11/03/15 – Andy Worthington – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
Now I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I got Andy Worthington on the line.
The heroic Andy Worthington.
Writer, campaigner, investigative journalist, and commentator.
He is the co-founder of Close Guantanamo, the co-director of We Stand with Shocker.
And, of course, he's the author of the book The Guantanamo Files, The Stories of 759 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, and director of the documentary Outside the Law.
He is, even though he's a Brit, he's America's greatest chronicler of the Guantanamo gulag.
Welcome back to the show, Andy.
How are you doing, man?
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Great to have you on.
And nice to celebrate a victory with you every once in a while.
Tell him the good news, huh?
Yeah, well, the good news is that, yeah, finally, Shaka'ama, the last British resident held in Guantanamo Bay, has been released and is back at home here in Britain and reunited with his family.
And I assume he's dispelled all the rumors about what a horrible place Guantanamo is and talked about what a great time he really had there, right?
Yes.
Well, he hasn't said much yet, apart from just to thank everybody who's worked so hard to to get him free.
But I'm sure that when he does finally speak, he won't be endorsing it as a holiday resort for people kidnapped and sent there and held for many, many years without charge or trial like himself.
I don't know, man.
I heard a Republican say they get lemon chicken there, and that sounds pretty nice.
I'm sorry.
Listen, so tell him the story of who's this guy and what was he doing down there anyway?
He must have been a really bad terrorist.
Well, Shaka'ama is, as I was saying, is a legal British resident.
So he had settled in the UK.
He married a British woman.
He had four kids.
Actually, the youngest of his kids was born the day that he got to Guantanamo, back in February 2002.
So he had never seen him before.
He has always maintained that he traveled to Afghanistan in about June 2001 to undertake humanitarian aid work.
No one has ever successfully disputed that, though they have ladled on top of his capture all kinds of claims about him which, you know, have never stood up to any kind of scrutiny.
So it's been alleged that he hung around with, you know, various terrorist-related people in the UK, and that out in Afghanistan it's been alleged that he knew Osama bin Laden, that he was present at the Battle of Tora Bora, all kinds of stuff like this, Scott.
And the really important thing to notice about these claims is when you look at who made them.
So some of these claims were made by Abu Zubaydah, who I know you know, and I'm sure many of your listeners do.
So Abu Zubaydah is the guy who was actually the gatekeeper for a training camp in Afghanistan that wasn't affiliated with al-Qaeda.
But when he was picked up in Pakistan in 2002, the Bush administration decided that they would use him as the first object of their torture program, the CIA torture program.
So he was subjected to horrendous torture and abuse, was waterboarded on 83 separate occasions.
His testimony, funnily enough, is completely unreliable.
Another person who made the allegations against Shaker is a Yemeni guy called Yassin Bassadar.
Now he's known to people who've watched the Guantanamo story closely.
He was, at first, the U.S. authorities thought he was the most wonderful prisoner because he was making allegations against so many other prisoners.
But it turned out that after a while, the smarter ones started to question the reliability of their star witness because he appeared to keep pointing out that people were in places where they said they weren't.
And in fact, it turned out that he was a phenomenally unreliable witness.
There's another guy in there.
Get this, Scott.
This is the kind of weird story we've discussed over the years.
Another unreliable witness is a gentleman who had been imprisoned by al-Qaeda as a suspected spy.
He was then tortured.
He was then liberated from prison by the United States.
But instead of freeing him, they sent him and about half a dozen other guys to Guantanamo.
I don't think his mental state was very good by that point.
And U.S. officials are on record as saying that his testimony shouldn't be trusted unless it could be independently verified from any other source.
But it's funny, Scott, because if you talk to the right-wingers, and I've had to deal with some of them in the U.K. lately, they will swear that every bit of information that's in the files about Shakarama is true.
And it so clearly is not the case.
So those are the kind of bases of the supposed allegations against him.
The most noticeable thing about Shakarama is that since he has been in U.S. custody for nearly 14 years, it was, he was probably the most prominent prisoner for resisting the injustice of the detention program introduced by the United States after 9-11.
And he just absolutely obsessively resisted the injustice, shouting and resisting and arguing with them and looking after the needs of his fellow prisoners, always standing up for the rights of his fellow prisoners, and generally just annoying the hell out of them.
And, you know, I think and many other people think that the reason that they spent such a long time actually getting around to releasing him six to eight years after he was told twice, six years and eight years ago, that they didn't want to hold him, is simply because they knew that he was going to talk and he was going to embarrass them.
Man.
All right.
So a lot of different stuff there.
Seems like maybe the reason why they want to get rid of him is because he's such a troublemaker, too.
A little bit of conflicting incentives there for these guys.
Well, you would think they would.
But unfortunately, the way they deal with people who are capable of, you know, getting other prisoners to agitate against the conditions of their confinement is that they put them in solitary.
