Archive for April, 2010

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In an attempt to raise awareness of the importance of the rulings being made in US courts on the habeas corpus petitions of the prisoners held at Guantánamo (as authorized by a significant Supreme Court ruling in June 2008), I’m devoting most of my work this week to articles covering the 47 cases decided to date (34 of which have been won by the prisoners), as a series entitled, “Guantánamo Habeas Week.” Note (April 23): Given the scope of this project, I’ve now expanded it to “Guantánamo Habeas Fortnight.”

Although I have covered the 47 cases in detail over the last 19 months, I had not, until now, followed the example of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Washington Independent and the Miami Herald, who have all produced “Habeas Corpus Scorecards.” As a result, this series kicks off with my own list, providing links to my analyses of the rulings, to the judges’ own unclassified opinions, and, where relevant, to my articles covering the prisoners’ release from Guantánamo, and progress reports on a handful of appeals.

Throughout the week, following an article examining the case of Yasin Ismail, a Yemeni who recently lost his habeas petition (whose publication slightly preempted the start of this series), I’ll be publishing two articles analyzing the unclassified opinions in the cases of Mohamedou Ould Salahi (aka Slahi), a Mauritanian who recently won his habeas petition despite being considered one of the most significant prisoners in Guantánamo, and Mukhtar al-Warafi, a Yemeni who lost his habeas petition (I wrote about the initial rulings here). I will also analyze the judge’s opinions in the cases of four more Yemenis: Saeed Hatim, who won his habeas petition in December last year, Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, who won his habeas petition in February, and Suleiman al-Nahdi and Fahmi al-Assani, who lost their habeas petitions in February (the Hatim ruling was initially discussed here, and the other three were discussed here). If time allows, I will also examine a few other opinions that were not available when I wrote articles based on the judges’ verdicts. Note (May 4): See here for an article analyzing the unclassified opinion in the case of Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed (which includes a lengthy analysis of the torture of Binyam Mohamed).

I remain impressed that the judges involved have ruled in the prisoners’ favor in 34 of the 47 cases (that’s 72 percent of the total), especially as they have exposed, in the most objective manner available, the lack of oversight in the Justice Department (first under Bush and now under Obama) regarding pursuing cases that should have been dropped, as well as persistent obstruction by the Justice Department when it comes to providing material necessary for the prisoners’ defense.

Moreover, the judges’ rulings have also revealed the alarming flimsiness of most of the material presented by the government as evidence. Primarily, the judges have exposed that the government has been relying, to an extraordinary extent, on confessions extracted through the torture or coercion of the prisoners themselves, or through the torture, coercion or bribery of other prisoners, either in Guantánamo, the CIA’s secret prisons, or proxy prisons run on behalf of the CIA in other countries.

Sadly, these rulings have not, for the most part, been covered by the mainstream media with anything like the dedication that they deserve. This is distressing, because the rulings are, to be frank, the single most important collection of documents analyzing the failures of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” detention policies — and Obama’s refusal, or inability to thoroughly repudiate them.

As part of the judges’ revelations that the majority of the supposed evidence is actually based on the torture, coercive interrogations or voluntary “confessions” of the prisoners (in exchange for better conditions of confinement), what has also emerged, to reinforce research undertaken by myself and by staff and students at the Seton Hall Law School, is that the majority of the prisoners were not, for the most part, seized by US forces “on the battlefield,” as senior Bush administration officials claimed, but were, instead, mainly rounded up by the US military’s allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, at a time when bounty payments were widespread, and were never adequately screened at the time of capture to determine whether or not they had ever been engaged in any kind of combat.

Just as troubling, however, are the justifications for continuing to hold the majority of the prisoners who lost their habeas petitions, as they reveal that the basis for doing so — the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and maintained as a justification by President Obama — was, and is a deeply flawed document, which fails to distinguish between a small group of genuine terrorists (al-Qaeda) and a considerably larger group of men (and boys) associated with the Taliban. The result is that men continue to be consigned to indefinite detention, on an apparently sound legal basis, even though they were only peripherally involved with the military conflict in Afghanistan to secure the fall of the Taliban, and should, all along, have been held (if at all) as prisoners of war, and protected by the Geneva Conventions.

And in the meantime, of course, the real terror suspects — 35 of those held, according to the Obama administration’s interagency Task Force, which reviewed their cases last year — await either civilian court trials (Eric Holder’s preference) or trials by Military Commission (following one of Obama’s weakest concessions to Congressional cooperation), and 47 others, judged by the Task Force as prisoners who should continue to be held indefinitely, because of fundamental weaknesses in the supposed evidence against them, must wait and see if the courts agree with the government’s assessment when their own habeas petitions are examined by District Court judges.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

The introduction to “Guantánamo Habeas Week” was discussed in detail by Jeff Kaye on Firedoglake and Invictus, by Kelly Vlahos at Antiwar.com, which also posted a link on its front page, and by Jeff Farias, and was cross-posted on The Public Record, Eurasia Review, The World Can’t Wait, War Criminals Watch, Campaign for Liberty, Global Research, The Lift: Legal Issues in the Fight against Terrorism, Uruknet, Cageprisoners, New Left Project, Political Theatrics, Countercurrents, Zinmag Chronicle and The Ruthless Truth. It was also mentioned in a round-up of news on Foreign Policy‘s website, by Reprieve, and on Democratic Underground. In addition, the full list was cross-posted on The Public Record, The World Can’t Wait, New Left Project and War Criminals Watch, and was linked to in a banner headline on Cageprisoners’ front page.

For a sequence of articles dealing with the Guantánamo habeas cases, see: Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: the most important habeas corpus case in modern history and Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? (both December 2007), The Supreme Court’s Guantánamo ruling: what does it mean? (June 2008), Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland (Uighurs’ first court victory, June 2008), What’s Happening with the Guantánamo cases? (July 2008), Government Says Six Years Is Not Long Enough To Prepare Evidence (September 2008), From Guantánamo to the United States: The Story of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs (October 2008), Guantánamo Uyghurs’ resettlement prospects skewered by Justice Department lies (October 2008), Guilt By Torture: Binyam Mohamed’s Transatlantic Quest for Justice (November 2008), After 7 Years, Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo Kidnap Victims (November 2008), Is Robert Gates Guilty of Perjury in Guantánamo Torture Case? (December 2008), A New Year Message to Barack Obama: Free the Guantánamo Uighurs (January 2009), The Top Ten Judges of 2008 (January 2009), No End in Sight for the “Enemy Combatants” of Guantánamo (January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (January 2009), How Cooking For The Taliban Gets You Life In Guantánamo (January 2009), Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics (February 2009), Bad News And Good News For The Guantánamo Uighurs (February 2009), The Nobodies Formerly Known As Enemy Combatants (March 2009), Farce at Guantánamo, as cleared prisoner’s habeas petition is denied (April 2009), Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Judge Condemns “Mosaic” Of Guantánamo Intelligence, And Unreliable Witnesses (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), Guantánamo: A Prison Built On Lies (May 2009), Free The Guantánamo Uighurs! (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part One): Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies (July 2009), Obama’s Failure To Deliver Justice To The Last Tajik In Guantánamo (July 2009), Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think (July 2009), How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave (August 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Kuwaiti Charity Worker (August 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Two): Obama’s Shame (August 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Three): Obama’s Continuing Shame (August 2009), No Escape From Guantánamo: The Latest Habeas Rulings (September 2009), First Guantánamo Prisoner To Lose Habeas Hearing Appeals Ruling (September 2009), A Truly Shocking Guantánamo Story: Judge Confirms That An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions (September 2009), 75 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 31 Could Leave Today (September 2009), Resisting Injustice In Guantánamo: The Story Of Fayiz Al-Kandari (October 2009), Justice Department Pointlessly Gags Guantánamo Lawyer (November 2009), Judge Orders Release Of Algerian From Guantánamo (But He’s Not Going Anywhere) (November 2009), Innocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released In Kuwait (December 2009), What Does It Take To Get Out Of Obama’s Guantánamo? (December 2009), “Model Prisoner” at Guantánamo, Tortured in the “Dark Prison,” Loses Habeas Corpus Petition (December 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Unwilling Yemeni Recruit (December 2009), Serious Problems With Obama’s Plan To Move Guantánamo To Illinois (December 2009), Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights (January 2010), Fear and Paranoia as Guantánamo Marks its Eighth Anniversary (January 2010), Rubbing Salt in Guantánamo’s Wounds: Task Force Announces Indefinite Detention (January 2010), The Black Hole of Guantánamo (March 2010), Guantánamo Uighurs Back in Legal Limbo (March 2010).

