Nowak, Manfred - Interview master file
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Interviewer | We are rolling. | 0:05 |
Okay, good morning. | 0:06 | |
- | Good morning. | 0:07 |
Interviewer | We are very grateful to you | 0:08 |
for participating in the witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:10 | |
We invite you to speak of your experiences with detainees | 0:14 | |
and others in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 0:19 | |
We are hoping to provide you with that opportunity | 0:23 | |
to tell your story, in your own words. | 0:26 | |
We're creating an archive of stories | 0:30 | |
and in the hope that people in America | 0:33 | |
and around the world will have a better understanding | 0:37 | |
of what Guantanamo really was about. | 0:39 | |
And hopefully your experiences will help people | 0:45 | |
understand that. | 0:47 | |
And future generations must also know what Guantanamo Bay | 0:49 | |
Cuba represented to America and to the world. | 0:52 | |
And by telling the story | 0:57 | |
you're helping to contribute to history. | 0:58 | |
And we're very grateful for you to join us today | 1:01 | |
and wanted to mention that | 1:04 | |
if you want to take a break at any time, please let us know. | 1:05 | |
And if there's anything you say | 1:09 | |
that you think we should remove | 1:10 | |
we can remove it by the end of the tape. | 1:11 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:14 |
Interviewer | So I'd like to begin | 1:15 |
by asking you to tell us your name and where you were born | 1:16 | |
and a little bit of your background, your age and schooling. | 1:20 | |
So we know who you are. | 1:25 | |
- | Well, thanks very much for inviting me to this interview. | 1:27 |
I think it's a great project that you are doing | 1:31 | |
to really have an archive | 1:34 | |
on what happened in Guantanamo Bay. | 1:37 | |
My name is Manfred Nowak, I'm Austrian citizen. | 1:40 | |
I was born in Austria and raised in Australia | 1:42 | |
and going to school in Lintz and then started my studies | 1:46 | |
in Lintz moving to Vienna, studying various things. | 1:51 | |
Actually I wanted to become a filmmaker | 1:57 | |
but that didn't really work out well. | 2:01 | |
So I studied economists | 2:03 | |
and finally I've finished my law studies | 2:05 | |
at Vienna University. | 2:07 | |
Afterwards worked actually all my life | 2:09 | |
in the science of law, international law and human rights. | 2:12 | |
I did a master of law | 2:19 | |
at Columbia University already in the 1970s. | 2:20 | |
And then as a human rights lawyer and expert | 2:26 | |
I became more and more involved | 2:32 | |
in practical human rights work, | 2:34 | |
be it with non-governmental organizations, | 2:36 | |
carrying out fact-finding missions | 2:39 | |
to various countries in the world. | 2:41 | |
And then gradually also being accepted | 2:44 | |
as a human rights expert by the United Nations | 2:47 | |
by the Council of Europe, the Organization of Security | 2:50 | |
and Cooperation in Europe, the European Union, | 2:53 | |
I've still quite a number of functions. | 2:56 | |
I'm vice chair of the Fundamental Rights Agency | 3:00 | |
of the European Union in Vienna | 3:03 | |
which is the most important human rights institution | 3:05 | |
of the European Union. | 3:09 | |
But primarily I've really worked | 3:11 | |
for many years voluntarily as a UN expert. | 3:14 | |
First in the field of disappearances, | 3:19 | |
in this working group on enforced disappearances. | 3:22 | |
I had a special assignment as an independent expert | 3:25 | |
on disappearances in the former Yugoslavia. | 3:30 | |
So I spent quite a lot of my time during the war | 3:35 | |
in the early 1990s in Bosnia, in Croatia | 3:38 | |
trying to find persons who disappeared in particular. | 3:43 | |
And so I put it | 3:48 | |
to opening mosques and this kind of work. | 3:49 | |
I was a judge for eight years | 3:52 | |
at highest court at that time in Bosnia-Herzegovina | 3:56 | |
which had international churches | 4:01 | |
under the Dayton Peace Agreement. | 4:02 | |
And in the 19 in the two thousands, actually working also | 4:04 | |
in order to get a United Nations convention | 4:11 | |
on enforced disappearances. | 4:16 | |
I was advising an inter governmental working group | 4:17 | |
and then between 2004 and 2010 | 4:21 | |
I was UN special rapporteur on torture carrying | 4:24 | |
out about 18 official missions to countries | 4:28 | |
in all world regions | 4:31 | |
but doing also joint studies, such as the Guantanamo study. | 4:32 | |
And yeah, presently, I have been designated | 4:36 | |
by the secretary general of the United Nations | 4:43 | |
to lead a global UN study on children, deprived of liberty. | 4:46 | |
This is just getting off the ground. | 4:52 | |
So, but by 2018, I should actually present this study. | 4:56 | |
And I was working at various universities. | 5:00 | |
I was had a professorship | 5:04 | |
in the eighties already at Utrecht University | 5:06 | |
in the Netherlands heading the Netherlands Institute | 5:11 | |
of Human Rights. | 5:14 | |
I was a professor at Lund University | 5:16 | |
the Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights | 5:18 | |
at Stanford University and various others | 5:20 | |
at the Geneva, Geneva Academy of Human Rights | 5:27 | |
and Humanitarian Law. | 5:29 | |
And since last year I am actually | 5:31 | |
that's my main shop secretary general | 5:34 | |
of the European inter university center | 5:38 | |
for human rights and democratization, which is a network | 5:41 | |
of about hundred universities around the world. | 5:44 | |
And we are organizing and financing also with you finances, | 5:47 | |
but we are the hub of a global campus | 5:56 | |
of seven regional master programs in human rights | 6:00 | |
and democratization or world region. | 6:03 | |
So we are probably the the biggest | 6:05 | |
human rights education institution | 6:08 | |
in the world here based in Venice | 6:11 | |
but this regional masters in coordinated, in Pretoria | 6:12 | |
or Iowa's or Bangkok or other places in Beirut. | 6:17 | |
So that's my main job now, but I'm still a professor | 6:21 | |
of international law and human rights | 6:26 | |
at Vienna University wanting their Vienna | 6:28 | |
and a master of arts in human rights | 6:31 | |
and department Institute of human rights | 6:33 | |
which I created in 1992 and also another research center | 6:35 | |
on human rights at Vienna University. | 6:40 | |
So these are a few of my functions. | 6:42 | |
I've almost told you all my professional life story. | 6:44 | |
So, but saving you | 6:50 | |
from asking all further questions I just did it at once. | 6:51 | |
Interviewer | But you didn't tell me about your writing. | 6:54 |
So maybe you could briefly add that to it. | 6:56 | |
Because that's also very impressive. | 7:00 | |
- | Yeah, of course, as a human rights | 7:02 |
and international law professor, of course | 7:06 | |
you also have to do some research. | 7:08 | |
Some of my main works | 7:11 | |
I wrote book on political rights already in the 1980s. | 7:12 | |
And then I think probably my best known book is | 7:17 | |
commentary article by article commentary | 7:22 | |
on the International Covenant on Civil | 7:26 | |
and Political Rights originally written in German. | 7:29 | |
Then I translated it into English. | 7:32 | |
There are two editions, but it has been translated | 7:34 | |
in other languages, including Chinese. | 7:36 | |
And this is the most important United Nations treaty | 7:39 | |
in the field of human rights. | 7:44 | |
I have also together with Liz Miguel. | 7:46 | |
So I have written a commentary | 7:48 | |
on the United Nations convention | 7:52 | |
against torture published by Oxford University Press | 7:53 | |
and quite a number of other books | 7:56 | |
textbooks on the introduction to international human rights. | 7:59 | |
And most recently I was also has to do | 8:04 | |
with my Stanford research. | 8:07 | |
I did looking more | 8:10 | |
into the relationship between the economy and human rights. | 8:11 | |
So I was writing a book on "Rising Economic Inequality | 8:15 | |
As A Challenge To Human Rights." | 8:20 | |
And at the same time, human rights is an answer how to deal | 8:22 | |
with rising economic inequality, building | 8:25 | |
upon economic theories of Thomas Pickety capital | 8:28 | |
in the 21st century and Anthony Atkinson and others. | 8:32 | |
And the most recent book that was published | 8:35 | |
by Pennsylvania Press is | 8:39 | |
about global capitalism and human rights. | 8:42 | |
So the relationship between these two phenomenon. | 8:46 | |
And Pennsylvania press is also in the process | 8:51 | |
of publishing the English version of my book on torture. | 8:55 | |
I actually in the German region | 9:01 | |
are describing in very simple terms | 9:04 | |
My experiences as six years, | 9:08 | |
especially rapporteur on torture. | 9:11 | |
So that was published in German a couple of years ago | 9:13 | |
and now will be published | 9:17 | |
in English by Pennsylvania Press during this year. | 9:19 | |
Interviewer | Oh, good, I'll look for that. | 9:23 |
I hadn't thought of this, but since you're saying so much | 9:26 | |
about it before, when you started was human rights | 9:29 | |
as much part of the landscape of the UN as it was | 9:32 | |
as it has been since then? | 9:39 | |
Was human rights as it did people think | 9:42 | |
in terms of human rights when you first started your career? | 9:45 | |
- | Yes, of course, but it was a different world. | 9:49 |
When I started in the 1970s | 9:52 | |
there were a few famous individuals. | 9:55 | |
My most inspiring professor whom I ever | 9:58 | |
had was Louis Hankin | 10:02 | |
who was teaching me at Columbia University Human Rights | 10:04 | |
and also in Vienna, Felix and Mercola | 10:07 | |
who was the pioneer of human rights in Australia. | 10:09 | |
And he was special rapporteur of the UN on Afghanistan | 10:15 | |
on South Africa, on Chili, et cetera. | 10:19 | |
So he had a lot of experiences. | 10:21 | |
So these were the two kind of teachers who really | 10:23 | |
inspired me to become a human rights specialist | 10:27 | |
but those were a few individuals only much later. | 10:31 | |
And we developed master programs | 10:35 | |
