Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait: January 2016 Archives

Clearance by the government is a step in the process of getting released from Guantánamo, and Mr. Hamdoun's clearance is welcome news. However, it is hardly sufficient. Of the 93 men still detained at Guantánamo, 35 are cleared for release, many of them for years. 

"I have become a body without a soul. I breathe, eat and drink, but I don't belong to the world of living creatures. I rather belong to another world, a world that is buried in a grave called Guantánamo," says Zahir Hamdoun, a Yemeni citizen held without charge in Guantanamo since 2002. "I fall asleep and then wake up to realize that my soul and my thoughts belong to that world I watch on television, or read about in books. That is all I can say about the ordeal I've been enduring." 

The Center for Constitutional Rights is prepared to offer years of long-term support for their client, ranging from "financial assistance and referrals for needs large and small, ranging from live-in interpreters and mental health care, to laptops and language CDs." 

For being cleared to mean anything, it must lead to actual release.

Closing Guantánamo is seen as a legacy issue for Barack Obama. Yet, while the media focuses on the impact his failure to close it will have on Obama's place in history, there is no consideration of the long-term physical and psychological impact almost 15 years of indefinite detention and torture will have on the prisoners. They remain, as always, pawns in other people's power games...

there is no real plan to close Guantánamo or end indefinite detention

It's not enough, and hardly justice, but identification with detainees' plight inspires redress of U.S. lawlessness.

President John Dramani Mahama urged Ghanaians to welcome Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih al-Dhuby, citizens of Yemen, with compassion: "Let me be clear, people say ex-convicts, they were never tried, they were never charged, and they were never convicted."

Ghana is among 56 countries in the world that have taken about 680 detainees that were transferred from the Guantanamo Bay:

The New York Times and National Public Radio (NPR), reputable leading media organizations in the United States of America have revealed that a total of 203 of them were sent to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia 124, Pakistan 63, Yemen 17, Britain 15, Morocco 13, Kuwait 12, Sudan 12, Tajikistan11, Albania 11, Oman 10, Kazakhstan 9, France 9, Slovakia 8, lraq 7 and Russia 7.

The rest are Georgia 6, Uruguay 6, United Arab Emirates 6, Qatar 6, Palau 6, Bahrain 5, Spain 5, Jordan 5, Bermuda 4, Bosnia and Herzegovina 4, Turkey 4, Germany 3, Somalia 3, Belgium 3, Switzerland 3, Libya 2,Ghana 2, Portugal 2, El Salvador 2, lran 2, and united States 2, Ireland 2, Australia 2, Tunisia 2, ltaly 2, Mauritania 2.

The remaining countries had one each Hungary, Maldives, Bulgaria, Latvia, Canada, Sweden, Egypt, Chad, Estonia and Denmark.

"If a prosecutor can't put together a case against someone who has been sitting in prison for as long as 13 [now 14] years, there is no reason that person should continue to sit in prison, whether in Guantánamo or someplace else." -- American Civil Liberties Union counsel Chris Anders  

The transfer of 10 Yemeni men to the Gulf nation of Oman yesterday leaves fewer than 100 men held at Guantanamo. Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi, Samir Naji al-Hasan Muqbil, Adham Mohamed Ali Awad, Mukhtar Yahya Naji al-Warafi, Abu Bakr Ibn Muhammad al-Ahdal, Muhammad Salih Husayn al-Shaykh, Muhammad Said Salim Bin Salman, Said Muhammad Salih Hatim, Umar Said Salim al-Dini, and Fahmi Abdallah Ahmad Ubadi al-Tulaqi were "dropped off" in Oman for a "temporary stay." Their ultimate destination is anybody's guess.

We continue to demand Due Process for the remaining prisoners. The late Judge Henry Friendly generated a "required procedures" list that remains highly influential:

 1. An unbiased tribunal. 
 2. Notice of the proposed action and the grounds asserted for it.
 3. Opportunity to present reasons why the proposed action should not be taken.
 4. The right to present evidence, including the right to call witnesses.
 5. The right to know opposing evidence.
 6. The right to cross-examine adverse witnesses.
 7. A decision based exclusively on the evidence presented.
 8. Opportunity to be represented by counsel.
 9. Requirement that the tribunal prepare a record of the evidence presented.
10. Requirement that the tribunal prepare written findings of fact and reasons for its decision.

The civilian "tribunals" mentioned above should not be confused with the military tribunals authorized by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as an alternative to trying detainees in the regular court system. Wikipedia makes the distinction:

The United States has two parallel justice systems, with laws, statutes, precedents, rules of evidence, and paths for appeal. Under these justice systems, prisoners have certain rights. They have a right to know the evidence against them; they have a right to protect themselves against self-incrimination; they have a right to counsel; and they have a right to have the witnesses against them cross-examined.

The two parallel justice systems are the Judicial Branch of the U.S. Government, and a slightly streamlined justice system named the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for people under military jurisdiction. People undergoing a military court martial are entitled to the same basic rights as those in the civilian justice system.

The Guantanamo military trials under the 2006 MCA do not operate according to either system of justice.

Further, because the accused are charged as unlawful combatants (a certain category of people who are not classified as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions), then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in March 2002 that an acquittal on all charges by the commission is no guarantee of a release.

Indeed, President Obama's authorization for Periodic Review Boards to determine the fate of Guantanamo prisoners has created what The Washington Post describes a formal system of indefinite detention, "The Tragedy At The Heart of Guantánamo."

"Blame for Obama's failure to follow through on one of his first acts in office and close this most reprehensible of prisons, the president would say, lies not with him but with Congress, whose bills preventing Guantanamo's closure he continues to sign," writes Charles Davis, teleSUR. 

"Far from altering course, Obama's legacy will be his institutionalizing the national security approach of his predecessor, albeit those of his second term, normalizing that which leading members of his Democratic Party once cast as an obscene break with an idealized past. His biggest change has been replacing boots on the ground with drones [in] the sky, in keeping with the establishment consensus following the disaster that was the last US-led invasion. That has resulted in less men being tortured and detained at Guantanamo, to be sure, but only because they, their children and any 'military-age' bystanders are now dead."

Obama Never Had a Plan to End What Guantánamo Represents