Dear friends and supporters,
With just four months left for President Obama to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, as he promised when he first took office in January 2009, we confess that we do not share the optimism of those we know who think the president will finally fulfill his long-unfulfilled promise, as Congress is still almost fanatically opposed to his plans, and it will be difficult to close the prison and move the men to another facility or facilities on the mainland without lawmakers’ support.
However, we were delighted to hear recently that Camp 5, a 100-cell block of solid-walled, isolated cells, which opened in 2004 and was modeled on a maximum-security prison in Bunker Hill, Indiana, has been closed down, and its remaining prisoners moved to Camp 6, where prisoners live communally. Camp 5 will be converted into a clinic and psychiatric ward, and its closure as a prison will cut the military personnel working at Guantánamo by around a fifth — from 1,950 to 1,550 — helping to wind down operations.
Camp 5 is also where two men died, in 2007 and 2012, and last week Kevin Gosztola of Shadowproof spoke to two attorneys at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who explained how horrible Camp 5 was. Shayana Kadidal called it “the original large-scale solitary confinement facility at Guantánamo,” describing it as “one of the most inhumane places to hold men” at Guantánamo, which “won’t be missed,” and Wells Dixon said, “Good riddance to a place that caused so much pain and misery for our clients for so many years.”
The failure to close Guantánamo
The failure to close Guantánamo is not through indifference on President Obama’s part — at least, not lately. Confronted for most of his presidency by cynical Republican obstruction, he spent years failing to fight back, even though the means to do so were at his disposal, and it is only in the last three years that he has made up for lost time, releasing over a hundred men and bringing the prison’s population down to just 61 men — the 46 now in Camp 6, and 15 “high-value detainees” in Camp 7.
Furthermore, 20 of those men have been approved for release, 13 by the Periodic Review Boards that have also been reviewing prisoners’ cases over the last three years — those not facing trials (just ten men) and not already approved for release by an earlier review process. 20 of the men approved for release by PRBs have already been freed, making up nearly a fifth of those freed in the last three years.
64 men in total have had their cases reviewed by the Periodic Review Boards, which are made up of representatives of representatives of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the last of the first round of reviews took place just two weeks ago. Please check out our definitive Periodic Review Board list for further details.
To date, 19 men have had their ongoing imprisonment approved by the PRBs — and 12 decisions have yet to be taken. Here at “Close Guantánamo” we are aware that, although the PRBs have done a good job, however belatedly, in reducing the population of Guantánamo, no one should complacent about thinking that those approved for ongoing imprisonment are being held in an entirely lawful manner.
Although the U.S. has the right to hold people under the laws of war, the men at Guantánamo are still not held according to the Geneva Conventions, if they are regarded a soldiers, and, if they are alleged to have been involved in terrorism — as is the case with some of those whose ongoing imprisonment has been approved by PRBs — then they should put on trial and not held indefinitely without charge or trial.
The military commissions: not fit for purpose
We are also concerned about the inadequacy of the trial system — the military commissions — for the men facing trials, and in recent weeks Andy has been addressing these problems, firstly in his article, Tortured “High-Value Detainees” Arrived at Guantánamo Exactly Ten Years Ago, But Still There Is No Justice, in which he looked at the cases of the 14 “high-value detainees,” some of whom are facing PRBs, and some of whom are facing trials that are not fit for purpose, as they are permanently stuck in pre-trial hearings, while the government tries desperately to continue to hide evidence of their torture.
We also recommend our latest article, Lawyer for Torture Victim and Guantánamo Prisoner Abu Zubaydah Writes Powerful Op-Ed for TIME, in which we cross-post, with Andy’s introduction, a recent op-ed by Joseph Margulies, who is one of the lawyers for Abu Zubaydah, for whom the brutal and counter-productive post-9/11 torture program was conceived. Zubaydah is one of the “high-value detainees” — and recently had a Periodic Review Board — but no one expects that he will be approved for release, and so his extraordinary and unacceptable limbo continues.
We will continue to monitor the trials and the next waves of reviews for those approved for ongoing imprisonment after the first round of the PRBs, and, of course, we will continue to argue that Guantánamo must be closed.
In the meantime, thanks, as ever, for your ongoing support.
The “Close Guantánamo” team
P.S. Please, if you will, also ask your friends and family to join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email. Please also note that we can be found on Twitter here and on Facebook here.
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