Vice Presents A Major Feature on Guantánamo, Including Ramzi Kassem on Why Prisoners Cleared for Release Are Still Held

The banner for Vice's in-depth analysis of Guantánamo, "Behind the Bars: Guantánamo Bay," 18 articles published simultaneously on November 10, 2014.

By Andy Worthington, November 12, 2014

Congratulations to Vice, which describes itself as "an ever-expanding galaxy of immersive, investigative, uncomfortable, and occasionally uncouth journalism," who have shown up the mainstream media by publishing a major feature on November 10, "Behind the Bars: Guantánamo Bay," consisting of 18 articles published simultaneously, all of which are about Guantánamo -- some by Guantánamo prisoners themselves, as made available by their lawyers (particularly at Reprieve, the legal action charity), others by former personnel at the prison, and others by journalists. "Behind the Bars" is a new series, with future features focusing on prisoners in the U.K., Russia and beyond.

Following an introduction by Vice's Global Editor, Alex Miller, there are five articles by three prisoners, as follows:

• "The Declaration of No Human Rights" and "Colonel John Bogdan Has No Nose" by Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, long cleared for release but still held. In the second of these articles, Shaker focuses on Guantánamo's recently retired warden, who oversaw a period of particular turmoil at the prison; in particular, the prison-wide hunger strike last year that finally awakened widespread outrage domestically and internationally about the plight of the prisoners.

• "What Happens When I Try to Give My Guantánamo Guards Presents" and "An Obituary for My Friend, Adnan Abdul Latif" by Emad Hassan, a Yemeni, cleared for release in 2009 by President Obama's high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, but still held, who as been on a hunger strike since 2007. Adnan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni who had serious mental health issues, was the last prisoner to die at Guantánamo, in September 2012, even though he too had long been cleared for release, so this tribute by Emad Hassan is particularly poignant.

• "My Road to Guantánamo" by Younous Chekkouri (aka Younus Chekhouri), a Moroccan prisoner, also cleared for release in 2009, who tells the story of his capture and explains why he cannot return to Morocco and is seeking a third country to offer him a new home. In February this year, Reprieve made available a love letter by Younus to his wife Abla.

In addition, in "Pakistan Since Guantánamo," Pakistani journalist and author Saba Imtiaz responds to a question by a Pakistani prisoner who is still held about the situation in Pakistan over the last 13 years, and in "Cooking Ahmed Rabbani’s Biryani at Tayyab's East London Curry House," the journalist Oscar Rickett visits a famous curry house in London's East End to sample the favourite meal of Pakistani prisoner Ahmed Rabbani (aka Ahmad Rabbani or Mohammed Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani), who has not been approved for release and is waiting for a review board to assess his case.

In another powerful article, "The Banned Books of Guantánamo," John le Carré, Frederick Forsyth, Ian Cobain, John Kampfner, John Pilger and Irvine Welsh explain what they think about their books being banned in Guantánamo, as does torture supporter Alan Dershowitz, whose book 'Blasphemy' is also banned.

In addition, there are articles discussing the banning of other books, including 'A People's History of the United States' by Howard Zinn, 'An American Slave' by Frederick Douglass, 'Crime and Punishment' by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 'The Diary of a Young Girl' by Anne Frank and 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett, as well as Jeremy Paxman discussing the banning of 'Futility' by Wilfred Owen, and Melvyn Bragg discussion the banning of 'The Merchant of Venice' by William Shakespeare.

Vice's Guantánamo feature also includes Muslim convert Terry Holdbrooks describing "My Time as a Guard at Guantánamo Bay," former chaplain James Yee's article, "The Trials of Being the Only Imam at Guantánamo Bay," Col. Morris Davis's account of his time as the chief prosecutor of the military commissions, before he remerged from the "dark side" into the light, and some journalists -- Carol Rosenberg On Covering Guantánamo, Jason Leopold on Obama and Bush: How Do the Presidents Compare on Guantánamo Bay?, an article on adolescents at Guantánamo (and please feel free to read my article from 2011, "WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo"), Marc Ambinder on Why Hasn't Obama Closed Guantánamo?, an article about how Yemen’s Proposed GTMO Rehab Centre Isn’t Making Much Progress, and Guantánamo lawyer Ramzi Kassem asking, "Why Are Prisoners Who Have Been Cleared for Release Still in ​Guantánamo?"

Ramzi is an associate professor of law at the City University of New York, where he directs the Immigrant and Non-Citizen Rights Clinic, which represents prisoners at Guantánamo (including Shaker Aamer), Bagram and elsewhere. We're cross-posting Ramzi's article below, as it provides a comprehensive take on a topic that is of permanent relevance to us at "Close Guantánamo" -- how is it that men approved for release from Guantánamo are still held, what will it take for them to be released, and what will it take to get Guantánamo closed for good, as President Obama promised on his second day in office, in January 2009.

Ramzi looks at the various review processes that have taken place through the prison's history; in particular the Administrative Review Boards (under President Bush) and the conclusions reached by President Obama's Guantánamo Review Task Force. As he explains, the "fatal flaw was that neither the ARBs nor the GRTF were granted the power to release prisoners. They were designed primarily to relieve or deflect political pressure, to placate various opponents or critics, not to concretely implement policy."

There is also another review process, the Periodic Review Boards, which Ramzi doesn't even mention, but which is currently underway, with results that appear to confirm his criticisms. The PRBs were first promised in March 2011, but only finally began last November. Convened to review the cases of 71 prisoners not recommended for release in 2009 by President Obama's Guantánamo Review Task Force (which approved over half of the remaining 148 prisoners for release), the PRBs have, to date, only reviewed the cases of nine prisoners, approving four of them for release, although only one of them has actually been released.

