that the status of the case in general, and this news in particular, will understandably and appropriately elicit intense emotion, and we also realize that the decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement will be met with mixed reactions amongst the thousands of family members who lost loved ones. The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement after 12 years of pre-trial litigation was not reached lightly; however, it is our collective, reasoned, and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in this case.

In informing the White House of the decision to investigate, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight & Accountability, cited the spouse of a 9-11 victim who expressed some of what the prosecutors had anticipated:

I am angry and disappointed that enemy combatants who killed thousands of Americans in our homeland are now able to exploit the US judicial system to their benefit, receiving support from American taxpayers for shelter, food, and healthcare for the rest of their lives.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which was representing Mohammed and others facing the death penalty for the 9-11 attacks, had lauded the initial plea agreement, stating it was the “right call” and the “only practical solution” after nearly 20 years of pre-trial litigation. “For too long, the US has repeatedly defended its use of torture and unconstitutional military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay. The military commissions were doomed from the start and the government’s torture of these defendants makes this plea both necessary and just,” the ACLU said in a statement released in response to the prosecutors’ letter.

The use of torture at Guantanamo Bay detention camp was a controversial aspect of the US government’s response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks. “Enhanced interrogation techniques,” broadly considered to have qualified as torture, were employed on detainees suspected of terrorism. The Bybee Memo, written in 2002 by Justice Department official Jay Bybee, provided legal justification for these techniques by narrowly defining torture and arguing that the executive branch had broad authority in matters of national security.

Photo: Pixabay via Jurist

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Photo: governor of Moscow Oblast via Wikimedia Commons

A group of armed men opened fire at a concert hall in a Moscow suburb on the night of March 22, killing at least 133 people and injuring scores more. Video footage posted online showed at least two masked men in camo entering the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, repeatedly firing assault rifles as they advance. Another graphic video appears to show four men firing into the crowd in the seating area before a fire breaks out. The crowd was waiting for the popular Russian rock band Piknik to take the stage. After a few minutes of shooting, a grenade or an incendiary bomb was apparently thrown, and the venue was engulfed in flame. Footage published by the official TASS news agency showed a column of smoke billowing from the roof of the venue.

Later that day, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, Afghanistan affiliate of the ultra-fundamentalist movement, claimed responsibility for the attack in a post on the Telegram channel of the ISIS media arm, Amaq News Agency. The statement said ISIS-K attacked “a large gathering of Christians in the city of Krasnogorsk on the outskirts of the Russian capital of Moscow, killing and wounding hundreds.” (The Moscow Times, NYT, CBS News, CNN)

Undeterred, Russian authorities are of course blaming the attack on Ukraine. The Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the next day that four suspects had been detained in Bryansk, near the Ukrainian border, and said that they had been attempting to flee to Ukraine. (Jurist, Azerbaycan24, AKI) Russian pro-war social media channels have been (approvingly) posting images of the suspects being tortured and even mutilated by the FSB, including grisly shots of one with his ear cut off. (Trigger warning: The Insider)

Russian Security Council deputy chair and former president Dmitry Medvedev (seemingly the regime’s mouthpiece for the most bellicose verbiage) immediately took to Telegram, saying: “If it is established that these are terrorists of the Kyiv regime, all of them must be found and ruthlessly destroyed as terrorists.”

President Vladimir Putin himself shortly echoed this, saying the “perpetrators of the act of terror, all those who shot and killed people, were found and detained. They tried to hide and were moving in the direction of Ukraine, where according to preliminary information, the Ukrainian side prepared a window for them to cross the border.” (DW, The Guardian)

Putin also pledged revenge: “We will identify and punish everyone who was behind the terrorist attack.” (Al Jazeera)

And Russian far-right oligarch Konstantin Malofeev called for a nuclear strike. “Let’s give the civilian population of Ukraine 48 hours to leave the cities and finally end this war with the victorious defeat of the enemy. Using all forces and means,” Malofeev wrote on Telegram. (WaPo)

Kyiv’s Foreign Ministry responded in a statement, saying: “We consider such accusations to be a planned provocation by the Kremlin to further fuel anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russian society, create conditions for increased mobilization of Russian citizens to participate in the criminal aggression against our country and discredit Ukraine in the eyes of the international community.”

