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Close Gitmo
Report from Guantanamo Hearings: When Due Process is a Matter of Life and Death
02 weeks ago
This week I’ve been at the Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay Cuba observing the first military commission proceedings since the ten-year anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo prison. The proceedings concern the case of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri (pronounced al-NAH-shiri) — first taken into U.S. custody in November 2002 — who faces a possible death sentence for his alleged involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole over eleven years ago. Over the course of two full days of proceedings the military commission judge struggled with several motions that squarely implicate fundamental due process and fairness concerns, particularly crucial in a criminal trial where the defendant’s life is at stake. Yet few of these critical issues were resolved or even clarified this week as the commissions system continues to be bogged down by novel rules and a near complete lack of any instructive precedent.
Extensive and time-consuming consideration of pre-trial motions is common in any complex death penalty case. What is exceptional about the al-Nashiri case is that most of the concerns raised by participants would never be at issue in a trial before any federal court, or even state court, where the rules are more fully developed and substantial precedent exists. Moreover, the atypical procedural obstacles that have arisen in the al-Nashiri case stem in large part from the omission of protections long recognized as essential by ordinary courts.
For instance, federal courts and all state courts have long acknowledged the particular importance of sufficiently resourcing the defense in capital cases, a right widely recognized as requiring that the defense be allowed to ask the court for resources without showing the request to the prosecution. That is because if the defense were to include the prosecution in such requests it would risk revealing its trial strategy and giving the prosecution an unfair advantage. In the military commissions, on the other hand, the refusal to grant defense resources in death penalty cases has been such a serious problem that in 2009 Congress passed legislation making clear that the commissions were to provide defense counsel in capital cases with resources comparable to those granted in federal courts.
Yet last month the Military Commissions Convening Authority, the body in charge of granting defense resources, inexplicably rejected a joint request from both the defense and the prosecution for the defense to be able to request resources from the Authority without sharing the request with the prosecution. On Tuesday, the defense challenged the Authority’s rejection before Judge James Pohl, who seemed uncertain about whether he had the authority to overrule the Convening Authority’s decision.
Ultimately, Judge Pohl attempted to side-step the issue by asking defense counsel to provide only minimal descriptions of the resource request and related justification to the Authority and the Prosecution and to come back to the judge if and when those minimally described requests were denied. Given that there was nothing in the Authority’s lengthy and unequivocal rejection to suggest that it would accept a minimal description, it appears most likely that the commission participants will re-litigate the issue several times, leading to further delays.
Another issue that would never come up in federal courts is the question of whether the government can examine the content of attorney-client mail. In federal court, the government would never be permitted to do so, as it would clearly violate the attorney-client privilege and provide the prosecution an unfair and significant advantage over the defense.
Such practices were also rejected at Guantánamo until this past fall, when the Commander responsible for the prison began ordering closer reviews of attorney-client mail in military commission cases. A recent order requires that all attorney-client mail for detainees involved in the military commissions be reviewed by a team of government contractors for both physical and “information” contraband. The top military commissions defense lawyer saw this order as being such a threat to the attorney-client privilege that he told the attorneys under his command that they were ethnically obligated not to comply.
In the al-Nashiri case, after several hours of oral argument and witness testimony over two days, Judge Pohl was still unable to resolve the issue. Instead, he ordered the defense and prosecution to provide additional information and the issue will be addressed–for third time in the al-Nashiri case — at the next hearing in April.
A final issue that was raised and remains unresolved implicates the torturing of al-Nashiri while he spent four years in secret CIA custody. On Tuesday, defense counsel began to argue why his client should not be shackled while meeting with defense counsel because of the residual impact of his having been tortured while in shackles. (Publicly available information indicates that interrogators held a gun and power drill to al-Nashiri’s head during interrogations.) The answer to the underlying question of al-Nashiri’s shackling during defense counsel meetings was postponed to give the defense the opportunity to more fully explain the relevance of al-Nashiri’s mistreatment, an explanation that will most likely occur in a session closed to the public thus providing confirmation that the consistent true aim of the military commissions is to keep the secrets of American torturers. Again, no one in a federal or state capital trial would bother to question the “relevance” of a defendant’s torture to his capital defense. Particularly not when the torture was at the hands of the same government that seeks his death.