Yeah.
Shakar actually spent a lot of his time in solitary confinement.
And, you know, the amazing thing is there was this clip a couple of years ago when a CBS 60 Minutes crew went down and they were in the corridor filming and he had figured out that somebody was out in the corridor.
So he just started shouting.
And, you know, and that's apparently what he did all the time.
It was it was great that a film crew caught him because they then managed to help to publicize his story, which was really important.
The woman doing the program was amazed that somebody there was speaking English.
She hadn't actually done the research to find out that there was a very prominent British resident in Guantanamo who, of course, was fluent in English.
But, you know, that's what he did.
He just he resisted.
And unfortunately, you know, he suffered a lot of physical violence as a result and and spent all this time in isolation.
So, you know, quite, quite.
I can't imagine being able to put up with that for such a long time.
Right.
All right.
Now.
So let me ask you this.
Back when they cleared him six and eight years ago, it sounds like the first time in the Bush administration.
Then again, under the Obama reviews where this is the State Department, the CIA, the Defense Department and every relevant party come together and putting their stamp of approval on it first.
At that point, are they withdrawing all their previous accusations against them or they're just sort of mumbling that, OK, well, we're we're kind of not going to concede out loud that these were lies, but we're going to no longer hold these lies against them at that point?
Or how does that work?
Well, you know, publicly, it's very difficult to get anyone to talk about it, Scott, for one very good reason.
And that word is lawyers.
So the United States government has lawyers.
And the first job of those lawyers is to tell their employers how not to do things that will get them sued.
So as a result, you will find throughout the history of Guantanamo, a concerted effort never to admit that mistakes have been made.
You know, a really good example actually was in 2004, when the Bush administration was told in the Supreme Court that the prisoners at Guantanamo had habeas corpus rights.
The Bush administration were really annoyed about this.
And they and they tried to circumvent their responsibilities by implementing these kangaroo tribunals called the combatant status review tribunals, where the prisoners were presented with the allegations against them, and were then given an opportunity to to try and refute them.
And actually, it was in the whole process was meant to just rubber stamp their prior designation as enemy combatants without rights.
You know, these are people who had never been screened, they were rounded up in all manner of ways, and with them were told that they were all guilty of being illegal combatants.
Now, you know, should I carry on after the break, Scott?
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
And let's stop here.
And we'll come back and finish this thought and some more with Andy Worthington, author of the Guantanamo files, find his great website at Andy Worthington.co.uk.
We're talking about the final release of Shocker Armor.
He's back in the UK.
Hold it right there.
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This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court's ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.
And that Common Article 3 says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity.
It's very vague.
What does that mean?
I never get tired of that clip.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm here with Andy Worthington, and I think actually that was a different Supreme Court case than the one you were referring to there, but close enough, damn it, to play the clip.
George Bush complaining about the Geneva Convention being deliberately vague so that it's pretty much all-inclusive for any kind of torture that you and your lawyers can dream up.
It's covered, too.
A point he was deliberately trying to not understand, I think, there.
But anyway, so you were talking about, I'm mixing them up now, Hamdi and Hamdan and Boumediene and all the different decisions now.
But anyway, we're talking about the tribunals they convened after Rassoul, which gave the President...
Rassoul, right, there's one.
Yeah, that was the one that said that the federal judiciary has jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus cases.
Yeah, which the Bush administration then persuaded Congress to take away again for another four years.
But that was what let the lawyers in, and in the meantime, the Bush administration had these Mickey Mouse tribunals where they set about establishing that everyone was guilty, as they'd always said they were.
And what happened for a very, very short amount of time there, Scott, was that they were obviously finding almost everybody to be enemy combatants.
But just for a very short amount of time, they found some people to be not enemy combatants, i.e., oh boy, we made a mistake.
And it took a very short amount of time before the lawyers got there and said, no, no, no, call them no longer enemy combatants.
And that way, of course, you know, we're not responsible.
Mistake wasn't made, they've just stopped being bad guys.
So that's what they did.
With Shaka Armour, with all of these people who were approved for release from Guantanamo, they don't even call it approved for release, they call it approved for transfer out of the prison.
No one is admitting that they made mistakes.
What they're saying is that they believe that they don't constitute a significant enough threat to the United States to carry on holding.
That's the bottom line.
But you know, we know what the code is.
That covers all manner of things.
But it couldn't mean, oh, God, we just absolutely messed up really badly here and got somebody innocent.
Or you could take it at face value.
This is somebody who was, you know, it was a nobody who's so insignificant, that, you know, there's not a problem with them.
This is somebody who wants to go back, pick up the pieces and get on with their lives.
So you know, unfortunately, we are until this is all in some point in the future behind us, and we can really properly examine it, I hope.
