'Guantanamo lawless and was designed that way'
Pressure is mounting to reach a realistic and concrete deadline for President Obama to shut down the Cuban-based US naval prison, which is in the grips of a 150 day long hunger strike which shows no sign of abating.
Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike
Though Obama has decreased the number of prisoners to 166 from
the camp’s peak occupancy of 680, he has still failed to close a
facility which critics say is antithetical to the core American
value of democracy.
RT sat down with experts Morris Davis, the former Chief
prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo and Carlos Warner,
a lawyer who represents 11 clients at Guantanamo, to discuss the
hypocrisy, hunger, and closing date of the controversial
detention facility.
“It was ironic when President Obama took his daughters to
visit the cell where Nelson Mandela was held in South Africa and
to think he’s showing them that cell where [he] spent 18 years on
an island prison when he has his own island prison in Cuba where
we’ve kept people for 11.5 years it’s a bit hypocritical to
lament one and operate the other,” said Davis.
“Gitmo is a lawless place, it was designed that way by Dick
Cheney,” Carlos Warner, an attorney for 11 hunger strike participants on the island, told RT.
“Our justification has been that we’re at war and the law of
war permits you to detain the enemy for the duration of the
conflict. By the end of 2014, we end combat operations in
Afghanistan, so whether it’s a legitimate justification or not,
it vanishes,” said Davis.
“I think during my tenure most of the worst practices had
stopped, but certainly throughout Guantanamo’s history,
particularly early days when we had the Bush admin telling the
military to ‘take the gloves off’ and that the Geneva conventions
were ‘quaint’ and we needed to force more information out of
these men in that 2002-2004 there were clearly things that took
place at Guantanamo that we should be ashamed of.”
“We tend to be better at preaching than practicing. We claim
to be the champion of the rule of law, but when it’s inconvenient
for us we just ignore it,” said Davis.
The prisoners are not receiving proper trials, and haven’t yet
‘had their day’ in court, as legal proceedings are moving at a
tortoise pace, with little conclusion or resolve.
The camp has 166 detainees, most of who never have been formally
charged with a crime, and 86 who have been cleared for release
but still live day to day in America’s 21st century purgatory.
20 more have been prosecuted and 60 remain in an indefinite
category, a sort of limbo.
“I think if the detainees saw some forward progress that they
haven’t been forgotten, that the administration is going to keep
its word, the hunger strike would be over,” Davis told RT.
In June Obama announced the US was ‘redoubling’ its efforts to
close the prison at Guantanamo, yet recently Commander General
Kelly went to Congress asking for $200 million dollars to
renovate the facilities, begging the question why the US would
continue to invest in facilities that are meant to be ‘temporary’
and not permanent.
“There isn’t anyone in the White House who has grabbed this
problem by the throat and said that we’re going to close
Guantanamo,” Warner told RT.
According to Davis, the 86 detainees cleared for release are
essentially ‘lower hanging-fruit’ for the Obama administration,
an easy way to make good on their 2008 campaign promise to close
down the facility.
“This should have been over and done long ago, that fact it
continues to go on is disappointing,” Davis told RT.
Of the 86 detainees cleared, 56 are Yemeni, some who have been on
the island for years without any official criminal charges.
“The detainees are looking for real concrete signs their needs
are being met and not ignored. An easy way to do that is to begin
to send the cleared Yemenis back home to Yemen where their
government wants them,” Davis said.
Davis added it’s impossible to reduce the risk of terrorism to
zero, and doesn’t justify keeping the prison open.
“I think the solution is to keep their word- put them on the
plane and take them home,” Davis told RT.
Mr. Sloan has only been on the job for a week, but Davis isn’t
holding any illusions about a speedy closure.
“I’ve been hopeful before and disappointed. I’m cautiously
optimistic,” Davis said, adding there has been “a lot of
rhetoric but not a lot of reality. We need a leader, not a
lecturer.”
“Someone is going to die”
Warner could see the hunger strike debacle running another 6 or 8
months if the White House remains dormant on releasing the ‘free’
detainees.
“Someone eventually is going to die, the military itself has
said it is not a sustainable situation, we are at 150 days, we
don’t know how long it will go on,” Warner told RT.
“It doesn’t have to be that way, the President can use the
authority he has from Congress to transfer these individuals
within a month,” said Warner.
“The president has the power to bring the hunger strike to an
end,” Davis said.
The hunger strike continues to swell, with 106 people now
refusing food and 44 of them being force fed, according to Gitmo official figures and
human rights advocates. The upcoming Ramadan holiday will complicate the force
feeding practice.
“The Obama administration is caught between two bad choices:
one is to force feed, which some call torture or medical
maltreatment, on the other hand if they don’t, then you sit there
and watch people starve themselves to death- neither one is a
good choice,” Davis told RT.
“A voluntary person has the right to choose treatment, and if
they choose today, they should be allowed to die,” said
Carlos Warner, who has 11 clients at the camp who he believes are
in ‘terrible condition’ and sees ‘no end in sight’.
“It’s a sad commentary about America that it takes people
putting their lives at risk- they are out of sight and out of
mind, and the only way the American public will pay any attention
is for them to put their lives at risk,” said Davis.
“The fact that these doctors who are tube feeding clients need
to know when they come back to the United States there is going
to be ethical charges against them,” said
Warner.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.