But the intelligence directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry just as quickly and just as predictably accused the Russian secret services of carrying out the attack. “The terrorist attack in Moscow was a planned and deliberate provocation by the Russian special services on Putin’s orders,” the intelligence directorate said in an official statement, adding that the aim was to “further escalate and expand the war” with Ukraine. (TRT World, Politico)

The mysterious Freedom of Russia Legion, which the previous week had carried out cross-border raids from Ukrainian territory on Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk oblasts, also wasted no time in blaming the Kremlin, saying in a social-media statement hours after the attack: “We accuse Putin’s terrorist regime of today’s tragedy. We have faced similar manifestations of the Kremlin’s dictatorship since the very first days of Putin’s rule and are not surprised by yet another bloody provocation.” (Kyiv Independent, Ukrainska Pravda)

Washington is backing up the notion of ISIS responsibility, and denying a Ukrainian role in the attack. Interestingly, the US had apparently warned Moscow of an impending attack just days earlier. US National Security Council representative Adrienne Watson told CBS News after the attack: “Earlier this month, the US government had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow—potentially targeting large gatherings, to include concerts—which prompted the State Department to issue a public advisory to Americans in Russia. The US government also shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding ‘duty to warn’ policy.”

The Security Alert, dated March 7, remains on the website of the US Embassy in Russia. It reads: “The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours.”

Yet security at the Crocus City Hall was so lax that masked and camo-clad militants bearing assault rifles could approach and enter the venue with no opposition. This inevitably raises the possibility of a LIHOP thesis. Followers of 9-11 conspiracy theory will be familiar with this acronym for “Let It Happen On Purpose”—as opposed to its more ambitious counterpart Make It Happen On Purpose (MIHOP).

But Putin’s response to the warnings at the time was to dismiss them as “provocative statements” that “resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” (BBC News) This constitutes an insinuation, at least, that Washington was behind, or at least complicit in, the attack.

Let’s review the factors in support of or against these three theses—an ISIS attack, a Ukrainian covert operation, or a Russian “false flag” operation. Or four, if we include the insinuated theory of a US hand in the attack.

Is there anything that might make Piknik a special target for either side? In 2016, the band was barred from performing in Ukraine due to their having played a gig in annexed Crimea. However, the band does not seem to be particularly pro-war or pro-Putin. (RIA Novosti, MSNBC) But then, ISIS presumably had no special beef with Ariana Grande in the Manchester concert bombing in 2017. Killing some 20 English youth seemed to have been sufficient motivation. Russia’s military devastation of Afghanistan in the 1980s doubtless provides an extra incentive for ISIS-K.

Plausible video footage of the attack released by ISIS March 24 appears to further substantiate the group’s culpability. (NDTV)

It’s important to recall that Putin’s rise to power, including his recent rise to outright autocratic power, as well as his various military adventures, have been lubricated every step of the way by terror attacks. The 1999 apartment block bombings in Moscow and two other Russian cities did for Putin what 9-11 did for Bush, igniting a new war with Chechnya, propelling the hardline Putin into the Kremlin—and similarly sparking a frenzy of conspiracy theories. These have been recalled in subsequent terror attacks in the Russian Federation. Certainly, a vicious cycle is at work: blowback for the brutal Chechnya war was seen in the October 2002 deadly siege of a Moscow theater by Chechen militants, in which some 130 hostages were killed.