in order to study human rights as a multidisciplinary topic | 10:39 | |
in order to train human rights professionals | 10:43 | |
people who can be sent to the field in peace operations | 10:46 | |
second search innovation of peace building | 10:50 | |
after the end of the cold war, | 10:53 | |
when peace building was no longer simply a matter | 10:56 | |
for the military for the blue helmets | 10:58 | |
but where you needed to build up an architecture | 11:01 | |
of human rights and democracy in order to start the process | 11:05 | |
of reconciliation tools that would lead to a lasting peace. | 11:10 | |
And we needed these human rights professionals | 11:14 | |
because that was not an official study. | 11:16 | |
So that's why many of these master programs developed. | 11:19 | |
And now for instance, here at the global campus | 11:24 | |
of human rights, we have more three thousand graduates. | 11:28 | |
And some of them working in the highest levels | 11:30 | |
of international organizations, | 11:32 | |
they are working in governments. | 11:35 | |
I, whenever I come somewhere in the, in the world | 11:36 | |
there's always somebody who approaches me and says, hey | 11:40 | |
I was studying with you in Venice or wherever | 11:42 | |
in the field of human rights. | 11:45 | |
And now I'm a minister of justice, or I am a deputy | 11:48 | |
secretary general of the whatever international organization | 11:51 | |
or I am the chairperson of the United Nations Committee | 11:56 | |
on the rights of the child. | 12:01 | |
So we have it's great to see that this is | 12:02 | |
a big network of young professionals | 12:06 | |
who spread the message of human rights around the world. | 12:09 | |
Interviewer | For people, especially | 12:14 |
when I watched this 50 isn't now won't know | 12:16 | |
what pin you have on your jacket. | 12:18 | |
Can you tell us? | 12:20 | |
- | Yes, it is our symbol of the global campus, | 12:21 |
and it is colorful. | 12:24 | |
It's a colorful experience. | 12:27 | |
So every color symbolizes another region | 12:29 | |
of the world where we are running a master program. | 12:32 | |
So it is seven different programs | 12:36 | |
and this is seven different colors, but this one entity | 12:39 | |
it's one also visual identity that we are developing. | 12:43 | |
We all work together. | 12:48 | |
They have their autonomy | 12:50 | |
how they are running it differently | 12:51 | |
in Africa dealing primarily with African problems. | 12:53 | |
So the Latin Americans who live | 12:56 | |
with Latin American problems | 12:58 | |
but still it's a global campus. | 12:59 | |
And we come together quite often to also see, for instance | 13:02 | |
beginning of April, we have one week in Sarajevo | 13:06 | |
where we deal with the memory and we reconciliation | 13:09 | |
they call it liquid reconciliation. | 13:17 | |
So how do different societies deal | 13:19 | |
with difficult past experiences, the war | 13:22 | |
in former Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. | 13:25 | |
How do the societies today actually come to grips | 13:30 | |
with that or not. | 13:33 | |
In South Africa, but the legacies | 13:35 | |
of the apartheid regime and how did Nelson Mandela | 13:39 | |
and others actually deal with the past | 13:42 | |
which were more swore to commissioner | 13:45 | |
not via criminal courts. | 13:47 | |
What's in Argentina. | 13:49 | |
The major human rights violations occurred in the 1970s. | 13:51 | |
And there were always again, trials | 13:55 | |
and then amnesties et cetera. | 13:57 | |
And there are still thousands of people who say | 13:59 | |
we still want to know the truth about 30,000 | 14:02 | |
people who disappeared in the dirty war. | 14:06 | |
And we want that the few surviving people | 14:08 | |
are still brought to justice. | 14:11 | |
What's in Cambodia where we now have | 14:12 | |
after the Khmer Rouge, atrocities, and genocide | 14:14 | |
that still some of the surviving leaders of Khmer Rouge | 14:19 | |
are brought to trial. | 14:22 | |
So there are different ways | 14:24 | |
and means how we deal with difficult situations in the past | 14:25 | |
even in my own country, Australia, where the atrocities | 14:29 | |
of the Nazi time and are more than 70 years ago. | 14:33 | |
But still there are people who simply put in question | 14:36 | |
that Auschwitz or this kind of Holocaust existed | 14:41 | |
and we still need to deal with the past. | 14:45 | |
We also have to provide to a probation | 14:49 | |
to those who survived the Holocaust | 14:51 | |
and some of them are still living. | 14:54 | |
So it's it will be a very interesting conference | 14:55 | |
where we bring all our different experiences | 14:59 | |
from this 7 different master programs, | 15:04 | |
a hundred universities | 15:06 | |
into one particular issue. | 15:07 | |
Lebanon, for instances really in a very difficult situation | 15:09 | |
how to deal with the civil war of the recent past | 15:13 | |
which is kind of a taboo in the education of children. | 15:16 | |
Interviewer | You do this every year? | 15:22 |
Or is this for this year? | 15:24 | |
- | Yes, we do every year that we're going. | 15:25 |
Yeah, no, not the same. | 15:28 | |
It's always a different, | 15:29 | |
a different topic that we are discussing, | 15:30 | |
but from the different regional perspectives this year, | 15:34 | |
it's the memory and reconciliation. | 15:37 | |
And next year it might be, I don't know | 15:39 | |
the current crisis of the, of human rights | 15:43 | |
in the world or the current crisis of everything | 15:47 | |
that we are actually living through these days. | 15:50 | |
Interviewer | How old is this university, | 15:53 |
the one that you now heading? | 15:56 | |
- | Yeah, we are not a university. | 15:58 |
We are an inter university center. | 16:00 | |
So we are an, we are private association on the Italian law | 16:02 | |
but our members are universities | 16:07 | |
and that was created in 2002. | 16:10 | |
So we are now 15 years old | 16:13 | |
but the European masters program, which was | 16:16 | |
the pioneering program will celebrate its 20th birthday | 16:17 | |
in September when we have | 16:23 | |
the big graduation ceremonies in Venice. | 16:25 | |
Interviewer | Oh, okay. | 16:27 |
Okay well, it's an incredibly impressive background | 16:28 | |
and I think it's helpful for people to hear that. | 16:31 | |
Why don't we go into what we're here for, which is, I guess | 16:35 | |
unless you can go earlier | 16:39 | |
but when you became the rapporteur on torture | 16:40 | |
that seems to me when you started focusing on Guantanamo | 16:45 | |
or did you focus on Guantanamo before then | 16:48 | |
or that is when you started thinking about it? | 16:50 | |
- | I focused on Guantanamo already from the very beginning. | 16:53 |
And I tell you a story. | 16:57 | |
I was one of eight international churches | 17:00 | |
at an institution called the Human Rights Chamber | 17:05 | |
for Bosnia-Herzegovina. | 17:08 | |
We were altogether 14 churches | 17:10 | |
two Serbs, two Croats, two Muslims. | 17:12 | |
That was the way how Bosnia dealt with that. | 17:14 | |
And the Dayton Peace Agreement said | 17:19 | |
eight churches should be elected by the council | 17:20 | |
of Europe from among the council of Europe member states. | 17:23 | |
And I was one of them. | 17:28 | |
And we were established in 1996 and then in 2001, | 17:30 | |
911 was in September. | 17:38 | |
And in October, we got a case about six Bosnians | 17:41 | |
of Algerian origin who had been arrested | 17:47 | |
by the Bozeman authorities | 17:51 | |
on the initiative of the United States of America. | 17:54 | |
So the American ambassador said | 17:57 | |
these are people who are very dangerous. | 17:59 | |
They were planning an attack on the American embassy later. | 18:02 | |
They said also in the British embassy, in Sarajevo. | 18:08 | |
So you have to detain them and take care of them. | 18:11 | |
And we had trained already for five years | 18:16 | |
the Bosnian churches | 18:18 | |
that they should actually apply the rule of law. | 18:19 | |
So they did, they arrested them, of course | 18:23 | |
but then they said, we cannot keep them forever. | 18:26 | |
So we need evidence. | 18:28 | |
So they went back to the Americans and said | 18:29 | |
could you please provide us evidence that they | 18:31 | |
really were planning to attack the American embassy? | 18:34 | |
And the American ambassador said, no, no, no, no. | 18:38 | |
It's top secret that CIA information. | 18:41 | |
So we cannot give you this information. | 18:43 | |
So, and then of course they complained too. | 18:45 | |
We were the highest court at that time in the country | 18:48 | |
they complained to us and said, is this in line | 18:51 | |
with the European convention on human rights | 18:54 | |
the international covenant on civil and political rights. | 18:56 | |
And we said, no | 18:59 | |
because under the right to personal liberty | 19:00 | |
you can detain somebody for 48 hours | 19:05 | |
but then you have to bring him before or her before a judge. | 19:07 | |
And then the judge decides | 19:10 | |
is there enough evidence to put you in pretrial detention? | 19:12 | |
That's what they did originally | 19:16 | |
but that can also not be done for forever. | 19:17 | |
So we tried whatever we could get it. | 19:21 | |
Also, we approached the Americans to say, no | 19:24 | |
we cannot give you this evidence. | 19:27 | |
So then we ruled in a preliminary ruling saying | 19:28 | |
you have to release those people. | 19:31 | |
So finally the Bosnian churches actually complied | 19:35 | |
with our ruling. | 19:38 | |
And we also, at that time | 19:39 | |
there was already the idea that there might be | 19:41 | |
extradited to the United States of America. | 19:44 | |
And we said, no | 19:49 | |
you cannot extradite them to the United States | 19:51 | |
of America because there is no evidence and we said | 19:53 | |
even if they were really involved in terrorism | 19:56 | |
it was after 911 | 19:59 | |
they might face the death penalty, and then you | 20:00 | |
never can extradite them to the United States of America. | 20:04 | |
So it was a clear ruling. | 20:07 | |
Then they were released from the prison | 20:08 | |
in the court, the main court in Sarajevo. | 20:13 | |
And on the other side of the street | 20:17 | |