Also see: Justice extends to Bagram, Guantánamo’s Dark Mirror (April 2009), Judge Rules That Afghan “Rendered” To Bagram In 2002 Has No Rights (July 2009), Bagram Isn’t The New Guantánamo, It’s The Old Guantánamo (August 2009), Obama Brings Guantánamo And Rendition To Bagram (And Not The Geneva Conventions) and Is Bagram Obama’s New Secret Prison? (both September 2009), Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List (January 2010), Bagram: Graveyard of the Geneva Conventions (February 2010).

Such is the prevailing disregard for the fate of the 183 prisoners remaining in Guantánamo that last week, when Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, submitted a declaration in a case brought by a former prisoner, in which he stated, unambiguously, that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld all knew — and didn’t care — that “the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent,” almost no one noticed that one of the remaining 183 men had just lost his habeas corpus petition in a US court.

Only JURIST mentioned the one-page ruling by Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., denying the habeas petition of Yasin Qasem Muhammad Ismail, a Yemeni prisoner, even though it brought to 13 the victories secured by the government in the habeas litigation (in contrast to the 34 victories secured by the prisoners themselves).

Judge Kennedy’s unclassified opinion is not yet available, but this seems to me to be a poor excuse for not attempting to present something of Ismail’s story. Given that he was just 22 years old at the time of his capture in late 2001 (or 19, according to his lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who claimed that the government had incorrectly recorded the year of his birth as 1979 instead of 1982), it is highly unlikely that there is any truth to allegations that “An individual identified [him] as the Emir of the Bagram front in July 2001 and as being proficient with mines,” or that, as another unidentified “individual” stated, he was “a commander of a military group.”

These are the kinds of allegations that plague the government’s supposed evidence, and in the majority of the 34 habeas petitions decided in favor of the prisoners, judges have been swift to deride claims like these as unreliable, noting, after being given access to interrogation logs and other related material, that they were obtained through the torture, coercion or bribery of other prisoners or of the prisoners themselves.

This does not detract from the fact that Ismail was in Afghanistan at the time of his capture, and that he had, apparently, been there for around two years. Discerning the truth from the shifting allegations over the years — and from Ismail’s confusing appearances before a military tribunal and a military review board — is not easy, but it also seems probable that he attended the al-Farouq training camp, traveled with others to the Tora Bora mountains, where a showdown took place between al-Qaeda and US forces in November and December 2001, and where he was eventually captured, and, on three occasions while he was in Afghanistan, saw Osama bin Laden make speeches.

In his defense, however, Ismail claimed in his tribunal:

I was not in Tora Bora for more than one day. When the attacks took place, I was not in Kabul, I was in Kandahar. When I went to Kabul, my plan was to go back. I was going to go from Kabul back to Yemen in the hot season. The first day I got to Kabul, I went to the market. Some Afghani people picked me up and said they were security. They drove me to a city that I didn’t know. They took me to a house. I found out I was kidnapped and the people were not security. The house I stayed in was watched. I was told if I left they would kill me. From the first attack until the 26th day of Ramadan. They told me they would take me to a house with Arabs in it. They took me to an Afghani place in Tora Bora. I stayed there one day and they brought a wounded person and another guy called Khaled Egani. They were going to treat the wounded man and then we were all going to go back to Yemen. From there they sold me to the Americans.

This is an unlikely explanation of how Ismail came to be captured, but it is not completely implausible, as there are other documented examples of prisoners being seized by Afghans and held in houses until they were sold either to the Northern Alliance, who then sold them to the US, or to the US directly, and it was a predictable result of a bounty system that offered $5,000 a head for al-Qaeda or Taliban suspects in one of the poorest countries in the world.

In addition, there are problems of ill-treatment — and possibly torture — in Ismail’s case, even though it is probable that Judge Kennedy concluded that his own statements to his tribunal and to one of his annual review boards in Guantánamo were sufficient to find that he was connected to al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban and could continue to be held indefinitely.

At his tribunal in 2004, for example, almost his first words were, “I will talk with you as long as you guarantee me there will be no torture. If it will affect my safety I will say nothing.” He proceeded to explain how, “whenever we spoke to the interrogators we were punished,” and added:

We were hit and tortured. Not only did I get hit and punched, they broke my nose. The Americans did this to me. When I arrived in Cuba I got hit in the place where we eat. I got hit on the shoulder and it was very painful. It was dislocated or something. They threatened to break it monthly even when I got to Cuba. They told me I would be here for a long time.

Ismail also told Marc Falkoff that he was subjected to sexual humiliation in Guantánamo. An article in the Washington Post in February 2005, which discussed the Church Report, a military report into allegations of abuse at Guantánamo, including claims that female interrogators had used menstrual blood — or red ink — in interrogations, noted that:

[Ismail] said he had been interrogated more than 100 times since being “kidnapped” in a marketplace in Kabul, Afghanistan, and brought to Guantánamo Bay. He recounted to his lawyer that when he refused to talk in one interview, a female soldier entered wearing a tight T-shirt. “Why aren’t you married?” she reportedly asked [I]smail. “You are a young man and have needs. What do you like?” [I]smail said “she bent down with her breasts on the table and her legs almost touching” him. “Are you going to talk,” she asked, “or are we going to do this for six hours?”

Throughout his detention, Ismail has insisted that he only sought military training in Afghanistan, that he was not affiliated with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and that he never fought against anyone. As he asked at his tribunal, “Is this type of training forbidden internationally?” His intention may have been to fight in Chechnya, as has been suggested, but without any evidence that he fought anyone it seems, yet again, that the definition of “support” used to determine who can continue to be held indefinitely at Guantánamo is far too sweeping.

If anything, Ismail — and other prisoners who have lost their habeas petitions, like Ghaleb al-Bihani, who served as a cook for Arab forces supporting the Taliban — should have been held as prisoners of war and protected from ill-treatment according to the Geneva Conventions. On this basis, they could be held until the end of hostilities, and we would now be arguing about whether it is conceivable that an invasion to overthrow the Taliban, which began eight and a half years ago, and which met its immediate aims, leading to the fall of the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government and the election of Hamid Karzai as the Afghan President, is legitimately part of a “War on Terror” that might last forever, and that, as a result, even the most minor players in that initial conflict can be detained indefinitely.

As it stands, however, Yasin Ismail — a man who, by all accounts, never took up arms against anyone — remains imprisoned in Guantánamo on an apparently legal basis, and those of us who regard his continued detention as an overreaction, to put it mildly, must also reflect on the fact that, far from being treated humanely for the last eight years, he has been subjected to physical abuse and sexual humiliation for no justifiable reason, but that this is considered irrelevant to the case against him.