September 2004 saw the deadly schoolhouse siege in Beslan, in the North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia, which resulted in the deaths of more than 330 people, the majority of them children. This attack was proudly claimed by Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev. But it certainly well served Putin’s quest for total power. Encyclopedia Britannica recalls:

In the wake of these attacks, Putin introduced new and sweeping counterterrorism measures. He also proposed that regional governors—such as those in North Ossetia and Chechnya—no longer be popularly elected but instead be appointed by the president, subject to endorsement by regional legislatures, which the president would be empowered to dissolve if they rejected his nominations on two occasions. The legislation, which was approved by overwhelming majorities in both houses of the national legislature, returned Russia to the unitary system of government that had existed prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Elections for regional governors were restored in response to pressure from below in 2012—by Medvedev, during the period when he was rotated into the presidency as Putin’s proxy to get around constitutional term limits. (Al Jazeera) Putin, restored to the presidency that same year, has recently been taking steps to rein in or remove recalcitrant governors, and has pushed through a constitutional reform allowing him to stay in office indefinitely—both moves part of his consolidating dictatorship.

Which is why who was actually behind the Crocus City Center attack does not really matter overmuch. Just as 9-11—whoever was behind it—served the hyper-interventionist aims of Dubya Bush and his administration, we may be reasonably certain that the carnage in Krasnogorsk will serve the war aims and totalitarian domestic agenda of Vladimir Putin.

Indeed, on March 24, Russia launched massive air-strikes on Kyiv and the whole of Ukraine, clear to the western city of Lviv. (BBC News)

Perhaps the still more apt analogy may prove be to Germany’s February 1933 Reichstag Fire. The lone communist who was executed for the arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, was postumously pardoned by the German state in 2008. But given everything that came next, does the question of his guilt or innocence make that much difference?

We may be at another such historical tipping point now.

Image: Wikipedia

Also in 2016, human rights organization Reprieve and Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss law firm filed a habeas corpus petition demanding Gul’s release. In October 2021, the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the US “no longer has a legal basis to justify the continued detention,” having found that Gul had been a member of HIA but not of al-Qaeda. The court ordered his release. In April 2022, Gul’s lawyers moved to hold the US government in contempt for not complying with the court’s order.

The US Supreme Court ruled in 2008 in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo Bay detainees have a right to petition a habeas corpus writ. Gul was the first such detainee to win a habeas case in 10 years.

Reprieve stated that Gul did not have access to a lawyer for the first nine years of his incarceration despite making numerous appeals for legal representation. The group also stated that Gul had suffered severe physical and psychological torture during his detention, including being beaten, suspended by his wrists, deprived of food and water, and prevented from praying. He was also subjected to sleep deprivation, extreme cold temperatures, and solitary confinement.

Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, also announced Gul’s release and stated that he was one of the last two Afghan detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

Human rights organizations have reported multiple human rights violations at Guantánamo Bay over the years.

From Jurist, June 26. Used with permission.

Notes: The HIA was allied with the Taliban insurgency, but its leadership was granted impunity with the 2016 peace deal.

Gul has been repatriated to Afghanistan via Qatar. (NYT)

The last Guantánamo detainee to win a habeas case was Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni, who died at Guantánamo in 2012 after his release order was overturned by a US appeals court.

Photo: Gino Reyes/Wikimedia Commons

In the 20 years the detention center has been operating, a total of 780 prisoners have been held there, with 39 detainees remaining today. Of those, only nine have been charged or convicted.

The experts described the facility as a site of the systematic use of torture, and of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of the prisoners detained there. They also said the prison is a symbol of the lack of accountability for “state-sponsored torture.” They expressed concern for the aging and ill prisoners, many of whom lack adequate medical assistance or rehabilitation for the torture they suffered. The experts called on the US to close the site and return the detainees home, or to safe third countries.

They also expressed concern that military commissions were continuing with pre-trial proceedings on motions to suppress the evidence of torture. They said there is a need for openness in the trials and called for transparency and fairness. They specifically highlighted “the failures of the United States judicial system to play a meaningful role in protecting human rights…and enabling a legal black hole to thrive in Guantanamo with their apparent approval and support.”

On Jan. 9, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University released a paper on the costs of US detentions and interrogations since 9-11. It noted that no US official has been held accountable for the creation or authorization of the detention programs. It called for bold action from President Biden, starting with the closing of the facility at Guantánamo Bay. It also said the president should authorize the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to hold the authors of the program to account, and recommends an official apology and remedies to the victims.

From Jurist, Jan. 10. Used with permission.

Photo via Jurist

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