01/14/16 – Andy Worthington – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Next up, it's our friend Andy Worthington.
He might be a Brit, but he's still America's best guy on Guantanamo Bay.
Hey, Andy, how are you doing?
I'm good, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Appreciate you joining us again on the show.
You're welcome.
Hey, everybody, go to AndyWorthington.co.uk.
That's where you can find all of Andy's stuff.
Tons of writing there, as well as links to his book, The Guantanamo Files, profiles of everybody ever held at Guantanamo, 760-something, whatever it was.
And then also his documentary film that he put together is called Outside the Law.
You can find all that there at AndyWorthington.co.uk.
And am I right that you're here in the United States right now?
I am.
I'm in New York City at the moment, Scott.
That's cool.
What for?
I bet for some anti-Guantanamo Bay gulag prison activism, huh?
Yeah, that's right.
I was obviously in D.C. as I have been on January 11th every year since 2011, calling for the closure of the prison.
And then I come up to New York to do some events and meet some people.
So if anyone's in the New York City area and listening to this, I'm at Revolution Books in Harlem tonight, talking about the campaign to free Shaka Arma from Guantanamo and the ongoing campaign to get the prison closed in the last year of Obama's presidency.
Seven o'clock.
Good deal.
Revolution Books there in New York.
Okay, so tell me this, man.
I don't ever take this Obama guy seriously when he says he's going to do something good.
If he threatens to do something horrible, you can pretty much take that to the bank.
It's pretty easy to tell the difference.
But so he said in the State of the Union there's something about how he still wants to, but it was framed in the form of continuing to beg Congress for permission to close the prison.
This president, he can start a war, but he can't close a prison, even though he is the commander in chief of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps.
And they have no jurisdiction whatsoever in the Congress over him, other than to, you know, well, in a case like this, they could impeach the president if they wanted to fight about it.
Other than that, they couldn't do anything to countermand his order.
And but then he, I guess, does seem to be doing as much as he can, because tell him the brand new breaking news from today.
Well, yeah, 10 men have been released, which is the largest single group of prisoners to be released in what it feels like in living memory, actually, Scott, but it's for many, many, many years.
Yeah, 10 Yemenis have been sent to Oman.
So these are guys who, you know, have all been approved for release.
Since January 2010, when the high level interagency task force that the president set up when he took office back in January 2009, had finished its deliberations about the prisoners, they spent a year looking at the cases of all the guys to decide whether they should recommend them for prosecution or release, or even unfortunately, in many cases for ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial.
And these were people that they recommended should be released.
And it's taken, you know, all this time really rather terribly to get them out of there because of a long standing reluctance on the part of the entire US establishment to release people back to Yemen.
And of course, Scott, you know, when these guys were approved for release, Yemen was much more stable than it is now.
Right.
What else has changed?
Is there anything, I mean, as far as Obama's concerned, he could have let them go all this time?
Or is there anything different in the law?
I mean, there was an actual prohibition on transfers to Yemen that existed in the legislation for a while.
But it expired.
It's no longer there.
I mean, he actually imposed his own ban on releasing prisoners to Yemen after there was a an underpants bomb, if you recall, many, many years ago, he then lifted that in 2013.
But he still didn't do anything about it until until the end of 2014.
And at that point, it was clear that I mean, I think it's fair to say, you know, Yemen is in a terrible state because of the Saudi bombing of it in particular.
It's not a safe place to return people to.
So what the US government finally did was to start seriously asking other countries to take these guys in.
And that's that's, you know, been a huge removal of an obstacle to reducing the prisoner population and being able honestly to talk about perhaps actually getting the place closed.
Now, I mean, 10 other guys have been sent to Amman, other Yemenis have been sent to all kinds of other countries.
It's leading to very weird situations, of course, Scott, I mean, a couple of guys were just last week sent to Ghana.
So you know, what kind of surreal world are we living in a couple of Yemenis are transplanted from Guantanamo to Ghana, where they know no one, but, you know, everything is a step in the right direction, I think, to finally looking at the possibility that we can get the place closed.
Yeah, it's really an amazing situation.
But so you're saying that, as far as the congressional ban on Obama moving these guys, I guess the congressional ban is just on him moving them to the United States.
Is that it?
Well, no, I mean, I think they have actually imposed bans on releasing prisoners to a variety of countries.
I think they added a whole few more to that list in the latest legislation.
But because he has, you know, because they all agree that no one's being sent back to Yemen, then then he's at liberty to find other countries that will accept them.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so of these 10 guys, is it just a fair assumption that they just happen to be Arab and in Afghanistan?
So close enough to al Qaeda?
Or is it possible?
Or do you know, were some of them actually friends of bin Laden and Zawahiri, but the government decided they've done their time?
Or can you characterize any of this?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm just laughing because I'm thinking that if, you know, if any of these guys actually were to have been standing anywhere near Osama bin Laden, or Hoyman, or Zawahiri...
