Alright, everybody, welcome back to the show, Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton, and our next guest on the show today is Andy Worthington, the heroic Andy Worthington.
His website is andyworthington.co.uk.
You can find what he writes at fff.org, at antiwar.com, and other places like that.
His book is called The Guantanamo Files, and the movie, which I still haven't seen, Andy, is called Outside the Law.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, man?
Yeah, I'm great, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I need you to send a copy of that DVD to Angela.
Okay.
I still haven't seen it.
Okay.
And then once I see it, then I can interview you all about it, and maybe we'll sell some more.
Yeah, great idea.
Okay.
I'll do that.
Alright, cool.
You can write that on your hand for later.
Alright, so, yeah, the book is The Guantanamo Files, and that is Andy's expertise now.
It's a year and a half after Obama promised that he would have Guantanamo closed in one year.
And so, rather than no longer having something to write about, Andy still has something to write about.
Isn't that right?
Yeah.
Alright, well, let's start off with this piece you have here about the habeas corpus hearings.
That's on your front page here.
I think you had the ratio.
Here we go.
Guantanamo and habeas corpus, two years, 50 cases, 36 victories for the prisoners.
So let's start off with how is it that these guys got rid of habeas corpus hearing in the first place, and then tell us a little bit about what's been going on in these federal courtrooms here, Andy.
Okay, well, you know, it took years.
They were first granted, unusually granted, habeas rights in June 2004 by the Supreme Court.
Normally, when you hold prisoners in wartime, they wouldn't get rights, because they would be treated humanely as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
But no, this was a black hole.
And the Supreme Court recognized this and said, well, look, if a guy says he didn't do it, didn't do anything, was picked up by mistake, was picked up because you guys were offering bounty payments, how does he get out of that place?
You've got to give him the right to go before an impartial judge using the nearly 800-year-old great writ of habeas corpus, you know, originally signed in a field in West London back in 1215, and you know, ask why he's being held.
So, you know, Congress was then persuaded to try and strip the prisoners of their rights.
And the Supreme Court got back onto it in June 2008 and said, no, definitively, these guys have habeas rights, let's get this going.
And so since then, for the last two years, there have been 50 cases that have made it to a ruling by the judges in the district court in Washington, D.C., the district court for the District of Columbia.
And 36 of those have been won by the prisoners.
So 72% victory for the prisoners, the other 14 have been won by the government.
And along the way, the judges have certainly exposed, in what I think is a very reputable and publicly available forum, that the supposed evidence that the government has relied upon to justify the detention of these prisoners actually consists a lot of false allegations that were made by other prisoners who were either tortured or coerced, or in some cases, bribed with better conditions to produce these stories, in some cases, through the torture or coercion of the prisoners themselves.
And I think that 72% success rate really shows just quite how inept the whole process of rounding people up and labeling them the worst of the worst and sending them to Guantanamo in the first place was.
Well, now, if I understand this system right, a writ of habeas corpus is, I mean, a hearing like that is the kind of thing with a very, very low bar for the prosecution to hurdle, right?
I mean, this isn't like a jury trial, beyond a reasonable doubt or anything.
This is the judge saying to the prosecutors, to the executive branch, do you have any reason why I should believe that you ought to be able to continue to hold this guy at all?
And then if they have one, case dismissed, and you can continue holding him, right?
I mean, the reason we're talking 34 out of 50 here is because 34 times out of 50, they had nothing.
Yeah, that's right.
It's described as by a preponderance of the evidence that the government has to demonstrate that these people had some involvement with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
And what's even more distressing, I think, really, is that of the 14 cases that the government has won, in the majority of those cases, the only people who are being approved for ongoing indefinite detention are people who played some kind of minor role within either the Taliban or within al-Qaeda's military operations in Afghanistan, if you like.
And I think the distinction that needs to be made here is that this was supposed to be about terrorists.
This was supposed to be about the guys who, you know, were so uniquely dangerous that they needed this uniquely lawless place to hold them outside of every international norm.
