Guantanamo Bay detention camp

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Guantanamo Bay detention camp Origin: Guantanamo Bahia, Cuba Foundation: 2002 Crimes: Unlawful Detention Torture Islamophobia Waterboarding Sleep deprivation Type of Villain: Infamous concentration camp

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The Guantánamo Detention Camp is a United States infamous military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which is on the coast of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. It is sadly known that indefinite detention without trial and various torture of detainees has led to the operations of this camp being considered a major violation of human rights by Amnesty International, both guilty and innocent were imprisoned here. Some sources have referred to Guantanamo Bay as a concentration camp.

In June 2006, the United States Supreme Court declared emergency judicial procedures at Guantánamo illegal. In May 2006, the London-based human rights group Reprieve revealed in The Independant newspaper that more than 60 detainees were reportedly incarcerated as minors.

Guantanamo detainees

In 2004, Army Specialist Sean Baker, a soldier posing as a prisoner during training exercises at the camp, was beaten so severely that he suffered a brain injury and seizures. In June 2004, The New York Times reported that of the nearly 600 detainees, not more than two dozen were closely linked to al-Qaeda and that only very limited information could have been received from questionings. In 2006 the only top terrorist was reportedly Mohammed al Qahtani from Saudi Arabia, who is believed to have planned to participate in the September 11 attacks.

Kadr is interrogated

Mohammed al-Qahtani was refused entry at Orlando International Airport, which stopped him from his plan to take part in the 9/11 attacks. During his Guantánamo interrogations, he was given 3+1⁄2 bags of intravenous fluid, then he was forbidden to use the toilet, forcing him to soil himself. Accounts of the type of treatment he received include having water poured over him, interrogations starting at midnight and lasting 12 hours, and psychological torture methods such as sleep deprivation via repeatedly being woken up by loud, raucous music whenever he would fall asleep, and military dogs being used to intimidate him. Soldiers would play the American national anthem and force him to salute, he had images of victims of the September 11 attacks affixed to his body, he was forced to bark like a dog, and his beard and hair were shaved, an insult to Muslim men. He would be humiliated and upset by female personnel, was forced to wear a bra, and was stripped nude and had fake menstrual blood smeared on him, while being made to believe it was real. Some of the abuses were documented in 2005, when the Interrogation Log of al-Qathani "Detainee 063" was partially published.

On May 25, 2005 Amnesty International published its annual report in which it described Guantánamo as a "modern gulag".

The then Secretary of Defense of the United States, Donald Rumsfeld, questioned the name of gulag, calling it extravagant. William Schultz, Amnesty International's representative in Washington, said Guantanamo should not be seen as a Soviet gulag, but there are still some common characteristics, such as keeping detainees incommunicado and taking them into custody. outside the civil justice system or the fact that some have disappeared.

Donald Trump agreed to keep the field open indefinitely.

Legal proceedings

United States Supreme Court

On November 10, 2003, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would decide on appeals by Afghan war detainees who challenge their continued incarceration at the Camp as being unlawful.

On 10 January 2004, 175 members of both houses of Parliament in the UK had filed an amici curiæ brief to support the detainees' access to USA jurisdiction.

On June 28, 2004 the Supreme Court ruled that "illegal combatants" such as those held in Guantánamo can challenge detentions but can also be held without charges or trial.

Military Commission hearings (Camp Delta)

On November 8, 2004, a federal court halted the proceeding of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen. Hamdan was to be the first Guantánamo detainee tried before a military commission.

Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the U.S. military had failed to convene a competent tribunal to determine that Hamdan was not a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions -- specifically Article 5 of the third Geneva Convention, which reads:

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

However, a three judge panel overturned judge Robertson's ruling on Friday July 15 2005. The panel's ruling stated that the trial by military commission could, in and of itself, serve as the necessary "competent tribunal".

Combatant Status Review Tribunals

Main article: Combatant Status Review Tribunal

In July 2004, following the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld-ruling (November 2004) the Bush administration has begun using Combatant Status Review Tribunals to determine the status of detainees. By doing so the obligation under Article 5 of the GCIII was to be addressed. The U.S. judicial branch agreed with critics of the U.S. executive branch, that the USA did have a treaty obligation to convene competent tribunals to determine whether their prisoners were or were not "lawful combatants".