In sum, after two lengthy days of arguments, the al-Nashiri case seems hardly closer to coming to trial. Defense counsel suggested that the al-Nashiri trial wouldn’t even begin until 2015 in commissions it described as a “facsimile of a court.” In a press conference following the proceedings’ conclusion, family members of the victims of the Cole bombing also commented on the delays, one man saying he expected he might see justice by the time he was an old man. What wasn’t discussed at the press conference was how many of delays and procedural quagmires that have delayed justice for al-Nashiri and the Cole bombing victims alike could have been avoided had the case been brought in the established federal forum where it properly belonged.
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Guantanamo and the Death Penalty: Two Terrible Ideas Come Together
02 weeks ago
The military commission hearing in the case of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri (pronounced al-NAH-shiri) beginning today will once again put on the world stage two of the worst U.S. ideas: Guantánamo and the death penalty.
The hearing takes place in Guantánamo — bad idea number one — where al-Nashiri has been detained for years, following his secret imprisonment and torture. As our European allies in countries including Poland, the U.K. and Spain are forced to deal with their complicity in the shameful U.S. program of torture and secret prisons and as our enemies continue to use the detention camps as a recruiting tool, the reasons to close Guantánamo, not start new trials there, are mounting.
Al-Nashiri’s hearing is in a capital case, the second really bad idea we cling to in this country. We still have the death penalty, although we are in the minority, and we share the distinction of “most executions” with human rights outlaws: China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen.
The fact that the hearing is in the military commissions (we’re going to stop counting bad ideas now) — will force Rick Kammen, longtime capital defender and al-Nashiri’s “learned counsel,” to make an argument he hasn’t needed in a long time, maybe a couple of decades. At issue is an indigent defendant’s right to receive funding for the investigation and the experts needed to defend against capital charges and the death sentence, and to ask for that funding outside the interested ears of the prosecution. (In legal Latin, such hearings are called “ex parte,” and they are as routine as the sound of ceiling fans in such bastions of “enlightened” capital practice as the courts of Mississippi and Louisiana.)
Should a puzzled reporter or observer lean over to a lawyer today in Guantánamo and ask what would this hearing look like in federal court, the answer is that there would never be such a hearing in a federal court. The right for defense funding of experts and investigators, and the right to ask for that funding privately — without having to reveal defense strategy or the progress of the investigation — has been established in federal courts for decades. It is universally recognized in federal capital trials that an indigent defendant gets to go before the court and say what he or she needs for a fair trial — without having the other side listen in.
What is even more surprising is that everyone seemed to recognize this state of play when the need for confidential hearings was raised. The judge indicated that the parties should ask the Convening Authority of the military commissions, and they did so together. It is worth noting that the motion to have “ex parte” communications about funding for experts and investigation was a joint motion of the defense and the prosecution. Despite this fact, it was denied by the Convening Authority. Al-Nashiri’s hearing beginning today at Guantánamo may decide what the military judge will do now.
Before giving the prosecution too much credit, though, we should point out that the “sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander” argument doesn’t really apply here. The defense has only one source of funding for its investigation and experts: the military. The prosecution isn’t limited that way. If they want something — say a couple dozen lawyers and investigators to pursue evidence in Yemen, or Saudi Arabia — and the military turns them down, they will get all they need from the endless supply of Department of Justice lawyers and CIA and FBI investigators.
And that brings us to the second big issue for the hearings this week in al-Nashiri’s case: the proposed “security” measures that the defense team, the American Bar Association, and others have said violate the attorney client privilege. There, the issue is an old one that will persist as long as these Guantánamo trials do; the vexing problem for the government of keeping secret the identities of the torturers and the details of the torture while trying to make the trial of a tortured man look fair.
The “new” military commission has a new motto: “Fairness, Transparency, Justice.” But this week is all about a system that cannot seem to provide basic rights to a defendant. Stay tuned from more news from Gitmo later this week.
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Guantanamo Chief Defense Lawyer Orders His Attorneys: Don’t Agree to Monitoring
03 weeks ago
Ten years on, Guantánamo authorities are back to their old tricks, throwing up roadblocks to fair trials. But now the top defense lawyer for the controversial Guantánamo military commission system has ordered the attorneys under his command not to comply with new rules issued by the Guantánamo prison chief that require Defense Department screening of all written materials lawyers want to send to their clients.