Then they'd be safe in Pakistan right now.
I know.
Yeah.
Those guys would probably have been turning to their bodyguards and going, you know, who's this little kid standing next to me?
Get him away from me.
They were nobodies.
You know, there's no way that they would be having anything to do with these people.
You know, some of them were low level Taliban foot soldiers.
Some of them were not that.
I think a case can clearly be made that some of these people were completely innocent of even any kind of military activity.
And you know, and as we know, Scott, people who are accused of being members of the Taliban or of supporting the Taliban in any way were not necessarily involved in any activities against the United States.
They had all been in Afghanistan before the 9-11 attacks, when they were supposed to be helping the Taliban to rid themselves of the menace of another Muslim group of people in Afghanistan, which was the Northern Alliance.
Right, exactly.
They were in the middle of that war, and many of them had just surrendered to the Americans, never fought the Americans at all, never had a chance to.
That's right.
So, you know, I mean, I've just been looking at the stories.
There are people, you know, who had their habeas corpus petitions granted years ago, who then had their habeas corpus petitions overturned because the DC Circuit Court, for naked ideological political reasons, was adamant that no one should be released from Guantanamo by having their habeas petition granted.
I just read a story of somebody who was a Yemeni who was initially recommended for transfer out of Guantanamo.
The intention at the time was to transfer him to continued detention, although I don't know how they thought that they could, you know, insist upon that.
But anyway, he was approved for transfer out of the prison, allegedly to continued detention, in April 2004.
You know, nearly 12 years ago, he was told, we're making the plans to move you out of this prison, and only now has it finally happened.
12 years.
Well, you know, it doesn't sound like it compared to some of the other stuff, but I think if anybody puts himself in that position, that amounts to torture itself, if you ask me.
Right.
But hang tight right there, Andy.
We'll be right back, y'all, with the great Andy Worthington, right after this.
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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Andy Worthington.
The great Andy Worthington.
The Guantanamo Files is the book.
Andyworthington.co.uk is his great website.
And we're talking about, well, a few things here and still more to get to.
But the big news today, Obama sent 10 Yemenis to Oman, which is right next door to Yemen, and let them out of the Guantanamo prison.
So a couple of questions here.
I think I heard you right, and I think I already know this, but I might be missing something, too, Andy.
Is it right there's three categories of guys being held in the Guantanamo prison?
There are the guys who the government claims are going to be tried at some point in front of a military commission.
Then there are the guys who they admit that they do not have anything like the evidence that they would need to convict these guys, even in a ridiculous kangaroo Guantanamo military commission court.
But, oh, well, we're just going to hold them for the rest of their lives anyway.
And then there are those who are cleared for release.
I believe this is a completely distinct category from the former.
People who are cleared for, I could be wrong, people who are cleared for release who may or may not ever be released.
Is that basically right?
That's basically right.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think what we what we can say is definitely happening here is that that latter category of people approved for release is finally being released.
And the State Department spokesman said today that all 34 men in that category are expected to be freed by the summer.
And, you know, that could not come true.
But I think it's I think they're not just saying it as an empty promise.
They are intending to do that.
And I think we can presume that discussions are underway with all kinds of countries to actually, you know, help take these guys.
The really interesting bit that everybody needs to focus on now, Scott, apart from actually, I should say, first of all, just 10 men are facing or have faced trials of the 93 men who are still held.
And in Guantanamo's entire history, when 779 men were held, the total is just 15 of people who are currently facing trials or have faced trials.
And of course, you know, the appeals court has been wiping out some of those some of those convictions.
So the legal outcome of Guantanamo has been, you know, disgracefully poor and continues to be an absolute disgrace.
But let's look at that category in the middle that you mentioned, which is of the people who they call too dangerous to release, but don't have the evidence to put them on trial, which, of course, is very worrying.
It means that the evidence isn't actually evidence.
And there are 49 men in this category at the moment.
The interesting thing is that a review process was set up in 2013 to look at these men's cases.
Now, this was promised in 2011, when President Obama set up a established an executive order to hold the too dangerous to release prisoners recommended for ongoing detention by the task force.
And he promised then that they would have reviews of their cases that would take place within a year.
He's very good at making promises that things will happen within a year, and then not fulfilling them as he did with the closure of Guantanamo.
So it took until 2013 for these reviews to start.
And they've been taking place very slowly.
They involve representatives of the main government departments, the intelligence agencies, they meet in a secure location, and by video, they talk to the prisoner and their lawyers, and then military representatives assigned to the prisoners in Guantanamo, when the men make a case for why they should go home.
And what's been happening with this process, although it's been very slow, is that it has been very successful for the prisoners.
So they have made decisions in 18 cases so far.
And in 15 of those cases, they've recommended the prisoners for release.
That's the good news for them.
The bad news is that there are over 40 men still waiting for reviews.
And of course, unless they speed it up, those aren't going to be completed until 2020.
