As Activists Plan Protest for 9th Anniv. of Guantánamo, Former Gitmo Commander Subpoenaed in Spain over Prisoner Torture + Ending Bush’s big lie on Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
7 January, 2011

This morning, as part of my current US tour to raise awareness of Guantánamo, in the week that the 173 men still held in the “War on Terror” prison begin their tenth year of detention, I was delighted to be invited to speak to Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now! Amy and Juan had also invited Katie Gallagher of the Center of Constitutional Rights, and our segment of the show, which lasts about 12 minutes, is available below:

As Activists Plan Protest for 9th Anniv. of Guantánamo, Former Gitmo Commander Subpoenaed in Spain over Prisoner Torture

In the time available, I was pleased to have the opportunity to explain, briefly, how, as the 9th anniversary approaches, we face the shocking possibility that very few prisoners at all will be released before the 2012 elections. With reference to the findings of the Obama administration’s own Guantánamo Review Task Force, I explained how the 89 men cleared for release are, for the most part, going nowhere, because 58 are Yemenis, whose repatriation has been prevented by both President Obama and by Congress, and 31 others are awaiting third countries prepared to offer them a new home. As I explained with regard to the Yemenis, “It’s been a year now since the President announced a moratorium on releasing any prisoner from Guantánamo to Yemen because of the uproar that came about because, at Christmas 2009, a Nigerian man tried to blow up a plane, and it came out that he was apparently recruited in Yemen. So Yemen is now this entire terrorist country. Nobody cleared for release from Guantánamo can be released there because of these fears that they will join some terrorist cell. That’s guilt by nationality. It’s collective punishment. However you want to look at it, it’s grossly unfair.”

Speaking of the other 31 men and the need to secure third countries prepared to offer them homes, I pointed out how, in the recent WikiLeaks revelations about the international horse-trading regarding these men, the failure of the US to take responsibility for any of these men had been overlooked. As I told Amy and Juan, “It remains a problem that, at every level, at the highest levels of government in the United States, everybody who could — the courts, Congress, President Obama — refused to accept cleared prisoners to be brought to live on the US mainland.”

Moreover, just this week, President Obama showed his disdain for those seeking justice for the Guantánamo prisoners by forcibly repatriating the first prisoner released since last August — Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, an Algerian who had won his habeas corpus petition, but was desperate not to return home, and who, shockingly, was repatriated while a legal challenge to his forcible repatriation was underway.

I also spoke about the 48 men proposed for ongoing indefinite detention without charge or trial, noting how this designation — and the recent suggestion that President Obama will sign an executive order formalizing their indefinite detention, while providing for some sort of review process — is also fundamentally wrong. I also mentioned how the Task Force’s findings — through a secretive process initiated by the Executive — conflicts with the prisoners’ ongoing habeas corpus petitions, or involves designating for indefinite detention men who have lost their habeas petitions, even though the majority of the 19 men who have lost their petitions “were very peripheral foot soldiers in the military conflict that took place before the 9/11 attacks, in Afghanistan,” and are, explicitly, “not terrorists.”

Katie spoke about two submissions, filed in Spain today, relating to ongoing investigations of the US torture program, which are pending in the National Court of Spain. In the first, CCR and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) “submitted a dossier regarding former commander of Guantánamo, Geoffrey Miller, which collects and analyzes the evidence demonstrating his role in the torture of detainees at Guantánamo and in Iraq,” requesting that a subpoena be issued for Miller to testify before the court, and in the second, CCR and ECCHR “submitted an expert opinion that sets out the legal basis for holding the ‘Bush Six’ criminally liable under international criminal law,” which summarizes the key evidence against the defendants — David Addington, William J. Haynes II, Douglas Feith, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee. Further information about both cases — including the submissions — is available here, and also see this op-ed in the Guardian by CCR’s President, Michael Ratner.

***

In the Guardian: Bringing Guantánamo Detainees to New York

Below is an article I wrote for the Guardian’s Comment is free America, after editor Matt Seaton got in touch to ask if I’d be interested in writing a short article promoting the screening of my film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash) at Revolution Books in New York this evening, as part of my short US tour to raise awareness of the plight of the remaining 173 prisoners during the week that the prison begins its tenth year of operations (on January 11). I was, of course, delighted to accept Matt’s offer, and hope some to see some of you at Revolution Books this evening, where I will be joined by Scott Horton, law professor and columnist at Harper’s Magazine. I’d also like to encourage anyone in the D.C area to come to The White House for the rally and protest on the morning of January 11.

