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On Guantanamo Prison Camp's Fifth Birthday, New Pressure to Shut It Down •
Witnesses at Guantanamo
By Retired Colonel Ann Wright
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Tuesday 09 January 2007
January 11, 2007, marks the five-year anniversary of the first prisoners
sent by the Bush administration from Afghanistan to the US Naval Base
prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Over 770 prisoners have been
incarcerated there in the subsequent five years, "the worst of the
worst," according to former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. After
five years, only ten have been charged with any crime. 379 of the "worst
of the worst" have been sent home with no charges and no apologies,
after years of imprisonment. Torture and other inhumane treatment of
prisoners have occurred routinely in the prison. 29 prisoners have made
41 suicide attempts; three were successful. All prisoners are depressed
and despondent.
On January 9 to 13, 2007, I will be a part of an international
delegation of former prisoners, families of current prisoners, US
lawyers and human rights activists who will march to the US Naval Base
in Guantanamo Bay to demand that the prison be closed. The march is a
part of the January 11 International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo.
As I look into the US Naval Base at Guantanamo, I will be filled with
sadness and anger with what the Bush administration has done in the name
of "national security," national security that has been jeopardized
by
policies in the prison that have undercut the moral and ethical
foundation of our country.
As a retired US Army Reserves Colonel and US diplomat who helped reopen
the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2001, I am going to
Cuba to march to the gates of the US Naval Base to demand accountability
for violations of domestic and international law against prisoners and
to protest the incredible costs to our international standing as well as
to our common humanity caused by the Bush administration's policies on
detention, interrogation and torture. The name "Guantanamo" will now
live in infamy in the annals of history.
To the world, the term "Guantanamo" means inhumane treatment at best
and
torture as the norm. Plain and simple, no matter how the Bush
administration tries to parse the definition of torture, we know it when
we hear it: solitary confinement for months on end, extreme changes of
temperature, waterboarding, beatings, deprivation of sleep, high
intensity noise and light. They can tell us that "alternative"
techniques are approved, but we know what they are - techniques that the
president, if they were used on him, would call torture.
"Guantanamo" stands for being outside the rule of law - no hearings,
no
notice of evidence, no habeas corpus for fellow human beings. It means
an administration that has attempted to be the law rather than follow
the law.
"Guantanamo" stands for shielding from prosecution for their illegal
criminal activities those who have been involved in illegal detention,
torture and rendition.
"Guantanamo" stands for the sacrifice of our morality and humanity
by
allowing the prison to stay open.
I firmly believe that to regain some respect in the international
community, and for the sake of our national spirit and soul, the prison
in Guantanamo must be closed and the US military must be removed from
adjudicating "enemy combatants" cases.
Instead, I believe the federal courts must administer the laws of the
United States against persons charged with "terrorist" crimes, as
the
courts have done in the past. For the United States to ever hope to
salvage some modicum of its stature in the area of human rights, the
legal process for those accused of criminal, terrorist acts must be
transparent and fair. The "Guantanamo process" is neither.
For our own humanity, I call on the new Congress to acknowledge the
capabilities and history of our civilian legal system, abolish the
Military Commissions Act, designate the federal courts to hear the
cases, and close Guantanamo.
--------
Ann Wright is a retired 29-year US Army Reserve Colonel and a 16-year
US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq.
Other members of the delegation to Guantanamo are:
Zohra Shaban Zewawi and Taher Deghayes, mother and brother of Omar
Deghayes, from Dubai Asif Iqbal, a former detainee in Guantanamo
released in March 2004
Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Cindy Sheehan, "peace mom," Gold Star Families for Peace
Bill Goodman, attorney and legal director for the Center for
Constitutional Rights
Adele Welty, 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows (her son, a
firefighter, was killed on 9/11)
Jodie Evans, CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Tiffany Burns, Gold Star Families for Peace
Mat Whitecross, co-producer of the film "Road to Guantanamo"
Catherine Murphy, documentary filmmaker who will document the delegation
Go to Original
On Guantanamo Prison Camp's Fifth Birthday, New Pressure to Shut It
Down
By Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US
Tuesday 09 January 2007
San Francisco - An international delegation arrived in Cuba this week to
call for the closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The
protest is part of the January 11 International Day to Shut Down
Guantanamo, during which many groups in the United States and abroad are
expected to rally thousands of human rights activists.
January 11 is the 5-year anniversary of the first prisoners being sent
to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
"From the beginning this was a prison that was set up without any kind
of due process," Medea Benjamin of the women-for-peace group Code Pink
told OneWorld from Havana. "People in prison have no access to see their
family members. It took a long time for them to even have lawyers and
those lawyers don't even have access to their clients."
