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Former US Chief Prosecutor Condemns 'Law-Free Zone' of Guantánamo
Ten years on from its creation, calls are mounting from legal and human rights experts for closure of the 'torture' centre on Cuba
The former chief prosecutor for the US government at Guantánamo Bay has accused the administration he served of operating a "law-free zone" there, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the order to establish the detention camp on Cuba.
A shackled detainee is taken from a vehicle for interrogation at Camp Delta, at the Guantanamo base in Cuba in 2006. (Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP) Retired air force colonel Morris Davis resigned in October 2007 in protest against interrogation methods at Guantánamo, and has made his remarks in the lead-up to 13 November, the anniversary of President George W Bush's executive order setting up military commissions to try terrorist suspects.
Davis said that the methods of interrogation used on Guantánamo detainees – which he described as "torture" – were in breach of the US's own statutes on torture, and added: "If torture is a crime, it should be prosecuted."
The US military, he said, had been ordered to use unlawful methods of interrogation by "civilian politicians, and to do so against our will and judgment".
Davis was speaking at a conference on human rights law at Bard College in New York state. After resigning from the armed forces, in a dramatic defection to the other side of the raging debate over conditions at the camp, he became executive director of, and counsel to, the Crimes of War project based in Washington DC. The speech was to launch the project's 10th anniversary campaign and to protest against the existence of the camp and the torture there and at so-called "black sites" run by US intelligence around the world.
"No court has jurisdiction over Guantánamo," said Davis. "Some senior civilian Bush administration officials chose Guantánamo to interrogate detainees because they thought it's a law-free zone where we can unlawfully… handle a very small number of cases. We have turned our backs on the law and created what we believed was a place outside the law's reach." He added that America was "great at preaching to others, but not so good at practising what we preach. There is a point when enough is enough, and you have to look at yourself in the mirror. Torture has no place in American courts."
He admitted that "for a couple of years I was a leading advocate of military tribunals", but at his first meeting as prosecutor "I told my prosecution team that I would not use any enhanced interrogation techniques – we didn't need to". However, he continued: "We had these political appointees telling us to get in there and use them."
Speaking to the Observer, he said: "The uniformed services were in opposition to what was going on. But the military was cut out of the loop. Civilian politicians excluded the military in establishing the process and then handed it to me, saying: 'Here, go make it work.' Political appointees were making the decisions and, so far as I was concerned, the methods being used were unlawful. They said: 'President Bush said we don't use torture, so if the president said it's not torture, who are you to say it is?' " At first, said Davis, "the Bush administration didn't want civilian lawyers involved. They didn't even want the Red Cross on the island."
Davis, an expert on the law of war, and former judge advocate for the US Air Force, said that prisoners at Guantánamo have "fallen between" the conventions and rules governing prisoners of war. He questioned the notion of a "war on terror", saying: "Prisoners of war are supposed to have been captured on the battlefield. Abducting people off the streets of Indonesia and other places far from Afghanistan is pushing the envelope on what is a battlefield. The whole world is in essence the battlefield."
After his resignation in 2007 and retirement in 2008, Morris was officially deemed to have acted "dishonorably". But, he said: "The people who said I had behaved dishonorably were all political appointees. I've had no one from the military or the intelligence community who has criticized what I did."
Davis's Crimes of War project is leading pressure on the administration of President Barack Obama during Guantánamo's 10th anniversary, with firm reminders of Obama's unequivocal pledges to abolish military commissions and close the camp. Professor Thomas Keenan, the head of the Bard College human rights program, which staged the conference, said: "The president campaigned on a pledge to close down the jail at Guantánamo Bay, and to end the use of military commissions to try its inmates. How is it possible that, two years after he was elected, there are still more than 150 prisoners there, and this November, one of them will go on trial before one of those very commissions?"
The 10th anniversary of the executive order will come four days after the arraignment on 9 November of Saudi-born former millionaire Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 US sailors in 2000. The trial is the first to be held at Guantánamo in which the government will seek the death penalty.
But lawyers for al-Nashiri, who claim he was tortured at a "black site" in Poland, will present a motion arguing that the trial is meaningless, since the government has said it will not necessarily release the accused even if he is acquitted.
Davis said he thought the handling of terrorist suspects should proceed "one step at a time, and the first step is to close Guantánamo". Trials could then be moved to the federal courts.
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Show All'How is it possible that, two years after he was elected, there are still more than 150 prisoners there, and this November, one of them will go on trial before one of those very commissions?"'
Because Barack Obama is Part Of The Problem, Not Part Of The Solution.
Because Obama has a gun to his head by the real gang running the show, by the neo-cons, whom I strongly suspect have quite literally threatened his life and that of his family.
Because there's no way in heaven, hell or earth that Obama was going to get the goddamn nomination in '08, much less the Oval Office, without rolling over and accepting, among Satan only knows what other strictures, that elections are not held in America to effect change, they're held to cement the staus quo. Any apparent changes are, as we've plainly seen, purely cosmetic and a decoy.