In an email sent Sunday and obtained by the ACLU, Marine Col. J.P. Colwell, the chief military defense counsel for the commissions, informed all military commission defense lawyers that they were ethically obligated to refuse to follow the rules, which were issued last month.
Guantánamo’s commander, Navy Rear Adm. David Woods, issued the rules on monitoring legal communications on December 27. Under these rules, any information provided by lawyers that military censors found objectionable — like communications about U.S. personnel who tortured the prisoners — could be kept from the prisoner and brought to the attention of the base commander. This would eliminate attorney-client confidentiality.
The new prison rules say that defense attorneys must agree in writing to the monitoring as a condition of communication with their clients. In his email, Colwell told military commission defense lawyers that they should not sign the monitoring agreement, and if they already had signed, then they should immediately withdraw from the agreement. Citing the ethics codes that govern every branch of the military, Colwell wrote that following the agreement and revealing such information would be “in violation” of rules for professional conduct.
Col. Colwell joins an honorable line of Guantánamo military lawyers who have opposed superiors’ attempts — ostensibly in the name of security — to undermine longstanding rules necessary for a fair trial. In seeking to force military defense counsel to cast aside their professional ethical obligations of client confidentiality, the new rules fly in the face of American justice and tradition.
If we want to do justice — and be seen as doing it — these cases need to be in federal court where the rules are established, fair, and effective.
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ACLU Studio: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo
03 weeks ago
Today marks 10 years since the first prisoners were sent to Guantánamo, making it the longest-standing war prison in U.S. history. Almost 800 men have passed through Guantánamo’s cells. To learn more about the ACLU’s call to close Guantánamo, visit www.aclu.org/closegitmo.
In 2001, Lakhdar Boumediene was falsely accused of being an al Qaeda operative while working for a humanitarian aid organization in Bosnia. Even though Bosnia’s highest court found no evidence against him, the U.S. government kidnapped Mr. Boumediene and sent him to Guantánamo, where he remained for 7 ½ years without charge or trial.
In a 2008 landmark Supreme Court decision that bears Mr. Boumediene’s name, the Court ruled that the constitutional right of habeas corpus applied to the men imprisoned at Guantánamo.
The Court ordered the government to give Mr. Boumediene and his fellow prisoners a meaningful opportunity in a civilian court to challenge their confinement. Five months later, a United States District Court in Washington heard the supposed evidence against Mr. Boumediene, found it utterly lacking and ordered him set free. In May 2009, Mr. Boumediene was released from Guantánamo and today, he lives in France with his wife and three children.
In the latest episode of ACLU Studio, ACLU National Security Project Senior Staff Attorney Zachary Katznelson talks with Mr. Boumediene about his experiences at Guantanamo and his reflections on the 10-year mark since the first prisoners were taken there.
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Check Out Our "Close Gitmo" Activist Toolkit!
03 weeks ago
Tomorrow marks 10 years since the first prisoners were sent to the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, making it the longest-standing war prison in U.S. history.
To learn how you can amplify the call to close Guantánamo, once and for all, check out our new activist toolkit.
And in case you missed them, be sure to check out the “Gitmo by the Numbers” Infographic that we blogged about yesterday, and our blog post about Lakhdar Boumediene, an innocent man who was imprisoned at Guantánamo for seven and a half years without charge or trial. Tomorrow, we’ll feature a podcast conversation with Mr. Boumediene.
And be sure to let President Obama know that you’re counting on him to make good on his original promise to close Guantánamo and to shut down the un-American and illegal policies that it embodies.
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INFOGRAPHIC: Guantanamo by the Numbers
03 weeks ago
This Wednesday, January 11 marks 10 years since the first prisoners were sent to Guantánamo. Over the last decade, the prison camp has become a symbol of injustice, abuse and disregard for the rule of law.
Since it opened, almost 800 men have passed through Guantánamo’s cells. Today, 171 men remain imprisoned there; 89 of those men have been unanimously cleared by intelligence and military officials, but remain at the prison camp.
A new ACLU infographic details this information, as well as other alarming facts and figures about Guantánamo. Click here to view the infographic.
In case you missed it, this weekend we wrote about Lakhdar Boumediene, an innocent man who was imprisoned at Guantánamo for seven and a half years without charge or trial. Later this week, we’ll feature a podcast conversation with Mr. Boumediene.
On this shameful anniversary, the ACLU renews our call for the prison camp to be shuttered. Join us: ask President Obama to close Guantánamo, once and for all.