Moreover, as was explained last February in “Conditions of Confinement at Guantánamo: Still in Violation of the Law,” a report by the Center for Constitutional Rights, he continues to be subjected to violence in Guantánamo, along with any other prisoner who infringes the prison’s rules to even the smallest degree. Reporting on the activities of the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF), teams of five soldiers who respond to the most minor infractions of the rules with extreme violence, CCR explained:

On the afternoon of January 7, 2009, Yasin Ismail was in one of the outdoor cages of Camp 6 for “recreation” time. The cage was entirely in the shade. Mr. Ismail asked to be moved to the adjoining empty cage because it had sunlight entering from the top. The guards, who were outside the cages, refused. One guard told Mr. Ismail that he was “not allowed to see the sun.” Angered, Mr. Ismail threw a shoe against the inner mesh side of the cage, which bounced harmlessly back onto the cage floor. The guards, however, accused Mr. Ismail of attacking them and left him in the cage as punishment.

He eventually fell asleep on the floor of the cage, but hours later he was awakened by the sound of an IRF team entering the cage in the dark. The team shackled him, and he put up no resistance. They then beat him. They blocked his nose and mouth until he felt that he would suffocate, and hit him repeatedly in the ribs and head. They then took him back to his cell. As he was being taken back, a guard urinated on his head. Mr. Ismail was badly injured and his ear started to bleed, leaving a large stain on his pillow. The attack on Mr. Ismail was confirmed by at least one other detainee.

I await Judge Kennedy’s unclassified opinion with some expectation, but I sincerely doubt that he will have succeeded in justifying what happened to Yasin Ismail over the last eight years, or in presenting a valid case for his ongoing detention. Instead, I believe it will be another depressing example of how the Bush administration’s post-9/11 detention policies continue to make a mockery of justice by tarring certain individuals, who had no connection whatsoever with terrorism, neither as prisoners of war, nor as criminal suspects, but as a unique category of human being — formerly known as “enemy combatants” — that should have been done away with when President Obama came to power 15 months ago.

Note: In Judge Kennedy’s one-page ruling, Yasin Ismail was identified as Yasein Khasem Muhammad Ismael.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and currently on tour in the UK), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Truthout. Please Digg the original here.

For a sequence of articles dealing with the Guantánamo habeas cases, see: Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: the most important habeas corpus case in modern history and Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? (both December 2007), The Supreme Court’s Guantánamo ruling: what does it mean? (June 2008), Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland (Uighurs’ first court victory, June 2008), What’s Happening with the Guantánamo cases? (July 2008), Government Says Six Years Is Not Long Enough To Prepare Evidence (September 2008), From Guantánamo to the United States: The Story of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs (October 2008), Guantánamo Uyghurs’ resettlement prospects skewered by Justice Department lies (October 2008), Guilt By Torture: Binyam Mohamed’s Transatlantic Quest for Justice (November 2008), After 7 Years, Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo Kidnap Victims (November 2008), Is Robert Gates Guilty of Perjury in Guantánamo Torture Case? (December 2008), A New Year Message to Barack Obama: Free the Guantánamo Uighurs (January 2009), The Top Ten Judges of 2008 (January 2009), No End in Sight for the “Enemy Combatants” of Guantánamo (January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (January 2009), How Cooking For The Taliban Gets You Life In Guantánamo (January 2009), Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics (February 2009), Bad News And Good News For The Guantánamo Uighurs (February 2009), The Nobodies Formerly Known As Enemy Combatants (March 2009), Farce at Guantánamo, as cleared prisoner’s habeas petition is denied (April 2009), Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Judge Condemns “Mosaic” Of Guantánamo Intelligence, And Unreliable Witnesses (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), Guantánamo: A Prison Built On Lies (May 2009), Free The Guantánamo Uighurs! (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part One): Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies (July 2009), Obama’s Failure To Deliver Justice To The Last Tajik In Guantánamo (July 2009), Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think (July 2009), How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave (August 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Kuwaiti Charity Worker (August 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Two): Obama’s Shame (August 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Three): Obama’s Continuing Shame (August 2009), No Escape From Guantánamo: The Latest Habeas Rulings (September 2009), First Guantánamo Prisoner To Lose Habeas Hearing Appeals Ruling (September 2009), A Truly Shocking Guantánamo Story: Judge Confirms That An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions (September 2009), 75 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 31 Could Leave Today (September 2009), Resisting Injustice In Guantánamo: The Story Of Fayiz Al-Kandari (October 2009), Justice Department Pointlessly Gags Guantánamo Lawyer (November 2009), Judge Orders Release Of Algerian From Guantánamo (But He’s Not Going Anywhere) (November 2009), Innocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released In Kuwait (December 2009), What Does It Take To Get Out Of Obama’s Guantánamo? (December 2009), “Model Prisoner” at Guantánamo, Tortured in the “Dark Prison,” Loses Habeas Corpus Petition (December 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Unwilling Yemeni Recruit (December 2009), Serious Problems With Obama’s Plan To Move Guantánamo To Illinois (December 2009), Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights (January 2010), Fear and Paranoia as Guantánamo Marks its Eighth Anniversary (January 2010), Rubbing Salt in Guantánamo’s Wounds: Task Force Announces Indefinite Detention (January 2010), The Black Hole of Guantánamo (March 2010), Guantánamo Uighurs Back in Legal Limbo (March 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: The Torture Victim and the Taliban Recruit (April 2010).

Also see: Justice extends to Bagram, Guantánamo’s Dark Mirror (April 2009), Judge Rules That Afghan “Rendered” To Bagram In 2002 Has No Rights (July 2009), Bagram Isn’t The New Guantánamo, It’s The Old Guantánamo (August 2009), Obama Brings Guantánamo And Rendition To Bagram (And Not The Geneva Conventions) and Is Bagram Obama’s New Secret Prison? (both September 2009), Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List (January 2010), Bagram: Graveyard of the Geneva Conventions (February 2010).

On Monday, at 1.20 in the morning in London, I was, nevertheless, happy to get on the phone to talk to Cenk Uygur for The Young Turks, a daily online news show, which attracts a significant number of viewers, and, when it launched in 2005 (after three years as a radio show), was the first live, daily webcast on the Internet. My interview, which lasts for 16 minutes, is available below, via YouTube:

Cenk was a great host, asking me to explain why I have contended, both in my book The Guantánamo Files, and in my subsequent journalism, that the overwhelming majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo are not terrorists. After describing how intelligence reports over the years have persistently demonstrated that no more than a few dozen of the men held at Guantánamo had any meaningful connection to al-Qaeda, I explained that the rest of the men were either completely innocent men, who were seized by the US military’s Afghan or Pakistani allies at a time when bounty payments averaging $5,000 a head were widespread, or low-level Taliban recruits, involved in an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the 9/11 attacks, and had no connection to al-Qaeda.

Cenk also asked me about the Uighurs, Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province, who were sold to US forces by Pakistani villagers in December 2001, allowing me to explain how they were living in a run-down settlement in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains, either because they had failed to find a way to get to Turkey or Europe, where they hoped to build new lives, or because they nurtured futile hopes of rising up against their only enemy, the Chinese government, and occasionally had a go on the settlement’s one and only gun.

Clearly, these men were not terrorists, and bore no ill will towards the US, but, as I also explained, it was a bitter disappointment when a plan hatched by White House Counsel Greg Craig to bring two of these men to live in the US last April, which provided the best opportunity to demonstrate to the American people that they were not terrorists, and that terrible mistakes were made at Guantánamo, never reached fruition, because President Obama capitulated to Republican pressure and abandoned it.

