A note from lawyer Clive Stafford Smith who has just returned from another visit to Guantanamo Bay: The Worst of the Worst This has been my thirty-first visit to Guantánamo Bay, the notorious Cuban prison which, according to former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, houses the “worst of the worst” terrorists in the world. It has been a long time coming, but I believe I have finally seen the worst of the worst. Sad to say, the current military administration at the prison is the very worst in the decade since I first came here. General John Kelly and Colonel John Bogdan, the officers in charge, seem intent on repeating every mistake made by their predecessors, adding some fresh ones of their own. The mistreatment of prisoners has been exemplified by General Kelly’s approach to the hunger strike. First, he said “the whole hunger strike thing was kind of a joke” really – none of the prisoners, he assured the media, was serious about it. I was aghast when I read this. I tried going a week without food last year and it was not easy. Last Tuesday I met with Ahmed Rabbani, who has been on hunger strike for 16 months now; on Wednesday I saw Khalid Qasim, whose current strike comes on top of an even longer one in 2009-11; on Thursday, it was Emad Hassan, whose peaceful protest has now extended without a break for seven years, since 2007, subject to force feeding every day; and on Friday I met with Shaker Aamer, who has been on and off hunger strike since he first complained about his mistreatment in Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan in January 2002. If General Kelly’s comments sound inhumane, he matches them with his actions. Judge Gladys Kessler recently ordered the government to provide us with several videotapes of the “Forcible Cell Extraction” (FCE) of another hunger striking client, Abu Wa’el, as he was taken to the force feeding. The videos are currently deemed secret, so I cannot describe them here, but if they reflect what the detainees have told us, they will document some terrible abuse: beating a shackled prisoner, pounding him into the concrete, dragging him to the “torture chair”, forcing a tube up his nose and pumping liquid into him until he vomits. True to form, when it became clear that they would not be allowed to keep their tapes from us, General Kelly responded by ordering an end to all recording of the process. Why? To make sure there is no proof of what is really going on in the black hole that is Guantánamo Bay. Ahmed Rabbani told me about this order, and I immediately had him sign an affidavit, to inform the judge. Only then did cooler heads prevail, when General Kelly’s lawyers presumably told him that covering up misconduct might get him in more trouble than the original offence. Within hours, the videotapes were rolling again. As I drove down “Recreation Road” past the Guantánamo golf course to visit the prisoners this week, the yellow sign by the road admonished everyone that the “Value of the Week” is currently Integrity. General Kelly seems not to have noticed. Next, Ahmed told me that General Kelly and Colonel Bogdan had concocted another new policy – no crutches or wheelchairs would be allowed for disabled hunger strikers. There is no good reason for this: it is not as if an amputee has hurled his wheelchair at the assembled troops. It was sheer bloody mindedness, another effort to coerce detainees out of their peaceful protest. Ahmed is in the cell across from Abu Wa’el, who is a Syrian long since cleared for release, unable to go to his troubled homeland. When Abu Wa’el refused his food, he was told: “Walk or FCE!” He pointed out that he needed his wheelchair. The response was the same: “Walk or FCE!” So this disabled man was forced to the floor, ground into the concrete, and dragged to the torture chair. When he was hauled back to his cell, Ahmed heard him vomiting through the night. Opposite the yellow sign on “Recreation Road” is a red one that identifies a dozen “attributes of leadership”: inhumanity is not on the list. The root of Guantánamo’s problem is attitudinal: General Kelly and Colonel Bogdan seem to think that the only way to resolve a dispute is to issue an order and, when it is not instantly obeyed, to inflict harsh and immediate punishment. Colonel Bogdan told Shaker Aamer, the last British resident, that he knew how to treat detainees, because he “has children at home”. Shaker observed wryly that the social services should surely pay him a visit. These detainees, who have suffered so long, make only one claim: give us a fair trial or set us free. It is a demand that has been echoed for five years by President Barack Obama, who is the commander in chief to both General Kelly and Colonel Bogdan, and who rightly recognizes that Guantánamo is a blot that sullies America. Is it not extraordinary, then, that these military officers behave the way they do? My own motivation in traveling to Guantánamo Bay is to bring a tiny bit of power to the powerless men who are held there. I abhor a world where those with all the power can, with impunity, trample those they despise. The ultimate duty of a lawyer is to redress the balance to whatever small extent possible. Perhaps one day the public will see the videotapes of this ghastly process. They say that sunlight is the best disinfectant; Guantánamo certainly needs to clean up its act. - Clive Stafford Smith is the director of the charity Reprieve.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 16:30:57 +0000
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