Terrorists, the people who would blow up buildings and kill innocent people.
What we're talking about is that because of the law that was passed by Congress just after 9-11, which justifies the detention of these people, which is what Obama still relies on, is that they were involved with al-Qaeda and or the Taliban under any kind of circumstances.
And what al-Qaeda was doing in Afghanistan, you know, while a small number of people were plotting this terrible terrorist attack, is that a larger number of people were training in camps that were affiliated somehow to al-Qaeda, or in some cases weren't at all, but in some cases were, were then going and fighting with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance.
It was Muslims against Mughals, it was before 9-11, it had nothing to do with international terrorism.
As soon as the U.S. invaded, these guys then became the enemies of the United States.
And you know, and that's it, really.
So, you know, I don't mind saying that you have a right to detain somebody who is a soldier in a war against the United States and Afghanistan back in 2001, but I can't see any justification for not holding those people as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, rather than, you know, approving their ongoing detention in the prison that, let's face it, to most people is associated with terrorism, you know, and this has nothing to do with terrorism.
Yeah, well, you know, there's so much to go over here, it seems like, well, let's cut to this important individual story here, Mohamed Hassan Odiani, who's he?
Mohamed Hassan Odiani is a guy who was a student at a university in Faisalabad in Pakistan, and on the 28th of March, 2002, one of a Yemeni student at the university said, why don't you come around and meet some of the other students at my house?
So he went around for dinner, and they were chatting away, so he ended up deciding that he would stay the night.
Now that same night, the house was raided.
It was the same night that across town, a man called Abu Zubaydah, who was initially claimed to be Al-Qaeda's number three, but who we now know was a mentally damaged facilitator for a training camp that had little to do with Al-Qaeda, he was seized on that same night.
So they rounded up the people in this guest house, because of some spurious claim that the guest house was associated with Al-Qaeda, and hauled all these guys off.
So the rest of them, the majority of the other people in the house, exceeding very much were actually what they said they were, which was students who lived there.
This guy didn't even live there.
He'd just gone around for dinner, got chatting a bit late, and decided he was going to crash out the night.
And that's it.
He's still in Guantanamo.
Now, this man in June 2002, when he arrived in Guantanamo and interrogated, suggested that once he'd been interrogated about the people who were living in the house, it really would be time to send this man back home.
In June 2002.
In 2005, 2006, he was cleared by the Bush administration for release.
It never happened.
Last year, the Obama administration, the Guantanamo Review Task Force, that consisted of representatives of government departments and the intelligence agencies, etc., reviewed the cases of all the prisoners.
In his case, they decided it was time for him to go home.
He has now won his habeas corpus petition.
The judge in the case was very forceful in saying, you know, this is ridiculous.
What are you doing?
Now, this was three weeks ago, four weeks ago.
He is still held.
Why have they not put this man on a plane and sent him immediately back to Yemen?
Well, the reason is because a Christmas Day, if you recall, a Nigerian man called Umar Farouk Abdel Moutarab tried to blow himself up on a plane.
Now, he had apparently trained in Yemen.
Hold it there, Andy.
We've got to go out to this break.
We'll be right back.
It's Andy Worthington on Antiwar Radio.
Listen to LRN.
FM on any phone, any time, 760-569-7753.
That's 760-569-7753.
I'm about to have a nervous breakdown.
My head really hurts.
If I don't find a way out of here, I'm going to go crazy.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm talking with the heroic Andy Worthington, author of the Guantanamo Files and maker of the movie Outside the Law.
His website is AndyWorthington.co.uk, and we were talking about why this young, innocent Yemeni is still being held at Guantanamo Bay, even after, even as the Obama administration admits to The Washington Post, anonymously, of course, that we have nothing on this kid.
He is innocent, just as he says he is.
And yet, Barack Obama sent his people to lie to the judge to try to keep him imprisoned, and they still won't let him go back to Yemen after the judge said, let him go back to Yemen.
Andy, why?