On 31 January, Washington federal judge Joyce Hens Green ruled that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals held to acertain the status of the prisoners in Guantánamo as "illegal combatants" were "unconstitutional", and that they were entitled to the rights granted by the Constitution of the United States of America.

The Combatant Status Reviews were completed in March 2005. 38 of the detainees who had been imprisoned, for years, without charge, and subjected to years of abusive interrogation, were determined to have been innocent civilians all along.

On March 29 2005, the dossier of Murat Kurnaz was accidentally declassified. Kurnaz was one of the 500-plus detainees the reviews had determined was an "unlawful combatant". Critics found that his dossier contained over a hundred pages of reports of investigations, which had found no ties to terrorists or terrorism whatsoever. It contained one memo that said Kurnaz had a tie to a suicide bomber. Judge Green said this memo:

"fails to provide significant details to support its conclusory allegations, does not reveal the sources for its information and is contradicted by other evidence in the record."

Eugene R. Fidell, who the Washington Post called a Washington-based expert in military law, said:

"It suggests the procedure is a sham, If a case like that can get through, what it means is that the merest scintilla of evidence against someone would carry the day for the government, even if there's a mountain of evidence on the other side."

Another detainee, Fawaz Mahdi, was determined by a CSRT to be an unlawful combatant despite the fact that the CSRT itself (and also Fawaz' lawyer and he himself) observed that he suffers a form of mental illness, and that the only evidence for determining his status was his own statement.

The principal arguments of why these tribunals are inadequate to warrant acceptance as "competent tribunal," are:

a The CSRT conducted rudimentary proceedings

b The CSRT afforded detainees few basic protections

c Many detainees lacked counsel

d The CSRT also informed detainees only of general charges against them, while the details on which the CSRT premised enemy combatant status decisions were classified.

e Detainees had no right to present witnesses or to cross-examine government witnesses.

Most notably the flawed nature of the procedure can be seen in the following cases: Mustafa Ait Idir, Moazzam Begg,Murat Kurnaz, Feroz Abbasi, and Martin Mubanga.[15][16][17] A comment by legal experts states":

It appears ... that the procedures of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals do not qualify as status determination under the Third Geneva Convention. <......> The fact that no status determination had taken place according to the Third Geneva Convention was sufficient reason for a judge from the District Court of Columbia dealing with a habeas petition, to stay proceedings before a military commission. Judge Robertson in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld held that the Third Geneva Convention, which he considered selfexecuting, had not been complied with since a Combatant Status Review Tribunal could not be considered a ‘competent tribunal’ pursuant to article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention.

Other court rulings

On February 23, 2006 U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff in New York ordered the Defense Department to release uncensored transcripts of detainee hearings which contained identifying information for detainees in custody as well as the names of those who have been held and later released. The U.S. military has never officially released even the names of any detainees except the ten who have been charged. The U.S. Defense Department immediately said it would obey the judge's order. Related CNN story The names of only 317 of the about 500 alleged enemy combatants being held in Guantánamo Bay were released by the United States Department of Defense on March 3, 2006 after a court order to reveal them. Pentagon spokesmen Bryan Whitman justified withholding the names out of a concern for the detainees' privacy, although justice Jed Rakoff had already dismissed this argument.

Legal status

The particular legal status of Guantánamo Bay was a factor in the choice of Guantánamo as a detention center. Because sovereignty of Guantánamo Bay ultimately resides with Cuba, the U.S. government argued unsuccessfully that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay.(see Cuban American Bar Ass'n, Inc. v. Christopher, 43 F.3d 1412 (11th Cir. 1995)). In 2004, the Supreme Court rejected this argument in the case Rasul v. Bush brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, with the majority decision and ruled that prisoners in Guantánamo have access to American courts to challenge the legality of their detention, citing the fact that the U.S. has exclusive control over Guantánamo Bay.