As a result, Republican opportunists have been able to continue portraying these men as terrorists, even though, as Cenk noted, when four of them were resettled in Bermuda last June and Bill O’Reilly joked that Obama was setting free terrorists who wanted to set up an ice cream store (which the men had said they wanted to do), a more logical conclusion would have been that they were never terrorists in the first place. As I added, however, when dealing with the likes of O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, there is no place for logic or reality, as everything is twisted to the service of their own malign agenda.

Cenk also asked me to speak about the recent declaration by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, who asserted, as part of a lawsuit brought by a former Guantánamo prisoner seeking compensation, that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld all knew — and didn’t care — that the majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo were innocent. Despite this, I had to point out that, although this was certainly true, all three men remained convinced that interrogations would yield “actionable intelligence,” and were happy to authorize a widespread torture program when they failed to get the results they hoped for.

Finally, we spoke about how the Obama administration is floundering, and how Guantánamo is now on the back burner, allowing me to explain that I don’t see how the prison will close, even though the need to close it is as great as ever, and Cenk concluded with some apposite complaints about how depressing it is when the President won’t do the right thing, but prefers instead to play politics with the lives of men who, for the most part, have already been deprived of their liberty — and subjected to a horrendously abusive regime — for no good reason for over eight years.

It was a pleasure to talk to Cenk, and I hope to have the opportunity to talk to him again.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

The following statement, prepared by campaigning group The World Can’t Wait, responds to a barrage of terrible news lately — including the endorsement of the assassination of Americans anywhere in the world and the Wikileaks revelation that US troops fired on an unarmed party of Iraqis in 2007, including two journalists, and then fired on those who attempted to rescue them — by calling on President Obama to accept that crimes committed under President Bush are crimes regardless of who the President is, and to bring them to an end.

Crimes Are Crimes — No Matter Who Does Them!

Please join Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan, Cornel West, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern, Carl Dix, Bill Quigley, William Blum, Joyce Kozloff, Ann Messner, David Swanson, Sunsara Taylor, Stephen Rohde, Fr. Bob Bossie, Peter Phillips, Jed Stone, Tomás Olmos, Peter McLaren, Jodie Evans, Margaret Lawrence, Matthis Chiroux, Larry Everest, Blasé Bonpane, William Ayers, Dahr Jamail, Kathy Kelly, myself and many others, in signing this statement and donating to publish it:

* * *

In the past few weeks, it has become common knowledge that Barack Obama has openly ordered the assassination of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, because he is suspected of participating in plots by al-Qaeda. Al-Awlaki denies these charges. No matter. Without trial or other judicial proceeding, the administration has simply put him on the to-be-killed list.

During this same period, a video leaked [to Wikileaks] by whistleblowers in the military showing US troops firing on an unarmed party of Iraqis in 2007, including two journalists, and then firing on those who attempted to rescue them — including two children — became public. As ugly as this video of the killing of 12 Iraqis was, the chatter recorded from the helicopter cockpit was even more chilling and monstrous. Yet the Pentagon said that there would be no charges against these soldiers; and the media focused on absolving them of blame — “they were under stress,” the story went, “and after all our brave men and women must be supported.” Meanwhile, those who leaked and publicized the video came under government surveillance and are targeted as “national security” threats [PDF].

Also during this period, the Pentagon acknowledged, after denials, a massacre near the city of Gardez, Afghanistan, on February 12, 2010, in which 5 people were killed, including two pregnant women, leaving 16 children motherless. The US military first said the two men killed were insurgents, and the women, victims of a family “honor killing.” The Afghan government has accepted the eyewitness reports that US Special Forces killed the men, (a police officer and lawyer) and the women, and then dug their own bullets out of the women’s bodies to destroy evidence. Top U.S. military officials have now admitted that US soldiers killed the family in their house.

Just weeks earlier, a story broken in Harper’s by Scott Horton carried news that three supposed suicides of detainees in Guantánamo in 2006 were not actual suicides, but homicides carried out by American personnel. This passed almost without comment.

In some respects, this is worse than Bush. First, because Obama has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of “terrorism,” merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the CIA, something Bush never claimed publicly. Second, Obama says that the government can detain you indefinitely, even if you have been exonerated in a trial, and he has publicly floated the idea of “preventive detention.” Third, the Obama administration, in expanding the use of unmanned drone attacks, argues that the US has the authority under international law to use such lethal force and extrajudicial killing in sovereign countries with which it is not at war.

Such measures by Bush were widely considered by liberals and progressives to be outrages and were roundly, and correctly, protested. But those acts which may have been construed (wishfully or not) as anomalies under the Bush regime, have now been consecrated into “standard operating procedure” by Obama, who claims, as did Bush, executive privilege and state secrecy in defending the crime of aggressive war.

Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration has refused to prosecute any members of the Bush regime who are responsible for war crimes, including some who admitted to waterboarding and other forms of torture, thereby making their actions acceptable for him or any future president, Democrat or Republican.

We must end the complicity of silence and say loud and clear:

The things that were crimes under Bush are crimes under Obama.
Outrages under Bush are outrages under Obama.
All this MUST STOP.
And all this MUST BE RESISTED by anyone who claims a shred of conscience or integrity.

* * *

Click here to add your name. Be sure to donate towards this effort, so we can publish it and publicly declare our opposition to the crimes still being carried out in our names. I am interested in where you think it should go to find an audience of people who will be challenged to speak out by reading it; write me.
Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can’t Wait

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation

On Tuesday I was delighted to be invited to speak once more with progressive radio host Jeff Farias. The show is available here, and the half-hour interview starts 24 minutes in. Jeff had read my recent article, “Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: The Torture Victim and the Taliban Recruit” (originally published on Truthout), and we had a great chat about how significant the habeas rulings are in exposing the truth about the cruelty, incompetence and overreaction that typifies the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” and why the entire detention policy should have been thoroughly repudiated by President Obama (as opposed to being dealt with primarily through cowardice and compromise).

Jeff and I began by discussing the extraordinary case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (featured in the article mentioned above), a Mauritanian in Guantánamo who was once regarded as the “highest-value detainee at the facility,” because of his purported connection to the 9/11 attackers. Slahi’s habeas petition has just been granted by District Court Judge James Robertson, and, as I explained, he was tortured for many months in Jordan, where he was rendered by the CIA, and was also subjected to a particularly fearful torture program in Guantánamo, as a result of which he “broke” and told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear.

Jeff and I also spoke about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and myself). In particular, we discussed the success of the current UK tour of the film, and especially how the testimony of released prisoner Omar Deghayes is proving to be particularly powerful. I explained to Jeff how the film is available worldwide on DVD, and put out a call for anyone in the US to get in touch if they can help with promoting it, as a follow-up to my brief US tour last November (see my reports here and here).

We also spoke about Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who was cleared for release in 2007, and whose story is also featured in “Outside the law: Stories from Guantánamo,” and I ran through Shaker’s story — and the inexcusable refusal to release him — that I have reported at length in articles here, here, here, here and here (and see here and here for two posts relating to campaigns to secure his release).