Why Are Prisoners Who Have Been Cleared for Release Still in ​Guantánamo?
By Ramzi Kassem, Vice, November 10, 2014

To the uninitiated, it may seem incomprehensible that the majority of the 148 prisoners remaining at Guantánamo Bay have been cleared for release by the U.S. government for years, yet continue to languish in indefinite imprisonment without charge or fair process.

However, to those who have followed the developments at Guantánamo with distant but nonetheless discerning interest, and to those who know the issues intimately, like my students and colleagues, or the dozens of other lawyers who have represented the prisoners on a volunteer basis for years, the apparent paradox is only par for the course.

Guantánamo is seldom about substance and very often about perception and politics. The prison's continuing existence provides what is possibly the most powerful illustration of that principle. The president did not wish to spend scarce political capital on closing Guantánamo, nor did he want to risk exposing his flank to criticism from political adversaries. To Congress, Guantánamo was too lucrative a political symbol to be relinquished. So Congress threw up roadblocks while the White House dithered.

The predicament of the cleared Guantánamo prisoners does not escape that cardinal rule of the Gitmo-verse placing politics over sound policy, letting perception trump substance. And, under that light, the seeming contradiction raised by the fate of the majority of Guantánamo prisoners begins to fade.

To fully appreciate this reality, a little historical background is necessary. For starters, review processes are not new to Guantánamo -- since the prison's inception in 2002, there has been a succession of alphabet soup mechanisms designed to evaluate prisoners' "files."

Bush, for instance, had his Administrative Review Boards. The ARBs were military panels tasked with reviewing mostly classified materials to determine whether prisoners could be released. The panel would also question any prisoner who was willing. Many were not, as word quickly got around the prison that the ARBs were a charade. Indeed, a prisoner before the ARB was not allowed to fully see accusations against him, let alone the classified evidence that supposedly justified his detention, and he did not have the support of counsel.

Still, many prisoners were cleared for release by the ARBs. Among them is Shaker Aamer, a contributor to this series and a man whom my students and I represent. Cleared by the ARB in 2007, Aamer is the last British resident remaining at Guantánamo.

With Obama came the Guantánamo Review Task Force. The GRTF was charged with a comprehensive review of all prisoners and it performed most of its work in 2009. Aamer was once again cleared, as was another of my clients, Abdelhadi Faraj, a Syrian, along with two other detainees who contributed to this series, Emad Hassan and Younous Chekkouri. In the end, a solid majority of the total Guantánamo prisoner population was cleared as well.

Those clearances carry the weight of the entire U.S. national security establishment. To say that they were cleared means that every single U.S. government agency with a stake in national security affairs has signed off on their release. This includes the Department of Justice (which oversees the FBI), State, Defense and Homeland Security, alongside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (which covers the CIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But many of these cleared men remain at Guantánamo today. 

Reconciling these two facts requires an unblinking look at the politics that drove the creation of -- and set limits for -- these review mechanisms.

Both the Bush-era ARBs as well as Obama's GRTF were set up to project the appearance of process amid charges by rights watchdogs and the international community that the United States was holding men offshore in Cuba for years without trial or fair process. In addition to the basic window-dressing function that both entities were intended to fulfill, the Obama Task Force was also meant to provide some cover for prisoner releases. Releasing a GRTF-cleared prisoner, the thinking went, carried the imprimatur of the entire security establishment. It should not, therefore, provide as inviting a target to partisan second-guessing.

But the scheme's fatal flaw was that neither the ARBs nor the GRTF were granted the power to release prisoners. They were designed primarily to relieve or deflect political pressure, to placate various opponents or critics, not to concretely implement policy.

The resulting power vacuum -- created by toothless review bodies -- was far too easy to exploit. Although the Task Force has the authority to clear a prisoner for release, its inability to effectuate its own findings cedes control over actual outcomes to the political imperatives of the day.

Aamer, for instance, is a twice-cleared prisoner who is not charged with any crime. The government of the United Kingdom, speaking through successive prime ministers and foreign ministers, has officially demanded his return and his reunification with his family in London, British subjects all. This is not just any country – it is the United States' oldest, closest and most trusted ally. Surely, the United Kingdom can be relied upon to mitigate any concerns the United States might have with Aamer's release.

But because the Task Force's decision to clear him for release is basically aspirational and non-binding, occult political forces have free rein to sabotage it, notwithstanding both countries' stated policy. Those forces may include officials in the U.K. security establishment who have no interest in seeing him returned home where he will be at greater liberty to disclose what he knows firsthand about British involvement in abusive interrogations in Afghanistan.

Emad Hassan and other cleared Yemenis like him are victims of another species of pernicious politics. Concerns about security lapses in Yemen, highlighted by the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab case in late-2009, quickly morphed into a moratorium on prisoner transfers to Yemen owing to alarmist rhetoric by elements in the political and security spheres. Even since that moratorium has been lifted, the perception that no Guantánamo prisoners should be returned to Yemen under any circumstances retains its vitality.

It doesn't seem to matter that two Yemeni prisoners -- including one of my clients, Amin al-Bakri -- were repatriated this summer from Guantánamo's less known twin, the U.S. military prison at Bagram, Afghanistan. At the time of writing, no great calamity had befallen either Yemen or the United States as a result.

With the 2014 mid-term election yielding firm Republican control of both houses, the fate of planned efforts to reduce the prisoner population in 2015 may be sealed.

The next two years will prove the ultimate test of Obama's resolve to close Guantánamo. In the face of likely opposition, he would have to do what his predecessor did when he opened the prison and when he later released the majority of its nearly 800 prisoners. Obama would have to act -- boldly and unilaterally -- by vetoing obstructionist legislation and taking lawful executive action in furtherance of his longstanding policy objective. That is, if Obama cares enough about closing Guantánamo to stick his neck out.