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Since
2002, the Guantanamo Bay naval base has contained a military
prison, the
Guantanamo
Bay detention camp for
persons alleged to be militant combatants captured in Afghanistan,
and later in Iraq.
Since the beginning of the current
war in Afghanistan,
775 detainees have been brought to Guantanamo, approximately 420 of
which have been released without charge. As of May
2008,
approximately 270 detainees remain. The detainees currently held have
been classified by the Bush administration as "enemy
combatants,”
and have been denied
many legal rights.
In January, 2006 outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning
people at Guantanamo, Mahvish Rukhsana — a journalist and recent
law school graduate — volunteered to translate for the prisoners
and eventually began representing an Afghan detainee. She has since
published the stories of the detainees she has met in the
newly-released book, My
Guantanamo Diary.
For more information, please visit http://www.mahvishkhan.com.
Mahvish has also been published in the The Wall Street Journal, The
New York Times, The Washington Post and other media.
The work
that lawyers like Rukhsana have done to advocate on behalf of these
detainees contributed to a recent Supreme
Court ruling
to grant habeas corpus to all Guantanamo prisoners. That is why I
felt so privileged, as a representative of Progressive Future, to be
able to talk to her about the importance of upholding the
Constitution and restoring our international reputation. Rukhsana's
blog was written just before the Supreme Court's landmark ruling.
Before I got involved with Guantánamo, I had no opinion about whether the detainees there were guilty or innocent; I just thought they all deserved a fair hearing and due process. But after talking to a number of detainees and reading their files, I came to believe that many, perhaps even most, were innocent men who’d been swept up by mistake.
I really became convinced when I found out about the bounties.
Many of the men I met insisted that they’d been sold to the United States. During the war after September 11, the U.S. military air-dropped thousands of leaflets across Afghanistan, promising between $5,000 and $25,000 to anyone who would turn in members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The average Afghan would have to work for eighty-three years to make that kind of money.
The Department of Defense (DOD) has said it was unaware of any sort of bounty being paid for prisoners. However, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters in late 2001 that leaflets were dropping across Afghanistan “like snowflakes in December in Chicago.”
Afghan warlords and locals went for the bait. But they weren’t the only ones. The hefty bounties also created an extensive black market for abductions in Pakistan. That’s where many detainees’ road to Guantánamo began.
Most of the prisoners I met spoke of harsh beatings, being stripped naked infront of females, sleep deprivation, extremes of cold and heat, stress positions. 80-year old Haji Nusrat, who is a paraplegic, spoke about injuries to his arm during one particular beating at the hands of US soldiers at Bagram military base. Many of the detainees were obviously depressed. Some of the men I’ve profiled in my book speak of sexual humiliation, beatings, multiple full cavity searches, disrespect toward their holy book, restrictions on religious performance. One spoke of multiple suicide attempts.
Salah Al-Aslami, a 23 year old Yemeni detainee, allegedy committed suicide. The young man’s family hired independent Swiss pathologists to conduct a second autopsy of their son. The results of the autopsy surprised the family and the pathologists. The vital organs necessary to determine suicide by hanging (as the US military alleged) had been removed by the US military. The detainee’s pharyx, larynx, and other throat organs were missing. With the two other detainees who allegedly committed suicide on the same night (June 10, 2006), it was more of the same.
Its hard to know the exact nature and extent of the torture, because many don’t want to speak of it when asked. Speaking of torture is psychologically difficult because it forces the detainee to recall and in a sense relive the shame of their experiences. Had defense lawyers not taken up the cause of Gitmo prisoners, the illegal detention as well as the torturing of hundreds detainees would have gone unchallenged. Lawyers have carried the voices and stories of these men to the public.
While it often seems like a fruitless and ongoing legal battle to restore habeas corpus, lawyers who represent Gitmo detainees play a pivotal role. They are the lifeline for Gitmo prisoners. Without lawyers, the detainees would have been cut off entirely from the public—buried within the confines of the U.S. military’s detention facility. While the military purports to have transparency in its operations by allowing journalists on the base, these journalists are only given silly tours of mock cells and are sent home with an earful of propaganda. Furthermore, the lawyers are the only positive face of America that the prisoners will perhaps ever see. It is immensely therapeutic for detainees to know that someone is working for their freedom and that someone cares about them, will call their families and let their wives and children know they’re in good health and not to worry.
Laws don’t get much more fundamental than habeas corpus. It’s an old safeguard preventing imprisonment without charge and a right embedded in the U.S. Constitution. Bringing a habeas petition forces the captor to provide justification for holding his captive.
It’s hard to know what a detainee is “culpable” of—when he has not been charged with anything. Only a handful of over 800 detainees have ever been changed with any crimes against the United States. I do believe that Gitmo holds individuals who are guilty of terrorist activity, but its hard to separate the good from the bad without a full and fair hearing.
I met a man named Mohammed who readily admitted he worked for the Taliban as a check post guard. Here’s what he said:
"The American government under President Bush has committed horrible atrocities, but that doesn't mean that all people working for the U.S. government support Bush's ideologies or support his actions. Similarly, the Taliban ran the government of Afghanistan for seven years. Some people were weak minded and led to do things that were not right. There were others who disagreed with the politicies of their government. I cannot speak for all of them, but I can say that I am not a political figure. I worked under their government [merely] as a checkpoint guard."
The U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay stands as a challenge to our nation. It challenges our readiness to do the right thing in times of crisis, the times when it’s most important -- and most difficult -- to adhere to our founding principles and to follow the rule of law. What lies at the heart of the Gitmo debate are the beliefs upon which the United States of America was founded and for which it has long been celebrated: the conviction that no one should be imprisoned without charge, and that everyone has a right to defend themselves in a fair and impartial trial.
I believe that the global pressure to close the detention centers, the widespread disgust with this administration blatant lack of respect for the rule of law and the erosion of America’s reputation globally—will force Gitmo’s dungeons to close. Unfortunately, that day has not yet come. There are still almost 300 detainees at Gitmo for going on 7 years. It’s sad how we have hurt so many innocent people and destroyed so many lives.
You can take direct action by signing our Close Guantanamo Petition. Your signature can make all the difference in restoring our commitment to the Constitution and cleaning up our global reputation.