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Injustice at Guantanamo: Past and Present
03 weeks ago
Image, left: Lakhdar and Yusuf (born 8/2010) – September 2011
This Wednesday marks 10 years since the prison at Guantánamo Bay opened. Today in The New York Times, Lakhdar Boumediene reflects on that anniversary and tells the harrowing tale of the seven and a half years he spent imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. Mr. Boumediene always maintained his innocence, fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court in a case that bears his name, and ultimately won his freedom before a federal court in Washington. Today, he lives in France with his wife and three children.
Mr. Boumediene’s personal experience goes to the heart of what is wrong with Guantánamo. Originally from Algeria, he became a Bosnian citizen and worked there for the Red Crescent — the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross. In October 2001, he was taken away from his wife and two daughters, arrested and falsely accused of being an al Qaeda operative. After three months of investigation, Bosnia’s highest court found there was no evidence against him, but instead of tasting freedom, he was kidnapped by the United States government, trussed up and flown to Guantanamo. There, he was brutally treated, beaten, subjected to extreme temperatures, forced to stay in painful positions for hours at a time, sleep deprived and beaten. His wife and young children were never allowed to visit and their letters were either rejected entirely or heavily censored. Mr. Boumediene went on hunger strike to peacefully protest his incarceration without charge. He was force-fed for two years.
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Boumediene in Paris weeks after his release from Guantánamo — Spring 2009
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Still, somehow, Mr. Boumediene maintained the strength to fight for his freedom. In his historic 2008 case, Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners like him must have a meaningful opportunity to challenge their confinement. Months later, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. had no credible evidence against Mr. Boumediene and ordered him set free. It turns out the government’s entire case relied on a single unnamed informant, whom U.S. Embassy officials in Bosnia had found untrustworthy at the time Mr. Boumediene was originally seized. Yet he remained imprisoned for seven and a half years. He was finally reunited with his family in France in May 2009.
“Some politicians say that people in Guantánamo are terrorists, but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children’s lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again….I’m told that my Supreme Court case is now read in law schools. Perhaps one day that will give me satisfaction, but so long as Guantánamo stays open and innocent men remain there, my thoughts will be with those left behind in that place of suffering and injustice.”
While Mr. Boumediene is finally free, over 170 men remain in Guantánamo, stuck in a limbo created by the politics of fear that surround anything to do with terrorism. The majority of Guantanamo prisoners have been unanimously cleared for release by the United States intelligence and military communities, but remain incarcerated, to the cost of over $70 million a year. The reason is politics and failure by all three branches of government to act to bring an end to Guantánamo. It is a lot easier to bang the drum of fear than to sound the call of justice.
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Taken the day before release, the only known photo of a prisoner and lawyer at Guantánamo – May 2009
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I had the honor of interviewing Mr. Boumediene last week, and our conversation will be available online later this week as a podcast on the ACLU’s website. It is a unique opportunity to hear the words of a man who has actually experienced Guantánamo Bay from the inside, with all its failings and profound ugliness. We ask that you stand today with Mr. Boumediene and call upon the U.S. government to finally end the blight on our reputation — and our security — that is Guantánamo Bay. Join us in asking President Obama to keep his promise to close the prison camp by charging and trying the prisoners who are there, or sending them home.
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The Machinery of Death: Witness to Al-Nashiri’s First Guantánamo Hearing
02 months ago
Yesterday, the man accused of planning the 2000 U.S.S. Cole bombing appeared before the world for the first time, nine years after his capture, at a military commission hearing at Guantánamo. I was there to observe the proceedings for the ACLU.
The arraignment of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri (pronounced al-NAH-shiri) was the beginning of what will likely be a years-long death penalty trial before a military commission. Mr. al-Nashiri wore a white smock and trousers (similar to a doctor’s scrubs, just a bit thicker and baggier).
Mr. al-Nashiri’s attorney told the court that the start of these proceedings meant Mr. al-Nashiri finally has something concrete in his life. But it seems that very little in this Guantánamo military commission is truly concrete. Speaking from the bench, the judge himself, Army Col. James Pohl, admitted some of the key uncertainties and problems that threaten a fair trial. Judge Pohl has never tried a death penalty case. When asked about mitigation — the portion of a death penalty trial in which the defense gets to argue why the accused should not be put to death — Judge Pohl stated he needed to research it more.
