My colleague, Jumana Musa, is down in Guantanamo for the hearings today sent this update early this morning.
Last year when three men reportedly committed suicide in one day, the press was kicked off the base, the base commander and other government officials made inflammatory remarks about the incident, and all military commissions were suspended. Nearly a year later, it appears that more people have taken their own lives than have been charged before the newly reconfigured military commissions, yet we were herded onto the plane before knowing if the man's body had left the base. Last years suicides generated massive press coverage and calls for closure. This year, it barely made the news ticker while coverage of a man who traveled while infected with TB captured the countries imagination. The situation in Guantanamo has somehow transitioned from an extreme policy to an everyday occurrence.
When I got to Andrews, it occurred to me that it has become routine. I greeted journalists and JAG attorneys that are familiar in face and name. Getting on these flights has become a reunion of sorts, anything but an extraordinary occurrence. What is even more striking is that once you land on the base, the reunion feeling ends. You are faced with a fresh batch of officers and enlisted soldiers, rotated onto the base every 6 months to a year. Institutional memory is elusive at best, and at times the journalists, some of whom are Gitmo regulars, are more capable of answering questions that some of the people in charge.
All of this serves as the backdrop to what we will see tomorrow. Our instructions have us getting on the boat at 6:10 am to go to the other side of the base for an 8:30 am hearing in the Khadr case. Omar Khadr was detained by the United States at the age of 15, and transferred to Guantanamo at the age of 16. He is now 20, having spent his formative years in a prison cell in Guantanamo, much of it in isolation. He stands accused of throwing a grenade in a firefight in Afghanistan that killed one US soldier and wounded another. His father, alleged to be a high level Al Qaeda operative with close ties to Osama Bin Laden, was killed in a firefight in Pakistan about a year after Khadr's detention.
All in all, Omar Khadr is not the most sympathetic figure, but his case raises several concerns. One is the precedent it sets for how the United States will treat child soldiers. International law regarding child soldiers and children in detention requires that they be treated differently from their adult counterparts. Children are to be detained only as a last resort, and for the shortest time possible. They should be segregated from the adult population and allowed access to education and rehabilitation. Rather than rehabilitate Khadr, the US government threw him in with the adult population, and subjected him to treatment that amounts to torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. He alleged in previous court documents that at one point US agents poured pine solvent on the floor and used him as a human mop.
Today, Omar Khadr will come before a military commission that affords him less rights as a Canadian then he would have as a US citizen. He is charged with murder, attempted murder, providing material support for terrorism, and other charges and can be convicted based on evidence obtained through coercion or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. He could face life in prison based on a conviction obtained through evidence that would not be admissible in any other US court for an act he committed when he was 15 years old. This sets a worrying precedent for the treatment of child soldiers, who are increasingly being used in conflicts around the world.
If all goes smoothly, which it rarely ever does in Gitmo, we will break for lunch and then come back from the arraignment of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose lawsuit lead the Supreme Court to strike down the previous military commissions. Hamdan is alleged to have been Bim Laden's driver, and is being accused of conspiracy and materials support of terrorism, neither of which were previously considered war crimes.
After the Supreme Court threw out the old military commissions system (which looked a lot like the current system absent Congressional authorization), President Bush transferred fourteen "high value detainees" to Guantanamo (a fifteenth was recently transferred) from secret CIA detention facilities around the world, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The President stood before the American people with family members of 9/11 victims behind him and told the American people that Congress had to authorize military commissions to get justice for 9/11 families. However, rather than charge KSM, the US government is proceeding with the prosecution of Bin Laden's driver. This is the absurd result of the normalization of a system that operates untethered to any body of US or international law. This is what happens when you improvise justice. This is Guantanamo.
Jumana Musa
Advocacy Director for Domestic Human Rights and International Justice, Amnesty International USA