Jeff also mentioned the frustrations that progressives currently have with the lack of outrage in the US regarding Obama’s failure to close Guantánamo and to thoroughly repudiate the policies of the Bush administration. This gave me the opportunity to talk about how dangerously self-defeating the administration’s cowardice is — as well as being fundamentally wrong — and also to talk about how significant it is that White House Counsel Greg Craig left the administration at the start of this year, even though he had pushed to close the prison and, last April, was close to bringing two cleared prisoners from Guantánamo to live in the US. As I pointed out, having just spent several weeks traveling around the UK with a former prisoner, this single gesture would have demonstrated to Americans, in the clearest manner possible, that profound mistakes were made in the “War on Terror,” and that not everyone who was held in Guantánamo — or who is still held — is or was a terrorist.

However, when Obama capitulated to right-wing criticism (and critics within his own party) and turned the plan down, it was, lamentably, the start of a process of back-tracking that has led to the revival of the reviled Military Commissions, the official endorsement of indefinite detention without charge or trial, the failure to close Guantánamo by Greg Craig’s one-year deadline, and the floundering that now typifies the administration’s approach to the prison’s closure, which has allowed right-wing critics to make all the noise and to advance their poisonous agenda.

Despite the generally bleak outlook, it was a pleasure to talk to Jeff, as ever, and I hope you enjoy the show.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Please support my work!

I recently passed another milestone as an independent journalist working mainly in the new media (and the very old media of writing books). My 800th blog post since I began writing about Guantánamo and related issues as a journalist nearly three years ago (following the 14 months I spent researching and writing my book The Guantánamo Files) was this interview for a Pakistani blog.

As I reflect on the last two years and nine months of relentless journalism (I gave up counting how much I had written when it exceeded a million words), I hope that new readers and researchers can navigate their way through the 500+ full-length articles I have written in that time, and would like to direct everyone to the five posts published here, which present chronological links to all the articles I wrote between May 2007 and December 2009. The 100+ blog posts this year can be found in “Archives” and “Categories” in the right-hand column.

I’d also like to thank everyone who has supported me over the years: those who have helped me to become noticed as a world authority on Guantánamo, to be ranked in Technorati’s Top 100 World Politics Blogs (at the time of writing, I was No. 32, but the ranking changes frequently), and to receive so many readers — over 200,000 page visits last month — that I recently had to upgrade my bandwidth.

It is enormously gratifying to realize that there are so many people out there who recognize that the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” was devastatingly cruel and incompetent, who remain indignant that those who authorized the use of torture are still allowed to walk free, and who are disappointed that the Obama administration has not only failed to fulfill its initial promise to close Guantánamo within a year, but has also allowed it to become a marginal issue.

In this, the mainstream media has, for the most part, been complicit, and it is a tribute to all my readers that they have sought out my work, and have read it and publicized it to such an extent that it features so prominently on search engines.

So thank you all for your support from the bottom of my heart. I welcome your comments — here on my website, especially, but also on Facebook, of course — and encourage you to publicize my work and to cross-post it (all I ask is that you preserve links — if you do, the Internet actually rewards those who share, rather than jealously guard their material). I also ask that, if possible, you donate to help with the running of the site. I remain deeply grateful to those who pay me to write (primarily, my good friends at Truthout and the Future of Freedom Foundation), but much of my work is unpaid, and every donation is gratefully received.

If you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Readers can pay from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page).

I’d also like to remind readers that copies of my books The Guantánamo Files, The Battle of the Beanfield and Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion are all available (from Amazon and other retailers, or directly from me if you’re in the UK), and that DVDs of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and myself) are available here.

I have spent much of the last few months touring the UK, showing the film, and taking part in rewarding Q&A sessions, with former prisoner Omar Deghayes, and will continue to do so in the coming months. Please feel free, however, to order your own copy of the DVD and arrange your own screening, and if any of you has the enthusiasm and the contacts to cover my costs and arrange for me to travel to other countries (and especially the US) to show it, I’d be delighted to oblige.

Touring the film has taken up much of my time recently — although I have endeavored to keep up with the major stories relating to Guantánamo — but it has been an immensely worthwhile experience, as it keeps the story of Guantánamo alive, while so many in power are trying to sweep it under the carpet, and, in particular, it brings home to audiences the human cost of the ruinously unjust detention and interrogation policies in the “War on Terror,” which President Obama has failed to thoroughly repudiate.

Thanks once more. I’ll see you again at 900 posts, and I hope by then that the population of Guantánamo has shrunk considerably, although, as ever, I won’t be holding my breath …

Andy Worthington
London, April 15, 2010

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Yesterday, I was delighted to receive an email from Morris Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor for the Military Commissions at Guantánamo Bay, who asked if I had a contact at the Huffington Post for an op-ed he had just written defending the importance of the rule of law — and how it applies to everyone — written in a blistering style that America needs more of.

Moe also pulled no punches when it came to explaining why torture is a criminal offense, and why those who authorize it must be prosecuted — an unsurprising, but important opinion, given that he resigned as chief prosecutor when placed in a chain of command under Pentagon counsel Jim Haynes, who, as he explained in December 2007, had been involved in “authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques” — in other words, torture — which conflicted with his own insistence that prosecutors in the Military Commissions “would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the [Bush] administration … sanctioned.”

I was happy to provide Moe with a contact, and am delighted that his article has now been published on the Huffington Post, and I cross-post it below because — well, have a read. You’ll find that it’s well worth it!

Conservative and Liberal Pillagers Master the Art of Pandering
By Morris Davis

If it was a crime to misappropriate a word or phrase — to treat it like you own it and toss it around arbitrarily whenever it suits your purposes — then some prominent conservatives and liberals would be serving hard time. Of course there don’t seem to be any real consequences when there’s literal theft in the world of politics, so it’s a pipe dream to imagine there would be any consequences for pillaging the vocabulary, but it’s still a good thought.

Conservatives stole the word “patriot.” They hot-wired the ignition and drove it away like they had the title in their back pocket. Join the Tea Party and become a Tea Party Patriot. Go to the TPP website and “join the fight for liberty.” Buy Karl Rove’s book and read how Dick Cheney is a patriot. If you think Sarah Palin is wonderful and President Obama is a socialist then you’re a patriot, too. The clear message is that if you haven’t embraced the far right agenda then by default you have to be an unpatriotic liberty hater.

As a military veteran who spent a quarter-century in uniform, I take offense when people like Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Gingrich, Cheney (Dick and Liz), Rove, Malkin, Coulter, and Dick Morris — a dozen chest thumping right wing war hawks who’ve amassed personal fortunes wrapping themselves in the patriot banner and stoking the anger of the base with their “you’re either with us or against us” blather, but who felt they had more important things to do when each of them had the opportunity to serve in the nation’s armed forces — imply that veterans who answered the call of duty but don’t ascribe to their hateful fear-based ideology are unpatriotic and something other than “real Americans.” It’s disappointing, too, that so many ordinary Americans are drawn to these PINOs (Patriots In Name Only) like mosquitoes to the alluring blue light in a bug zapper. There are patriots of all stripes who love this country. No one, and no one ideology, has the right to treat the word like it’s theirs exclusively.

Liberals like to throw around the phrase “rule of law.” Let the Iranians or the North Koreans do something we don’t approve of and we excoriate them for their lack of respect for the rule of law. President Obama goes on a secret trip to Afghanistan and encourages Afghan President Hamid Karzai to institutionalize the rule of law. The administration’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen, withdraws from further consideration for the post and the White House releases a statement praising her “commitment to the rule of law.”

The rule of law means everyone — let me repeat, everyone — is accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated. The Torture Statute, publicly promulgated federal law codified in the United States Code, says torture is a criminal offense. Likewise, the United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is signatory, requires the investigation of allegations of torture and the criminal prosecution of offenders. There is no opt-out provision in either statute that lets the government choose to ignore the law when it’s not politically expedient or might prove to be unpleasant.