More fundamentally, Judge Pohl recognized that in Guantánamo military commissions, “there are gaps not present in other more developed systems.” The new regulations for the military commissions (a 202-page document) were only issued on Monday and are untested. There has been only one contested Guantánamo military commission trial to date, and little precedent to follow. This stands in stark contrast to the 200-plus years’ worth of guidance and precedent available in the federal criminal justice system.
Perhaps most worryingly, Judge Pohl stated that it was his job to follow the Guantánamo military commission rules and law even if they lead to an unreliable result. We are tinkering with the machinery of death and even with a mechanic like Judge Pohl, who comes across as fair minded, justice is unlikely because the tools are inadequate and the system is unfair.
The hearing yesterday would have taken mere minutes in federal court, but stretched for hours here in Guantánamo. Time and resources were diverted to issues that would never need to come before a federal judge because federal courts resolved them long ago. The defense told Judge Pohl that the government was reading attorney-client mail, which federal courts have long held is unquestionably wrong. Judge Pohl ruled the government had to stop doing so — in this case only — though only after over an hour of argument and the testimony of the military lawyer who has been overseeing the reading of the mail to date.
The military commission spent significant time on whether or not the defense has to tell the government why it needs an expert to work on the case, thereby tipping off the prosecution as to a possible line of defense. The judge left that question for another day, even though it is a long-established practice in federal courts that the defense can submit such requests to the judge without having to reveal them to the government.
Down the line, the questions will get much more serious. Will the CIA finally be forced to reveal where it held Mr. al-Nashiri for four years and what it did to him? Will coerced evidence be entered into the record? Will hearsay even two or three times removed from the original source be used against Mr. al-Nashiri? It should go without saying that a trial tainted by secrecy, evidence that is the fruit of cruel treatment, and unreliable hearsay, cannot be fair — yet under the military commissions’ rules, that may be the trial Mr. al-Nashiri gets.
The prosecution asked for a trial date of February 2, 2012, less than three months from now. The judge disagreed and set the trial date for November 9, 2012. A key reason for the delay is that the government has failed to turn over evidence the defense argues that it needs to prepare for trial. The next fight will be over just how much of this material, which includes information about the CIA’s torture of Mr. al-Nashiri, the government must provide to the defense team.
If past experience is a guide, the government will try to act like Mr. al-Nashiri’s four years in CIA secret prisons never happened. But revisionist history has no place in any judicial proceeding. We know already from a CIA Inspector General report released in 2009 that Mr. al-Nashiri was abused and tortured. He was waterboarded. He had a loaded gun put to his head. He had a drill revved near his face and threats to harm his family. All of that is relevant to any statements Mr. al-Nashiri has given while in U.S. custody and to the decision whether he will receive the death penalty. Only with full disclosure of the details of torture and the identities of all witnesses to and perpetrators of torture can this death penalty case even approach fairness. The judge will start to hear some of these issues in January 2012.
The financial costs of this Guantánamo military commission will be enormous, particularly because the government has chosen to seek the death penalty. The best prediction of the cost of the defense alone — let alone the costs of the prosecution, and of flying a planeload of court personnel to Guantánamo for each hearing — is in the millions. Any death penalty case is expensive; a Guantánamo military commission, with all the delays that will ensue because of those “gaps” Judge Pohl identified in what he referred to as a “unique” system, will be exorbitantly so.
Other costs may be even more profound. Families of the victims of the U.S.S. Cole bombing also attended the hearing. Afterwards they spoke of their hope for justice, but the justice they seek must be the product of a fair and open trial. Those families should not have to sit through novel proceedings that are virtually being created from scratch when a tried, tested, and trusted alternative exists: federal courts.
Yesterday, we had a preview of all that is wrong with trying Mr. al-Nashiri’s case before a Guantánamo military commission, and the challenges to come. Justice — for the U.S.S. Cole families, for Mr. al-Nashiri, for all of us — demands that we be in federal court.
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The Road to Death at Guantánamo
02 months ago
Tomorrow, we start down the dark path to a possible execution in Guantánamo. As the Supreme Court has long said, death is different. Putting someone on trial for his life requires — at a bare minimum — a rigorously fair process if even the appearance of legitimacy is to be maintained. Nowhere will that be clearer than in the first Guantánamo military commission death penalty case, that of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri, who was held secretly for years by the CIA, and — as the government has admitted — tortured.
