I spoke with BBC Radio Wales this morning about the Obama Administration's decision, more than two years after it promised to close Guantanamo Bay, to hold military tribunals for the detainees at the facility.
The item starts just after the 1:54:00 mark on the BBC iPlayer.
The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.
When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.
In the first trial in criminal court of a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was acquitted yesterday on 279 of 280 charges over the 1998 bombing of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
This, however, was not the most extraordinary news of the day. Instead, it was the reaction --- aided by a compliant US media --- that the case highlights "whether civilian courts are appropriate for trying terrorists". In other words, rights can only be upheld and due process of law observed when the outcome of Guilty is pre-ordained.
Indeed, if the media wanted to stand up to those trying to use the outcome to ensure that Guantanamo Bay remains open indefinitely, it might put forth the primary reason why it was not possible to establish Ghailani's guilt: evidence obtained by torture was not allowed by the trial judge.
Around a dozen men, who accused British security forces of colluding in their torture overseas, are to get millions in compensation from the UK government.
Some of the men, who are all British citizens or residents, were detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
At least six of them alleged UK forces were complicit in their torture before they arrived at Guantanamo.
As we went back and forth, I began to realize that it was impossible to know how much of his argument Eric Holder really believed, and how much he was merely willing to say. Like any good political appointee, he was prepared to defend the policy whether he liked it or not. And in that case, maybe it didn't matter what he supported; promoting the policy was supporting it. I was reminded of something one of his friends had told me, a former DOJ official who has known Holder since the beginning of his career: "Eric has this instinct to please. That's his weakness. He doesn't have to be told what to do—he's willing to do whatever it takes. It's his survival mechanism in Washington."
During the sentencing hearing, when Khadr should have had an opportunity to present mitigating facts, the judge barred the defense from presenting significant evidence of Khadr's ill-treatment while in custody. Additionally, because this case was a plea bargain, Khadr had to waive his right to appeal so none of the fundamental flaws of the military commission process that were a part of his case can be challenged.
Presented with an admission of guilt that Khadr had previously adamantly denied, and with the limited case the defense put forward, it is no wonder the jury returned the sentence they did. Although the plea agreement set a maximum of eight years, the military jury (which, following ordinary courts-martial practice, was not told of the plea bargain) handed down a sentence of 40 years --- 15 more than even the prosecution had asked for. Coupled with the eight years Khadr has already spent in US custody, it amounts to a 48-year sentence. This, for someone who was only 15 years old at the time he committed the crime.
Of the hundred or so prisoners seized in Pakistan — mostly in house raids, but also in random raids on mosques, on buses and in the street — all but these 40 have been released. The cases of those released reveal, in general, how US intelligence was often horrendously inaccurate, and how opportunism often played a part in the actions of the Pakistani authorities, who were being rewarded financially. As [Pakistan's] President Musharraf admitted in his 2006 autobiography, In the Line of Fire, in return for handing over 369 terror suspects to the US, “We have earned bounty payments totaling millions of dollars.”
Moreover, of the 13 men whose stories are described in this chapter, many appear to be victims of the same failures of intelligence or opportunism as those already released.
Of the 13 men whose stories are described in this chapter, only one has had a ruling on his habeas corpus petition, and, although successful, that ruling was overturned on appeal in July this year. One other man, the last Tajik in Guantánamo, was cleared for release before a judge could rule on his petition, and, of the rest, two are Afghans, two are Saudis (who were cleared for release under the Bush administration), and the rest are Yemenis. As with the Yemenis discussed in other articles, it is certain that some are amongst the 58 Yemenis cleared for release by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, who are only held because of the President’s unprincipled moratorium on releasing any Yemenis, which he announced in January.
Andy Worthington writes in the first of an eight-part series profiling the 176 detainees still at Guantanamo Bay:
The 20 prisoners listed below were the first group of prisoners seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. They have been identified as the “Dirty Thirty,” because of allegations that they served as bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, although these allegations have long been challenged by the prisoners and their attorneys, and by those who have studied the stories in detail, for three reasons: firstly, because the majority of the men had been in Afghanistan for such a short amount of time that it is inconceivable that they would have been trusted with such an important role; secondly, because one source of the allegations is Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was tortured at Guantánamo, and who later withdrew his false allegations; and thirdly, because two other sources of the allegations are Sharqwi Abdu Ali al-Hajj and Sanad Yislam Ali al-Kazimi, whose false confessions were recently exposed in a US court, in the habeas corpus petition of Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 18:58