American soldiers were standing, but they were part | 20:19 | |
of the international force under NATO command | 20:24 | |
which were established under the Dayton Peace Agreement. | 20:28 | |
So they were not Americans, they were of course, Americans | 20:30 | |
but under NATO command for a peace operation | 20:34 | |
and they simply changed their hats and saying, no | 20:38 | |
we are arresting you. | 20:41 | |
We are bringing you to the Bootmier camp | 20:42 | |
that was just the next camp to Sarajevo. | 20:44 | |
And then we really try to intervene and say | 20:46 | |
that's not possible. | 20:50 | |
You cannot bring them outside the outside of | 20:51 | |
Bosnia until we have decided the case. | 20:54 | |
We finally have to go into the merits | 20:57 | |
of the case et cetera. | 20:59 | |
And then there were high level talks, both competitors | 21:00 | |
which was the high representative. | 21:06 | |
At that time, he talked to the American ambassador. | 21:07 | |
We talked the French and et cetera. | 21:10 | |
And finally, what I was told, I wasn't present | 21:11 | |
at the American ambassador said, "Fuck the chamber." | 21:15 | |
And off they went to the eager base first | 21:20 | |
and then do in G League in Turkey. | 21:23 | |
And from there the Guantanamo bay. | 21:27 | |
And we finally, finally | 21:29 | |
we actually ruled that this was all unlawful | 21:33 | |
but we could not rule against the United States. | 21:37 | |
We didn't have the mandate. | 21:39 | |
We could only hold it Bosnia | 21:41 | |
by kind of having facilitated it | 21:43 | |
or not prevented it violated international human rights. | 21:46 | |
And at least we told the Bosnian authorities | 21:51 | |
in this binding judgment that you have | 21:55 | |
to do whatever you can to get those people | 21:57 | |
out of Guantanamo Bay and to pay compensation. | 21:59 | |
They paid compensation | 22:02 | |
to the families of those six individuals | 22:03 | |
but some of them stayed for many, many years. | 22:06 | |
And I think one of them is still in Guantanamo | 22:10 | |
if I'm correct, and whenever I'm teaching in. | 22:13 | |
And finally we tried to find countries that would take them. | 22:19 | |
And actually, and I negotiated again | 22:23 | |
with the Bosnian government | 22:26 | |
that they should take them back because at a certain point | 22:27 | |
the Americans realized that this was all not true. | 22:29 | |
There was no plan whatsoever | 22:34 | |
of attacking bombing or whatever, the, the American embassy. | 22:38 | |
So there all those charges were dropped | 22:44 | |
but they spent many, many years of their time | 22:46 | |
in Guantanamo bay have been ill treated tortured also. | 22:49 | |
And there's one guy who called Mustafa Idedea. | 22:53 | |
And you might perhaps would like to interview him. | 22:58 | |
He whom I took them together is worth compared to shows. | 23:01 | |
Also Australia. | 23:05 | |
We started in Austria a campaign | 23:06 | |
to raise funds by cloud funding | 23:09 | |
in order to assist him to start living again | 23:12 | |
with his family in Bosnia. | 23:15 | |
Because as soon as you are in Guantanamo | 23:17 | |
you are an ex Guantanamo detainee. | 23:20 | |
He had terrible problems to find a job again. | 23:23 | |
So we raised money so that he could have his coffee shop now | 23:26 | |
in Sarajevo and he's living from this. | 23:30 | |
And whenever I am teaching | 23:32 | |
and I will do that again every year I'm teaching | 23:33 | |
in Sarajevo, in the one of our regional master programs | 23:36 | |
for the south east European region. | 23:40 | |
I always invite him. | 23:42 | |
I said, Mustafa, could you come to my class? | 23:43 | |
Because the students and the students come | 23:47 | |
from all over Europe, but primarily from the Balkans. | 23:49 | |
And said then you can see a real ex Guantanamo, detainee. | 23:52 | |
He is a normal person. | 23:56 | |
You can talk to him. | 23:58 | |
And he is telling his story in a very, has a very fine sense | 23:59 | |
of humor, how he describes his guards, how he's describes | 24:03 | |
how they also tortured him here, the poke and joy. | 24:07 | |
He was paralyzed tough. | 24:10 | |
And he was seriously beaten up | 24:11 | |
but he is not full of hatred. | 24:14 | |
He's more full of humor saying how actually | 24:17 | |
they always asked him the same | 24:22 | |
just to give you an, a stop is this, but always | 24:24 | |
to give you to ask him the same question, | 24:26 | |
Mustafa, why did you every day pass by everyday | 24:29 | |
with your car, the American embassy at this time, | 24:34 | |
the Cousavo, Cousavo is the name of the big stadium. | 24:40 | |
And that's the road at that time the American embassy was. | 24:44 | |
And Mustafa said, it's very simple | 24:49 | |
because if you show you a map | 24:52 | |
I was living there that's was where I worked. | 24:54 | |
I worked for a humanitarian organization. | 24:57 | |
And the only way of driving from my home | 24:59 | |
to my work is passing by the American embassy. | 25:02 | |
It's that simple. | 25:06 | |
But he said it was hundreds of times | 25:08 | |
that he was put the same question in those interrogations | 25:10 | |
by different CIA interrogators | 25:13 | |
and military interrogators in Guantanamo Bay. | 25:17 | |
So that he said, when he started to laugh | 25:20 | |
he said, I mean, it's really, | 25:22 | |
it's there's a lot of stupidity behind it. | 25:24 | |
And it's, that's the way how it tells the students. | 25:28 | |
So it's just, so I got involved in this later | 25:32 | |
when I became special rapporteur on torture | 25:35 | |
I of course was still very much interested | 25:40 | |
in the fate of these six persons because I | 25:43 | |
didn't know them personally, but I knew their families. | 25:45 | |
Their wives would always come to us | 25:49 | |
help us please, et cetera. | 25:50 | |
So I got in contact of course, with the lawyers | 25:53 | |
and tried to do whatever I could to release them or do | 25:56 | |
to try to do release them. | 26:00 | |
So my first and they were actually | 26:02 | |
among the first Guantanamo | 26:05 | |
detainees because they were transferred in January, 2002. | 26:06 | |
Interviewer | Did you help release them, do you think? | 26:10 |
- | I did whatever I could by making this story public, | 26:14 |
judgment was of course published | 26:19 | |
and to link that to the lawyers. | 26:22 | |
So I gave a lot of information to the lawyers | 26:25 | |
that the American lawyers who were dealing after. | 26:27 | |
I mean, everything could only really start | 26:31 | |
after this famous case in 2004 against, against Bush. | 26:34 | |
The, for the first time the Supreme court said | 26:42 | |
that Guantanamo Bay falls | 26:47 | |
under the US constitution was Azule versus Bush. | 26:50 | |
And that means at least | 26:54 | |
that they have the writ of habeas corpus. | 26:56 | |
And in order to exercise the writ of habeas corpus | 26:59 | |
you need to be represented by a lawyer. | 27:01 | |
So that was the big break. | 27:04 | |
So in 2004, until 2004 | 27:06 | |
they didn't have any kind of legal assistance. | 27:08 | |
Interviewer | I just want to go back for a moment. | 27:11 |
Did you, when you said that the families got compensation | 27:13 | |
Bosnian company gave families money to support themselves | 27:16 | |
while the men were in Guantanamo, or is that? | 27:21 | |
- | Yes, it is. | 27:24 |
I mean, that's the only thing we could do. | 27:25 | |
We could, as we said, two things we ordered | 27:27 | |
we had the power to order the Bosnian government, | 27:30 | |
first of all, to pay compensation to the families. | 27:33 | |
But it was, yeah, not, not at very high amount of money | 27:36 | |
but still do because many of them had six children. | 27:41 | |
And so, I mean, they were, and the men were | 27:44 | |
the breadwinners at that time. | 27:47 | |
So of course it helped them a little bit. | 27:51 | |
Secondly, we ordered the Bosnian government to | 27:52 | |
do whatever they could to send. | 27:55 | |
And once the minister of justice actually went | 27:57 | |
to Guantanamo bay in order to release them, but it | 27:59 | |
didn't have much effect, but perhaps it contributed | 28:04 | |
a little bit to that. | 28:08 | |
Some of them got an earlier release. | 28:09 | |
Mr. Booer Dien was one of them who is now living in falls. | 28:11 | |
And there was another famous case of his. | 28:15 | |
So they, the Bosnians actually played a quite | 28:17 | |
important role also | 28:20 | |
in the legal litigation before American court. | 28:22 | |
Interviewer | Before you were appointed | 28:25 |
as rapporteur and this incident happened. | 28:27 | |
So you knew something about Guantanamo. | 28:30 | |
What did you think? | 28:32 | |
Because that was new to America | 28:33 | |
at least it's seen new to America. | 28:36 | |
So what were you thinking about America | 28:38 | |
that it had done with you just described? | 28:40 | |
- | I mean, at that time | 28:44 |
nothing was really known about Guantanamo Bay. | 28:45 | |
It was just being set up. | 28:49 | |
And then we only, I mean, when, when we did this injunction | 28:52 | |
we didn't know, we only heard that they would be expedited | 28:56 | |
to the United States and we said, no | 28:59 | |
you cannot extradite them. | 29:02 | |
It's a violation by Bosnia, but we didn't know | 29:03 | |
that it would be sent to Guantanamo bay at that time. | 29:07 | |
They didn't tell us later | 29:09 | |
we found out that they were sent to Guantanamo bay | 29:10 | |
and they were not extradited well, when did it | 29:13 | |
it was an extraordinary condition. | 29:17 | |
And again, when I talked to many of the former | 29:19 | |
Guantanamo detainees court | 29:25 | |
in addition also including those two | 29:28 | |
Bosnians whom I met afterwards, many of them | 29:30 | |
said the transport shackled handcuff is google's whatever | 29:34 | |
but for a very, very long period of time | 29:41 | |
because between in Chile, from Chile to Guantanamo | 29:44 | |
that's a long flight and you are really in a | 29:47 | |
very stressful position on the floor of this plane. | 29:50 | |
You are not allowed to go to the toilet. | 29:55 | |
You're not getting nothing to eat and drink. | 29:56 | |
They said that was already for them | 29:58 | |
