Imagine living Afghanistan where vengeance is a part of life. Add to that terrorists and their supporters mingling with your neighbors, familiar with your local traditions, acquainted with some of the local leaders, and hiding from the U.S. The U.S. doesn’t understand local customs, can’t tell you from the terrorists or their supporters, but can offer significant rewards to anyone who provides information on “enemy combatants.”
Next, imagine that your government is an ally of the U.S. Imagine too that they are anxious to please the U.S. and demonstrate their support by finding those enemy combatants.
Who might be turned over to the U.S. by your government? Enemy combatants? You? Will the U.S. get the ones they are seeking, but can’t recognize? Or will they be misled by greed and hidden alliances and imprison mostly innocent bystanders with a few real terrorists?
What if you and your brother were arrested and ended up at Guantanamo for telling a satirical joke – not for being on “the battlefield” as stated by President Bush and VP Cheney? What if you are denied access to legal counsel? What if it took three years before the U.S. finally let you free? What could you tell us about your experience that would give us great concern?
For the full details about these two brothers and others released from Guantanamo, listen to the extended, over an hour, report at This American Life. Go to the archives for 2006 and click on the link for Habeas Schmabeas. From there click on the RealPlayer icon.
Here is some background information for Habeas Schmabeas from This American Life:
The right of habeas corpus has been a part of this country’s legal tradition longer than we’ve actually been a country. It means the government has to explain why it’s holding a person in custody. But now, the war on terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that the prisoners should not be covered by habeas – or even by the Geneva Conventions – because they’re the most fearsome terrorist enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes?
Prologue. Joseph Margulies, a lawyer for one of the detainees at Guantanamo, explains how the detention facility there was created to be an ideal interrogation facility. Any possible comfort, like water or natural light, are entirely controlled by the interrogators. (3 minutes)
Act One. There’s No U.S. in Habeas. Jack Hitt explains how President’s Bush’s War on Terror changed the rules on prisoners of war, and how it is that under those rules, it’d be possible that someone whose classified file declares that they pose no threat to the United States, could still be locked up indefinitely – potentially forever! – at Guantanamo. Jack Hitt reports. (24 minutes). Clarification: When Seton Hall Professor Baher Azmy discusses the classified file of his client, Murat Kurnaz, in this Act, he is referring to information that had previously been made public and published in the Washington Post. That material has subsequently been reclassified.
Act Two. September 11th, 1660. Habeas Corpus began in England, and 175 members of the British Parliament filed a “friend of the court” brief in one of the Supreme Court cases on habeas and Guantanamo, apparently the first time that’s happened in Supreme Court history. In their brief, the MP’s warn about the danger of suspending habeas: “During the British Civll War, the British created their own version of Guantanamo Bay and dispatched undesirable prisoners to garrisons off the mainland, beyond the reach of habeas corpus relief.” In London, reporter Jon Ronson, author of Them, goes in search of what happened. (6 minutes)
Act Three. We Interrogate the Detainees. Although over two hundred prisoners from the U.S. Facility at Guantanamo Bay have been released, few of them have ever been interviewed on radio or television in America. Jack Hitt conducts rare and surprising interviews with two former Guantanamo detainees about life in Guantanamo. (20 minutes)
A Seton Hall study of the Guantanamo detainees provided the following details:
1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.
2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.
3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed “fighters for;†30% considered “members of;†a large majority – 60% — are detained merely because they are “associated with†a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners their nexus to any terrorist group is unidentified.
4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the
detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.5. Finally, the population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants – mostly Uighers – are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants.
Related to habeas, a federal judge in Washington ruled on December 23, 2005, that the continued detention of two ethnic Uighurs at the U.S. prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “unlawful,” but he decided he had no authority to order their release.
“If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They’re terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden’s] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker.” — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, June 27, 2005. The National Journal used this quote to introduce a recent cover story on detainees in Guantanamo.
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Now there is a movie that tells the story of released detainees. Road to Guantanamo, concentrates on the stories of three young British men who were held in the camp for two years. They were never charged, and were eventually released. The film, by noted director Michael Winterbottom, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, where it won one of the top prizes. It's just opened in Britain and now it's bound for the United States.
For more on the movie or to download it, visit Channel4.com