Fernandez writes: "2015 was supposed to be the year I visited Guantanamo
Bay. I was meant to attend pretrial hearings in April for the five 'HVDs' -
high-value detainees - held at the prison. The HVDs are accused of
involvement in 9/11; topping the list is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged
mastermind of the attacks."
Guantanamo detainees, in white, and U.S. military guards walk around Camp 4
detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay. (photo: AP)
Guantanamo, 14 Years Later
By Belén Fernández, teleSUR
19 March 16
Gitmo is an offshore penal colony thats close enough to administer with
ease, but far enough away to exist on the margins of legality.
2015 was supposed to be the year I visited Guantánamo Bay.
I was meant to attend pretrial hearings in April for the five HVDs
high-value detainees held at the prison. The HVDs are accused of
involvement in 9/11; topping the list is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged
mastermind of the attacks.
I booked a flight from Beirut to Washington, D.C., and badgered the army
official in charge of allocating seats on the plane from Andrews Air Force
Base to Guantánamo until I was assured a spot. When I arrived to D.C.,
however, I was informed that the hearings had been canceled due to
complications arising from the FBIs infiltration of one of the defense
teams the previous year.
As defense lawyer Ramzi Kassem had remarked a few months earlier: The
imperatives and mechanics of justice and intelligence gathering are, to a
significant extent, incompatible. Nowhere is that contradiction sharper than
at Guantánamo, where those two worlds collide.
This particular observation had been made in response not to the FBI
infiltration but rather to the news that one of the interpreters at
Guantánamo client was an ex-employee of a CIA black site.
As the prison complex now celebrates its 14th birthday more than seven
years after Barack Obama promised to shut it down worldly collision
continues apace. And while it may be clear to any objective observer that
justice does not exist within the realm of possible outcomes at a U.S.
detention camp-cum-torture chamber operated on occupied Cuban territory, the
U.S. makes every effort to distract from the bigger picture by cultivating a
façade of fairness and respect for human dignity in day-to-day procedures at
Guantánamo.
Back in 2010, for example, The Miami Heralds Carol Rosenberg reported on a
new twist in the U.S. militarys Islamic sensitivity effort in the prison
camps
Military medical staff are force-feeding a secret number of
prisoners on hunger strike between dusk and dawn during the Muslim fasting
holiday of Ramadan. Among the enticing menu selections was butter
pecan-flavored Ensure (Flavor made no difference going down, one nurse
explained, but a captive could taste it if he burped later).
Never mind that the apparent respect for Ramadan is more than canceled out
by the fact that having feeding tubes jammed into ones orifices against
ones will is also a form of torture. According to the U.S. approach, a
million wrongs somehow make a right.
But what exactly is the point of keeping Guantánamo open when its widely
regarded as a liability detrimental to the American image worldwide and
fueling anti-American sentiment in addition to being mind-blowingly
expensive?
For starters, ample bipartisan commitment to over-the-top incarceration
schemes, not to mention the sizable profits generated by the prison
industry, is part of what has helped make the U.S. a veritable prison
nation.
Guantánamo, of course, is a special case: an offshore penal colony thats
close enough to administer with ease but far enough away to exist on the
margins of legality.
Writing in The New Yorker about the naval bases pre-9/11 functions,
Vanderbilt Universitys Paul Kramer discusses the territorys utility as a
holding pen for Haitians attempting to flee the brutal 1991 coup in that
country. By July 1992, he notes, refugee interception operations by the U.S.
Coast Guard had led to a situation in Guantánamo in which nearly 37,000
people were confined in makeshift tent cities ringed with barbed wire.
Regarding the ensuing showdown in a New York court over the camps dismal
conditions, Kramer explains: Lawyers for the government responded that
Gitmo was simply a military base in a foreign country and not United
States territory. Detainees there were outside the United States and
therefore they have no judicially cognizable rights in United States
courts.
A convenient precedent, no doubt.
In its current incarnation, the attractions of Guantánamo are numerous. The
facility houses Americas mega-enemies, whose human qualities as well as
possible motivations for the crimes theyre alleged to have committed are
kept safely out of reach of the U.S. public. This justifies not only their
continued imprisonment and mistreatment but also ongoing war against other
larger-than-life threats across the globe.
Furthermore, Guantánamo offers a hermetic container for more than just
physical bodies: thoughts, too, are contained. Because so many of the
details of the pervasive torture meted out to terror suspects in the
aftermath of 9/11 by the U.S. and its allies are deemed too dangerous to
release, many victims of torture who are now detained at Guantánamo are
effectively silenced. As Lisa Hajjar, author of Torture: A Sociology of
Violence and Human Rights, once put it: Their memories are classified.
Inmate Mohamedou Ould Slahis book Guantánamo Diary, written in 2005, was
finally published last year with more than 2,500 Defense Department
redactions. Military censors took the liberty of removing not only pertinent
information about Slahis sexual abuse by guards but also more seemingly
banal details like the name of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser.
But even if these and other valuable state secrets begin to seep out of the
prison camp, prospects for terminating the whole abusive structure remain
dim. As James Connell, a civilian counsel for HVD Ammar al-Baluchi,
commented in an email to me:
Closing Guantánamo means standing up for human rights and the rule of law,
which are not politically popular in the United States at the moment. Even
President Obamas [closure] plan doesn't actually close Guantánamo; it
simply relocates indefinite detention and military tribunals to a Guantánamo
North within the United States.