So how can the Obama administration say with a straight face that the United States is the champion of the rule of law and others should step up and follow our example when the administration deliberately ignores criminal accountability for the torture of some of the detainees captured in the global war on terrorism? Susan Crawford, who until recently served as the head of the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions, told Bob Woodward in an interview published in the Washington Post in January 2009 why she refused to send charges against Mohammed al Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker, to trial. She said, “We tortured al Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture.”

Susan Crawford is no left-leaning human rights zealot; she was General Counsel of the Army during the Reagan administration, Dick Cheney’s Inspector General at the Defense Department, and she was appointed to her military commission post by Defense Secretary Bob Gates during the Bush-Cheney years. So what was the rule of law loving Obama administration’s reaction to this admission by a senior Defense Department official that our government engaged in torture?  Key the sounds of crickets chirping.

In an age when the public seems to have the attention span of a gnat, buzz words and trite slogans get traction. It doesn’t matter if there is any real substance behind the words so long as they stick. Maybe that’s acceptable in commercial marketing, but it’s not in democratic governance. We have a right to expect better from those who purport to pull the levers of power. When they’re talking the talk they should mean what they say. The two sides have pretty much succeeded in trashing our country; the least they can do is stop trashing our vocabulary.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Those of us who have been studying the recent career of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson were not surprised when, last week, he submitted a declaration (PDF) in a lawsuit seeking compensation from the US government that was filed by former Guantánamo prisoner Adel Hassan Hamad. A Sudanese hospital worker, Hamad was sold to US forces by their unscrupulous Pakistani allies in the summer of 2002, but was only released from Guantánamo in December 2007.

In the declaration, Col. Wilkerson, who served in the US military for 31 years and was Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from August 2002 until January 2005, stated that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld all knew — and didn’t care — that “the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent.”

Last March, Col. Wilkerson wrote a guest column for The Washington Note, “Some Truths About Guantánamo Bay,” in which he first laid out some of his major complaints about the failures of the Bush administration’s detention policies in the “War on Terror.” In his column, Col. Wilkerson decried “the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the US operations there,” and explained, “Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.”

Col. Wilkerson also wrote that:

[S]everal in the US leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released. But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers.

Furthermore, Col. Wilkerson wrote:

[I]t has never come to my attention in any persuasive way — from classified information or otherwise — that any intelligence of significance was gained from any of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay other than from the handful of undisputed ring leaders and their companions, clearly no more than a dozen or two of the detainees, and even their alleged contribution of hard, actionable intelligence is intensely disputed in the relevant communities such as intelligence and law enforcement. This is perhaps the most astounding truth of all, carefully masked by men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney in their loud rhetoric — continuing even now in the case of Cheney — about future attacks thwarted, resurgent terrorists, the indisputable need for torture and harsh interrogation and for secret prisons and places such as GITMO.

Col. Wilkerson’s attacks on the Bush administration’s incompetence reflected what I and other researchers had discovered, and as a result, I felt emboldened to approach him, to ask if he would agree to an interview. I was delighted when he accepted, and the resulting two-part interview was published by the Future of Freedom Foundation last August and September.

In it, Col. Wilkerson expanded on the chaotic detention policies following the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and explained how the State Department had been left trying to deal with countries who wanted their citizens back. He conceded that they were largely kept out of the loop by Cheney and Rumsfeld, and added how, in Colin Powell’s opinion, President Bush had “no idea” of the “magnitude” of what Cheney was up to behind the scenes. He also reiterated that there was no reason for the majority of the prisoners to have been held, citing an unnamed colleague, who told him, after 742 prisoners had been transported to Guantánamo, “I’ll tell you right now that 700 of them haven’t done a damn thing except get in the way of somebody capturing them.”

Col. Wilkerson also dropped a bombshell about intelligence gathering, explaining how, “from talking to hundreds of people, literally,” he had recently become convinced that, although he had previously thought that the administration’s fear of another terrorist attack persisted throughout 2002 (in other words, when the entire torture program was being developed), “their fear of another attack subsided rather rapidly after their attention turned to Iraq, and after Tommy Franks, in late November [2001] as I recall, was directed to begin planning for Iraq and to take his focus off Afghanistan.”

Despite these previous attacks on the Bush administration, Col. Wilkerson’s declaration in support of Adel Hassan Hamad’s claim for compensation is welcome for a number of reasons. The first is because memories are chronically short in this world of endless rolling news, and many people (both journalists and the general public) may have forgotten — if they ever noticed — that Col. Wilkerson has been waging a one-man assault on the Bush administration for the last year.

The second is because he finally implicates George W. Bush in the policies largely implemented by Cheney and Rumsfeld; and the third is because the Obama administration has reached something akin to paralysis in its attempts to close Guantánamo, and the innocent men still detained there — as well as the handful of genuine terrorist suspects — deserve either freedom or a fair trial, so that the abomination that is Guantánamo can finally be closed.

A fourth reason, perhaps most damning of all, concerns the entire basis of the detention policies — to facilitate interrogations — and here Col. Wilkerson expands on his revelation, last summer, that the gathering of intelligence was subverted to justify the invasion of Iraq rather than to protect the American people from another terrorist attack.

The first point is self-evident, as is apparent from mainstream media reporters who appear not to have noticed before that, as Col. Wilkerson explained in his declaration, “many of the prisoners detained at Guantánamo had been taken into custody without regard to whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all,” and that many were “victims of incompetent battlefield vetting.”

Col. Wilkerson also pointed out that “predominantly US forces were not the ones who were taking prisoners in the first place,” explaining that “Instead, we relied on Afghans, such as General Dostum’s forces, and upon Pakistanis, to hand over prisoners whom they had apprehended, or who had been turned over to them for bounties, sometimes as much as $5,000 a head.” As he also explained, “I recall conversations with serving military officers at the time, who told me that many detainees were turned over for the wrong reasons, particularly for bounties and other incentives.”

Col. Wilkerson also explained that, “by late August 2002, I found that of the initial 742 detainees that had arrived at Guantánamo, the majority of them had never seen a US soldier in the process of their initial detention and their captivity had not been subjected to any meaningful review.”

Clearly troubled by this, he added that it also became “more and more clear that many of the men were innocent, or at a minimum their guilt was impossible to determine let alone prove in any court of law, civilian or military,” and that, during his morning briefings, Colin Powell “often expressed that he was particularly troubled by the lack of a plan regarding final disposition for the detainees, especially if the idea was to keep them in indefinite detention, without trial, forever.”

Spelling out the Bush administration’s incompetence more clearly than before, Col. Wilkerson added that “At least part of the problem was that it was politically impossible to release them,” and that one particular concern was that, through releasing prisoners, “the detention efforts at Guantánamo would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were.”

As in his previous articles and interviews, he also made it clear that a major stumbling block to the release of prisoners was Donald Rumsfeld, who “just refused to let detainees go,” and that another was Dick Cheney, who “had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent, or that there was a lack of any useable evidence for the great majority of them. If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it. That seemed to be the philosophy that ruled in the Vice President’s Office.”