Because nobody in the administration is prepared in a midterm election year to stand up to the kind of people who will bark louder than them if they suggest, you know, this guy is completely innocent, we need to send him home.
Can you not see how much damage this is doing to us internationally, how much damage this is doing to us in the Muslim world by not releasing a patently innocent man?
And it's all part of the fear-mongering and the paranoia that arose after this, you know, this Nigerian guy tried to blow himself up on the plane, and it emerged that he had apparently been recruited for this attempted bomb plot in Yemen.
It was suggested that one of the people who was involved in recruiting him was a Saudi who had been held in Guantanamo, who was part of this group in Yemen.
Now, he had been released by President George W. Bush, not by President Obama.
He had been released as part of a political deal with the Saudi government.
He had been released in spite of the advice of the U.S. intelligence services that he was actually one of the handful of genuinely dangerous people in Guantanamo.
And yet when, you know, when President Obama starts getting all this flack around the Christmas period into the new year, then he just backs down.
I believe that one of his aides said it was a no-brainer.
We're not releasing anybody to Yemen under any circumstances until we say we're going to do it's a moratorium.
That was the 7th of January, so that's six months ago.
Now, you know, without suspending the moratorium or at least making an exception in this case, then this innocent young man rots in Guantanamo on an ongoing basis.
And I would suspect, Scott, that we're going to hear that they will make an exception for him.
But it really is, you know, it's an example of cowardice on the part of the administration.
And you made a very good point that the Justice Department, despite knowing all this about him, that those officials and lawyers in the Justice Department are the same guys essentially who were working under Bush.
You know, they had the nerve, they had the effrontery to go in front of a district court judge with a case that they knew there was nothing to, there was nothing to it.
You know, this was a guy who'd been cleared over and over and over again.
He's not the only one that they're doing this with.
Where's the leadership?
Where are people joining the dots that the Guantanamo Review Task Force cleared, you know, a hundred prisoners for release from Guantanamo?
And yet, in case after case, nobody has liaised with the Justice Department lawyers who are still preparing these cases and still taking them in front of a judge and still time and again being told by a judge essentially, how dare you bring this case to me?
If you haven't got a case here, let this person go.
And then of course they drag their heels about letting anybody go because the Obama administration is extremely reluctant to actually release prisoners from Guantanamo and get the damn place closed down.
I don't understand it.
Well it really reminds me of Andrew Jackson when he was trying to at least allow or help the government of Georgia force march all the Cherokee to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears.
The Supreme Court ruled that no, you can't do that.
And Andrew Jackson said, well, John Marshall has made the law, let's see him enforce it.
And of course, Andrew Jackson was in charge of all the cops and the soldiers, not John Marshall.
And so Andrew Jackson went ahead and with his forced march.
But I wonder whether, you know, if it really comes down to it, if a judge was angry enough, could he not send marshals to Justice Department headquarters to begin arresting Department of Justice officials until they begin carrying out his order?
I mean, if a judge says to the executive branch, release this man and they don't do it, he's got no other recourse than to send marshals to the DOJ headquarters to start arresting people, which is not happening and it's apparently not going to happen no matter how many times.
I mean, we've talked about here 36 victories for the prisoners in this habeas corpus, these habeas corpus hearings.
How many of these people have actually been released as per the judge's orders, Andy?
Well, you know, I think about two thirds of them have.
The problem is that in most of the other cases, the government has appealed.
So, you know, they're not they're not often prepared to accept the ruling of a judge.
And to be honest, they really should, because the judge is sifting through, you know, evidence that has been compiled over eight years to reach a determination.
These are people who are skilled to make these calls.
You know, I would say looking at it objectively, sometimes they've you know, they're obviously going to come up with different decisions.
I think sometimes some judges have ruled, you know, to detain a prisoner when actually there was no basis to do it.
I mean, this happened in the summer.
There was a there was a guy and the judge said the case is Gotham thin, but, you know, he erred on the side of caution and allowed the government to continue holding him.
