Vol. 72/No. 24      June 16, 2008

The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which represents al-Qahtani, said it has well-documented evidence that his “confession” was extracted through torture. Time magazine published in 2005 excerpts from a military log detailing one of al-Qahtani’s harsh and degrading interrogations, which lasted for 48 straight days as he was strapped to an intravenous drip and denied use of a bathroom.

The Defense Department is seeking the death penalty for five other Guantánamo inmates accused of involvement in the September 11 attacks: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Waleed bin Attash, and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali. They are scheduled to face trial by military commission September 15.

In the military tribunal procedures established by Congress in 2006 the judge and “jury” are military personnel appointed by the Pentagon and the prosecution can use hearsay and secret evidence. Statements obtained through some forms of torture are permissible, as long as it was done before Dec. 30, 2005.

The defendant’s lawyers are requesting the cases be dismissed on the basis that holding the tribunal a few weeks before the November presidential elections is politically motivated.

The former prosecutor at Guantánamo, Col. Morris Davis, recently testified that “There was that consistent theme that if we don’t get these [trials] rolling before the election, this thing is going to implode, and if you get the 9/11 guys charged it would be hard … for whoever wins the White House to stop the process.”

Morris got cold feet over using statements obtained though torture as evidence against Guantánamo prisoners and resigned his post in October.

Morris was denied a medal for honorable service at Guantánamo three weeks after he testified April 28 on behalf of Guantánamo prisoner Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, who faces life in prison for supporting “terrorism.” Hamdan is scheduled to be tried by a military commission July 21.

Differences within the U.S. government over what to do with the Guantánamo prison camp and its long-term viability continue to develop as more becomes public about the treatment of prisoners there.

The Justice Department released a report May 20 detailing accounts by hundreds of FBI agents of what they considered inhumane treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo. Some agents, the report says, started keeping a “war crimes file,” until they were told to stop. The FBI said it instructed its agents not to take part in, or witness torture.

An English translation of a book released in April, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo by former Guantánamo prisoner Murat Kurnaz, has brought some attention to the plight of inmates there. Kurnaz, a German resident of Turkish descent, was detained by Pakistani police in December 2001 while on his way home after spending two months studying the Koran at mosques in Pakistan. The U.S. military found Kurnaz suspicious, paid a $3,000 bounty for him, sent him to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and then shipped him to Guantánamo.

In 2004 he was classified as an “enemy combatant” at a Combat Status Review Tribunal in Guantánamo on the basis that Muslim pilgrims shared their food with him and that a friend he knew in Germany had become a suicide bomber. The friend, it turned out, was alive and in no sort of trouble in Germany.

Although the U.S. and German intelligence determined as early as 2002 that Kurnaz had “no connections to either Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and did not represent a terrorist threat,” he was imprisoned until August 2006. Although he was subjected to constant beatings and tortured, he never confessed.

Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for the al-Jazeera news network, was released from Guantánamo to Sudan May 2 in very bad health. After being taken from Pakistan while on business assignment for al-Jazeera, al-Hajj spend more than six years in Guantánamo without ever being charged. Al-Hajj and two other former Sudanese prisoners released with him are speaking out about their treatment. The U.S. government has banned the publication of al-Hajj’s sketches of his experience.

There are currently about 270 inmates left at the Guantánamo prison, of which the Pentagon plans to try about 80 by military commission.  
 
 
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