The Forever Trial at Guantanamo
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/us/politics/guantanamo-hi...
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/guantanamo-commiss...
- It's not quite as bad as that, in that the job was from the U.S. government, not the prosecution per se. Col. Spath was set to become an ALJ.
- It's a bit worse than all that, in that one of Col. Spath's worst biased rulings was to imprison the chief defense counsel when he refused to make his subordinates represent capital clients without learned counsel.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/contempt-clash-erupts-guant-namo-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/11/02...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-releases-marine-genera...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Guantanamo_Bay_detaine...
A couple of the entries that caught my eye:
Al Hajj, Sami Sudan 2001
Cameraman for al Jazeera, only journalist held at Gitmo, hunger-striker
Released May 1, 2008
Al Kandari, Abdullah kamel bin Abdullah Kamal Kuwait
* Main allegation is wearing a Casio F91W digital watch
More on the Casio watch thing: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-fil...
Source: I’ve been wearing both of these models for decades, although I haven’t touched the F91W in years and never will again.
And apparently the US then decided that meant possession of an F91W on its own was reasonable evidence of terrorism. Despite 90+ million of them being sold over the years.
It’s a feature not a bug, wouldn’t want to run out of “terrorist suspects” or else the war on terror would be difficult to sell.
I think it was the TSA manual that classified as "suspicious" both looking at law enforcement personnel and not looking at law enforcement personnel.
Scared people make stupid choices.
Remember that the people making decisions about looking for a certain watch or using torture are not scared soldiers in Afghanistan, they're career officers and politicians who face no personal risk.
However, we are talking about reality. Which is more realistic:
1. People twirling their moustaches and intentionally deciding to lie to give themselves a supply of prisoners to torture to the benefit of...
2. People deceiving themselves into justifying a course of action because they are scared and their self-image as a stalwart protector is under threat.
You're right that part of it is protecting an image, but that's driven by career ambition and social pressure, not fear. And you're right that they deceive themselves to justify their actions, but again it's not fear driven, it's just the natural "I'm not a bad person" mental protections that we all have all the time. They tell themselves the prisoners deserve it, or that anyone in their position would do the same, or that they're just following orders.
Moreover, any watch can be converted to be a timer, not just that one. The internal buzzer all watches contain is a piezo transducer driven by square waves generated by the processor, and is much simpler to reach than the backlight led; a simple circuit made by a bunch of parts recycled from any old pocket radio can be used to drive a relay, hence to trigger anything, from a coffee machine to a missile launcher. The point is that having the tools doesn't make one a terrorist; detaining someone on these premises reveals lack of intelligence and probably the need to fabricate some "results" to justify the enormous spending behind Gitmo and other facilities and keep the money flowing.
Ten thousand free terrorists would be a tiny price to pay to end this cancer.
Somehow it's even more concerning when the international and US media report a story this way:
29 Aug: "US drone strike targets suicide bombers on their way to Kabul airport"
11 Sep: "US drone strike mistakenly targeted Afghan aid worker, investigation finds"
2) it opened a massive can of worms legally, and a huge mess related to what to do with detainees (some of which have now lost their original national citizenships and/or normal lives), as they are now basically wards of the US gov’t, with no existing legal framework to cover what to do. It wouldn’t surprise me if when it does get shutdown many of them end up being Refugees the US ends up supporting. Good luck explaining THAT to the voters.
So it’s a big legal and PR mess that there is little incentive to try to fix for any politician. Lots of downside, little upside.
The empires that fell were indeed already warmongering, and dominating their part of the continent due to fighting successful wars and/or alliances. In that sense, it was "only" an empire taking down another. That viewpoint is however just the politics of the history. We can't forget how it affected the people.
I guess it’s a win, but in that case I think the entire concept of the pyrrhic victory needs to be renamed…
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/10/15/b...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/17/afghanistan.te...
I mean look at the Nuremberg trials. If there was ever an illusion of justice it was that trial.
German citizens were convicted of “wars of aggression” against Poland while the USSR, who collaborated with the Nazis and committed war crimes against the Polish people, weren’t even on trial but rather judges.
this is literally the core fascist tautology that the article is critiquing, gotta love the uncritical regurgitation of it
Some highlights:
Within months of his detention, everyone admitted he should not have been detained (no ties to terrorists, not an enemy combatant). Yet he was held for five more years and subjected to torture.
After they knew he was innocent, he was repeatedly interrogated about a friend of his who had committed a suicide bombing. Except that friend was well and alive in Germany, and likely had never been to that part of the world.
Are they lawful combatants?
If they are... and the war is over, the warring party is obliged to release the POW as per Geneva convention, which USA is a signatory of.