However, whereas, last summer, Col. Wilkerson had indicated to me that President Bush had little idea of the extent to which Cheney was running the government’s post-9/11 policies, in his declaration he fully implicated the President, noting that, although “it was easy for Vice President Cheney to run circles around President Bush bureaucratically because Cheney had the network within the government to do so,” and that he “could more often than not gain the President’s acquiescence” by “exploiting what Secretary Powell called the President’s ‘cowboy instincts,’” Powell also told him that, in his opinion, “it was not just Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”

The third point — President Obama’s inability to close Guantánamo — is particularly relevant right now. This was largely outside the scope of Col. Wilkerson’s remit for the declaration, but it was depressing to realize, while reviewing his earlier pronouncements, that a year ago he had pointed out “the now prevalent supposition, recently reinforced by the new team in the White House, that closing down our prison facilities at Guantánamo Bay would take some time and development of a highly complex plan. Because of the unfortunate political realities now involved — Cheney’s recent strident and almost unparalleled remarks about the dangers of pampering terrorists, and the vulnerability of the Democrats in general on any national security issue — this may have some truth to it. But in terms of the physical and safe shutdown of the prison facilities it is nonsense.”

In light of Col. Wilkerson’s explanations about the insignificance of the majority of the Guantánamo prisoners, it is depressing indeed to realize that, one year after he wrote these comments, 183 men are still held at Guantánamo, and the government’s own Task Force has reinforced Col. Wilkerson’s fears regarding the vulnerability of the Democrats on national security issues by recommending that, although 35 men should be tried, 47 others should continue to be held indefinitely without charge or trial.

Col. Wilkerson has done a great service to those of us (like myself and staff and students at the Seton Hall Law School) who have studied the prisoners’ stories in depth, and have persistently pointed out that there are no valid reasons for holding the majority of the prisoners who are still in Guantánamo. However, the fact that so little progress has been achieved in the last year — and that, in fact, the Obama administration is more clearly wracked by caution, cowardice and inertia than ever before — really should give added weight and urgency to his analysis.

Sadly, the media’s main focus — as part of the relentless spin-cycle of news I mentioned above — has been more on Col. Wilkerson’s revelations about President Bush’s knowledge of the failure of his experiment in detention and interrogation, and rather less on the lack of any rationale for holding the majority of the 183 men who still languish at Guantánamo.

Also overlooked, with implications that are no less grave, are Col. Wilkerson’s ongoing revelations about how the entire process of interrogation, which led to the widespread use of torture, was not to protect America from another terrorist attack, but was, instead, designed to extract information that would justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. This was a bombshell when Col. Wilkerson revealed it to me last summer, and it remains no less shocking now. As he explained in his declaration:

For the Vice President, Secretary Rumsfeld and others, the primary issue was to gain more intelligence as quickly as possible, both on al-Qaeda and its current and future plans but increasingly also, in 2002-2003, on contacts between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s intelligence and secret police in Iraq. Their view was that innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years … was deemed acceptable if led to a more complete and satisfactory intelligence picture with regard to Iraq, thus justifying the Administration’s plans for war with that country.

In his closing comments, Col. Wilkerson noted, “I have made a personal choice to come forward and discuss the abuses that occurred because knowledge that I served in an Administration that tortured and abused those it detained at the facilities at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere and indefinitely detained the innocent for political reasons has marked a low point in my professional career and I wish to make the record clear on what occurred.”

In doing so, I hope that Col. Wilkerson’s statements not only lead to pressure for the release of the majority of the remaining prisoners at Guantánamo, but also contribute to calls for those who authorized the torture and abuse to be held accountable for their actions. These are calls which, in law-abiding circles, have increased since the recent whitewash of a report recommending disciplinary action for John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the authors of the “torture memos,” which purported to redefine torture so that it could be used by the CIA — and which then migrated to the military.

For Col. Wilkerson, who remains “extremely concerned that the Armed Forces of the United States, where I spent 31 years of my professional life, were deeply involved in these tragic mistakes,” the need for accountability has a particularly personal meaning, but for the rest of us, it should be no less important that torture was used to justify an illegal war, that it infected the US military, that those who authorized it remain free to continue spreading their poisonous lies (in Dick Cheney’s case, at least), and that men continue to languish in Guantánamo as a result of it — and also as a result of the Obama administration’s unwillingness, or refusal to confront the very facts that Col. Wilkerson has disclosed.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation. Cross-posted on The Public Record and Uruknet.

Regular readers of my work will be aware that I have long campaigned for the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo Bay. Shaker was cleared for release from Guantánamo over three years ago, yet he remains imprisoned for no discernible reason except that it suits both the US and UK governments to put off the inevitable day when he will be free to tell the media about his deep knowledge of Guantánamo (as one of the foremost advocates of the prisoners’ rights), as well as his knowledge of British and American involvement in torture.

Shaker’s story features prominently in the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and myself), and, since February, former prisoner Omar Deghayes and I have been touring the UK showing the film, taking part in post-screening Q&A sessions, and encouraging audiences to send a letter to foreign secretary David Miliband asking him to do all in his power to secure Shaker’s release. That letter can be cut and pasted here, and there is also an Amnesty International campaign page, where interested parties can send a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and can email David Miliband. The film tour is ongoing, and further details can be found here.

Today, representatives of the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, based in Shaker’s home borough of Wandsworth, and signatories to the letter including Kate Hudson, the Chair of CND, journalist Yvonne Ridley and Chris Nineham of the Stop the War Coalition delivered the following open letter to Gordon Brown demanding Shaker’s return to his wife and four children.

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Dear Gordon Brown,

Time may be running out for you to obtain the release and return of British Resident Shaker Aamer, still detained after more than eight years in Guantánamo. You have claimed to have made repeated requests to the US for his release, yet you have failed to bring him home. It is beyond belief that Shaker, a long-term legal British resident, cleared for release in 2007, without charge, remains in Guantánamo in a cell, 6 foot by 8 foot, in solitary confinement, in the harshest of conditions. Your Government has been derelict in its duty to protect Shaker Aamer, a refugee from Saudi Arabia, who was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK and whose only wish is to return to family and home here in London.

Your Government withheld documents detailing the cruel and inhuman interrogations and torture of Shaker in the presence of M15 agents until the Courts demanded that they were made available to Shaker’s US lawyers. So you know Shaker has been tortured. You are aware of his cruel treatment at Kabul and at the US base at Bagram, Afghanistan. His torture has continued in Guantánamo. Shaker affirms that he has been beaten, chained, brutally force-fed whilst on hunger strike, half-suffocated with rags, denied food, clothes and sleep and kicked until his feet swelled. He has had his head repeatedly smashed against walls. His eyesight has been affected by the constant bright lights of his cell and he has lost half his body weight. A detention report states that his mental health is deteriorating. Despite knowing the extent of the abuse of his human rights, your Government, to its shame, has not used its power and authority to demand the immediate release and return of Shaker Aamer, victim of rendition and torture.

Furthermore, your failure to act has had a devastating affect on Shaker Aamer’s family. In January this year, Johina Aamer, Shaker’s 12-year old daughter, wrote a personal letter to you. She appealed to you to do all you can to bring her father home. She told you how much Shaker’s four children miss him. She told you about her mother’s depression and periods in hospital. Regrettably, you have not replied. This family has been denied the right to family life, in breach of international law. To date, the family has been denied contact with Shaker even by phone.

You must know that there is a strong public demand for urgent action for the release and return of Shaker Aamer. In all parts of the UK, every day, people are attending meetings and hearing about his case. They have signed petitions and written letters. Every day more MPs are putting their names to Early Day Motion 547 calling for Shaker’s release. Martin Linton, Shaker’s MP works closely with Shaker’s family in Battersea. The national and local press continue to press for his release. National and local groups including Amnesty International, Liberty, Reprieve, Cageprisoners, the Guantánamo Justice Centre, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities, the Stop the War Coalition, CND, members of the London Assembly, MEPs, lawyers and celebrities, and people of faith and none, have all called for Shaker’s return.