Ending Bush’s big lie on Guantánamo
Andy Worthington, The Guardian, January 6, 2011

In the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” it was important to dehumanise the men held at Guantánamo, to give life to the myth that the prison held “the worst of the worst” terrorists, picked up on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

This was not true, as reports over the years have demonstrated. A former military interrogator in Afghanistan, writing under the pseudonym Chris Mackey, explained in his book The Interrogators that there was no screening process in place, and that every Arab who came into US custody, by whatever method, had to be transferred to Guantánamo.

Moreover, in 2006, an analysis of the Pentagon’s own allegations against 517 prisoners (compiled after 200 men and boys had already been released), and conducted by researchers at the Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey, found that 86 percent were captured by the Northern Alliance or Pakistani forces, 55 percent were not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the US or its allies, and only 8 percent were alleged to have had any kind of affiliation with al-Qaeda.

In addition, around half the prisoners were not captured in Afghanistan, but were either seized in Pakistan, or crossing the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and although many of the men were foot soldiers for the Taliban, who had been involved in the long-standing civil war against the Northern Alliance, which had begun many years before the 9/11 attacks, others were missionaries, humanitarian aid workers, or economic migrants, and only 33 of the remaining 174 prisoners have been recommended for trial by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, which reviewed all the cases in 2009.

As the prison at Guantánamo prepares to start its tenth year of operations (on January 11), and as I begin a week of events in New York and Washington D.C. to raise awareness of the remaining prisoners, these men are still, for the most part, as dehumanised as they were under President Bush.

Part of the attempt to raise awareness involves showing the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” which I co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash, and which features compelling and emotional testimony from former Guantánamo prisoners Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg, both seized in 2002 from the homes where they were living in Pakistan, many hundreds of miles from the battlefields of Afghanistan, and sent to Guantánamo.

Last year, I travelled around the UK with Omar Deghayes, showing the film to audiences of students and activists who were grateful for the opportunity to meet Omar, after listening to his harrowing descriptions of how he was mistreated, and how the British security services colluded in his abuse, but when I travel to the US, I am not allowed to visit with Omar, or with Moazzam, or with any other cleared prisoner.

Audiences in the States are also moved by Omar’s testimony, when they have the opportunity to see it, but it would have a much greater impact if they were able to meet a former prisoner in person.

Sadly, the Obama administration is largely to blame for this state of affairs. In early 2009, White House Counsel Greg Craig was close to finalising a plan to rehouse a handful of cleared prisoners who could not be repatriated safely. These men were the Uighurs, Muslims for China’s Xinjiang province, seized by mistake, who had won their habeas corpus petition in a US court in October 2008, and their presence in the US would have done more to destroy the Bush administration’s enduring lies than any other gesture.

However, when Republicans got wind of it, and reacted with unjustifiable outrage, Obama quashed the plan, making it difficult for the US to find third countries prepared to take cleared prisoners who could not be repatriated, and contributing to the paralysis that Obama finds himself in today: presiding over a prison in which, although over half the remaining prisoners have been cleared for release by Obama’s Task Force, cynical lawmakers, and the President’s own cowardice, have made it increasingly difficult for him to release anyone.

Anonymity — the dehumanisation of these men — helps to maintain the illusion that their ongoing detention is somehow justifiable, but if their stories, and the circumstances of their capture, were more widely known, the Bush administration’s enduring mythology might be thoroughly punctured, and more substantial steps taken — or demanded — to secure their release. Bringing the stories of Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg to the American public can, hopefully, play a part in this still necessary process.

Details of this evening’s screening:

Friday January 7, 7 pm: Film screening – “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” followed by Q&A with Andy Worthington and Scott Horton.

Revolution Books, 146 West 26th Street (between 6th & 7th Ave.), New York, NY 10001.

A donation of $10 is requested for the film, drinks and popcorn, to benefit Revolution Books. For further information, see the Revolution Books website, or contact the store by email or by phone: 212-691-3345. A Facebook page is here.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. 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 July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

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