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- 1. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba The history and developments in the controversial prison: what happens now?
- 2. HISTORY
- 3. The Lease Basis • US Platt Amendment • “….the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations … to be agreed upon with the President of the United States … enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba…” • Over Cuban objections, accepted into Cuba’s Constitution effective 1902. • A naval base was granted to the US in 1903.
- 4. The Base Lease 1903 lease grants: *US “complete jurisdiction and control” 45 sq. mi. *ultimate sovereignty of Cuba *lease dissolution only with agreement of both parties Since 1934: *Lease is $4,085 yearly Only one check cashed (1959). Castro says illegal. NOW: *Cuba: affront to sovereignty, under duress and at threat of nuclear force. *US-Cuba Prof: Prison facility no does not meet criteria of coaling naval station.
- 5. The Base’s Prisons • 1991: An armed detention camp for Haitians escaping a military coup. Cuban Balseros, people Castro allowed to leave, were also interned. Boat people. • Camp X-Ray: Open cages no plumbing… set up first for Cuban “excludables” and then to accommodate Bush’s “unlawful combatants”. The first group of 20 arrived from Afghanistan and Pakistan on Jan. 11, 2002. X-Ray held up to 200 prisoners. • Camp Delta: As of 29 April 2002, the official Camp X-Ray was closed and all prisoners were transferred to Camp Delta.
- 6. Why Guantanamo? • Kandahar, Afghanistan prison: too small and inadequate for interrogations - new space need • “Unlawful enemy combatants” – evade Geneva Conventions, Law of War • Not under US Constitution, not US soil • No other US legal protections • Difficult to reach – control news/public opinion • “Worst of the Worst” – shape public opinion • Avoid the International Red Cross (ICRC)
- 7. “Detainees”: numbers • There have been 779 total. Last prisoner came 2008. Bush transferred most: 520 Obama - 201. Nine died. One transferred to federal court for trial (convicted). • Currently there are 41. 6 under OMC prosecution, 26 “forever” detainees, 6 approved for release, 3 convicted and held.
- 9. WORST OF THE WORST? BOUNTY BABIES? FOOT SOLDIERS?
- 10. • US urgency to produce results • Ignorance of Al Qaeda and Afghanistan • Inexperience in investigation and analysis • “Don’t coddle the enemy” attitude • Large bounties paid – distortions • Mistaken identities – Arabic names and nicknames • Unclassified prisoner profiles for the Periodic Review Board – then and now. • Extreme conditions produce false information FROM THE BEGINNING: “IT WAS CLEAR EARLY ON THAT THE INTELLIGENCE WAS GROSSLY WRONG” – Mark Fallon, Special Agent in Charge of the DOD’s Criminal Intelligence Task Force (2002-2004)
- 11. VS VS •Initial fears of terrorist retaliation and cost to NYC. •Military commissions afford less legal protection – lower threshhold of proof, hearsay evidence allowed. •Fear that strict federal rules allows release of suspects with little proof of guilt. •Fear of exposing torture in federal courts. •Military commissions - tighter government control. •No military commissions since WWII – little or no precedents – open to govt. control •MCA of 2006 invalidated by Supreme Court, MCA of 2009. •Supreme Court/DC District Court cases, Boumidiene habeas, Bahlul, Bahlul
- 12. Habeus Corpus • 2008 the Supreme Court ruled in the case Boumediene v. Bush, 5–4, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to access the US justice system. • Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which initiated the case said, • “By granting the writ of habeas corpus, the Supreme Court recognizes a rule of law established hundreds of years ago and essential to American jurisprudence since our nation's founding. This six-year-long nightmare is a lesson in how fragile our constitutional protections truly are in the hands of an overzealous executive."