the most painful or some of the most painful experiences. | 30:02 | |
First of all, you don't know what happens to you. | 30:05 | |
You are not informed about everything you are put in this | 30:07 | |
in this kind of dresses and diapers et cetera. | 30:11 | |
You're treated like a, like a baby. | 30:16 | |
And so, and so you are totally helpless. | 30:20 | |
You don't know what happens | 30:24 | |
but it's also very, very painful. | 30:25 | |
If you have back pain, for instance, really | 30:26 | |
can ruin your spine. | 30:30 | |
So that was very, very painful for them. | 30:32 | |
And that we realized only gradually afterwards | 30:35 | |
what these rendition flights actually meant. | 30:38 | |
And then when, of course the first information | 30:41 | |
from Guantanamo came out | 30:43 | |
and we knew that they were actually there. | 30:46 | |
So for us, this was in the first years, that means beginning | 30:47 | |
of 2002, until 2004, they were totally isolated, totally | 30:52 | |
totally helpless without any kind of assistance. | 31:01 | |
And then more and more of this torture memos | 31:05 | |
from John Hill and Jay Vibey, et cetera | 31:10 | |
came out and also then all the orders | 31:14 | |
which Rumsfeld actually has given. | 31:17 | |
So what should be the way how Guantanamo detainees | 31:20 | |
could be treated and they dating from early 2002 | 31:23 | |
and then they were changed a little bit. | 31:27 | |
And so all that, but only we learned later. | 31:29 | |
So really one information after the other | 31:33 | |
until it really became a picture. | 31:37 | |
But I was appointed in October, 2004. | 31:39 | |
So that was a time when a book already was public. | 31:43 | |
So that changed a lot in the public perception | 31:49 | |
of the American public in the media. | 31:53 | |
That was when all this famous investigative journalists | 31:56 | |
of the New York and the Washington Boston, et cetera, done a | 32:03 | |
and all those people we're starting to really get | 32:06 | |
get interested in published piece by piece. | 32:10 | |
So more and more became public. | 32:14 | |
And then the United Nations, different United Nations | 32:16 | |
special procedures were starting to saying, we | 32:20 | |
have to do an independent investigation into Guantanamo bay. | 32:25 | |
That goes back before I was appointed. | 32:28 | |
My predecessor from Bovine was already involved in that. | 32:32 | |
And I simply inherited this in October. | 32:34 | |
Interviewer | I just wanna give you the thoughts. | 32:37 |
Did it, how did you feel that you see America | 32:41 | |
is seemingly and violently human rights | 32:44 | |
in ways that you saw in other countries? | 32:49 | |
What did that, how did that, what did that mean to you? | 32:52 | |
When all of a sudden you're seeing America | 32:55 | |
is behaving like that? | 32:57 | |
- | Now it's not the first time that America | 32:59 |
is violating human rights. | 33:01 | |
I mean, I was involved in the 1970s heavily | 33:02 | |
in what happened in Chile. | 33:07 | |
What happened in Argentina, what happened | 33:10 | |
in the whole national security dictatorships | 33:13 | |
in Latin America which were only possible | 33:16 | |
because of US support. | 33:19 | |
And there was in Panama, even the school | 33:21 | |
of the Americas where torture techniques were taught | 33:23 | |
to Latin American military leaders, et cetera. | 33:26 | |
So I loved the United States. | 33:30 | |
On the one hand I was studying there, I | 33:34 | |
there are so many positive things, but I also know | 33:36 | |
that the United States always has been involved | 33:40 | |
in human rights violations. | 33:43 | |
But they always would deny. | 33:44 | |
Whenever there were any kind | 33:48 | |
of more evidence that culture was taught | 33:50 | |
by US military in Panama, they denied it. | 33:53 | |
And now, and that's the new kind | 33:57 | |
of that there was a paradigm shift | 34:01 | |
under the Bush administration that all of a sudden | 34:02 | |
they no longer denied it. | 34:06 | |
They simply tried to justify it | 34:08 | |
with the help of Alan Dershowitz | 34:12 | |
and other famous professors with the help of the media. | 34:15 | |
So kind of saying 911 | 34:19 | |
is a totally different situation. | 34:23 | |
Now we are in a global war on terror | 34:24 | |
this whole war paradigm saying we are attacked | 34:25 | |
for the first time after Pearl Harbor | 34:29 | |
there was an attack on the soil of the United States | 34:32 | |
of America and a situation where somebody | 34:34 | |
like Bush was in office that created a new narrative. | 34:38 | |
And that was so dangerous because saying, I mean | 34:44 | |
if it's for a good cause then torture might be | 34:50 | |
the lesser might be the lesser evil. | 34:53 | |
And that was never before we have seen it a little bit | 34:56 | |
in Israel with the London commission | 34:58 | |
we have seen it a little bit | 35:01 | |
with the British and in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. | 35:02 | |
But it was never that clear | 35:06 | |
that there is a government saying this might be | 35:08 | |
an absolute prohibition under international law | 35:12 | |
but we are in an exceptional situation. | 35:15 | |
We are no longer bound by international law. | 35:17 | |
They said, we are not bound | 35:20 | |
by international human rights law | 35:23 | |
because we are in a global war. | 35:24 | |
So only the laws of war are applying it, | 35:26 | |
even them, we are not really | 35:30 | |
they are no longer up to these new challenges. | 35:33 | |
So we have to create new ideas of illegal enemy combatants | 35:35 | |
who are neither competitors nor civilians, | 35:40 | |
which is an, a category that doesn't exist | 35:43 | |
under international humanitarian law. | 35:47 | |
So they said all of a sudden | 35:48 | |
that Guantanamo bay is outside even the protection | 35:50 | |
of the US constitution, but of course | 35:53 | |
even more outside the protection of International Law. | 35:55 | |
So creating such a space | 35:58 | |
where law simply does not apply anymore | 36:03 | |
outside the rule of law, that was something new. | 36:07 | |
That's what I have never seen at least in such an open way | 36:09 | |
of any earlier US administration and that frightened us. | 36:13 | |
And also the fact that in the years, between 2001, when | 36:17 | |
of course there was a lot of sympathy, a worldwide sympathy. | 36:22 | |
I mean, the security council in resolution 1373 was very | 36:26 | |
very clearly supporting the Bush administration | 36:31 | |
in saying that is legitimate self-defense | 36:35 | |
that you start an armed conflict | 36:38 | |
in Afghanistan against the Taliban regime, | 36:39 | |
because the Taliban were actually providing | 36:42 | |
shelter to Al-Qaeda. | 36:46 | |
So there was a unanimous decision | 36:48 | |
by the security council for the first time that article five | 36:51 | |
of the Native Treaty was actually involved. | 36:54 | |
So for collective security, all the native states | 36:57 | |
had an obligation to assist United States to fight this type | 36:59 | |
of terrorism, this fight, this type of attacks. | 37:05 | |
So there was a lot of sympathy | 37:08 | |
for George W. Bush and at the same time | 37:10 | |
that meant that the different kind of checks and balances | 37:14 | |
for which the US are so pound and rightly proud | 37:18 | |
in the U S constitution were not working anymore. | 37:21 | |
The churches in the first years that traditionally | 37:25 | |
was not willing or able to really like | 37:30 | |
what they do now with Trump. | 37:33 | |
Trump says this immigration ban and the next day | 37:35 | |
or two days later, the American Civil Liberties Union | 37:38 | |
in bringing a legal litigation. | 37:42 | |
And then the judges decided, no | 37:43 | |
this is violating the constitution. | 37:45 | |
At that time nobody did that. | 37:48 | |
And the same was also with Congress. | 37:50 | |
So both Congress, the judges and the media | 37:52 | |
the media in the first years, we are not speaking out. | 37:57 | |
So we really had to feeling | 38:00 | |
that it was a dangerous situation | 38:01 | |
that America could actually lose its checks and balances | 38:03 | |
and they executive power would be too dominant. | 38:08 | |
And that changed slowly with Abu Ghraib and with Wazul. | 38:12 | |
So in 2004, so exactly at the time | 38:15 | |
when I was appointed a special rapporteur on torture. | 38:18 | |
Interviewer | So I'll go into that next, | 38:21 |
but I just want to reiterate what you just said. | 38:23 | |
It was frightening to you to see what was going on | 38:25 | |
in those first few years. | 38:28 | |
It was frightening, because if the US is not | 38:29 | |
following the rule of law, is that frightening? | 38:32 | |
Is it, is this something? | 38:35 | |
- | No it has so much power, and so much power | 38:36 |
in the president. | 38:40 | |
And of course the vice president, Dick Cheney | 38:42 | |
but also Donald Rumsfeld. | 38:46 | |
And then, I mean, we are speaking today of a post truth | 38:50 | |
of post-factual discourse, but if you read these memos | 38:52 | |
of John Yau or J Baby or Blackberry later | 38:56 | |
that's post-factual discourse, I mean, it's simply | 39:00 | |
unimaginable that a lawyer and a, I mean, John Yau | 39:03 | |
was from Yale University, many writing things | 39:09 | |
that are so absurd, it's absolutely absurd, | 39:12 | |
what they are writing in order to justify a policy saying, | 39:15 | |
I mean, really turning around international humanitarian | 39:20 | |
law, turning around the definition of torture, | 39:24 | |
which is very in the US is a party | 39:27 | |
to the UN convention against torture | 39:30 | |
which is very, very clear torture means | 39:32 | |
to deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering | 39:36 | |
for a particular purpose, full stop. | 39:38 | |
And then they say, yeah, severe means most | 39:41 | |
severe excruciating pain. | 39:44 | |
You're similar to organ failure similarly. | 39:46 | |
So if you're not half dead, then it can be torture. | 39:49 | |
I mean, that high level lawyer in lawyers | 39:54 | |
in the justice department are writing this kind | 39:57 | |
of nonsense that frightened me. | 39:59 | |
