A "little" about GUANTANAMO prison
From the book "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard
But Guantanamo is the sore that festers-the name itself became
synonymous with human rights abuses. "Gitmoize" became a verb to
describe how to toughen up a facility. It wasn't uncommon at
demonstrations around the world to hear handcuffed protesters
scream, "This is not Guantanamo" as police dragged them away.
There were really two fundamental issues: the conditions of
confinement and the law. Holding men in the outdoor pens of Camp
X-Ray for four months was inhumane. When new facilities were
built they complied with U.S. federal standards and, in the case
of Camp 4, offered living conditions superior to many
maximum-security prisons I had visited in the United States or
Canada. But some detainees in Camps 5 and 6 were still confined
to small cells with almost no human contact. Many were held like
that for more than nine years. I remember one day in 2006 just
staring at what seemed like a choreographed dance between
detainees and guards as the prisoners paced like caged cheetahs,
taking about five steps before hitting a wall or cell door and
swinging back. Guards paced side to side too, looking like
captives themselves as they peered into the cell windows every
three seconds. Even the most heinous of convicted criminals in
Western prisons are granted basic rights sometimes denied
Guantanamo prisoners, such as blankets, appropriate footwear and
toiletries (not to mention books, televisions, access to phones).
Then there were the interrogation methods, which again, in the
early years, fell short of any international standards. Aside
from the moral repugnancy of those practices, most experienced
interrogators would later agree that those methods just didn't
work. Having a female soldier reach into her pants and pretend to
smear menstrual blood on the face of a devout Muslim detainee
will elicit screaming, not cooperation. The intelligence
community remains divided on the effectiveness of the other
techniques colloquially called "torture lite," but most whom I
have interviewed over the years believe that depriving prisoners
of days, or weeks, of sleep will make them largely incoherent and
anything they say unreliable. In Guantanamo, keeping prisoners
awake by forcing them to stand in painful positions was common,
and moving them from cell to cell for days on end was known as
the "frequent flyer program."
But as the prison conditions improved over the years, the general
news coverage didn't. Critics of Gitmo would run shots of Camp
X-Ray's outdoor pens when describing Guantanamo's facilities, or
include complaints about the prison that had long since been
rectified. On the other end of the spectrum, some would dine out
on details about the improvements. THEY GET TASTY FOOD AND
HEALTHCARE! THEY GET ART CLASSES! SOME DETAINEES
DON'T WANT TO LEAVE! These were the screaming headlines about
the caloric count of prison meals, details about the top-notch medical facilities
and classes.
The truth was somewhere in between.
Detainees were well fed and did get better health care than most
Americans (or Canadians). But those military doctors providing
superior health care had also helped devise interrogation plans
to exploit a detainee's vulnerabilities and sanctioned the
force-feeding of hunger-striking prisoners - both considered by
many in the medical community as violations of a doctor's
Hippocratic Oath. I was always skeptical about the military's
claims that some detainees didn't want to leave.
Conditions were easier to write about but ignored the main
overriding issue: these men had not been convicted of any crimes.
Most hadn't even been charged. By 2011, only six detainees had
trials or pleaded guilty before military commissions. That meant
that less than I per cent of the more than 770 men who had been
at Guantanamo had had their guilt assessed in court. For the
first few years, the U.S. administration had also flouted
international treaties that grant detained foreign citizens the
right to consular access, putting the United States on par with
other regimes that routinely hold prisoners incommunicado, such
as Iran, Egypt and Syria. In wartime, international law does
permit the detention of battlefield captives. Many of
Guantanamo's detainees, however, were not caught fighting NATO
troops in Afghanistan, but were handed over by Pakistani forces
in return for lucrative bounties. Besides, the Bush
administration had declared that these were not POWs entitled to
Geneva Convention rights. POWs should be released at the end of
"active hostilities." When would the "war on terror" end?
There were indeed terrorists in Guantanamo. There were mass
murderers who celebrated 9/11 and people I hope are never
released. That is what made it so surreal. I have no doubt that
some of the "worst of the worst" detained on the other side of
the island were still hoping to slaughter us non-believers while
we played Scrabble and drank Scotch. Not everyone was a wrongly
captured goat farmer. One of the detainees was allegedly part of
a group that threw a grenade in Afghanistan at friends of mine,
Star photographer Bernard Weil and former Star correspondent
Kathleen Kenna. Kathleen barely survived the attack and Bernie
has never forgotten it. But in the ten years since 9/11, since
only a handful of detainees had gone on trial and hundreds were
swept up in this decade of fear, it was the stories of the goat
farmers that resounded around the world......
Kuwait's Ministry of Interior suggested to the country's U.S.
ambassador that Gitmo detainees should just be sent back to
Afghanistan "where they could be killed in combat." Slovenia was
pressed to "do more" if it wanted to "attract higher-level
attention from Washington." An official in Finland's prime
minister's office confided: "Chinese diplomats in Helsinki have
repeatedly warned them about the damage to bilateral relations
should Finland accept any Uighurs."
Those were the types of closed-door comments being made around
the world as the United States bartered for homes for the
remaining Guantanamo prisoners., Closed-door comments, that is,
until revealed as part of the 2010 WikiLeaks dump of thousands of
secret State Department documents. Reading through the classified
cables gave the impression that Obama was relying on his appeal
as the most popular kid in the playground and had his buddies
cajoling, begging, bullying and trading friendships for favours.
You want to sit at the cool picnic table? Take a Palestinian.
Enjoy your lunch money, do you? How about giving a home to an
Algerian and an Uzbek to keep buying fries at noon?
Each negotiation was unique, but one source of tension seemed to
be the American refusal to accept any detainees. Congress's NIMBY
measure to block the transfer of prisoners cleared for release
irked many American allies. A September 2009 cable from
Strasbourg, France, made that clear. "The U.S. could not expect
European countries to accept detainees from Guantanamo if the
U.S. were not willing to accept some on U.S. soil," said the
Council of Europe human rights commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg.
Canada refused to even entertain the notion of taking detainees,
making it unique among U.S. allies.
Gitmo remains open and will be for the foreseeable future. By
2011, there were 171 detainees remaining, and Obama had lifted
the suspension on military commissions. Civil rights advocates
continue to denounce Guantanamo's military tribunals as
inherently unjust, with flawed rules allowing hearsay evidence
and crafted to ensure convictions. The nearly sixty Yemeni
detainees, not slated for prosecution, but considered too
dangerous to be returned to the impoverished and unstable Arab
nation, are being held indefinitely. President Obama's first act
as president was to issue an order to close the prison. Five
months later, in that National Archives speech, he talked again
about regaining the "moral high ground" and mentioned the prison
twenty-eight times. In his January 2011 State of the Union
address he did not once utter the word Guantanamo.
Four months later, on April 4, 2011, U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder announced that, against his better judgment, KSM and his
co-accused would be prosecuted in Guantanamo. On the same day,
Obama officially launched his re-election campaign......
YOU NEED TO READ "DECADE OF FEAR" by Michelle Shephard
If you want to know the INSIDE story of this decade of fear and fight against
terrorism, then Michell Shephard lays it all out for in in detail as someone who
has been there and interviewed ones you'd never think would be interviewed.
And you talk about being brave to do all this......my she gets a solid gold medal
from me.
..........
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