The judges can't clearly, you know, set up their own militia to enforce these things.
But what has happened on a number of occasions is that the judges have threatened to hold the government in contempt.
You know, another Yemeni who was held in this guest house, the first one who won his habeas petition.
That was last May.
A guy called Ali bin Ali Ahmed and he was, you know, the judge in that case, again, was very forcefully said, you haven't got a thing on this guy, let him go.
It took until October for the government to release him.
The judge, in the meantime, had to put pressure on the government, had to threaten to hold the government in contempt.
The same happened with a Yemeni, with a Kuwaiti prisoner who was released.
So the administration is sitting there doing nothing until they're provoked by a judge.
You know that a judge has to start standing up and dancing about and shouting at the government and saying, will you do what I told you to do, please?
You know, I don't get it.
I mean, it's just it's just part of the cowardice.
It's like, I know, I know that, you know, there was only a small window of opportunity when Obama came into power, when the when it looked like the majority of the American people in polls were prepared to go with him.
You know, this is a terrible thing that's happened.
We need to sort it out.
I know that it's swung back since then, with all the right wing venom that there is in the state to encourage people to think, no, no, no, it's full of terrorists.
Keep it open.
That it's not politically popular to do the right thing.
I don't care that it's not politically popular to do the right thing, Scott, you know what I mean?
I'm fed up of it.
Today, I'm writing something.
I'm looking back at what the Red Cross said about Guantanamo in an interview with the New York Times in October 2003.
Now, they're not supposed to speak publicly, but the main man with the Red Cross in the United States said in 2003, we are concerned that the open ended detention at Guantanamo, you know, we're concerned about the profound consequences on the mental health of the prisoners that this has.
This open ended detention, without charge or trial, without knowing when it will ever come to an end.
That was in October 2003 that the ICRC went public, which, you know, they hardly ever do.
It's not their job to go public.
Well, it's seven years later.
So what is the mental state of some of these men who are still held, not knowing on what basis they're held, not knowing when, if ever, they're going to be released?
Yeah, well, look, I mean, that's such an important point that I think, you know, may be lost on some people until they've heard it spoken so plainly like that.
But even, you know, crucifixions and stress positions and hypothermia and barking dogs and and all the different waterboarding and tortures aside, being locked in a prison and not even knowing whether you'll ever even have a chance to make your case as to why you ought to get out is torture itself.
Indefinite detention with no hope is torture.
Well, that's what I think, you know, and I think that, you know, as I've said, when we're talking about soldiers, clearly what should have happened all along is that they never had any of this bad treatment and that they technically can be held until the end of hostilities.
And that interests me, because, you know, were these people seized in connection with an endless war on terror or were they seized in connection with a limited campaign in Afghanistan?
Well, and it's just you said before, you know, the whole excuse for this was that these terrorists are so dangerous that we have to have this whole separate lawless system for it for them.
And yet we can see on its face, it's obvious that they created this separate system because these people are innocent.
If they had any ability to contest their imprisonment, the vast majority of them would be set free.
The only guilty people there are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, maybe that guy Katani, although they tortured him so badly that he's got to be innocent by now.
He's done.
He's paid his debt.
But there's a very small handful of people who actually even possibly had anything to do with 9-11 here.
And the rest are all goat herders and nobodies who were rounded up and sold for bounties.
That's why they keep them in lawless detention.
And of course, that's why they charge cooks and chauffeurs with war crimes.
It's because America is committing a war crime by keeping these people this way.
And that's the best hope that they can do is try to say that it's a war crime to be Osama bin Laden's cook or for a medic.
I have to say there was a case a few months back where a judge reluctantly said that although this guy was a medic with the soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, the Military Commissions Act passed by Congress is what has stripped medics of the protections of the Geneva Comments.
Wonderful.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
We're out of time here.
Everybody, please go read AndyWorthington.co.uk.
And thanks very much for your time, Andy.
Always appreciate it.
Hey, Scott.
It's always great to talk to you.
Cheers, my friend.