And that was used by Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney | 40:03 | |
to justify their deep into irrigation techniques, | 40:07 | |
which they then started with Abusuvaida, was the first one. | 40:10 | |
And also outsourcing to private security companies. | 40:15 | |
Those were private individuals who did the dirty work also | 40:19 | |
for the CIA. | 40:22 | |
So all that together I felt was frightening. | 40:23 | |
Interviewer | And the fact that we used other countries | 40:28 |
to torture for us you know, | 40:30 | |
in the extraordinary condition that attitude. | 40:33 | |
- | Yes, the same, of course, on the one hand building | 40:36 |
up this spider web of secret places of detention | 40:41 | |
we did another study after the Guantanamo study | 40:45 | |
we did in 2010, a joint study on secret detention | 40:48 | |
in the fight against terrorism, not only on the US, | 40:52 | |
but we identified 66 countries around the world | 40:55 | |
and many of them were close allies | 40:58 | |
to the United States, including in Europe. | 41:00 | |
So we're, it was clearly established what the council | 41:03 | |
of Europe had already said before the Poland, Romania, | 41:07 | |
Lithuania, as three European countries were actually | 41:10 | |
housing black sites of the CIA, but also countries | 41:13 | |
like Thailand, of course, Afghanistan, | 41:18 | |
and many others were closely collaborating | 41:19 | |
in allowing the CIA to run black sites where the high level | 41:23 | |
detainees were tortured, but also an I | 41:28 | |
think high level CIA officials once said | 41:32 | |
it very, very clearly. | 41:33 | |
I mean, we still have certain limits. | 41:34 | |
We are not applying every method of torture. | 41:37 | |
And if we still feel that they are not starting to speak | 41:40 | |
then we send them to other countries | 41:44 | |
and we are very very clear if you send them to Egypt | 41:47 | |
if you send them to Syria | 41:50 | |
if you send them to Morocco, we get different type of | 41:51 | |
so if you want them to survive, but still speak. | 41:54 | |
So they knew exactly. | 41:57 | |
And if you read it the same time | 41:59 | |
the state department reports on the human rights situation | 42:00 | |
in those countries, you find the most accurate descriptions | 42:05 | |
of some of the worst human, worst torture methods in Egypt | 42:10 | |
in Syria, in Morocco and in other countries, | 42:14 | |
which were at the same time close allies | 42:19 | |
of the United States. | 42:22 | |
Where they would send those detainees where they felt | 42:23 | |
with their own methods, they couldn't make them speak. | 42:28 | |
And then they send them there | 42:31 | |
in order for them to torture them, that's torture by proxy. | 42:32 | |
And then the CIA people was kind of | 42:36 | |
outside the door and when they were ready | 42:39 | |
then they were taking the interviews. | 42:41 | |
And then we found those Binyam Mohammed for instances | 42:43 | |
a good example of one of them who was tortured in Morocco | 42:48 | |
in the most, the most unbelievable undescribable manner | 42:53 | |
before he was actually speaking | 42:57 | |
to the British and Americans, not only the Americans. | 43:00 | |
Interviewer | So you're saying that it wasn't arbitrary | 43:04 |
if they chose Syria or Egypt or Lithuania, it was delivered | 43:07 | |
on the kind of torture that company participated in. | 43:12 | |
- | Not Lithuania, I think are they only try to find | 43:16 |
European countries which are so closely related. | 43:20 | |
We couldn't say no, a country like Lithuania | 43:24 | |
which was a bold country to be just a liberated | 43:27 | |
from the Soviet Union. | 43:32 | |
And so they were very grateful | 43:34 | |
to NATO and the United States. | 43:36 | |
So for them, it was difficult to say no. | 43:37 | |
Poland is traditionally a country that has very | 43:39 | |
very close links to the United States. | 43:43 | |
So again, that was the reason, in my opinion | 43:45 | |
why they established these black sites there | 43:47 | |
because the governments and I talked to president Kaczyński | 43:50 | |
and others about this because I was very much interested | 43:55 | |
in of course these black sites. | 43:59 | |
So they failed, they kind of had no other choice | 44:01 | |
as doing that. | 44:04 | |
But of course, if they sent them to Syria | 44:07 | |
they knew exactly what would happen. | 44:10 | |
And many of those extraordinary rendition cases were sent | 44:12 | |
Myahafor instance, not a famous case who was sent first | 44:18 | |
to Jordan, but then the idea was to bring him | 44:22 | |
because he was half German and half, not half Canadian | 44:25 | |
and half Syrian that he was then finally bought | 44:29 | |
from Jordan to Syria in order to be tortured. | 44:33 | |
The only reason was torturing. | 44:36 | |
And then they find out is the wrong guy. | 44:37 | |
But that is often the same as Cardell Mazi | 44:39 | |
the German Lebanese guy who was kind of arrested | 44:41 | |
in Macedonia and then sent to Afghanistan. | 44:47 | |
And he was in the, in the salt pit. | 44:53 | |
So one of the worst of, of those, of those black sites | 44:56 | |
almost as bad as what I found was the worst | 45:01 | |
was really the prison of darkness in Kabul. | 45:03 | |
Interviewer | That was the worst for you, | 45:07 |
the prison of darkness in Kabul. | 45:09 | |
- | Yeah according to all the information that I received | 45:10 |
from former detainees in the prison of darkness | 45:12 | |
it was absolutely mad. | 45:17 | |
Interviewer | Why was that the worst? | 45:19 |
- | Because it was absolutely dark. | 45:20 |
So you were, and some people were kept | 45:22 | |
for quite a long period of time. | 45:25 | |
Absolutely dark. | 45:26 | |
So some people told me you were | 45:28 | |
you couldn't see your hand here. | 45:31 | |
So you were only trying, sometimes they were shackled. | 45:33 | |
They couldn't even move around. | 45:36 | |
But then you were trying to find how big is the cell where | 45:37 | |
I mean, because you didn't know | 45:41 | |
and all of a sudden you're bumped with your head | 45:43 | |
against the wall. | 45:46 | |
And, and one of these persons | 45:47 | |
they said the only way was humor to laugh about yourself | 45:49 | |
to own stability, to survive. | 45:53 | |
But what was even worse is you had no contact whatsoever. | 45:55 | |
Also the prison guards were wearing black dresses | 45:58 | |
black gloves, and you had no personal contact even | 46:04 | |
gave you a step black clothes, gloves, the food. | 46:08 | |
So a small opening into your cell. | 46:12 | |
So yet they didn't talk to you whatsoever | 46:14 | |
but then you was objected 24 hours a day | 46:17 | |
to very very heavy music or noise. | 46:20 | |
And that makes you crazy. | 46:25 | |
So that is, and I, I tested them. | 46:28 | |
I said, but what does it mean with the loud noise, how loud? | 46:31 | |
And it was Pool Springsteen, or I don't know | 46:35 | |
M and M or heavy metal, whatever | 46:39 | |
but classical American music that knew | 46:42 | |
that that would be for them very for them torture | 46:45 | |
to have to listen to them 24 hours. | 46:48 | |
And they said, it is if you | 46:50 | |
if you have been in, in a very, very loud disco | 46:52 | |
so where you feel it with physically | 46:55 | |
the noise of the music, the vibrations, et cetera, | 46:58 | |
it's not as bad. | 47:04 | |
But if you're sitting in this room | 47:05 | |
and just next door is a very, very loud disco. | 47:07 | |
So you still feel it physically the vibration | 47:11 | |
but not as loud, but if you have the 24 hours a day | 47:16 | |
and that for weeks and months, it makes you | 47:20 | |
it makes you totally losing your senses and those. | 47:25 | |
So I admire, they said many of them simply got mad. | 47:30 | |
And those who survived for some, I talk to said | 47:34 | |
it's only possible if you're very religious. | 47:38 | |
They said the only way was kind of meditation | 47:41 | |
and getting in my own world of religion, praying and humor. | 47:45 | |
So that was the other side of the way. | 47:51 | |
So I do, according to my knowledge | 47:54 | |
and I have been speaking | 47:57 | |
to quite many persons who have been detained | 47:59 | |
in this black sites, in Jordan, in Thailand | 48:03 | |
and et cetera, I personally feel that was the worst. | 48:08 | |
Interviewer | You know, this is the question | 48:13 |
I was gonna ask you 'cause I want to talk about your work. | 48:16 | |
But what many detainees were kind of told us is | 48:20 | |
that trauma was a psychological prison | 48:23 | |
even though it had physical torture, that's how they saw it | 48:26 | |
especially after they left and then looked back. | 48:29 | |
And would you describing in the black site | 48:31 | |
with all darkness is psychological more | 48:34 | |
than physical or not? | 48:38 | |
I don't know what said how, when you would see it. | 48:40 | |
So in fact | 48:41 | |
would you think the psychological torture maybe is worse | 48:43 | |
which is kind of what you're saying? | 48:48 | |
I don't, I don't wanna qualitative. | 48:50 | |
- | Yeah, you can't, you can't really distinguish. | 48:53 |
So every physical torture, is also a psychological torture. | 48:56 | |
Not every psychologically torture | 49:01 | |
also physically torture. | 49:03 | |
But varying toward the line is very very difficult. | 49:04 | |
To give you an example in Guantanamo Bay, | 49:07 | |
many people said for us the worst | 49:11 | |
was the extreme temperatures. | 49:15 | |
So you are first you are put in the heat | 49:18 | |
of Cuba in an open cage, simply exposed to the sun. | 49:22 | |
And then you were put for three days | 49:28 | |
in a closed container where the air condition was fully on | 49:30 | |
you were stripped naked. | 49:36 | |
You had no blanket. | 49:38 | |
You had nothing to protect yourself | 49:39 | |
and three days in this refrigerator. | 49:41 | |
They said it was, it is you're feeling completely helpless. | 49:45 | |
You are shivering, you cannot protect yourself. | 49:49 | |
And is this physical? | 49:53 | |
Is it mental? | 49:56 | |
It's probably physical because it's the physical pain | 49:57 | |
but they never were touched by anybody, | 50:00 | |
we're just put in there. | 50:02 | |