- 13. OMC vs. Title 3 courts since 9/11 Justice delayed is justice denied…. • OMC: 7 convictions, 2 overturned. • Federal Courts: 550 terrorist convictions January 2011 NDAA: prohibits use of Defense Dept. funds to transfer GTMO prisoners to US or other countries. 2012: 9/11 capital trials of KSM and 4 others starts 2017: still in pre-trial hearings. 2017: Prosecution wants trial to start 2018. 2017: Defense – earliest start is 2020. A new system of justice is not easy to work out – synthesized almost daily from bits of the Law of War, the AUMF, UCMJ, US law, and in a remote location where lawyers do not have ready access to their clients. CIA interference (eavesdropping on client meetings, etc.), draconian restrictions on the defense, and extreme difficulty in discovery of government materials, which sometimes takes years.
- 14. Government Waste OMC: 7 convictions since 2009 • The OMC has cost $600 million since 2009. That’s $85 million each year. • GTMO costs $445 million per year to maintain • Cost: each current detainee per year – over $11 million • Cost of federal maximum security prisoner per year $78,000.
- 15. The Elephant in the Courtroom: TORTURE • Euphemisms cloud the picture: “enhanced interrogations” • Senate Torture Report restores semantic sanity. • Of 119 held in black sites by the CIA, at least 14 GTMO detainees came from those locations. • $80 million to Mitchell Jessen Associates for torture protocols • 9/11 OMC trial of KSM 5 is capital case, torture is a mitigating factor. • Prosecution fights tooth and nail to keep any mention of torture away from trial. • Courtroom 40-second delay.
- 16. Blowback 1. Studies show Guantanamo is mentioned repeatedly in ISIS, AQAP and other writings, but more so in the past. It is not as much a recruitment tools as it once was. 2. Guantanamo is used to create a moral wedge between America and Europe and other allies 3. The blow to the image of the US has been severe. 4. Many Americans have lost faith in the moral superiority of their government…or have gone into blind denial. 5. And worse yet, many Americans have accepted rationalizations of the government and now think torture is effective and all right.
- 17. Does torture work? DAVID IGLESIAS, Former Guantanamo Prosecutor: No, it doesn’t work. The problem with EITs, which is a euphemism for torture, is, it doesn’t work. You always want to get a voluntary statement with reliable information. And in every case that the Senate committee looked at, the actual evidence used came from nonabusive interrogation tactics. So, as a former war crimes prosecutor, I can tell you, it’s radioactive, and, more importantly, from a realpolitik point of view, it just doesn’t work. The United States Army field manual, explains that torture "is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” Not only is torture ineffective at gathering reliable information, but it also increases the difficulty of gathering information from a source in the future. Actionable intelligence at GTMO was gained before the subjects were tortured. I was told personally by OMC Prosecutor Ryan some years ago that the KSM 5 could easily be tried in federal courts as torture-induced confessions were not necessary – they already had the information they needed before that.
- 18. Should we keep it open? What do you think?
Hinweis der Redaktion
- The indigenous Taino peoples greeted Christopher Columbus at an excellent safe harbor, ringed by steep, sharp hills, in the far southeast of Cuba in 1494. He named it Puerto Grande, or “Large Port”. Subsequent incursions by pirates, the Spanish and British saw the name change a few times., Under the Spanish in the 19th century, Caimanera on Guantanamo Bay’s upper western shore became an important sugar export base. The war between the US and Spain began with the sinking of the USS Maine 1898, as the US took sides with Cuban insurgents rebelling against their Spanish rulers. The US sent a battalion of Marines from Key West to Guantanamo Bay to establish a base there to aid the Cuban independence effort. The Cubans, and the Marines with the help of the Navy routed the Spanish, and the war was over in ten weeks.
- With the Treaty of Paris of 1898, Spain was out of Cuba and the US maintained a strong military presence to help protect their independence.
- The treaty stipulates the use of the base for coaling and naval stations with no presence of armaments. The original lease was for $2000 in gold. Another stipulation was that Cubans fleeing justice were to be returned to Cuba. Vessels engaging in trade wit Cuba were to have free passage to the Bay above, where Camairera is located….a major sugar port.