And while, at 14, the detention camp may still be relatively young, its
pretty much guaranteed that no matter what happens in Gitmo the U.S.
disdain for justice will continue to thrive.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Guantanamo detainees, in white, and U.S. military guards walk around Camp 4
detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay. (photo: AP)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Guantanamo-14-Years-Later-20160110-
0027.htmlhttp://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Guantanamo-14-Years-Later-
20160110-0027.html
Guantanamo, 14 Years Later
By Belén Fernández, teleSUR
19 March 16
Gitmo is an offshore penal colony thats close enough to administer with
ease, but far enough away to exist on the margins of legality.
2015 was supposed to be the year I visited Guantánamo Bay.
I was meant to attend pretrial hearings in April for the five HVDs
high-value detainees held at the prison. The HVDs are accused of
involvement in 9/11; topping the list is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged
mastermind of the attacks.
I booked a flight from Beirut to Washington, D.C., and badgered the army
official in charge of allocating seats on the plane from Andrews Air Force
Base to Guantánamo until I was assured a spot. When I arrived to D.C.,
however, I was informed that the hearings had been canceled due to
complications arising from the FBIs infiltration of one of the defense
teams the previous year.
As defense lawyer Ramzi Kassem had remarked a few months earlier: The
imperatives and mechanics of justice and intelligence gathering are, to a
significant extent, incompatible. Nowhere is that contradiction sharper than
at Guantánamo, where those two worlds collide.
This particular observation had been made in response not to the FBI
infiltration but rather to the news that one of the interpreters at
Guantánamo client was an ex-employee of a CIA black site.
As the prison complex now celebrates its 14th birthday more than seven
years after Barack Obama promised to shut it down worldly collision
continues apace. And while it may be clear to any objective observer that
justice does not exist within the realm of possible outcomes at a U.S.
detention camp-cum-torture chamber operated on occupied Cuban territory, the
U.S. makes every effort to distract from the bigger picture by cultivating a
façade of fairness and respect for human dignity in day-to-day procedures at
Guantánamo.
Back in 2010, for example, The Miami Heralds Carol Rosenberg reported on a
new twist in the U.S. militarys Islamic sensitivity effort in the prison
camps
Military medical staff are force-feeding a secret number of
prisoners on hunger strike between dusk and dawn during the Muslim fasting
holiday of Ramadan. Among the enticing menu selections was butter
pecan-flavored Ensure (Flavor made no difference going down, one nurse
explained, but a captive could taste it if he burped later).
Never mind that the apparent respect for Ramadan is more than canceled out
by the fact that having feeding tubes jammed into ones orifices against
ones will is also a form of torture. According to the U.S. approach, a
million wrongs somehow make a right.
But what exactly is the point of keeping Guantánamo open when its widely
regarded as a liability detrimental to the American image worldwide and
fueling anti-American sentiment in addition to being mind-blowingly
expensive?
For starters, ample bipartisan commitment to over-the-top incarceration
schemes, not to mention the sizable profits generated by the prison
industry, is part of what has helped make the U.S. a veritable prison
nation.
Guantánamo, of course, is a special case: an offshore penal colony thats
close enough to administer with ease but far enough away to exist on the
margins of legality.
Writing in The New Yorker about the naval bases pre-9/11 functions,
Vanderbilt Universitys Paul Kramer discusses the territorys utility as a
holding pen for Haitians attempting to flee the brutal 1991 coup in that
country. By July 1992, he notes, refugee interception operations by the U.S.
Coast Guard had led to a situation in Guantánamo in which nearly 37,000
people were confined in makeshift tent cities ringed with barbed wire.
Regarding the ensuing showdown in a New York court over the camps dismal
conditions, Kramer explains: Lawyers for the government responded that
Gitmo was simply a military base in a foreign country and not United
States territory. Detainees there were outside the United States and
therefore they have no judicially cognizable rights in United States
courts.
A convenient precedent, no doubt.
In its current incarnation, the attractions of Guantánamo are numerous. The
facility houses Americas mega-enemies, whose human qualities as well as
possible motivations for the crimes theyre alleged to have committed are
kept safely out of reach of the U.S. public. This justifies not only their
continued imprisonment and mistreatment but also ongoing war against other
larger-than-life threats across the globe.
Furthermore, Guantánamo offers a hermetic container for more than just
physical bodies: thoughts, too, are contained. Because so many of the
details of the pervasive torture meted out to terror suspects in the
aftermath of 9/11 by the U.S. and its allies are deemed too dangerous to
release, many victims of torture who are now detained at Guantánamo are
effectively silenced. As Lisa Hajjar, author of Torture: A Sociology of
Violence and Human Rights, once put it: Their memories are classified.
Inmate Mohamedou Ould Slahis book Guantánamo Diary, written in 2005, was
finally published last year with more than 2,500 Defense Department
redactions. Military censors took the liberty of removing not only pertinent
information about Slahis sexual abuse by guards but also more seemingly
banal details like the name of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser.
But even if these and other valuable state secrets begin to seep out of the
prison camp, prospects for terminating the whole abusive structure remain
dim. As James Connell, a civilian counsel for HVD Ammar al-Baluchi,
commented in an email to me:
Closing Guantánamo means standing up for human rights and the rule of law,
which are not politically popular in the United States at the moment. Even
President Obamas [closure] plan doesn't actually close Guantánamo; it
simply relocates indefinite detention and military tribunals to a Guantánamo
North within the United States.
And while, at 14, the detention camp may still be relatively young, its
pretty much guaranteed that no matter what happens in Gitmo the U.S.
disdain for justice will continue to thrive.
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http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
