Michael Ratner: Guantanamo camp continues to violate international laws and norms, including fake trials, media blackout on ongoing hunger strikes, and banning public disclosure of torture faced by detainees
Story Transcript
KAYLA RIVARA, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. Iām Kayla Rivara in Baltimore. And welcome to another edition of The Ratner Report. Now joining us is Michael Ratner.
Michael Ratner is the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. He is also a board member and regular contributor for The Real News Network.
Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Itās always good to be with you and The Real News.
RIVARA: Can you talk to us a little bit about the latest in Guantanamo?
RATNER: Yes. I mean, the Center for Constitutional Rights and myself have been representing Guantanamo detainees since it opened. It will be 12 years JanuaryĀ 11. Thereās still 156 people in Guantanamo.
I just want to make a prediction. There will still be people there when President Obama leaves office, despite his promise to close Guantanamo in a year from when he went into office.
So, unfortunately, heās been weak-kneed. Congress has been bad, but I really lay it at the presidentās feet. Yes, weāre starting to see some people released, but heās going to have to release people dramatically.
In addition, even if we were to ever get it physically closed, the concept of indefinite detention unfortunately is now joined at the hip with our legal system. Itās an illegal, unconstitutional system. And itās sad that thatās the case. So whether this Guantanamo closes, another one will open. Another one is already open at Bagram. So in the end, weāre not winning this battle, although people are starting to be released now.
There are a couple of immediate things I wanted to bring to peopleās attention. One is an area we donāt talk about that much, which is the ongoing trials at Guantanamo. Thereās a trial going on for the alleged conspirators of 9/11. Think about it. Eleven years, 12 years, almost, later, and itās stillā12 years later and itās still going on. And those were people who were tortured. They were waterboarded. They were taken to secret sites. And then they were put in front of made-up trials, military commissions, completely made up, completely illegal, completely contrary to international law. And thereās these charades going on down there. I mean, itās moreāitās as if the emperor has no clothes, but no one seems to be willing to say it except for a few people like the Center and other civil liberties groups and a few others. But those trials are going on.
And one of the most unique things thatās happened in those trials, to me, is that these men, who have been tortured and waterboarded, have had their memories classified. Think about that. The criminality thatās happened to them, the torture thatās happened to them, they are not allowed to speak about it. They can tell their lawyers about it, but the lawyers cannot tell the public about it, and itās classified memoryāI mean, unheard of. This is something that, oh, you know, you think of in some Kafkaesque gulag, that you would actually classify what happened to people when theyāre in those Kafkaesque torture centers, whether Argentina, Chile, etc. But thatās what the United States has done.
This week we had a ray of hope. This week the lawyers are arguing for their clients by saying, stop classifying their memories. They ought to be able to testify at their trial about how they were tortured, ācause that obviously has an effect on whether any confessions they made were voluntary and whether the cases ought to be dismissed because the government misconduct is so bad, etc.
We still donāt have an answer, but finally it appears that the judge may allow these defendants to testify about the torture that happened to them. But it will likely be in a completely closed courtāthe lawyersāll be there, the judgeāll be there, the prosecutorāll be there, and thatās it. So you and I and the listeners will never know firsthand how the United States and the effect of what the United States did in terms of its waterboarding of these and others.
Itās just an outrage. But itās just another thing that tells me how all of those liberals and others who said military commissions, great idea, just put a bunch of nice rules about them, they sound great, itās crazy.
And these trials were going to happen in the United Statesāin New York, in fact. And Obama at the last minute, after they were already indicted because of pressure from the mayor, etc., decided not to have them here in a regular federal court. So now weāre going through kangaroo trials, if you can even label them that, in Guantanamo.
So thatās one important aspect I want to bring to peopleās attention, because as we go through the next year, these trials will continue and continue and continue.
A second important development on Guantanamo is the original general who actually built the dog cages for my client and for the first 100 or so people who went to Guantanamo, General Michael Lehnert, wrote an op-ed in the The Detroit Free News that took on not just Guantanamo ought to be closed, itās not in our national interest, it creates more terrorists, all the usual things you hear from people who mea culpa, oh, itās too late, we should haveāyou know, we should close it down now, but he actually said something more forceful: he said it should have never been opened in the beginning, it never served any purpose in the beginning, and what it was set upāand this is importantāit was set up as an interrogation camp. It wasnāt set up because people, you know, were so dangerous, even though Rumsfeld said they were the worst of the worst, but it was set up to interrogate people.