"Most of them have no charges against them, and none of them have had
a
fair trial," Benjamin added.
The 12-person delegation organized by Code Pink also includes U.S.
"peace mom" Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in the war in Iraq;
Adele
Welty whose firefighter son was killed on 9/11; retired U.S. colonel and
diplomat Ann Wright who resigned over the invasion of Iraq; and legal
director of the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights Bill Goodman who
has taken the cases of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Thursday, the group will walk to the gates of the Guantanamo prison
from the Cuban side. They had petitioned for access to the prison itself
but were denied.
Protests are also planned outside the U.S. military's Southern Command
in Miami, outside the Capitol in Washington, DC, and at international
capitol buildings worldwide.
The London-based rights group Amnesty International will also be
rallying activists around the world Thursday, while New York-based Human
Rights Watch is asking its supporters to contact their congressional
representatives and local newspapers.
Jen Daskal, the Washington lobbyist for Human Rights Watch, told
OneWorld that activists are pushing the newly formed Democratic-led
Congress to restore the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees.
President Bush stripped so-called "unlawful enemy combatants" of that
right last year when he signed the Military Commissions Act.
"Habeas is one of the oldest and most important checks on arbitrary
executive power," she said. "It dates back to the days of the early
English kings. At that time it assured that the king couldn't just throw
somebody in the dungeon without having an independent review of their
detention."
"By passing a law saying that these detainees could not access the
courts," Daskal said, "Congress essentially cut off one of the most
important checks for keeping the government accountable."
Daskal is optimistic the new Congress will pass a bill restoring habeas
corpus rights this year. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the
Senate Judiciary Committee have already introduced a bill to reinstate
the right. Last year a similar measure failed by only two votes.
"It's a high priority for the Democrats and for many Republicans,"
she
said. "There's a growing awareness that stripping detainees of the right
to challenge their detention is bad policy."
Five years after the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, not a single
inmate has been convicted of any criminal charge. Hundreds have been
released without charge or any form of compensation for the many years
they were detained at the prison camp.
Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer whose firm represents Guantanamo
detainees from Bahrain, told OneWorld that clients he thought might have
a connection to terrorism have been released, while those who appear to
be guilty of nothing remain in custody.
One client, Jum'ah Mohammed Abdul Latif al-Dossari, was seized in
Pakistan in December 2001 and has been in American custody ever since.
When he was first brought into American custody on a U.S. base in
Afghanistan, Colangelo-Bryan wrote, "Mr. al-Dossari and other detainees
were put in a row on the ground in a tent. U.S. Marines urinated on the
detainees and put cigarettes out on them.... A U.S. soldier pushed Mr.
al-Dossari's head into the ground violently and other soldiers walked on
him."
On his way to the interrogation room, the lawyer said, al-Dossari "was
made to walk barefoot over barbed wire and his head was pushed to the
ground on broken glass."
Inside the interrogation room al-Dossari was allegedly electrically
shocked, spat upon, and doused over the head with a very hot liquid.
Five years later, al-Dossari remains incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. He
has never been charged with any crime.
The U.S. military has told his lawyers that al-Dossari is being held for
being in Tora Bora, where U.S. forces allegedly had trapped Osama bin
Laden in the fall of 2001, a charge that perplexes the Bahrainian's
American lawyer.
"I don't know what that means," attorney Colangelo-Bryan told OneWorld.
"It doesn't tell me when he was supposedly at Tora Bora. It doesn't say
what if anything he supposedly did there. It doesn't say with whom-if
anyone-he was there. It's wholly lacking in the sort of detail that
would be necessary to find that someone is an enemy combatant, even
under the government's definition of that term."
Colangelo-Bryan told OneWorld that none of his clients have been
interrogated for over a year.
In the meantime, al-Dossari has reportedly become suicidal and the
military has placed him in solitary confinement. The only other prisoner
he is allowed to see, Colangelo-Bryan said, is an exercise partner who
has shown signs of severe mental illness.
Al-Dossari is one of hundreds of prisoners currently held in isolation
at Guantanamo Bay.
"We're talking about a group of people who have not been charged with
crimes, who will likely never be charged with crimes and for whom no
individualized determination has been made that they need to be kept in
isolation," Colangelo-Bryan noted. "To hold hundreds of people
indiscriminately in isolation perhaps for the rest of their lives
without charging them with any crime is not justice."
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