What else is Obama's recently announced student loan-repayment deal about than a cynical attempt to court the young, college vote, to appear progressive and to appear as though 'he's feeling the pain'?
And if one forgives Obama for this betrayal of campaign promise, assuming he really hoped to close the evil hole down and stop that one aspect of the nation's slide into fascism, it is because one knows that the stupefyingly vacuous and contemptuous-of-life-and-democracy ideology that was the Bush years is still very much the ideology, and that the few Congresspeople (as opposed to 'Congressindividuals') and Senators who are human beings and would like to close Guantanamo no matter how much machine-gunning of the House and the Senate literally ensues courtesy of Blackwater in the evnet of an actual vote, are vastly outnumbered by the others who've happily sold their souls to the devil, starting with Hillary Clinton.
History in the New Age will not be kind to The Fascist States of America.
And no matter what else, brace yourselves for some truly fucked-up weirdness between now and next November. And remember this: The U.S. in its fascist state and the neo-cons and the puppets of 'The New World Order' gang will not prevail. The universe will not allow it in the end.
is this an example of anti-capitalism?
All attention is on the Occupy movements.
There are now only two comments here, despite the magnitude of the accusation leveled at Congress by Morris Davis, "an expert on the law of war, and former judge advocate for the US Air Force."
We are being overwhelmed already by the cascade of events worldwide - that is what I deduce.
This case appears cut and dried, and I hope it is pursued.
Manysummits
========
I just watched my usual MSM programs (ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox) and there was not one word about the staggering fall from grace represented by U.S. torture policies since 9/11. None of the political candidates or the talking heads are thinking about this issue; or at least, being allowed to appear to be thinking about it. There are no candidates who have mentioned it, let alone made it a central part of their campaign. I say we progressives are to partly to blame, because we haven't tried hard enough and smartly enough to raise public consciousness. I for one am not going to give up on this.
The American people have paid more attention to the disappearance of 11-month-old Lisa Irwin from her home in Missouri than to this monumentally important matter.
It is surprising to me that the military did not have the power say no to the application of torture at Gitmo. I guess this is what they mean when they say the President is the commander in chief. Of course, the civilian bosses have been conducting low intensity warfare for years in Central and South America and the Philippines so I guess this was just more of the same old, same old.
They did have the power to say no. The ones who obeyed the unlawful orders to torture people did it for the same reasons that other soldiers 'just followed orders' in history.
The thing is that the escalation to waterboarding isn't that far from the legal tortures that are imposed every day in the regular prisons in North America (Canada included this time). Solitary confinement is a torture, indeed the entire prison industry is designed to torture the inmates. Not so much with the whips and hot pokers anymore, we've become more 'refined' in how we make the condemned suffer. (whipping prisoners was only banned in Canada during the 1930s, not sure about the USA)
The Military was willing and complicit in torture. They could have said no, but most did not. The excuse of their fear of losing their career is no excuse. I and many others lost careers for standing up. These are not men, they are war criminals and deserve to be prosecuted. Now that prosecutions are on the horizon they are posturing and attempting to excuse themselves. In time, they will be prosecuted.
Are you unaware of the civillians who not only designed the torture methods at both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but who were the torturers? Permitting torture, let alone encouraging it, by soldiers under your command, inevitably leads to a loss of command control because of the loss of meaningful leadership.
Are you trying to imply that the soldiers didn't torture anyone? Or that the ones who did only did it because of 'peer pressure'?
I'm ex-military. Your argument would get you a punch on the nose if you tried it with any of the people with whom I served. (at least I hope so, but as with all things I'm sure there were some closeted barbarians in my old units...)
Permitting torture, let alone encouraging it, by soldiers under your command, inevitably leads to a loss of command control because of the loss of meaningful leadership.
"The US military, he said, had been ordered to use unlawful methods of interrogation by 'civilian politicians, and to do so against our will and judgment'."
Just following orders...
seems that I recall that this excuse was debunked at Nürnberg.
"Prisoners of war are supposed to have been captured on the battlefield. Abducting people off the streets of Indonesia and other places far from Afghanistan is pushing the envelope on what is a battlefield. The whole world is in essence the battlefield."
That to me is the biggest problem with this war on "terrorism". It's an open ended term with no specific definition or limitations. I commend Mr. Davis for his covinctions and personal efforts on this topic.
Why wasn't this shithead voicing these concerns back when Gitmo was opened?
junior made it perfectly clear that he considered, most criminally, that the United States Naval Base (ferfuksake!) lay outside of the limitations of the Constifukkinpiecefpapertution.
And this jerk just now thinks of this?
And while we're on the subject of Executive Crime - Awlaki.
There is a dangerous meme being introduced here, one I foresaw 10 years ago. The military has allowed the civilians to righteously mess up the war game and will come rolling in as Saviour and Guarantor of Security.