And we didnāt learn anything from them. We didnāt have such important people there that knew anything about it. And, you know, I knew this at the time. I looked at this very early on, right after the camp was set up. And the Geneva Conventions particularly outlaw interrogation camps because they were used by the Germans during the Second World War, and theyāre explicitly outlawed.
And we went to court, we and all the other lawyers who were litigating this at the timeānot a great many of us, but some, and a decision came down in a case called Hamdi in 2004 that said, you can hold people as prisoners during this so-called war on terror, but you cannot hold them for purposes of interrogation.
And so what Michael Lehnert, the general who set up the camp, was saying: we were holding them for interrogation. And as the Supreme Court has now saidāand thatās me speaking about the Supreme Court as saying, not Michael Lehnertāitās completely illegal, what they did. So his statement is very, very important on the illegality of this camp from the beginning.
The second thing he saidāalso very important. Here if we look at our situation, 156 people left at Guantanamo, a handful have been charged and are on trial, you know, completely BS trials, horrible, ridiculous, you know, show trials of the best or worst sort, but no one else has been charged and tried. In fact, half of them have been told theyāre cleared for release. And what General Lehnert says is, we have a constitution in this country, and that says you donāt put people in prison and hold them unless theyāre charged, tried, and convicted, and therefore everyone ought to be released from that camp unless theyāre charged, tried, and convicted. Thatās way beyond anything the Obama administration has said, way beyond what even a number of civil liberties groups and others have said. Heās saying, we have a constitution, you comply with it. And Iām saying heās right.
And that provision in our constitution goes back to the Magna Carta, 1215, 800 years ago. And what this country has done has utterly shredded an 800 year legal history that said that people canāt be jailed by an executive or a king. They have a right to go to court, a right to test their detention, a right to be tried and convicted before theyāre sentenced.
So those are two important aspects of Guantanamo, whatās going on at the commissions.
David Lehnertāwhat Michael Lehnert, the general who set up the camp, saidāI do want to say, when it comes to Michael Lehnert, it was a great statement. But what I would have liked to see him do as well is own up to what happened when he set up that camp. Those are the famous dog runs, you know, those long runs, you know, with the wire on the sides, you know, elements getting in. I have been to Guantanamo. Bad conditions. And I would have liked him to say, you know, things were bad when I was here. And we know they were bad because people like Moazzam Begg have written books about those first six months in the camp, and it was terrible. So I think it would have had added a lot to his statement to say, and yes, I bought the Kool-Aid, I was into this, I shouldnāt have done it. Unfortunately, he didnāt go that far. Perhaps he will soon.
The third and last point I want to make about Guantanamo is a letter that was sent by a coalition of groups, including my office, the Center for Constitutional Rights, to Secretary of Defense Hagel on whatās going on with the recent hunger strikes. Two important things have happened. The Defense Department has issued new standard operational procedures, SOPS, about how they handle hunger strikes, and they have not made them public. Even though they said they were going to make everything transparent about how theyāre treating the prisoners there, they havenāt made them public.
And itās our view, my view in particular, that those ways of dealing with hunger strikers most likely violate medical ethics, if not the law, against abuse and torture. Thatās what weāve seen before. Thatās what I fear we see now.
So these dozen groups have just written this letter saying, make those standard operating procedures public. Weāre fearful that our clients and our people there are being abused, tortured, and the medical ethics are being violated.
The second thing the letter attacks is, you know, all of a sudden, thisāyou know, you canāt believe it, you canāt believe the government. All of a sudden they say, weāre no longer going to announce how many people are on a hunger strike. I mean, theyāre not telling the nation or the world that thereāsāthe numbers on the hunger strike. And, you know, itās very important that that information gets out. Itās very important public information that we know whatās going on in a prison under our control, how many people are resisting that prison, whatās happening to those people. And yet this government in another wonderful show of the obvious, you know, lies weāre getting about transparency, about Obama and secrecy, weāre not being told any longer how many people are on hunger strike.
So there you have it. You have a Guantanamo under the current president that, very sad to say, is violating, you know, most of the law and most of the rules that any civilized society should have in handling any of its prisoners.
RIVARA: Well, we will certainly be following up with you on this very important issue. Michael Ratner, thank you so much for joining us.
RATNER: Real News, again, thank you for having me.
RIVARA: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
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