President Joe Biden turned the page on one of the legacies of September 11, 2001 by ending the war in Afghanistan, but he still has a long way to go with another: the detention center in Afghanistan. Guantanamo.
The White House says it intends to close the U.S. base prison in Cuba, which opened in January 2002 and in which most of the 39 men still in custody have not been charged with any crime. It is unclear how or when the government will carry out this plan, although the first steps to release a prisoner and place five others on a list of those eligible to be released have generated optimism among some who want him to close, including prisoners.
“The fact that Biden is at least saying the right things has given people hope,” said Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who recently made his 40th trip to Guantanamo, to see prisoners he had not been able to visit. since the beginning of the pandemic. “Hope is dangerous because it crushes easily. But at the same time, at least, they have hope, and that’s good.”
As with Afghanistan, Biden faces a complex task of closing Guantanamo. This is a promise that President Barack Obama made, and then failed to deliver. The closure was completely abandoned under the tenure of President Donald Trump, who once promised to “load it with some bad guys,” but who for the most part simply ignored the site.
The challenge now, as then, remains: What must the U.S. government do with some of the Guantanamo men, including some two dozen who are unwilling to release?
Among them is Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, who at the time was a renowned figure in Al Qaeda and is considered the architect of the 9/11 attacks. He faces a trial before a military commission with four co-defendants who, amid legal and logistical problems, personnel issues and the pandemic, have been bogged down for more than 9 years in the pre-trial phase. in a high security room built especially for this. It is not clear when it will have to start.
Mohammad and his co-defendants went to court this week for the first time since the start of the pandemic for a hearing on the qualification of a new judge, Air Force Colonel Matthew McCall, to preside over the case . It was the 42nd pre-trial hearing since the charges were heard in May 2012.
Over time, new problems arise. The oldest prisoner, a Pakistani who was granted permission to be released in May but is still at Guantanamo, is 74 years old and suffers from heart disease and other illnesses. Several other men also have significant physical and mental health issues that will need to be treated if “indefinite” detention is extended much longer. Since Guantánamo opened, nine prisoners have died: two from natural causes and seven from apparent suicides.
“People are getting older, sicker, more desperate,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, a Constitutional Rights Center lawyer representing a Yemeni prisoner who recently received permission to be released but remains in custody.
Not surprisingly, in fact, no one has made long-term plans for the detention center. It was an impromptu project from the beginning.
After the invasion of Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks, the United States wanted a place to detain the hundreds of prisoners from dozens of countries who were captured by U.S. forces, many of whom were delivered, as was later learned, in exchange for rewards, regardless of whether they had a connection to the Qaeda or the Taliban.
The government of then-President George W. Bush declared that they were “the worst of the worst,” and has claimed that it could detain men abroad, without charge, as illegal enemy fighters, without the right to protection given to prisoners of war, at the site of the Navy on the steep southeast coast of Cuba.
A photo released by the Pentagon showed the first detainees, dressed in orange overalls and kneeling in outdoor cages under the tropical sun. He intended to show that “we are doing what we need to do” in a challenging message to the world, said Karen Greenberg, director of the National Security Center at Fordham Law School.
“They regretted this decision very soon, in a matter of days, but weeks,” said Greenberg, author of “The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days.” Guantánamo days).
As reports of the brutal treatment emerged, Guantanamo became a source of international outrage, undermining the sympathy and support the United States attracted after the 9/11 attacks.
The United States would end up with 779 prisoners at Guantánamo and would spend hundreds of millions on the construction and operation of what today looks more or less like a small state prison, surrounded by barbed wire and surveillance posts on the edge of it. resplendent Caribbean Sea.
Bush released 532 prisoners. Obama released 197. Trump released only one detainee: a Saudi who returned to his homeland after reaching an agreement on military commissions.
Few of the detainees could be charged with a felony because no evidence was collected when they were captured, or there was none, or they were contaminated beyond use when the detainees were subjected to what the CIA euphemistically called. ” improved interrogation “. Of those who remain, 10 are awaiting trial before a military commission, and all are still in the investigation phase.
Over the years, the population has been shrinking as the United States decides that some men no longer pose a threat and it is not worth having them detained with legal challenges as a backdrop. At times, the prison has been shaken by hunger strikes and clashes between prisoners and guards, caused in large part by the frustration of being held indefinitely without charge under what the United States claims is its right under the laws. international war.
Now the Guantánamo prison is smaller and quieter. But Stafford Smith, founder of human rights organization Reprieve, says he remains oppressive. “It’s not so much the physical conditions, it’s the psychological ones,” he said. “To be told you’re free to leave but never to leave, that psychologically is immensely harmful to people.”
Obama, who issued an executive order shortly after taking office in which he ordered the closure of Guantanamo within a year, ran into political opposition when his government announced it would move the military trials in federal courts. Congress ended up adding to the Pentagon’s annual authorization law a text prohibiting the government from transferring Guantanamo detainees to the United States for any reason.
In a signal that political winds could be changing, Congress recently lifted the ban on transferring Guantanamo detainees from the Pentagon’s clearance, and removed funding from the detention center from the budget of the Pentagon. next year. It remains to be seen whether this will change, especially after several ex-prisoners, released under both Bush and Obama’s tenure, became Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.
The Biden government, which did not respond to requests for comment on this article, has not said much about its plans.
“I don’t have a timetable for you,” press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters when asked in July about the closure of Guantanamo. “As you know, there is a process. There are different stages in the process. But this remains our goal, and we are considering all available avenues to responsibly transfer detainees and, of course, close Guantanamo.”
Those who support the closure feel encouraged that the new government has reactivated a review board process and authorized the release of five of the prisoners (none were authorized under Trump). But they are concerned that Biden’s team has not yet appointed anyone to the State Department to lead an effort to reach agreements with other countries for the resettlement of prisoners, as was done under Obama’s mandate.
Many argue that the simplest solution would be to move the cases of the 10 detainees who are being tried by a military commission to a federal court in the United States and find a way to transfer or release the rest. Kebriaei, the lawyer the Yemeni client is waiting to be released, said the government should only focus on the matter.
“There’s a feeling that it needs to be done, and … more than one possibility that it can be done,” he said.