Or if you are people told me for weeks that they were | 50:03 | |
that was the called sleep deprivation. | 50:10 | |
But every 15 minutes | 50:12 | |
when they just start to sleep, they were woken | 50:13 | |
up and pause just from one cell to another cell. | 50:17 | |
15 minutes later, again, that goes on for weeks. | 50:21 | |
It's of a psychological form of torture. | 50:24 | |
But again, you're physically moved. | 50:28 | |
So where, where is the | 50:30 | |
so if you have to stand for a long time against the wall | 50:33 | |
and you're not allowed to move, but you know | 50:39 | |
if you're sitting down, you will be beaten up | 50:41 | |
but you are not beaten up. | 50:45 | |
You stand or you stand in a stress position. | 50:47 | |
I would call it both physically and mental of course, | 50:50 | |
classical mental forms where the use of individual phobia. | 50:55 | |
And that was, it was all written | 51:01 | |
in Donald Rumsfeld's kind of orders. | 51:03 | |
What are the, what are the methods that they allowed? | 51:10 | |
So when they came to Guantanamo, they had a very | 51:15 | |
thorough psychiatric or psychological investigation. | 51:18 | |
So they asked them in a very nice way, how are you | 51:23 | |
and whatever, any kind of problems in your childhood | 51:27 | |
and in order to find out any kind of phobia. | 51:30 | |
So if somebody is clostophobic | 51:34 | |
then he was put in a very narrow cage. | 51:39 | |
For a clostophobic person who is afraid | 51:41 | |
to go into an elevator and would prefer to go up 10 floors. | 51:45 | |
So rather than going into the elevator | 51:51 | |
it's terrible to be in a very small cage. | 51:53 | |
Is this physical or is it mental torture? | 51:56 | |
It's probably, again, both. | 52:01 | |
If you are and then again, animals. | 52:03 | |
If you are afraid of dogs, et cetera | 52:07 | |
then you've blindfolded in yourself and they opened the door | 52:10 | |
and a dog was bought into your cell. | 52:13 | |
Again, if you are not afraid of dogs | 52:20 | |
that probably is not torture. | 52:23 | |
If you are terribly afraid of dogs and you're smelling | 52:27 | |
and hearing and whatever, and you don't know what happens | 52:28 | |
because you're blindfolded, you're naked. | 52:31 | |
You're terribly, that's torture | 52:33 | |
it's severe pain or suffering. | 52:36 | |
So it's, so all those kind of mental | 52:38 | |
and physical torture methods are really interlinked. | 52:45 | |
Many people, not only in Guantanamo bay | 52:49 | |
but whom I victims and survivors of tortures | 52:54 | |
whom I interviewed said the worst actually | 52:58 | |
is the time before you're tortured. | 53:00 | |
So you are, let's say you are arrested | 53:03 | |
and you are brought into an interrogation room. | 53:07 | |
And then you are, again, strip naked. | 53:10 | |
You are handcuffed. | 53:12 | |
You are, might be suspended somewhere. | 53:13 | |
And you're simply told you should tell us. | 53:16 | |
And usually it is you should confess a crime | 53:21 | |
or you should give us information. | 53:24 | |
And then they say, please, and they are very nice. | 53:26 | |
They offer you cigarettes. | 53:28 | |
They say whatever ,coffee and tell us. | 53:30 | |
And so, but then they always say, yeah | 53:34 | |
but if you're not telling us the truth | 53:36 | |
we can use other methods. | 53:39 | |
And then you hear people already screaming | 53:41 | |
from the next door who have been tortured. | 53:43 | |
So, you know, it's an atmosphere that torture is practiced | 53:46 | |
but you yourself are not yet. | 53:51 | |
So many people then finally | 53:53 | |
that can take three days, four days | 53:56 | |
five days and nights and whatever. | 53:58 | |
And you never know, am I not to be beaten up? | 53:58 | |
Or am I not? | 54:02 | |
Am I suspended and subjected to electric shocks? | 54:03 | |
And many of them said, this fear | 54:06 | |
of being tortured is worse than so for them | 54:09 | |
it was a relief when they finally were beaten up | 54:11 | |
and they start to beat them. And then they had the feeling | 54:15 | |
perhaps the beating was less worse or less bad | 54:18 | |
as they would have actually expected in their dreams. | 54:20 | |
So before that is psychologically torture. | 54:24 | |
You are threatened, you might be tortured. | 54:29 | |
And then afterwards it comes to physical torture. | 54:32 | |
So that's why I'm saying also physical torture | 54:34 | |
is always result psychological torture | 54:38 | |
and it's but often psychologically torture | 54:40 | |
is more effective than physically beatings. | 54:43 | |
I give you another example | 54:49 | |
Calleg Jai Mohammed, Alex mastermind. | 54:51 | |
He's still not really convicted, but behind 911 | 54:54 | |
according to information that I have received | 55:00 | |
I think he was subjected if I'm correct, 173 times | 55:03 | |
to waterboarding. | 55:10 | |
And waterboarding is even if president Bush still maintains | 55:11 | |
it's not torture or Trump, probably the same. | 55:17 | |
It is one of the classical torture methods | 55:21 | |
which was used already in the Spanish inquisition. | 55:23 | |
So if you read historical books of torture methods | 55:25 | |
you always find the waterboarding, | 55:29 | |
it was called differently at that time. | 55:31 | |
But it's same just dropping water | 55:33 | |
on your head for a long period of time | 55:35 | |
or actually putting you on a board | 55:37 | |
and drowning you and getting you out again, whatever. | 55:39 | |
And he still didn't speak. | 55:43 | |
So he must be a very tough guy. | 55:49 | |
I've never met him. | 55:52 | |
So, but then they arrested his family. | 55:54 | |
And then they threatened to torture his kids | 55:59 | |
and he broke down. | 56:03 | |
So that's an example. | 56:06 | |
So of course, torturing the kids, it's physically tortured | 56:08 | |
in front of him or whipping your wife. | 56:12 | |
That is what they often did in many, in Bosnia, et cetera, | 56:15 | |
to humiliate you | 56:19 | |
but also because they want something from you. | 56:21 | |
But for moment, this was psychologically torture. | 56:25 | |
So he was stood diverse forms of physically torture | 56:28 | |
but he immediately started to talk when there was | 56:33 | |
only the threat that his children would actually be tortured | 56:37 | |
in front of him. | 56:40 | |
Interviewer | Do you think I've heard this? | 56:43 |
So I wonder what your opinion is that America was innovative | 56:44 | |
in psychological torture, would you say yes? | 56:49 | |
- | Yes I think they built | 56:52 |
upon what the British security forces developed | 56:54 | |
in their fight | 56:58 | |
against the Irish Republican army in Northern Ireland. | 57:00 | |
And the build upon what Israel, | 57:04 | |
Israel security and intelligence forces developed | 57:08 | |
as psychological forms of torture against the Palestinians. | 57:10 | |
And of course | 57:18 | |
they also relied upon the earlier experiences. | 57:19 | |
As I said, also in this school, in the | 57:22 | |
in the Panama's school, there were not only physical | 57:25 | |
but also mental torture that was applied | 57:27 | |
to the left-wing gallery on other opposition cops | 57:30 | |
in Latin America, in all those countries. | 57:34 | |
So, and they had also this survey program | 57:41 | |
which was meant to make American soldiers strong | 57:46 | |
in reacting to torture methods against them. | 57:53 | |
John McCain was of course, speaker of that also. | 58:00 | |
And but that's totally difficult different. | 58:05 | |
Now, if I know that this is simply | 58:08 | |
I can always get out of it. | 58:11 | |
That is, and that was what Rumsfeld actually said. | 58:13 | |
I mean, if our soldiers are actually subjected | 58:17 | |
to the same type of methods, then of course | 58:20 | |
why shouldn't be applied it as well now. | 58:23 | |
So that's, but that is simply again, does not make sense | 58:27 | |
because it's a totally different situation. | 58:31 | |
And in classic torture situation | 58:33 | |
you simply don't know how far they are going | 58:36 | |
and you cannot yourself say no, no | 58:37 | |
please stop this experiment. | 58:39 | |
Interviewer | Would you say given, | 58:42 |
I think I just wanna follow up. | 58:43 | |
Would you say that Guantanamo | 58:45 | |
was it experimental prison to try to experiment, | 58:47 | |
to try some of these new methods | 58:50 | |
to see how effective they are? | 58:53 | |
- | Definitely that played a role, | 58:55 |
but I think more actually in the black sites, | 58:59 | |
but also also Guantanamo Bay, | 59:02 | |
certainly they tried out new methods in | 59:04 | |
in seeing how effective they were and also how the kind | 59:06 | |
of reaction would be from the legal profession | 59:14 | |
both in the United States and outside. | 59:18 | |
So how far they were stretching the limits | 59:20 | |
or we saying, I mean, I mean, Bush said we don't torture. | 59:22 | |
It's simply not torture. | 59:26 | |
So how far can we go deep into irrigation methods? | 59:28 | |
And also how effective is it | 59:31 | |
in order to get useful information? | 59:37 | |
And there is one, I think important element that is, I mean | 59:40 | |
torture was abolished in the light of, | 59:47 | |
in the age of enlightenment, because it was | 59:52 | |
in the old days in your inquisition, you simply to get an | 59:56 | |
a confession of a crime that you have actually committed | 1:00:03 | |
and they are, it's totally useless | 1:00:07 | |
because it only depends how strong you are. | 1:00:09 | |
And it doesn't tell you anything about the truth. | 1:00:12 | |
So that's why in the whole fight against torture, | 1:00:14 | |
many people said torture is totally unuseful | 1:00:19 | |
from a utilitarian perspective, we should abolish it. | 1:00:22 | |
That's true for the criminal justice process. | 1:00:29 | |
But it's not true for intelligence. | 1:00:32 | |
So if the fight against torture is purely based | 1:00:34 | |
on this utilitarian arguments, then it is very weak | 1:00:39 | |
because of course a good intelligence officer | 1:00:43 | |
can get useful information by using torture | 1:00:48 | |
or by threatening somebody with torture. | 1:00:53 | |
And they are very, I mean | 1:00:55 | |
they say is, is very, very sophisticated. | 1:00:56 | |