- The first use of GTMO as a prison was in 1991 during the Haitian refugee Crisis. Tens of thousands of Haitians fled a military coup d’etat.by boat and were picked up by the US at sea. . The camp they were brought to at GTMO was primitive and was surrounded by barbed wire and US troops. Few were allowed asylum in the US, although they were clearly political refugees, causing a major scandal. Most were sent back to Haiti. In the mid 90’s Castro allowed any Cubans who wished to cross the mine fields between Cuba and the US Navy base, or to swim there to do so. 100,000 of these asylum seekers were sent to the US. Cuban “troublemaker” were sent to Camp X-Ray before being returned to Cuba. There are separate prison camps on the base, hidden over the steep hills to the northwest, out of casual view. Camp Delta consists of detention camps 1 through 6, Camp Platinum, Camp Iguana, Camp Echo, the Guantanamo psychiatric ward, and Camp No. With the reduced population, not all are occupied and not all are considered adequately equipped or of humane size. Some are communal and others one-cell. High Value detainees are in classified Camp VII. The area of the prisons and the courts are attended to by about 1600 military personnal known as the JTF - Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) combines military from all services, under the command of US Southcom. Which encompasses 31 countries and 16 dependencies and areas of special sovereignty. The region represents about one-sixth of the landmass of the world assigned to regional unified commands The JTF troops rotate on a 6-month basis. Many prefer Iraq or Afghanistan duty to GTMO because of the area’s extreme physical limitations and lack of extensive facilities. The area is extremely dry, and a desalinization plant and imported water supplies the base. A disease (I think it was a fungus) wiped out most of the palm trees on the base, leaving mostly scrub brush. The main wildlife in evidence are Cuban rock iguanas and a type of rat related to a porcupine called a hutia, but known to locals as a banana rat. Boas, tree frogs, tarantulas and aquatic animals, all are protected. Harming or killing an iguana is punishable with a $10,000 fine. It is not unusual to have traffic stopped near the small clutch of buildings that include the Navy Exchange, the Library, the one movie theater, the gym and the McDonalds to wait out an iguana crossing the road.
- Interestingly, within the month the first prisoners arrived at GTMO, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said they WERE POWs and entitled to Geneva Conventions. This was ignored. The Department of Defense (often attributed to Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld) popularized calling GTMO internees “the worst of the worst”. A recently discovered 2002 memo from Rumsfeld to the Joint Chiefs of Staff belies that description saying “We need to stop populating Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) with low-level enemy combatants”. The belief that US laws would not apply led one government official to liken GTMO to “legal outer space”.
- Not all detainees were released. Many were transferred to willing recipient countries where they were held under various restrictions for periods of time. Saudi Arabia and others have rehab centers. Of the remaining 41 prisoners, 90% have been in GTMO for over ten years. Preparations are reportedly being made to allow cells to accommodate wheel chairs for an aging inmate population. The Periodic Review Board is still functioning despite this
- It is a contrast to the Bush transfers that the Obama team worked very hard to find recipient countries all around the globe. This is a slightly old map – I believe it’s missing some countries. The recidivism rate has been consistently overblown by the Pentagon. (Released prisoners returning to the battlefield.) The most reliable source is Office of the Director of National Intelligence in its bi-annual report ” Reengagement of Detainees Formerly Held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which last year gave the rate of those released since 2009 as 5.6%, and those suspected of it at 6.8%.
- Those subjected to obscene experiments included victims of mistaken identity or flimsy evidence that the United States later disavowed. Others were foot soldiers for the Taliban or Al Qaeda who were later deemed to pose little threat. Some were hardened terrorists, including those accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks or the 2000 bombing of the American destroyer Cole. Most, as you can see by the Bush releases, were small fry or mistaken identity.
- It’s happened before – rat on your neighbor and get his land…and a huge monetary bounty. Bizarre instances of people picked up far from Afghanistan or Pakistan are documented. One man accused of building bombs was found – after years in prison – to have had sugar, salt and petroleum jelly that was mistaken for bomb materials. Us forces couldn’t tell the difference. Some “bad dudes” were actually captured…but they are far in the minority of the 780 incarcerated and many tortured over the life of the detention camp.
