From Guantánamo Bay to Putin's Prisons

by Aisha Maniar, One Small Window

Rasul Kudaev, a Russian national from the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (KBR) in the North Caucasus region, has spent almost all of the 21st century behind bars in prisons on three different continents—yet no substantive evidence has ever been produced to link him to any criminal offense. On December 23, 2014, he was convicted in Russia's longest-running contemporary criminal case, a show trial lasting over nine years. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Afghan & US Detention
In 2001, then aged 23, Rasul Kudaev left home to study Islam in Pakistan. Travelling via Afghanistan, after the outbreak of the war that year with the US and allied forces, he was captured by the Northern Alliance. In a prisoner uprising in November 2001, he sustained a bullet wound to his right hip; due to inadequate medical attention ever since, the bullet remains lodged there, making it difficult for him to walk and causes him frequent pain.

He was sold to the US military who held him at the Kandahar detention center, before being taken to Guantánamo Bay in mid-February 2002. The US accused him of being a member of an Uzbek militant group and fighting for the Taliban but he was quickly deemed to have no "valuable or tactically exploitable" information of use to the US military, or affiliation to the Taliban. He was cleared for release by the end of that year.

Interview with a Young Kurdish Revolutionary

by Eleanor Finley, Institute for Social Ecology

In the last year, the small Syrian city of Kobane and its gender-liberated, stateless revolution has captured the attention of Leftists across the world. The following interview was conducted with Sherhad Naaima, a young revolutionary from Kobane and a student of Ocalan's thinking. It offers a brief account of his experiences as well as some reflections on the Rojava Revolution, social ecology, and Turkey's recent betrayal of the Kurdish Movement.

What was it like growing up in West Kurdistan? What does your family do?

I was born in 1991 to a Kurdish family in a village outside of Kobane. Kobane is a part of the Aleppo Governorate in Syria. My father is a worker, but he could not find a job in Kobane, so my family traveled to Damascus. There I studied English literature at Damascus University and my eldest brother became a journalist. But once the war and violence sparked, we left our studies and returned to our village.

Is the Army Turning a Blind Eye to Murder?

by Jason Gutierrez, IRIN

MANILA — Has the Philippine army been in cahoots with armed groups accused of murdering civilians in the southern region of Mindanao? That's the focus of an investigation the government has finally agreed to undertake.

Responding to pressure inside and outside the country, including from the United Nations, the government said on September 22 that it would probe the killings of three indigenous rights activists earlier this month. Now, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima has said the investigation will be broadened to look into the wider roles of paramilitaries and their supporters.

An Interview with Bill Weinberg

by Andy Heintz, Balkan Witness

Questioning US Support for Tokyo's National Security Moves

by Craig Martin, Jurist

On August 30, tens of thousands of Japanese citizens demonstrated outside of the Diet (parliament), and in other cities across Japan, protesting against draft national security legislation that would expand the permissible operations of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF). The bills are the culmination of an effort by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to expand Japan's role in international collective security efforts. To do so, however, the government has sought to "reinterpret" Japan's constitutional limits on the use of military force, in a manner that circumvents the formal constitutional amendment process, and thereby undermines the rule of law and constitutionalism in Japan.

It is this process as much as the substance of the bills that has provoked the protests and triggered a constitutional crisis in Japan. Yet these developments have been largely welcomed in US policy circles. The objectives may be in America's short-term interest, but a deeper understanding of the issues and a longer-term perspective would caution against US endorsement of this illegitimate process.

Abuses Rise Along with Pro-Government Militias

by Bethany Matta, IRIN

KUNDUZ — When 30 Kalashnikov-toting men came to Mohammad Miakhil's house demanding he donate a large sum of money and three tons of wheat to their Afghan government-aligned militia, he knew it was time to leave. "They gave us two hours to pay," said Miakhil. "If not, they would set our house on fire and kill my family."

Miakhil could not afford to hand over such a large portion of his harvest and 120,000 afghanis (about $1,000), so his family joined the exodus from Khanabad, a district in northern Kunduz province that has become a frontline in the war between the Taliban and government forces.

by Philippa Garson, IRIN

NEW YORK — Fleeing gang violence in his hometown near San Pedro Sulas in Honduras, 14-year-old Gredys Alexander Hernández tried to reach safety in the United States, only to be intercepted in Mexico and sent back. Two days later, just as he was about to re-attempt the journey, masked gangsters burst into his house and shot him dead.

Honduran police say Hernández was murdered because he had witnessed gangsters killing his sister's boyfriend. The authorities in Honduras say he failed to tell staff at the migrant processing center there that his life would be in danger if he was sent home.

Hernández's story illustrates how mechanisms put in place to stop an unprecedented influx of unaccompanied minors from Central America to the southern US border—which peaked last summer—are failing scores of children fleeing violence in their native countries.

How an EU Asylum Rule 'Results in Death'

by Kristy Siegfried, IRIN

OXFORD — On Aug. 27, Austrian police opened the back of a truck abandoned on the side of a motorway to find the bodies of 71 migrants. They had suffocated after paying smugglers to transport them across the border from neighboring Hungary. The bodies were so decomposed it took a day to determine the number of dead.

Some, perhaps all, were Syrian refugees, most likely trying to reach Germany. Despite having made it into the EU's passport-free Schengen zone, they still felt the need to travel clandestinely to avoid being fingerprinted and registered for asylum in Hungary, which would have offered them few opportunities to work or integrate.

"This tragedy comes as a cruel reminder that the Dublin Regulation results in death," commented Hungarian NGO Migszol in a blog posted shortly after the news broke. "What we need is a safe passage through our country, and for that, we need to fight the European legislation."