The Guantánamo Papers

The internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in The Times on Monday were a chilling reminder of the legal and moral disaster that President George W. Bush created there. They describe the chaos, lawlessness and incompetence in his administration’s system for deciding detainees’ guilt or innocence and assessing whether they would be a threat if released.

Innocent men were picked up on the basis of scant or nonexistent evidence and subjected to lengthy detention and often to abuse and torture. Some people were released who later acted against the United States. Inmates who committed suicide were regarded only as a public relations problem. There are seriously dangerous prisoners at Guantánamo who cannot be released but may never get a real trial because the evidence is so tainted.

The torture has stopped. The inmates’ cases have been reviewed. But the detention camp in Cuba remains a festering sore on this country’s global reputation. Hampered by ideologues and cowards in Congress, President Obama has made scant progress in healing it.

Evidence obtained from torture and the uncorroborated whispers of fellow prisoners fill the more than 700 classified documents obtained by The Times and other news organizations. Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi believed to have been an intended participant in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was leashed like a dog, sexually humiliated and forced to urinate on himself. Yet claims Mr. Qahtani is said to have made about at least 16 prisoners are cited in their files with no mention of the coercion.

Some assessments relied on innuendo, gossip or information supplied by individuals whose motives were untrustworthy and whose information later proved false. Haji Jalil was captured in 2003 after an Afghan intelligence official said he had taken an “active part” in an ambush that killed American soldiers. He was sent home two years later, an inexcusable delay, after American officials determined that Mr. Jalil had been used to provide cover for the involvement of the intelligence official and others in the attack.

The Obama administration objected to release of the classified documents. The administration notes that the assessments were written between 2002 and early 2009 and that the task force established by Mr. Obama in January 2009 came to different conclusions about some of the remaining 172 prisoners. We accept that caution. But the administration is wrong to insist on secrecy. Inordinate resort to secrecy and resistance to testing evidence in fair and credible legal proceedings put the nation in this fix.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/opinion/26tue1.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

US military intelligence assessing the threat of nearly 800 men held at Guantanamo in many cases used information from a small group of captives whose accounts now appear to be questionable, according to a McClatchy analysis of a trove of secret documents from the facility.

The allegations and observations of just eight detainees were used to help build cases against some 255 men at Guantanamo - roughly a third of all who passed through the prison. Yet the testimony of some of the eight was later questioned by Guantanamo analysts themselves, and the others were subjected to interrogation tactics that defense attorneys say amounted to torture and compromised the veracity of their information.

Concerns about the quality of the "facts" from the eight men goes to the heart of Guantanamo's "mosaic" approach of piecing together detainees' involvement with insurgent or terrorist groups that usually did not depend on one slam-dunk piece of evidence. Rather, intelligence analysts combined an array of details such as the items in detainees' pants pockets at capture and whether they had confessed to interrogators - American or otherwise.

More than two-thirds of the men and boys at Guantanamo were not captured by U.S. forces. So analysts were often left to weave together the stories told by detainees, the context of where and how they were initially scooped up, the information passed on by interrogators at other U.S. detention sites and, crucially, the testimony of fellow detainees at Guantanamo.

WikiLeaks: Just Eight at Guantanamo Gave Evidence Against 255 Others

The former foreign minister Alexander Downer still believes Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks were ''terrible people'' and says the Howard government always regarded Mr Habib as the more dangerous of the two.

Despite new US Defence Department documents showing Mr Habib made a series of questionable confessions ''under extreme duress'' when being interrogated in Egypt, Mr Downer stopped short of accepting that Mr Habib had been tortured, saying the former detainee claimed ''to have been tortured''.

''We had no sympathy for Hicks or Habib and that's well understood,'' Mr Downer told the Herald yesterday.

'No, I won't be changing my mind about them. They were both terrible people - absolutely shocking.

''Of the two, Habib was in our view the worst.''

While Mr Habib said the documents vindicated his claims of torture, Mr Hicks, through a representative, hit back at Mr Downer, who is now the special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on Cyprus.

''We question how a man that left an Australian citizen in a legal black hole, to be subjected to an unlawful military commission process, and to be knowingly left in conditions that amount to torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment now works for the United Nations,'' the representative said.

Inaccuracies contained in the US document were laughable and should shame the previous Australian government for believing them.

''The fact that the former Howard government relied solely on the information provided by interrogators that could not even get the detainee's name correct or the name of their own navy ship is even more embarrassing.''

Mr Downer said he did not regret the way the Australian government had reacted. ''I haven't changed my mind a jot. I haven't changed my mind about anything at all. I have no regrets about Hicks and Habib.''