Very soon you will be asking the country to vote for you. People of goodwill everywhere would celebrate if you ensured the return of Shaker Aamer to his family whilst there is still time for your Government to act.

We appeal to you to note well the words of Brent Mickum, US lawyer for Shaker Aamer:

“He is still being tortured down there. And if he ends up dying down there, I have to say there is blood on the British hands.”

British Resident Shaker Aamer is being tortured in Guantánamo and his life is in your hands.

Yours sincerely,
Save Shaker Aamer Campaign

Note: You can contact your MP here to ask him or her to support Martin Linton’s Early Day Motion calling for Shaker’s release.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

I’m delighted to report that a date has now been finalized for the screening of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington) as part of the London International Documentary Festival.

The film festival runs from April 23 to May 10 at twelve different venues throughout London, and “Outside the Law” is screening at 8 pm on Monday April 26 at the Free Word Centre, in the former Guardian building at 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA. The box office number is 020 7324 2570 (and also see here, where tickets, priced £7.50 plus booking fee, can be ordered).

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion,  featuring former Guantánamo prisoners Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes, Andy Worthington, Polly Nash and Tara Murray of Reprieve. It is, moreover, part of an ongoing UK tour of the film, which began in February, with Omar and Andy (and, occasionally, Polly and other guests) attending post-screening Q&A sessions to discuss Guantánamo, President Obama’s failure to close the prison, and the plight of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo (who is also featured in the film).

Full details of the tour are available here, on a dedicated page, which will be updated as new dates are added. The film has already been shown in several London venues (Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre, the National Film Theatre, the LSE, SOAS, UCL and South Bank University) and also in Oxford, Bradford, Norwich, Canterbury, Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Future screenings include Colchester on April 27, Aston on May 4, Birmingham on May 5 and Newcastle on May 11.

About the film

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a new documentary film, directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, telling the story of Guantánamo (and including sections on extraordinary rendition and secret prisons) with a particular focus on how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws, how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening (and often for bounty payments), and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism (as missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, for example).

The film is based around interviews with former prisoners (Moazzam Begg and, in his first major interview, Omar Deghayes, who was released in December 2007), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith in the UK and Tom Wilner in the US), and journalist and author Andy Worthington, and also includes appearances from Guantánamo’s former Muslim chaplain James Yee, Shakeel Begg, a London-based Imam, and the British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

Focusing on the stories of Shaker Aamer, Binyam Mohamed and Omar Deghayes, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

Take action for Shaker Aamer

Throughout the tour, Omar, Andy and Polly (and other speakers) will be focusing on the plight of Shaker Aamer, the only one of the film’s main subjects who is still held in Guantánamo, despite being cleared for release in 2007, and despite the British government asking for him to be returned to the UK in August 2007.

Born in Saudi Arabia, Shaker Aamer moved to the UK in 1994, and was a legal British resident at the time of his capture, after he had traveled to Afghanistan with Moazzam Begg (and their families) to establish a girls’ school and some well-digging projects. He has a British wife and four British children (although he has never seen his youngest child).

As the foremost advocate of the prisoners’ rights in Guantánamo, Shaker’s influence upset the US authorities to such an extent that those pressing for his return fear that the US government wants to return him to Saudi Arabia, the country of his birth, where he will not be at liberty to tell his story, and recent revelations indicate that, despite claims that it has been doing all in its power to secure his release, the British government may also share this view.

In December 2009, it emerged in a court case in the UK that British agents witnessed his abuse while he was held in US custody in Afghanistan, and in January 2010, for Harper’s Magazine, law professor Scott Horton reported that he was tortured in Guantánamo on the same night, in June 2006, that three other men appear to have been killed by representatives of an unknown US agency, and that a cover-up then took place, which successfully passed the deaths off as suicides.

At the screenings, the speakers will discuss what steps we can all take to put pressure on the British government to demand the return of Shaker Aamer to the UK, to be reunited with his family. To get involved now, please visit this Amnesty International action page, to find details of how you can write to David Miliband and Gordon Brown, asking them to demand Shaker’s return. You can also cut and paste a letter to David Miliband here. Please also visit this page for a video of Shaker’s daughter Johina handing in a letter to Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on January 11, 2010.

Take action for Ahmed Belbacha — and others in Guantánamo

The letter to David Miliband, mentioned above, also asks the British government to accept Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who was also cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007, but who remains at the prison because he is terrified of returning to Algeria, where he fears persecution. Ahmed lived in the UK for nearly three years, and this country is, therefore, the most obvious country to offer him refuge.

The letter also calls on the UK to join other countries in accepting other cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated, but who do not already have a connection with this country. Algeria, Belgium, Bermuda, France, Georgia, Hungary, Ireland, Palau, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia and Switzerland have all done so, and the UK — as George Bush’s closest ally in the “War on Terror” — has no excuse for not doing so, if for no other reason than as some kind of compensation for recent revelations about the extent of Britain’s complicity in torture.

Recent feedback

““Outside the Law” is essential viewing for anyone interested in Guantánamo and other prisons. The film explores what happens when a nation with a reputation for morality and justice acts out of impulse and fear. To my mind, Andy Worthington is a quintessential force for all things related to the journalism of GTMO and its inhabitants. As a military lawyer for Fayiz al-Kandari, I am constantly reminded that GTMO is ongoing and that people still have an opportunity to make history today by becoming involved. “Outside the Law” is a fantastic entry point into the arena that is GTMO.”
Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, attorney for Guantánamo prisoner Fayiz al-Kandari

“I thought the film was absolutely brilliant and the most powerful, moving and hard-hitting piece I have seen at the cinema. I admire and congratulate you for your vital work, pioneering the truth and demanding that people sit up and take notice of the outrageous human rights injustices perpetrated against detainees at Guantánamo and other prisons.”
Harriet Wong, Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture

“[T]hought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful.”
Harpymarx, blogger

“Last Saturday I went to see Polly Nash and Andy Worthington’s harrowing documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” at London’s BFI. The film knits together narratives so heart-wrenching I half wish I had not heard them. Yet the camaraderie between the detainees and occasional humorous anecdotes … provide a glimpse into the wit, courage and normalcy of the men we are encouraged to perceive as monsters.”
Sarah Gillespie, singer/songwriter

“The film was great — not because I was in it, but because it told the legal and human story of Guantánamo more clearly than anything I have seen.”
Tom Wilner, US attorney who represented the Guantánamo prisoners before the US Supreme Court

“The film was fantastic! It has the unique ability of humanizing those who were detained at Guantánamo like no other I have seen.”
Sari Gelzer, Truthout

“Engaging and moving, and personal. The first [film] to really take you through the lives of the men from their own eyes.”
Debra Sweet, The World Can’t Wait

“I am part of a community of folks from the US who attempted to visit the Guantánamo prison in December 2005, and ended up fasting for a number of days outside the gates. We went then, and we continue our work now, because we heard the cries for justice from within the prison walls. As we gathered tonight as a community, we watched “Outside the Law,” and by the end, we all sat silent, many with tears in our eyes and on our faces. I have so much I’d like to say, but for now I wanted to write a quick note to say how grateful we are that you are out, and that you are speaking out with such profound humanity. I am only sorry what we can do is so little, and that so many remain in the prison.”
Matt Daloisio, Witness Against Torture

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Polly Nash or Andy Worthington.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a Spectacle Production (74 minutes, 2009), and copies of the DVD are now available. As featured on Democracy Now!, ABC News and Truthout. See here for videos of the Q&A session (with Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes, Andy Worthington and Polly Nash) that followed the launch of the film in London on October 21, 2009.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.