This week, as the world marks the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at the US naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a growing number of people and organizations — from military officers to religious leaders to legal scholars to human rights groups — continue to label the prison a black hole of injustice and demand that it be closed.
The facility, established following the war in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, has been controversial throughout the world as the US Department of Defense (DOD) imprisoned hundreds of alleged terrorists. It has been widely condemned for prisoner abuse and for the absence of any meaningful process to separate genuine wrongdoers from people detained because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Recently departed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly declared all the detainees “the worst of the worst.” But from its peak inmate population of 773, several hundred detainees have been released — mostly because the DOD concluded that they no longer represented a threat to US national security — the camp continues to house more than 400 prisoners.
While the US military claimed Guantanamo inmates were captured “on the battlefield” in Afghanistan, and designated by the Bush administration as enemy combatants, there has been mounting evidence that a number were victims of what is known as “extraordinary rendition” — capturing a person and sending him to a site recognized for practicing torture.
President George W. Bush has implicitly admitted that others, including 14 so-called “high value” prisoners said to have played significant roles in the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist act, were sent to Guantanamo after long detentions in the CIA’s “black hole” secret prisons in Afghanistan, Eastern Europe, and other locations.
None of these prisoners have been tried and only ten of them have been charged.
Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA, a human rights group that has labeled Guantanamo as the “American Gulag,” told IPS, “The US administration chose Guantanamo as the location for this detention facility in an attempt to hold detainees beyond the reach of US and international law. For five years, the vast majority of these men have been held in indefinite detention, without charge or trial. For five years, we have heard stories of torture and ill-treatment. And for five years, we have been assured that these detainees were captured ‘on the battlefield’ and represent the ‘worst of the worst’. Yet the US government’s own tribunals have determined that over half of those detained never committed any hostile acts against the United States. And most of those held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, but were handed over to the US by others in exchange for cash rewards. Undoubtedly, this practice of paying bounties for prisoners has led to mistakes; yet for five years the US government has denied that these men have the basic right to challenge their detentions.”
There has also been increasing disclosure of prisoner abuse, violating the Geneva Conventions. This evidence has flowed from the testimony of released prisoners and from documents provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. This evidence centers on written communications from FBI agents who witnessed “cruel, inhuman and degrading” prisoner treatment and interrogation, and reported it to their FBI superiors.
There have been three suicides among prisoners and hundreds have been force-fed to keep them alive during intermittent hunger strikes. The Department of Defense has acknowledged 41 suicide attempts among 29 prisoners.
The New York Times has reported that, while the June 10, 2006, suicides were the first inmate deaths at Guantanamo, “some prisoners tried suicide almost immediately after their arrival in 2001. By mid-2002, there had been numerous suicide attempts, and DOD renamed these acts as ‘self-injuries’.”
In January 2005, the Times reported that there had been 350 incidents of “self-harm” in 2003. Of those, 120 were attempts by prisoners to hang themselves. Twenty-three prisoners participated in a simultaneous mass-suicide attempt.
President Bush has said he would like to close the facility, but the US military has recently completed construction of new buildings to house cellblocks.
Among the most widespread criticisms of Guantanamo is the system set up by the Bush administration for adjudicating individual cases.
That process began with the establishment of CSRTs — Combatant Status Review Tribunals — in July 2004, more than two years after most detainees were imprisoned there. The CSRTs, while deeply flawed according to many military and civilian legal authorities, have been responsible for the release of some prisoners. In some cases, they concluded that the detainees had been captured by Afghan militias, Pakistani border guards and other surrogates, and some had been turned in for bounties, intelligence officials have said.
But the CSRT process itself proved to be ineffective. The New York Times reported that “Information about detainees’ identities and actions was often vague and secondhand. Physical evidence, if any existed, was sometimes lost before reaching Cuba.” Information obtained by coercion was allowed to be admitted as evidence.
The CSRTs required three military officers to decide cases by majority vote, based on a “preponderance of the evidence.” Midlevel officers — not military lawyers — were ordered to help detainees prepare for their hearings.
Lawyers for detainees contended that the military placed insurmountable obstacles to their defense. For example, more than a week after a hearing for a Pakistani businessman accused of ties to Al-Qaeda, a civilian lawyer who had been trying to help him said he had not been advised of the hearing.
Amidst growing international criticism, the Bush administration in May 2004 set up an annual parole system, called Administrative Review Boards, to assess whether a detainee represented a continuing threat or had intelligence value.
But before those hearings ever began, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush administration must conduct a one-time review of all Guantanamo detainees using the sort of panels called for by army regulations — and by the Geneva Conventions. This year’s round of parole-type review hearings ended last month. Most of the detainees eligible to appear at these hearings have reportedly stopped trying because of the perceived bias in the procedure and the haste with which hearings are carried out.
Congress then quickly passed the United States Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, which was signed by President George W. Bush in October 2006. The Act’s stated purpose was to “facilitate bringing to justice terrorists and other unlawful enemy combatants through full and fair trials by military commissions, and for other purposes.”
Under the MCA, the Bush administration and the US Congress retroactively shielded from prosecution for illegal criminal activities those who have been involved in illegal detention, torture, and rendition.
But Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), John Warner (R-Va.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), strong backers of the MCA, agreed to the administration’s “alternative” definitions of torture, which essentially meant that torture techniques could continue to be used by the US military, the CIA, and contract employees. Attempts by the Senate Judiciary Committee to preserve the rights of habeas corpus hearings for detainees also failed.
The new Democratic Party-controlled Congress is reportedly considering whether to challenge the suspension of habeas corpus hearings for detainees.
Amidst the continuing uncertainty about this and other issues at Guantanamo, pressure for its closure is likely only to increase over time.
