Calling for the Closure of Guantánamo on the 16th Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks

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Today, as we remember the terrible terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I am also aware that it was those attacks that, in turn, led to a terrible development by the United States that has consumed my life for the last eleven and a half years — the establishment, four months later, of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, where men have been subjected to torture, and are held indefinitely without charge or trial, for the most without anything resembling evidence.

Largely seized by America’s allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and sold for bounty payments, most of the prisoners arrived at Guantánamo without any information about them at all, and the US authorities then proceeded to create what they pretended was evidence by interrogating the prisoners using torture and other forms of duress, thereby rendering most of it worthless — although that conclusion remains something that, sadly, most US citizens, and a shockingly large number of lawmakers neither know nor care about.

Exactly nine years ago, on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I had an op-ed published in the Guardian, “Bush’s bitter legacy,” in which I began by stating the following, which largely remains relevant today:

Today, as we pause to remember the 3,000 people who died in the dreadful attacks of September 11 2001, it is also important to remember that, in terms of the Bush administration’s response, the bitter legacy of that day remains a deep stain on America’s moral standing.

In order to pursue a “war” against a group of terrorist criminals, the administration flouted the US Constitution and the bill of rights, dismissed the Geneva conventions, endorsed imprisonment without charge or trial, created a system of show trials for terror suspects out of thin air, granted themselves the right to spy on American citizens with impunity, and invaded a sovereign country without justification.

I also noted how “[d]ecisive leadership is now required to correct these mistakes, and to revive the United States as a country founded on the rule of law,” and proceeded to suggest that “[s]ome of this can be accomplished with a few pieces of crucial legislation – upholding the absolute ban on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, prohibiting the use of “extraordinary rendition”, holding prisoners seized in wartime in accordance with the Geneva conventions, and bringing criminals to justice within the US court system.”

Unfortunately, although the Bush program of torture and rendition is over, shady goings-on still take place in the shadows that attend America’s covert activities in numerous countries around the world, and assassinations by drone have replaced Bush’s network of “black sites.” In addition, at Guantánamo, men are still held without their imprisonment being in accordance with the Geneva conventions, and without anyone who has allegedly committed a crime being brought to justice within the US court system.

Nine years ago, some readers, I recall, thought it was unacceptably insensitive to even mention Guantánamo on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and so, today, 16 years after the attacks, I looked through the headlines to see if that has changed, and was reassured to see a handful of articles specifically dealing with Guantánamo in relation to 9/11.

In the Guardian, Joanna Walters asked, “Will accused 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ever come to trial?”, looking at how unacceptable it is that the trial for those accused of the 9/11 attacks has not yet taken place — and is still probably many, many years away, if it is to take place at all.

Walters noted that, although military prosecutors hope that his trial by military commission will begin in January 2019, “[m]ost interested experts think that is wildly optimistic, and are asking if [he] will ever stand trial at all.”

His lawyer, David Nevin, said, “It will take another two, three or four years to get the case to trial and it will take a year or so to try. Walters added that he “estimated there would likely follow an initial appeal that could take five years, then that appeal going up to the circuit court – another three or four years – and, maybe four years after that, a conclusion in the US supreme court up to 18 years from now – 34 years after the attacks.”

As Nevin added, “There’s every possibility that my client will die in prison before this process is completed.” He also said, “So you have to ask, why exactly are we doing this, or doing it in this way? We are spending millions and millions of [public] dollars every week for something that could be pointless.”

Al-Jazeera also covered the 9/11 trial today, in an article entitled, “Justice remains elusive on 9/11 anniversary,” and, for the New Yorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin wrote a highly critical piece, criticizing the military commissions, which involve ten of the 41 men still held, and also looking at the other men still held, and how it is that the prison is still open.

As she stated:

Five other prisoners … have been cleared for release, a long process that includes multiple agencies determining that they pose no threat. These are people who probably never should have been sent to Guantánamo in the first place; in some cases, they were ordered released many years ago but are still being held. (One problem is figuring out where to send them.) There are also twenty-six people who are known as “forever prisoners,” meaning that the Obama Administration was too uncertain about their innocence to release them but too timid to file charges against them—whether this was out of fear of an acquittal or because something embarrassing to the government might have emerged, it is impossible to say without a trial. President Obama enshrined this hesitation in a process of “periodic reviews.” The status of these prisoners remains what it is: indefinite detention on no charge, a distinctly un-American condition. The day before Obama left office, he sent a letter to Congress complaining that “politics” had kept him from closing the base. That is true, to an extent: even though George W. Bush had transferred twice as many prisoners as Obama ever did, once Obama took office, the Republicans used the prison issue as a cudgel. When the Obama Administration put together a comprehensive analysis demonstrating, among other things, that supermax prisons did a good job of holding even the worst terrorists, Senator James Inhofe, the Republican of Oklahoma, said that the report was “simply giving cover to President Obama so that he can continue what he is already actively working towards, which is bringing terrorists onto U.S. soil.” But politics is not something that just descends on a President, like a hurricane. Even before Congress made it much harder, the Obama Administration had muddled its chances to close Guantánamo. In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said that he would bring Mohammed to New York, to stand trial in federal court. This was the key moment; we might have had a trial years ago if the Administration had stuck to that decision. But, in the face of opposition from Republicans and local politicians, the Administration backed down.

She added, “What this means, in short, is that although Obama scaled Guantánamo down, and brought it a great distance from the days when prisoners were abused there, his successor, Donald Trump, could easily scale it up again.”

16 years after 9/11, this is, sadly, a possibility. As Amy Davidson Sorkin reminded readers, “He has said that he wants to keep it open: during the campaign, he said, ‘We’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me, we’re gonna load it up.’ That hasn’t happened yet, but, last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that the job of the State Department official assigned to work on closing Guantánamo would be eliminated. The retired general John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, oversaw Guantánamo when he led the military’s Southern Command, and has dismissed criticisms of the site as media exaggerations.”

While we wait to see if recent suggestions that Trump is still committed to expanding Guantánamo will come to fruition, we must not allow anyone to suggest that the terrible events of September 11, 2001 provide any basis whatsoever for the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, a moral, legal and ethical abomination that shames the United States, and its claimed respect for the rule of law, every day that it remains open.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.