On Wednesday, Mr. al-Nashiri will appear before the world for the first time since he was seized more than eight years ago. He will stand up and state whether he pleads guilty or innocent to planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Should he be found guilty, he may be executed. But the Guantánamo military commission he will appear before will not provide justice for him, for the U.S.S. Cole victims, or for Americans anywhere. I will be at Guantánamo tomorrow to observe the proceedings for the ACLU.
John Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor, claimed in a speech at Harvard on September 16, 2011 that “reformed military commissions… provide all of the core protections that are necessary to ensure a fair trial.” But if that is the case — if the basic structure of a Guantánamo military commission is the same as a civilian court — why is a Guantánamo military commission necessary at all? After all, a U.S.S. Cole indictment sits waiting in federal court.
The answer comes from Brennan as well: real differences do remain between a commission and a federal trial. Among them are the admissibility of hearsay, on which the government plans to rely heavily in this case, and the admissibility of coerced evidence. As Mr. Brennan conceded, those are “differences that can determine whether a prosecution is more likely to succeed or fail.” Put another way, the Obama Administration has chosen a Guantánamo military commission for Mr. Al-Nashiri because they think the rules of evidence there are lax enough that they are certain to win. It is hard to make the argument that you are in favor of the rule of law when you make decisions based on the rule of victory.
But the flaws of the Guantánamo military commissions are such that any victory will be years in the making — and may well prove pyrrhic. Since this is a system designed entirely from scratch, there is virtually no legal history testing its contours. Unresolved legal clouds loom. Can a Guantánamo military commission try someone for crimes, like those alleged here, that took place before September 11, 2001? A Guantánamo military commission has jurisdiction only over war crimes, but were we at war before 9/11? If not, the power of the Guantánamo commission to hear this case vanishes. Was one of the key charges against Mr. al-Nashiri, conspiracy, a war crime at the time Mr. al-Nashiri was allegedly acting? Four of the eight Supreme Court justices who have considered this have said no. If it was not a war crime, did Congress violate the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution when in 2006 it retroactively made it one? Is it legitimate to use evidence that is the poisonous fruit of coercion? Even if the coerced statement itself is thrown out, can the prosecution still use information that was gathered only thanks to that coercion, such as the names of possible witnesses?
In all likelihood, it will take years for the Supreme Court to resolve these issues. Keep in mind that federal death penalty cases usually take two to two and a half years. And this is far from a usual case. The usual criminal defendant has not been tortured and secreted away for years by the government. The usual criminal case does not involve legal questions about whether the court has the power to hear the case at all. The usual criminal prosecution does not require flying the judge, lawyers, and court staff hundreds or thousands of miles every time there is a hearing. The discovery process alone will likely consume all of 2012, especially if — as expected — the government resists disclosing much of the evidence Mr. al-Nashiri’s lawyers will request, most critically anything to do with Mr. al-Nashiri’s torture in the CIA’s secret prison system. A trial may be years away.
There is far more at stake than Mr. al-Nashiri’s fate. The debate about Guantánamo military commissions versus federal courts is not just one of rhetoric, inflamed by the upcoming elections. It is one of real consequences. Some of our European allies —Germany, Sweden, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic, to name a few — refuse to cooperate with us on terrorism cases if intelligence being shared or a suspected terrorist being extradited is going to end up before a Guantánamo military commission. That lack of cooperation is one reason why even the CIA’s former General Counsel John Rizzo favors federal court trials for terrorism suspects. How many other allies will withhold cooperation in fighting terrorism if we do not get this right? Are we willing to risk our allies’ cooperation — and our own reputation for fairness — for the sake of putting one individual to death?
Stay tuned for more updates from Guantánamo this week.
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ACLU Studio: A Fall from Grace, or Business as Usual at Guantánamo?
03 months ago
Many people saw the torture and abuse of prisoners and indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay in the wake of 9/11 as a fall from grace. Harvard Historian, Jonathan Hansen disagrees. “America,” he says, “scarcely has any grace to fall from.”
In this episode of ACLU Studio, ACLU National Security Project Litigation Director, Ben Wizner talks with Hansen about his new book, Guantánamo, An American History. Listen and learn how Guantánamo is a reflection of America; revealing the good, the bad and the ugly.
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