On November 8, 2004 U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson ruled in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that the Bush Administration could not try such prisoners as enemy combatants in a military tribunal and could not deny them access to the evidence used against them. However, on 15 July 2005, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in overturning Robertson ruled that al-Qaeda members could not be classified as prisoners of war and upheld military tribunals in U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay for al-Qaeda members. This ruling does not necessarily authorize all military tribunals as the case only dealt with the POW status of al-Qaeda members.

Prisoners held at Camp Delta and Camp Echo have been labelled "illegal" or "unlawful enemy combatants", but a number of observers such as the Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights Watch maintain that the United States has not held the Article 5 tribunals required by the Geneva Conventions. The International Committee of the Red Cross has stated that, "Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, [or] a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law." Thus, if the detainees are not classified as prisoners of war, this would still grant them the rights of the Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV), as opposed to the more common Third Geneva Convention (GCIII) which deals exclusively with prisoners of war.

Many supporters of the Bush administration have argued for the summary execution of all unlawful combatants, using Ex parte Quirin as the precedent, a case during World War II which upheld the use of military tribunals for eight German soldiers caught on U.S. soil. The Germans were deemed to be saboteurs and unlawful combatants, and thus not entitled to POW protections, and six were eventually executed for war crimes on request of the President of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The validity of this case, as basis for denying prisoners in the war on terror protection by the Geneva Conventions, has been disputed. A report by the American Bar Association commenting on this case, states:

The Quirin case, however, does not stand for the proposition that detainees may be held incommunicado and denied access to counsel; the defendants in Quirin were able to seek review and they were represented by counsel. In Quirin, “The question for decision is whether the detention of petitioners for trial by Military Commission ... is in conformity with the laws and Constitution of the United States. “ Quirin, 317 U.S. at 18. Since the Supreme Court has decided that even enemy aliens not lawfully within the United States are entitled to review under the circumstances of Quirin,11 that right could hardly be denied to U. S. citizens and other persons lawfully present in the United States, especially when held without any charges at all.

Prisoner complaints

Three British prisoners, now known in the media as the "Tipton Three", were released in 2004 without charge. Represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the three have alleged ongoing torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution being committed by U.S. forces at Guantánamo Bay. The prisoners have released a 115-page dossier detailing these accusations. They have also accused British authorities of knowing about the alleged torture and failing to respond.

The accounts of the British prisoners have been reiterated by two former French prisoners, a former Swedish prisoner, and a former Australian prisoner.

Former Guantánamo detainee, the Swede Mehdi Ghezali was freed on July 9, 2004 after two and half years internment. Ghezali has claimed that he was the victim of repeated torture. His lawyer has declared that he intends to sue the U.S. for their treatment of him.

Former Guantánamo detainee Moazzam Begg, freed in January, 2005, after nearly three years in captivity, has accused his American captors of torturing him and other detainees arrested in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr Begg, in his first broadcast interview since his release, claimed he "witnessed two people get beaten so badly that I believe it caused their deaths".

An Associated Press report asserted that some of the detainees were turned over to the United States by Afghan tribesmen in return for cash rewards. Detainees testified during military tribunals that bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000. The allegations were in transcripts the U.S. government released in compliance with a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by AP. There has not been independent confirmation of any of the above allegations since the U.S. government prohibits investigation by any third party.

Forced feeding accusations by hunger-striking detainees began around the beginning of Autumn, 2005: "Detainees said large feeding tubes were forcibly shoved up their noses and down into their stomachs, with guards using the same tubes from one patient to another. The detainees say no sedatives were provided during these procedures, which they allege took place in front of U.S. physicians, including the head of the prison hospital.A hunger striking detainee at Guantánamo Bay wants a judge to order the removal of his feeding tube so he can be allowed to die, one of his lawyers has said.". Within a few weeks, the Department of Defense "extended an invitation to United Nations Special Rapporteurs to visit detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station". This was rejected by the U.N. considering the restrictions "that [the] three human rights officials invited to Guantánamo Bay wouldn't be allowed to conduct private interviews" with prisoners. Simultaneously, media reports ensued surrounding the question of prisoner treatment. "District Court Judge Gladys Kessler also ordered the U.S. government to give medical records going back a week before such feedings take place." In early November, 2005, the U.S. suddenly accelerated, for unknown reasons, the rate of prisoner release, but this was unsustained .