- Irrational fears fed by the “worst of the worst” propaganda kept the capital trial of self-admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and 4 others from NY federal courts. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 under Bush, attempted to establish a military commission that would try violations of the rules of war “and for other purposes”. The 2006 MCA established the hitherto unknown (in US or international law) classification of “unlawful enemy combatant”, granted the US immunity for any illegal actions against detainees and under the War Crimes Act, and narrowed the definition of torture to practices that amount to torture, allowed the use of statements obtained through coercion in prosecution, authorized military trials that permit secret evidence, narrowed the definition of “sexual assault” to allow for sexualized abuses in interrogation and detention, and attempts to limit the use of international law in U.S. courts. The Supreme court, in Boumediene vs. Bush reaffirmed the constitutional right to habeas corpus and amended much of the 2006 MCA. The Bahlul case has been in the courts since 2008, with decisions ping-ponging back and forth. He is charged with “inchoate conspiracy” to commit war crimes”, but claims conspiracy is an Article III jurisdiction, not military commissions. I am oversimplifying massively, but this conundrum of law has kept this going now for almost 10 years. Lawyers refer to the case as Bahlul, Bahlul, Bahlul, Bahlul,,,,as it keeps coming back because of the lack of definition and precedence in the military commissions.
- Since this decision, Invoking Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Court concluded: "The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say 'what the law is'.” Unfortunately, since this decision , the Washington DC District Courts have effectively nullified the Boumediene decision.
- The necessity of reinventing a justice system has caused long delays in convicting KSM +4. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is a United States federal law specifying the budget and expenditures of the United States Department of Defense. Each year's act also includes other provisions. Hardliners in Congress have used the NDAA purse strings to pander to irrational fears. No prisoner has ever escaped a high-max prison in the US. No terrorist threat has ever been associated with their incarceration.
- Some say that owning a boat is like throwing thousand dollar bills into the water. If that’s true, keeping Guantanamo open is like throwing million dollar bills into the Caribbean. Remember the slide with convictions? Cost benefit analyses are simple – large costs, little benefits. Remember, Judges, lawyers, reporters, observers, must be flown in for each hearing…and out again. Once or twice a month. Lawyers fly in for client consultations .Where are those fiscal conservatives? Unfortunately – playing politics….A group of 11 Republican Senators has written the President to request that he keep GTMO open – and grow it! They asked the President to suspend future releases – 5 of the current 41 are cleared for release –and the Senators want to further populate it with “bad dudes”. Interesting to note that current captives are upset to think that ISIS adherents could come to GTMO – they are appalled by ISIS ideas and tactics. At present, no new or unusual orders have even been hinted at to the GTMO command.
- Mitchell Jensen Their company reportedly developed interrogation techniques described as brutal, including forced rectal feedings, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, mock executions, and intense psychological manipulation. Known as the Senate or CIA Torture Report, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Senator Dianne Feinstein released it in Dec. 2014. The 525 page redacted summary is available, but the full report not. Officials resisted releasing it to the courts until this month when the Trump Justice Department delivered it to federal courts. Previously, Obama put a copy of it into his sealed personal papers to preserve it. It is a damning indictment of the torture inflicted on prisoners by the CIA beyond its legal limits and the agency’s unsubstantiated stories that torture saved lives. The ACLU is suing Mitchell Jessen on behalf of three of their victims, one of whom died of his injuries. All three were kidnapped by the CIA, and tortured and experimented upon according to Mitchell and Jessen’s protocols. One of the men died as a result of his torture. The other two continue to suffer the effects of the physical and psychological torture inflicted on them. The judge has rejected attempts to dismiss the case, and it is scheduled for trial in June 2017.
- 1. Recent ISIS videos show the barbaric murders with the victims clothed in orange jumpsuits, the symbol of the Guantanamo detention facility. 2.The Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Smart Power wrote, “American leaders ought to eliminate the symbols that have come to represent the image of an intolerant, abusive, unjust America,” specifically because “Europe perceives that America lacks a commitment to the types of legal, institutional, and multilateral frameworks” both claim to value.
- After the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and American pilot was tortured by the Japanese to tell how many more bombs the Allies had. The pilot was totally ignorant,but told them – 100. Some think this convinced the Japanese to surrender.