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Two more innocents were released from America’s Robin Island this month. Our offshore penal colony at Guantanamo Bay still holds 160 prisoners, 86 of whom have been cleared for release. The two men sent home Dec. 17 were never charged with a crime and were cleared — four years ago.
Their release may provide other “cleared” prisoners a reason for hope, if they are privy to the news. During hunger strikes last spring, which in some cases lasted over 80 days, the military raided the prison and put 100 strikers in solitary confinement. No one knows how or what information is passed to them.
At that time, when 100 of 166 prisoners were refusing food, the ACLU, the Center for Victims of Torture, Human Rights Watch and 17 other civic groups wrote Pentagon Chief Chuck Hagel informing him that force feeding detainees was “cruel, inhuman and degrading” — the treaty definition of torture — and called for its immediate and permanent cessation. Mr. Hagel also got a letter from the president of the American Medical Association, Jeremy Lazarus, also charged that doctors helping force-feeding prisoners against their will violated “core ethical values of the medical profession,” and, “Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions.”
From February to June this year, the White House presided over the force-feeding of at least 21 bound prisoners, a gagging and choking experience in which plastic tubes are shoved through the nostrils and down the throat while you are tied in a restraint chair. This excruciating torture was conducted by the military under the auspices of Commander in Chief Barak Obama.
Cooler heads pronounce, but don’t yet prevail
In the midst of the hunger strike, a diverse group of legal scholars, constitutional lawyers and former high ranking government and military officials published an major report that found Guantánamo demonstrates “… the willingness of the United States to detain significant numbers of innocent people … and subject them to serious and prolonged privation and mistreatment, even torture.”
The nonpartisan Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment’s self-described “most important or notable finding” — made “without reservation” and heard around the world — was that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.” The 600-page study, two years in the making, explained: “the conclusion that torture was used means it occurred in many instances and across a wide range of theaters.”
The archly analytical report says that by authorizing torture, the US government had “set aside many of the nation’s venerable values and legal principles.” I wouldn’t use such niceties. Government employees violated, defied, disobeyed, contravened and flouted US criminal law; in particular the Torture Statute, the War Crimes Act, and both the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture which are now US law. Obama himself said in last April 30 that Guantanamo was “a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law.”
Constitutional group finds high-level culpability
The Constitution Project’s “second notable conclusion” was that “[T]he nation’s highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing — and contributing to the spread of — torture.” This finding is a legal bombshell in view of Treaty Law governing torture which holds that if an accused government — in this case the United States — fails to investigate and prosecute the credibly accused, other states or the International Criminal Court may be obligated to do so.
The task force declared, “…this conclusion is grounded in a thorough and detailed examination of what constitutes torture in many contexts, notably historical and legal. The Task Force examined court cases … in which the United States has leveled the charge of torture against other governments. The United States may not declare a nation guilty of engaging in torture and then exempt itself from being so labeled for similar if not identical conduct.”
The report noted that during a February 2012 visit to Guantanamo by its staff, the prison commander at the time, Rear Admiral David Woods, “was quick to point out the facility’s motto: ‘Safe, Humane, Legal, Transparent.’” Yes, and I am Marie of Romania.
Karen Greenberg, founder of the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s law school, said about the hunger strikers, “They can’t tolerate it any more. It is despair...” Ten years of indefinite solitary detention without charges is so psychologically devastating that the beleaguered inmates would rather have died than drift in oblivion. In May, prisoner Al Madhwani wrote to a federal court “…Obama must be unaware of the unbelievably inhumane conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison, for otherwise he would surely do something to stop this torture.”
The Obama White House has chosen to ignore the torture allegations made against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and George Bush — who did prosecutors the favor of confessing in his autobiography. When asked directly if his Justice Department officers would investigate, Obama said it would be unproductive to “look backwards.” It might also be self-incriminating, since Obama has himself authorized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Robin Island’s, I mean Guantanamo’s, suspects.