In October 2005, Juma Al Dossary, a 30-year-old Bahraini detainee, at the urging of his lawyers released his memoirs: "Included in his account, which he said he could barely bring himself to write because of the 'shame' he feels, Al Dossary says in three years he has been interrogated some 600 times, fed rotten food, beaten many times (by up to eight guards at once), made to walk on broken glass and pushed so that his face hit the glass shards, made to walk on barbed wire, and has had cigarettes put out on his body. This is in a U.S. prison by U.S. personnel."

In February 2006, Australian prisoner David Hicks also made allegations of torture and mistreatment in Guantánamo Bay. In July 2003, Hicks was one of six detainees first determined by President George W. Bush to be eligible for trial by a military court. Almost three years later, no trial has commenced.

NGO reports

On November 30, 2004, The New York Times published excerpts from an internal memo leaked from the U.S. administration, referring to a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The ICRC reports of several activities which, it said, were "tantamount to torture": exposure to loud noise or music, prolonged extreme temperatures, or beatings. It also reported that a behavior science team (BSCT), also called 'Biscuit', and military physicians communicated confidential medical information to the interrogation teams (weaknesses, phobias, etc.), resulting in the prisoners losing confidence in their medical care.

Access of the ICRC to the base was conditional, as is normal for ICRC humanitarian operations, on the confidentiality of their report; sources have reported heated debates had taken place at the ICRC headquarters, as some of those involved wanted to make the report public, or confront the U.S. administration. The newspaper said the administration and the Pentagon had seen the ICRC report in July 2004 but rejected its findings. The story was originally reported in several newspapers, including The Guardian, and the ICRC reacted to the article when the report was leaked in May.

In a foreword to Amnesty International's International Report 2005, the Secretary General, Irene Khan, made a passing reference to the Guantánamo Bay prison as "the gulag of our times," breaking an internal AI policy on not comparing different human rights abuses. The report reflected ongoing claims of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo and other military prisons.

Government and military inquiries

In December 2002, David Brant, director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), alerted Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora to reports of detainee abuse performed by the Joint Task Force 170 (JTF-170) and authorized at high levels in Washington. General Counsel Mora and Navy Judge Advocate General Michael Lohr believed the detainee treatment to be unlawful, and campaigned among other top lawyers and officials in the Defense Department to investigate and to provide clear standards prohibiting coercive interrogation tactics. [60] In response, on January 15 2003, Donald Rumsfeld suspended the approved interrogation tactics at Guantánamo until a new set of guidelines could be produced by a working group headed by General Counsel of the Air Force Mary Walker. The working group based its new guidelines on a legal memo from the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel written by John Yoo and signed by Jay S. Bybee, which would later become widely known as the "Torture Memo". General Counsel Mora led a faction of the Working Group in arguing against these standards, and argued the issues with Yoo in person. The working group's final report was signed and delivered to Guantánamo without the knowledge of Mora and the others who had opposed its content. Nonetheless, Mora has maintained that detainee treatment has been consistent with the law since the January 15 2003 suspension of previously approved interrogation tactics. [61]

After reports of detainee abuse became public, U.S. Navy Secretary Gordon England ordered a review of detainee incarceration practices at Guantánamo, conducted by Navy inspector general, Vice Admiral Albert Church, which concluded the facility was "being operated at very high standards."

On June 3, 2005, a U.S. military report supported allegations that U.S. soldiers had abused the Qur'an. The report found that a soldier deliberately kicked a Qur'an; an interrogator stepped on a Qur'an; a guard's urine came through an air vent, splashing a detainee and his Qur'an; water balloons thrown by prison guards caused a number of Qur'ans to get wet; and a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Qur'an. It concluded that many other allegations of desecration were unfounded (see Qur'an desecration controversy of 2005).

In June 2005 the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee visited the camp and described it as a "resort" and complimented the quality of the food. However Democratic members of the committee complained that Republicans had blocked the testimony of attorneys representing the prisoners. Democratic Senators have visited Guantánamo and they reported that they could not find evidence of abuse or mistreatment.