Downer hardly in a position to call me shocking, says Hicks

Well, given Alexander Downer's heroic reputation for being across the minutae of the world's daily events, as demonstrated by his evidence to the Cole Inquiry into the AWB scandal, his opinion on David Hicks & Mamdouh Habib would have to count for nothing.

Downer & other rattus government ministers at the time, including rattus himself, covered themselves in glory before the Cole Commission by claiming that they 'didn't know' about the AWB's activities (just like they didn't know that Hicks & Habib were being tortured by our 'special friends') & therefore couldn't be held accountable.

As the ethicist, Simon Longstaff, of the St James Ethics Centre, observed at the time, Downer & his luddite mates effectively destroyed the long-standing convention of ministerial accountability which, until then, had held that a Minister was accountable whether he knew of the relevant events or not.

Rattus, Downer & the rest of the wretched rattus crew demonstrated the same criminal contempt for the rule of law & democratic values as "Aussie Tony" & George Bushit, born out of their shared arrogant belief that society's rules don't apply to them; only to the rest of us who are not born to rule.

Anyone surfing the Internet this week is free to read leaked documents about the prisoners held by the American military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to print them out or e-mail them to friends.Except, that is, for the lawyers who represent the prisoners.On Monday, hours after WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing the documents online, the Justice Department informed Guantánamo defense lawyers that the documents remained legally classified even after they were made public.Because the lawyers have security clearances, they are obligated to treat the readily available files "in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards" -handling them, for example, only in secure government facilities, said the notice from the department's Court Security Office.It is only the latest absurdist challenge posed by the flood of classified material obtained by WikiLeaks over the past year: field reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; State Department cables; and now the military's risk assessments of 700 past or present Guantánamo prisoners.Guantánamo Files - Detainees' Lawyers Have Restricted Access to Leaked Documents

The former chief prosecutor for the US government at Guantánamo Bay has accused the administration he served of operating a "law-free zone" there, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the order to establish the detention camp on Cuba.

Retired air force colonel Morris Davis resigned in October 2007 in protest against interrogation methods at Guantánamo, and has made his remarks in the lead-up to 13 November, the anniversary of President George W Bush's executive order setting up military commissions to try terrorist suspects.

Davis said that the methods of interrogation used on Guantánamo detainees – which he described as "torture" – were in breach of the US's own statutes on torture, and added: "If torture is a crime, it should be prosecuted."

The US military, he said, had been ordered to use unlawful methods of interrogation by "civilian politicians, and to do so against our will and judgment".

Davis was speaking at a conference on human rights law at Bard College in New York state. After resigning from the armed forces, in a dramatic defection to the other side of the raging debate over conditions at the camp, he became executive director of, and counsel to, the Crimes of War project based in Washington DC. The speech was to launch the project's 10th anniversary campaign and to protest against the existence of the camp and the torture there and at so-called "black sites" run by US intelligence around the world.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/30/guantanamo-morris-davis

Guantánamo Forever?By CHARLES C. KRULAK and JOSEPH P. HOAR

IN his inaugural address, President Obama called on us to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” We agree. Now, to protect both, he must veto the National Defense Authorization Act that Congress is expected to pass this week.

This budget bill — which can be vetoed without cutting financing for our troops — is both misguided and unnecessary: the president already has the power and flexibility to effectively fight terrorism.

One provision would authorize the military to indefinitely detain without charge people suspected of involvement with terrorism, including United States citizens apprehended on American soil. Due process would be a thing of the past. Some claim that this provision would merely codify existing practice. Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States — and hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.

A second provision would mandate military custody for most terrorism suspects. It would force on the military responsibilities it hasn’t sought. This would violate not only the spirit of the post-Reconstruction act limiting the use of the armed forces for domestic law enforcement but also our trust with service members, who enlist believing that they will never be asked to turn their weapons on fellow Americans. would sideline the work of the F.B.I. and local law enforcement agencies in domestic counterterrorism. These agencies have collected invaluable intelligence because the criminal justice system — unlike indefinite military detention — gives suspects incentives to cooperate.

Mandatory military custody would reduce, if not eliminate, the role of federal courts in terrorism cases. Since 9/11, the shaky, untested military commissions have convicted only six people on terror-related charges, compared with more than 400 in the civilian courts.

A third provision would further extend a ban on transfers from Guantánamo, ensuring that this morally and financially expensive symbol of detainee abuse will remain open well into the future. Not only would this bolster Al Qaeda’s recruiting efforts, it also would make it nearly impossible to transfer 88 men (of the 171 held there) who have been cleared for release. We should be moving to shut Guantánamo, not extend it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/opinion/guantanamo-forever.html?pagewanted=print