So if you you're, you're not simply asking this question. | 1:00:59 | |
So you're asking questions where you know the answer | 1:01:03 | |
and then you see what the person saying | 1:01:09 | |
and you know exactly whether he's lying or not. | 1:01:11 | |
And then you're telling him that's a lie | 1:01:14 | |
and they can prove because I have the proof here | 1:01:17 | |
and then you are getting unsure | 1:01:19 | |
because you don't know how much I know. | 1:01:22 | |
So I go always one step further, I'd put your | 1:01:25 | |
the next question used it. | 1:01:28 | |
You don't know, do I know the answer you again, lie | 1:01:28 | |
and I show you you're lying. | 1:01:31 | |
And then I'm getting strong. | 1:01:33 | |
I'm saying, if you lie again | 1:01:34 | |
and then we are putting some stronger means | 1:01:37 | |
of torture, et cetera. | 1:01:39 | |
And then, so, and then you might, | 1:01:40 | |
I as an intelligence officer, I might get very | 1:01:43 | |
useful information from you because you are afraid | 1:01:47 | |
and you don't know what I know already | 1:01:50 | |
and you simply decide in order to avoid torture | 1:01:53 | |
to tell me the truth about a future terrorist attack | 1:01:55 | |
about any kind of intelligence information | 1:01:59 | |
that I want to have from you. | 1:02:02 | |
But again, I cannot a hundred percent rely on that. | 1:02:04 | |
So, but the point that I'm making the fight | 1:02:09 | |
against torture must be more than utilitarian. | 1:02:11 | |
It must be based on moral and legal arguments. | 1:02:14 | |
There are good reasons why torture is absolutely prohibited | 1:02:17 | |
under international law, because as soon | 1:02:21 | |
as you only allow torture in the very, very isolated case | 1:02:25 | |
when the ticking bomb scenarios that you are sitting there | 1:02:31 | |
and you're the only one who has the code to the bomb. | 1:02:35 | |
And if I don't get the code from you | 1:02:38 | |
then thousands of people are dying. | 1:02:40 | |
So this, this kind of scenarios | 1:02:43 | |
but as soon as you allow it in this one scenario | 1:02:46 | |
it spreads you open Bundaberg Pandora's box. | 1:02:49 | |
And that is the experience we have | 1:02:53 | |
from the Nazis that we have from so many we have | 1:02:55 | |
from Latin America, from the French Algeria, | 1:02:58 | |
from so many, so many historically cases | 1:03:03 | |
that that's why it is, it is even better | 1:03:08 | |
that if I don't get the code from you, | 1:03:12 | |
then those people die. | 1:03:16 | |
Then to really breaks a taboo | 1:03:18 | |
and that is the absolute prohibition of torture. | 1:03:21 | |
And that's exactly what the Americans did | 1:03:24 | |
if you speak to many of the CIA officers | 1:03:26 | |
and was a military who were involved | 1:03:29 | |
in the torture program, that is a, we didn't know anymore. | 1:03:32 | |
And as soon as I | 1:03:35 | |
I interviewed also quite a number of those people | 1:03:37 | |
who who said at the beginning, I didn't want to participate. | 1:03:40 | |
And then I was kind of forced. | 1:03:44 | |
And then you, if you, once cross the redline | 1:03:46 | |
you lose your moral or other restrictions | 1:03:51 | |
and you simply go on and that's also what the Stanford | 1:03:55 | |
the Milgram experiment clearly shows. | 1:03:57 | |
So as soon as you say, okay, for a good | 1:03:59 | |
cause I do it, then you're becoming a torturer. | 1:04:03 | |
Interviewer | Well, will it ever be put back in their box? | 1:04:08 |
It looks like it's always, yeah never, night. | 1:04:11 | |
- | I think Obama did his best to really stop it. | 1:04:14 |
I think Obama did very much to change the policy | 1:04:20 | |
to stop the black sides | 1:04:26 | |
to stop the torture methods, to give different order. | 1:04:29 | |
He even said within one year I will close down Guantanamo | 1:04:33 | |
but in my opinion was we did not his fault. | 1:04:38 | |
It was the fault of Congress | 1:04:41 | |
and the governors and the public opinion, et cetera. | 1:04:43 | |
So I, my opinion he did his best. | 1:04:47 | |
So he did quite a lot to put it back into the box | 1:04:50 | |
but I think he made one major mistake. | 1:04:55 | |
In my opinion, is | 1:04:59 | |
that he never started to really investigate | 1:05:03 | |
by special prosecutor or whatever to really look | 1:05:06 | |
into what happened during the Bush administration aimed | 1:05:12 | |
at going the main perpetrators to justice. | 1:05:16 | |
I think he should have done that to deal with the past. | 1:05:18 | |
And he always said, no, we stopped for the future | 1:05:20 | |
but we are not looking into the past. | 1:05:23 | |
And when, and that is important | 1:05:25 | |
for also the American society to be confronted | 1:05:29 | |
with it's it's like in a post-conflict situation | 1:05:33 | |
in other countries. | 1:05:36 | |
It is your need in, you need to find out the truth | 1:05:37 | |
and that UN investigative body can do something | 1:05:42 | |
but the US is more than any other country | 1:05:49 | |
relies on its own investigations. | 1:05:52 | |
And it, I remember very well when I had a long discussion | 1:05:56 | |
with Diane Feinstein in Congress, when she was the head | 1:06:02 | |
of the Senate intelligence committee starting | 1:06:07 | |
it was at the beginning when she started this investigation. | 1:06:11 | |
And I said, but I am | 1:06:14 | |
we already did quite a lot and can we not join forces? | 1:06:17 | |
Can, you know? | 1:06:20 | |
And then she looked at me. | 1:06:22 | |
So I see it still looked to me and said, young man. | 1:06:24 | |
She said, young man, I | 1:06:28 | |
didn't know whether I should be flattered | 1:06:30 | |
or whether it was meant as a degrading statement. | 1:06:32 | |
Young man we know in the United States | 1:06:36 | |
we know how to do that. | 1:06:38 | |
We don't need the United Nations. | 1:06:41 | |
We don't need you to tell us what to do. | 1:06:43 | |
That was the on Feinstein who did quite a lot. | 1:06:46 | |
She was the mayor of San Francisco. | 1:06:48 | |
She was a Democrat. | 1:06:51 | |
She was, and finally producing a very, very good report. | 1:06:52 | |
Only parts have been published so far | 1:06:57 | |
but she said by every kind | 1:07:00 | |
of general sense of the torture, what happened in | 1:07:02 | |
in the CIA program can only be described as torture. | 1:07:10 | |
That's what she writes in her introduction. | 1:07:14 | |
And then it goes, so | 1:07:17 | |
and they say still to have all blacked it out | 1:07:20 | |
and they call it whatever orange or brown or whatever. | 1:07:22 | |
But if you read it together with our report | 1:07:26 | |
on secret detention to fight against terrorism, | 1:07:28 | |
then you just know what is cobalt | 1:07:33 | |
and what is blue and what is green and what is brown. | 1:07:35 | |
So it's very clear about which black sites | 1:07:37 | |
we are talking now. | 1:07:40 | |
So Hurley posted quite a lot, but it was much later already. | 1:07:43 | |
And when it was published in December, 2013 or 14 | 1:07:46 | |
I think it was already fairly late. | 1:07:52 | |
I think it should have been done very early | 1:07:55 | |
by an independent investigator, both aimed | 1:07:58 | |
at bringing it the perpetrators to justice | 1:08:03 | |
and not just a small fish, like in our book gripe | 1:08:04 | |
but also the people in the high | 1:08:06 | |
both political and military hierarchy and CIA hierarchy | 1:08:11 | |
but also to provide civil advice to the victims | 1:08:16 | |
of extraordinary renditions and torture. | 1:08:19 | |
I think that would have been a candidiasis. | 1:08:23 | |
It would have been very important for the American society | 1:08:27 | |
perhaps if that would have taken place. I don't know. | 1:08:31 | |
The last elections might have been different. | 1:08:33 | |
Interviewer | Well, what's it the American side. | 1:08:34 |
They didn't want to face up to that. | 1:08:37 | |
Should the government still go forward anyway? | 1:08:40 | |
- | Yes, I think the American public | 1:08:44 |
was very much indoctrinated I should say | 1:08:47 | |
by the government on the one hand | 1:08:51 | |
but also by many media channel, 24, et cetera. | 1:08:53 | |
So torture was really portrayed by many | 1:08:57 | |
of these also series as the lesser evil. | 1:09:01 | |
Now, if, if the good | 1:09:09 | |
the good guy who is always on the right side | 1:09:10 | |
and he is using torture and it always helps by torture | 1:09:13 | |
he finds the bad people and he's a hero, you know? | 1:09:17 | |
And I think to then get the other story | 1:09:22 | |
from an American, but independent investigator, | 1:09:28 | |
like I mean, you have very good people | 1:09:33 | |
in the United States when it was about Monica Levinsky | 1:09:35 | |
at Stan Hare and others who do so, why not | 1:09:38 | |
for this having an really independent investigators | 1:09:42 | |
all the powers from Congress to do that. | 1:09:45 | |
So it wouldn't have, so Obama could have said, it's not me. | 1:09:48 | |
It's not Eric Stover. | 1:09:52 | |
It's not the department of justice. | 1:09:54 | |
It's a totally independent and impartial. | 1:09:56 | |
They could be from the Republicans | 1:10:00 | |
whatever who is carrying out this investigation. | 1:10:01 | |
I simply want that this is coming | 1:10:05 | |
that the truth is actually established. | 1:10:08 | |
Whatever we do then in terms | 1:10:11 | |
of criminal or civil education afterwards. | 1:10:12 | |
Interviewer | Well, I think now's a good time | 1:10:15 |
for you to tell us about your report | 1:10:18 | |
and how you got involved in that | 1:10:20 | |
and how you got pushed back and so on. | 1:10:23 | |
Maybe you could tell us about that. | 1:10:25 | |
- | That was one of the most interesting experiences | 1:10:28 |
of my life. | 1:10:31 | |
I must say, as I said, I inherited it. | 1:10:32 | |
The had started already in 2003, | 1:10:34 | |
they from both of my predecessor, but those others | 1:10:37 | |
there was the special rapporteur on a religious freedom | 1:10:40 | |
of religion, Asmutcher Hunky from Pakistan. | 1:10:45 | |
There was the working group on arbitrary detention | 1:10:49 | |
where Layla Zehugi from Algeria was the chairperson, | 1:10:51 | |
the special rapporteur to house or hunt, | 1:10:57 | |