On June 10, 2005, as testimony was being given about alleged human rights abuses at Guantánamo, before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on reauthorization of the Patriot Act, Chairman James Sensenbrenner (one of the act's authors) declared debate over the detainees at Guantánamo Bay irrelevant.

On July 12, 2005 members of a military panel told the committee that they proposed disciplining prison commander Army Major General Geoffrey Miller over the interrogation of Mohamed al-Kahtani who was forced to wear a bra, dance with another man and threatened with dogs. The recommendation was overruled by General Bantz J. Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, who refered the matter to the Army's inspector general.

The book, Inside the Wire by Erik Saar and Viveca Novak also claims to reveal the abuse of prisoners. Saar, a former U.S. soldier, repeats allegations that female interrogators taunted prisoners sexually and in one instance wiped what seemed to be menstrual blood on the detainee. In reality it was just a red marker but the prisoner was unable to clean himself and hence unable to pray. Other instances of beatings by the IRF (initial reaction force) have been reported in this book and it supports the claim that the Qur'an was flushed down the toilet. An FBI email [65] from December 2003, six months after Saar had left, said that the Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo had impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" on a detainee.

'Exceptional treatment' of prisoners

The U.S. government has claimed it has accommodated religious needs. Religious literature is supplied, daily prayers are respected and all meals are certified halal (adhering to Islamic law) by Guantánamo's Muslim chaplain. In fact, between April 2002 and March 2003 most detainees had gained an average of 13 pounds. But continued alleged religious harassment is one of the triggers to the hunger strike that started on August 8 2005. Detainee Omar Khadr told his lawyer that the camp authorities were only broadcasting the call to prayers four times a day, not the five times Islam requires. Further, camp authorities were allegedly offending the religious sensibilities of the detainees by having female personnel announce the call to prayers. Finally, he claimed that camp authorities were allowing guards to disrupt prayer sessions.

According to detailed accounts reported by the New York Times on June 24, 2005, from former interrogators, military doctors have assisted with refinement of the techniques interrogators have used on detainees, including advice on how to incrementally adjust psychological duress levels and manipulate fears, as a means of attempting to make the detainees more cooperative and willing to provide information.[66] It has been alleged that SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) program's chief psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, issued guidance in early 2003 for the "behavioral science consultants" who helped to devise Guantánamo's interrogation strategy. SERE is a program based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

A related article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported doctors involved with devising and supervising the interrogations indicated they understood the interrogation procedure refinements they gave advice on were designed to increase fear and distress, as a means to obtaining intelligence. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, while declining to address the specifics of the doctors' accounts, responded by asserting the doctors were not covered by ethics rules, since they were advising interrogators as behavioral scientists rather than treating patients.

According to a June 21, 2005 New York Times opinion article, on July 29, 2004 an FBI agent was quoted as saying, "On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more."

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney suggested detainees were treated better than they would be "by virtually any other government on the face of the earth."

Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, who headed the probe into FBI accounts of abuse of Guantánamo prisoners by Defense Department personnel, concluded the man (a Saudi, described as the "20th hijacker") was subjected to "abusive and degrading treatment" due to "the cumulative effect of creative, persistent and lengthy interrogations." The techniques used were authorized by the Pentagon, he said.

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, challenged the allegations, on July 11 2005, after taking a tour, contending the detainees received better care than most Kansans. However, visiting politicians were not allowed to speak to any of the detainees. Roberts commented on the high quality of the food on the detainee's menus while the detainees were in the midst of a widespread hunger strike.

And in a similar vein, still others claim that the real abuse at the base is against the guards that work there: "Our young military men and women routinely endure the vilest invective imaginable, including death threats that spill over to guards' families".

U.S. government denial of allegations of mistreatment

Main article: Periodic Report of the United States of America to the United Nations Committee Against Torture

The United States government, through the State Department, makes periodic reports to the United Nations Committee Against Torture. In October 2005, the report focused on pretrial detention of suspects in the War on Terror, including those held in Guantánamo Bay. This particular Periodic Report is significant as the first official response of the U.S. government to allegations that prisoners are mistreated in Guantánamo Bay. The report denies the allegations, but does describe in detail several instances of misconduct that did not arise to the level of substantial abuse, as well as the training and punishments given to the perpetrators.