USA is also a signatory of the first protocol, which extends the Geneva convention to irregular combatants, including people fighting in proxy wars, and guerilla forces.
By militarily, and materially supporting the Saudi regime against its people, USA has became a legit target in the conflict, and extended jus in bello to the attackers.
K.S.M. may well walk out of the courtroom.
Eventually, there will be a reckoning. And I look forward to the inevitable collapse of the USA and the end of its abuse of humanity.
Any prediction on which country will replace USA on the top, and what will be their level of abuse?
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" (1849)
This isn't to say that Guantanamo was actually useful for the national security of the US or Canada or that their complicity is equal.
No idea if it applies to non-citizens.
Some Guantanamo detainees got compensation from the UK and Canada:
https://www.voanews.com/europe/british-government-pays-compe...
https://www.newsweek.com/guantanamo-bay-detainee-omar-khadr-...
The agreement with the Taliban and the withdrawal from Afghanistan, in my view, brings the authority to continue military detention of many of these individuals into question.
The chief argument to the contrary would be that these are not purely military courts and not purely military detention. Congress set up the commissions system as an Article I court, rather than this existing purely under the President's Article II war powers.
As for citations, a citation is not needed for "in my view" discussion. I very clearly marked out my post as personal opinion, avoided legal conclusions, and acknowledged an argument from the other side.
This is what responsible people do in public discourse.
No, it would kidnapping: a crime. Sanctioned at the highest levels of government.
No, he and Tom Daschle sponsored, in the Senate, the Clinton Administration’s legislative proposal (the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995), some of which was, in modified form, passed as the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, and which is sometimes also seen as a spiritual antecedent of the Patriot Act.
"Shortly after taking office, Biden reversed President Trump’s executive order to keep Gitmo open and is lining up inmates to transfer out of the prison with the goal of emptying it and shuttering it — even though the remaining prisoners have long been classified by military intelligence as the worst of the worst and too dangerous to release."
https://news.yahoo.com/taliban-five-guantanamo-bay-afghan-13...
If the remaining ones are equally horrible people, surely the USA could bring actual charges against them, instead of indefinite imprisonment?
“Trust us, this guy is a criminal but we can’t tell you why or how” is not an convincing argument, particularly when it’s coming from people and institutions who are constantly caught lying.
Prosecuting cases that depend on classified national security material is nothing new really when it comes to the federal courts. There is a system in place to do so. The military tribunals are an entirely different beast, although some might say different sides of the same coin. I'm inclined to go with the latter, although I don't think the federal courts are quite as bad as the military tribunals in terms of fairness to defendants.
Handling classified information is something the federal courts are set up for already and do as needed. Its not a novel issue that excuses indefinite detention without trial.
There are two basic statuses for captured combatants. The first is "prisoner of war". There are rules about how POWs may be treated, but they don't include anything like a "fair trial". It is, in fact, illegal to put POWs on trial. Instead, they are supposed to be treated humanely and repatriated after hostilities have ceased. The catch here is that to be entitled to POW status the combatant must abide by the so-called laws of war, including bearing arms openly in the field (i.e, not hiding among civilians) and wearing a uniform or other insignia recognizable at a distance (something like a purple armband would be enough -- it just has to be something that clearly identifies you as "not a civilian" as seen from a distance).
The second status is that of the so-called "unlawful combatant". This includes pirates, spies, terrorists, or anyone else who engages in hostilities without wearing a uniform or insignia, or who engages in other actions in violation of the laws of war (for example, deliberately attacking civilians, hiding among the civilian population, falsely wearing a symbol that indicates that the combatant is a medic, and so on).
Unlawful combatants have no rights of any kind. They may be detained indefinitely (even after hostilities have ceased), tried by a military tribunal, or even be summarily executed on the spot when captured.
This basic framework has been the rule for centuries, and was most recently codified by the Geneva Conventions. It's not some new policy that the United States made up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant begs to differ:
"An individual who is not a lawful combatant, who is not a national of a neutral state, and who is not a national of a co-belligerent state, retains rights and privileges under the Fourth Geneva Convention so that he must be "treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial".
> After a "competent tribunal" has determined that an individual is not a lawful combatant, the "detaining power" may choose to accord the individual the rights and privileges of a prisoner of war as described in the Third Geneva Convention, but is not required to do so. (emphasis mine)
Edit to add this P.S: I'm not going to slam you for citing Wikipedia, but I will take off points for not mentioning (or checking, perhaps) that the original source is an opinion piece written by a lawyer -- not a law, treaty, court decision, or anything else that has actual weight.
In peacetime, yes.
Not in a combat situation.
And I'm pretty sure guantanamo isn't a live combat environment...