And what we're stuck with is still this, you know, this terrible morass of half lies and truth.
And, you know, it's actually difficult to work everything out.
But we know that a lot of stuff is being hidden because nobody wants to claim responsibility for anything.
Right.
Well, and, you know, part of the thing about Guantanamo, I think, just even the average American who doesn't really pay attention to this stuff, they must get the idea that they never hear anything about Guantanamo that isn't somehow some kind of scandalous, where, oh, look, they got a war crimes conviction against a cook, literally against a cook against a guy who used to be Osama's driver way back when, against nobody's against a little kid, against a guy, an Australian, who they let him go after time served in a $50 fine like nightcourt as long as you promise not to tell the media how we tortured you.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, it's true.
I mean, unfortunately, you know, far too many people aren't even paying attention to realize that they just they, you know, they just take what they're told, you know, but I mean, they don't ever hear anything positive about it.
I mean, if they ever hear anything at all, it's something ridiculous.
You know, what do you mean?
It's 2015, almost 16 now.
And Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh still haven't been convicted of anything.
And they're allowed to wear camouflage to court like they're soldiers and all this crap.
It's out of control.
It's completely crazy.
I agree.
Yeah.
And then like, I think even the average jackass has probably heard that a lot of these guys have been cleared for release for a long time.
Now, what's the process for getting released after you've been cleared for release?
Is this America?
Or is this communist Cuba down there?
Well, this is I mean, fortunately, I have to say, I think this is one of the messages that we've been pushing, you know, for actually, it's about five years now, and quite strongly.
And it's one of the messages that people can pick up on, you know, the way I always say about it is, look, if you have a process that you go through a high level review process, at the end of which you decide that there's a whole bunch of people that you don't want to carry on holding, you have to release them.
Otherwise, you end up appearing to be more cruel than a dictatorship, because a dictatorship doesn't pretend to have a review process.
You know, when they sling you in the dungeon and throw away the key, they don't come to you after years and go like, actually, we're gonna have a review process to find out whether we would like to release you or not, and then not release you.
Because a dictator would blanch at that they would think, what, really, that's unbelievably cruel.
How come I haven't thought that level of cruelty to tell someone they're going to leave and then not do it?
Yeah, I mean, I think people get that.
And I think there are people within the Obama administration who have been embarrassed about that.
But you know, still doesn't really help much, Scott, because there are currently of the 112 men still held at Guantanamo, 52 guys who were told and you know, 80% of these people were told six years ago, like Shaka, we don't want to hold you anymore.
And they're stuck there.
And for most of those guys, it's an accident of birth.
They're from Yemen.
And no one will return them to Yemen.
I mean, I understand that it's very difficult now to return them to Yemen, because the Saudis, with the assistance of the allies are bombing the crap out of that country, excuse me.
But that's not why they're worried about the politics of one of them joining up with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which they're flying out the Air Force for right now.
It's a kind of hysteria about recidivism that would keep America's prisons full if it was if it was applied to the domestic prison system.
You know, which I have said before, an international Willie Horton ad.
You know, somebody, somebody from California is released from prison and commits a crime and the and the establishment gets together and says, Okay, well, on that basis, we're never going to release anyone from California from prison ever again.
Yeah, that's the equivalent of the way that people are treating Guantanamo.
It's insane.
Now, let me ask you something else.
This is something that was brought up to me the other day, and it was something that I completely missed.
But apparently, there were some appropriations and some real moves going on to move Guantanamo to Florence, Colorado to the supermax there or move many of the prisoners there.
And I think even keeping them under the category, some of them have will never be charged or released kind of a thing.
Do you know about that?
Well, I don't know that they've fixed on a place yet, Scott, I would be surprised if they choose anything other than a military facility for people who aren't going to be charged.
If they're going to bring people over to the US mainland, that means that the the actual bad guys, you know, the handful of them are actually going to be put on trial in in federal court.
I hope and that would be very, very sensible, because they you know, they've committed terrorism and terrorism is a crime.
And it's, you know, way beyond time for that to actually be dealt with.
It's a very thorny issue for anybody that they claim that they can hold indefinitely without charge or trial on the US mainland, because you know, actually, you're not allowed to do that.
And what I myself and others think is that if they do manage to do that, which is really the only way that they can close the place, there will be very ferocious challenges in court, which will be successful, because you simply can't do that on the US mainland.
So, you know, hopefully, Scott, we get a chance to talk again about these issues as the story develops, because I think it's a very important aspect of how we may get to see Guantanamo closed.
Yeah.
Hey, keep up the great work.
Good to talk to you as always.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
Good.
That's the heroic Andy Worthington, everybody.
The movie is called Outside the Law.
The book is The Guantanamo Files, and his great website is AndyWorthington.co.uk.
Thanks again, man.
Okay, bye.
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