So men who were told in 2011, that this review process would be completed within a year are actually now looking at it taking nine years to complete just a review of their cases, unless somebody significantly accelerates this process this year.
And that somebody I think we have to conclude needs to be the President of the United States.
Yeah.
Do you know how these guys got on a separate list than the ones who were reviewed and cleared two years before?
Yeah, it's a very good question, isn't it?
What it is, is that the files, you know, in some cases would suggest that there appeared to be, you know, some kind of connection to something that looked a little bit more troubling than the general, complete absence of anything in so many people's files.
So some, some suggestion that they found vaguely credible, you know, but this is this is in plowing through material that's so unreliable, in general, because the kind of statements that are being made are being made by the prisoners about themselves and their fellow prisoners in conditions that were not conducive to them telling the truth.
But you know, at some point, they all sat down and went, Oh, we're not we're not entirely happy about recommending this guy, there seems to be something.
And also, I think it's fair to say that these some of these guys were people who had made threats against their captors during the many, many long years of their unjustified imprisonment and abuse.
So I think if at any point in that time, you, instead of being docile, had decided that you were going to try and fight against the circumstances of your detention, and that that might involve making threats against the people who were holding you, then they would regard you as somebody who you who couldn't be released, because you know, you would be dangerous.
Yeah.
And I mean, you know, put yourself in that position.
Exactly.
That's all I was gonna say is, you know what, this sounds like it's such an old issue.
Oh, Horton and Worthington talking about Guantanamo again, where, and it just, it's hard sometimes to put yourself in the spot where no, you're locked in a cage, you have one life, and then you're dead.
And this is how you have to spend it is locked in a cage without charges for decades.
Really, at the hands of the Americans, the red, white and blue hand on their heart, pledge allegiance to the Constitution, Americans couldn't be.
And this is a nightmare.
And, you know, again, of course, why are they on that list?
Because sorry, boss, we don't have any evidence against them.
Yeah, that's because they didn't do it.
And in the fact that this is going on in that we're this is the show's live.
This is not a rerun of some decade old conversation between the two of us.
This is January 2016.
We're still arguing about this.
The last year of Obama's presidency.
This is still going on.
And let me ask you this, and I maybe we'll have room for more.
But what more I mean, other than just closing down the whole thing and daring the the Congress to impeach and remove him?
What more can he do?
You know, within the confines that Congress has set up in the recent NDAAs, etc?
Well, I'm not really sure what he can do now.
Scott, you know, I mean, what we've been talking about is that if he releases the guys that are approved for release, if and you know, this is where campaigners need to put pressure on him, he speeds up the review process so that you know, by by summer going into fall, he's got dozens more people who they throw up their hands and say, you know, these guys are not too dangerous to release, let's release them as well.
He's dealing with, you know, we're, I would say, you know, well, the 34 who are already cleared, can he just set them free?
Or he's got to just find a place to send them?
Or what's he's got to find homes for some of them, because well, most of them are Yemenis.
So you know, he's got to find third countries that are prepared to take them in.
But if he gets to the point where, you know, significantly less than it is now, you know, he's got more, more leverage than on Congress to say, you know, the insane amount of money is costing to hold these guys is ridiculous.
We need to close this place, we need to move them to the US mainland.
And that will be the men facing trials.
And you know, it will be a small number of other people.
But the important thing to remember about that is that they will have rights under the US Constitution on the US mainland that they don't have in Cuba, Cuba, the essentially all the legal avenues to challenge the basis of their detention have been shut down through this, this terrible decisions by the appeals court to, to, to stop the lower court from granting the prisoners habeas corpus petitions, it's a dead end, the Supreme Court has refused to reconsider it.
The men have literally had their habeas corpus rights stripped by the appeals court.
So it would open up a new set of legal challenges.
And I think it becomes very difficult for the government to try and justify holding people without charge or trial on the US mainland.
There really is.
There are there are a lot of protections that that are designed in the United States to prevent that from happening.
And you know, when we first talked, Scott, we were talking about about Jose Padilla, you know, who was a US citizen who was held as an enemy combatant and tortured on the US mainland.
And when Bush was challenged to defend that he didn't he put him in the federal court system instead.
So you know, right, what he what he's going to have to do is either persuade Congress, or he's going to have to, you know, do this unilaterally.
And at the moment, I don't know how that's going to happen.
But I'm very, I very much hope that he doesn't take his foot off the pedal on this one.
And that, you know, by next January, where we're not marking another anniversary.
Yeah, I'm not holding my breath.
Yeah, no, me.
Don't.
It's a long time.
Hey, listen, man, you're great.
Thanks very much, Andy.
Appreciate it.
Well, it's great talking to you, Scott.
Thanks.
Talk to you later.
Yeah.
All right, y'all.
That is the great Andy Worthington, Andy Worthington dot co dot UK covering Guantanamo Bay for us still.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here.
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