the special rapporteur on the independence | 1:11:01 | |
of the judicially for this whatever bodies were dealing with | 1:11:05 | |
with Guantanamo detainees from Argentina. | 1:11:10 | |
So there were many different people. | 1:11:15 | |
And then I simply took over from Boven. | 1:11:16 | |
So they had started already | 1:11:20 | |
and we approached the US government. | 1:11:23 | |
We said, we want to do a joint report. | 1:11:27 | |
We were still at that time | 1:11:30 | |
still human rights commissioner just before | 1:11:32 | |
the time when the human rights council was established | 1:11:34 | |
we would like to do an independent investigation | 1:11:36 | |
into Guantanamo Bay, post deprivation of liberty | 1:11:40 | |
but health torture, freedom of religion, et cetera. | 1:11:42 | |
The US government was hostile. | 1:11:47 | |
They said, no, we are not, we are | 1:11:49 | |
we are not cooperating with you. | 1:11:51 | |
And that was a lot of my task | 1:11:53 | |
in really negotiating with them. | 1:11:56 | |
And I knew many of them. | 1:11:58 | |
I knew John Ballenger and I knew | 1:12:01 | |
so I had in my earlier UN functions, very much cooperated | 1:12:03 | |
with the US with different US governments. | 1:12:10 | |
So we had many negotiations and then they said, okay | 1:12:13 | |
we start to cooperate a bit. | 1:12:19 | |
We give you some information | 1:12:21 | |
which at that time was not yet declassified. | 1:12:24 | |
And then we said, but in order to really know | 1:12:26 | |
we have to go to Guantanamo Bay. | 1:12:28 | |
So that was the biggest issue. | 1:12:31 | |
Would we be allowed to visit Guantanamo Bay? | 1:12:32 | |
And there, we had many, many negotiations | 1:12:36 | |
both in Washington, but also in New York and in Geneva. | 1:12:40 | |
And for me the most a memorable experience | 1:12:45 | |
was when we then said we invite you in, | 1:12:50 | |
I was elected as the chair of this group elect as a, | 1:12:53 | |
we invite you to come | 1:12:58 | |
to the headquarters of the United Nations. | 1:12:59 | |
And there we have negotiations. | 1:13:00 | |
There were people from the Pentagon, from the department | 1:13:03 | |
of justice, from the national security council | 1:13:06 | |
from of course the state department, they were all coming. | 1:13:10 | |
And then they said, yeah, you know, it's difficult | 1:13:15 | |
for us to enter the United Nations. | 1:13:20 | |
Can we not do that in the UN mission in New York? | 1:13:22 | |
And I said, no. | 1:13:25 | |
I said, we invite you. | 1:13:27 | |
It's a UN investigation. | 1:13:29 | |
So finally, so they played all kinds of games to, of course | 1:13:31 | |
if it would have been in the UN mission | 1:13:35 | |
they would have been in charge. | 1:13:37 | |
So there I was chairing this meeting, and then they said | 1:13:38 | |
yes, we are thinking about allowing you to go | 1:13:42 | |
to Guantanamo Bay. But you know, you wouldn't have so much. | 1:13:46 | |
And I said, why? | 1:13:48 | |
I mean, if we are there, we could speak to the detainees. | 1:13:52 | |
That's for us the most important, and it's not | 1:13:54 | |
an unannounced visit because we need any way | 1:13:55 | |
we need you military to bring us actually there. | 1:13:57 | |
But at least when we are there to speak | 1:14:00 | |
in private with detainees and then they said, | 1:14:02 | |
"But you won't have so much, so many chances | 1:14:05 | |
to speak with them in private." | 1:14:09 | |
I said, why, why, why? | 1:14:11 | |
Because they might not be in their cells. | 1:14:13 | |
I said, okay, fine. | 1:14:16 | |
Then there should be somewhere else. | 1:14:18 | |
Now they might be on recreation. | 1:14:20 | |
I still hear that they might be | 1:14:21 | |
on recreation as what, what do you mean? | 1:14:23 | |
So it was an absurd kind | 1:14:27 | |
of discussion with people who were always in never | 1:14:29 | |
but who knew that behind they had the orders | 1:14:37 | |
and they couldn't go further than a further. | 1:14:39 | |
Fo to make a long story short at a certain point, | 1:14:41 | |
they offered us, they said, okay | 1:14:46 | |
you can come to Guantanamo Bay. | 1:14:49 | |
And we even fixed the date. | 1:14:52 | |
It was, if I'm correct | 1:14:53 | |
it was the 16th of December, 2004, 2005, sorry, 2005. | 1:14:55 | |
And, but only for a very short period of time | 1:15:04 | |
and you are five special arbiters. | 1:15:07 | |
We only want three. | 1:15:08 | |
So they didn't want Puhand because they said too high | 1:15:10 | |
to health is not a real human wide | 1:15:12 | |
and American law and independence of judges and lawyers. | 1:15:14 | |
That's not the issue now. | 1:15:18 | |
So just Asmucha Ngeer Leila, Hogan | 1:15:19 | |
I were invited to come. | 1:15:23 | |
So it took us quite a long time to convince our | 1:15:25 | |
colleagues who said, but we do a joint exercise | 1:15:27 | |
and we are not allowed. | 1:15:30 | |
And I said but let's give in. We have to find a compromise. | 1:15:31 | |
So we accepted this. | 1:15:34 | |
Secondly they said but it's only a visit | 1:15:36 | |
which should be a full week. | 1:15:40 | |
And they said, no, no, only a few days. | 1:15:41 | |
So we finally said, okay, but we need a few days | 1:15:44 | |
in order because there are quite a number | 1:15:48 | |
of people at that time, hundreds of detainees there. | 1:15:49 | |
So we want to interview them in private now. | 1:15:53 | |
So then the real issue was private interviews. | 1:15:55 | |
And that is, they said, that is very difficult. | 1:15:59 | |
And they said without private interviews | 1:16:04 | |
that we cannot give in | 1:16:06 | |
because you United States, you have always told | 1:16:07 | |
us the terms of reference to China and other states must be | 1:16:10 | |
there must be an independent investigation means | 1:16:14 | |
always a private interview. | 1:16:16 | |
So then they said, we go back and at the end. | 1:16:19 | |
So I always remembered it very vividly because we were in | 1:16:24 | |
London at time at the headquarters of Amnesty International. | 1:16:27 | |
And it was just before I would | 1:16:30 | |
I had an invitation to go to China for a full | 1:16:32 | |
fact finding mission of three weeks. | 1:16:36 | |
And I would go directly down from London to China. | 1:16:38 | |
And we had agreed on the final day, they always had said | 1:16:42 | |
give us a little bit more time. | 1:16:47 | |
And it was already in November. | 1:16:49 | |
And the visit to Guantanamo should have been in December. | 1:16:51 | |
And I was always on the telephone. | 1:16:54 | |
And they said, and finally we said, okay | 1:16:57 | |
tomorrow is a press conference. | 1:16:59 | |
I give anyway, a press conference on China. | 1:17:01 | |
And that was a given post conference in Guantanamo bay. | 1:17:03 | |
You have time until midnight. | 1:17:06 | |
You will be in time. | 1:17:08 | |
If you tell us we are allowed to carry | 1:17:09 | |
out private interviews with detainees, then we are coming. | 1:17:13 | |
If not, then we are declining your invitation. | 1:17:17 | |
At 11 o'clock they still called and said, | 1:17:22 | |
can you give us an extension? | 1:17:25 | |
I said, no, because tomorrow we have to pass over | 1:17:26 | |
everything set up, you have to. | 1:17:27 | |
And what it turned out, what I heard afterwards | 1:17:29 | |
is that Condoleezza Rice at that time, state secretary | 1:17:31 | |
she would actually have given in | 1:17:36 | |
but fail to remain stubborn. | 1:17:37 | |
He said, no, there's no way that they can do it. | 1:17:40 | |
So that's why we finally had to decline. | 1:17:43 | |
And I really regretted that. | 1:17:46 | |
I wanted to go to Guantanamo bay | 1:17:47 | |
and to see with my own eyes. | 1:17:49 | |
It's always better if you do a fact finding. | 1:17:51 | |
So we had to decline. | 1:17:54 | |
And then of course | 1:17:56 | |
the journalist asked us the first question I still remember | 1:17:57 | |
in London was, but does that mean | 1:17:59 | |
that the Chinese government is better cooperating | 1:18:02 | |
with the United Nations investigative mechanisms | 1:18:05 | |
than the US government? | 1:18:08 | |
And that is, it's not exactly the same | 1:18:11 | |
because I haven't asked for a general visit | 1:18:12 | |
to the United States only for Guantanamo bay, | 1:18:14 | |
but still they are not complying | 1:18:16 | |
with your terms of reference and China does compliance. | 1:18:19 | |
It is. | 1:18:21 | |
So it was an public relations disaster. | 1:18:22 | |
In fact, for the United States, for the Bush administration. | 1:18:25 | |
And in fact, the Chinese in principle complied | 1:18:28 | |
with the terms of arguments I could speak in private | 1:18:31 | |
to all detainees to whom I whom I wanted to speak. | 1:18:33 | |
So that is, that was unfortunately then often | 1:18:36 | |
they said the US denied us entry. | 1:18:42 | |
That's not true. | 1:18:45 | |
We declined the invitation at the end. | 1:18:47 | |
But we interviewed quite many ex Guantanamo detainees | 1:18:49 | |
in London, in Paris, in Madrid, in wherever | 1:18:55 | |
we could find them also Washington's | 1:18:59 | |
and Wiggers and whatever. | 1:19:00 | |
So, so that is, so our report is more illegally report | 1:19:03 | |
really addressing the main legal arguments will be | 1:19:11 | |
I think very convincingly stated | 1:19:15 | |
that those legal arguments are | 1:19:18 | |
under international law, simply not Taniber. | 1:19:19 | |
We refuted them. | 1:19:23 | |
And in relation to torture, we had, you simply had to do | 1:19:25 | |
to put the clear orders of the deep interrogation techniques | 1:19:32 | |
or enhanced interrogation techniques that Rumsfeld | 1:19:38 | |
and others have ordered together with what we heard. | 1:19:41 | |
And that totally coincided. | 1:19:45 | |
I mean, exactly this extreme temperatures | 1:19:48 | |
the sleep deprivation, the long isolation, the phobia. | 1:19:50 | |
So all that was | 1:19:56 | |
was also what we heard from them, from the interviews. | 1:19:57 | |
And of course also what, what was one | 1:20:03 | |
of the strongest was this force feeding | 1:20:04 | |
of hunger strikers at that time. | 1:20:06 | |
And there we heard the way how they actually | 1:20:09 | |
applied fairly thick tubes through their nose | 1:20:11 | |
must've been extremely painful and it was simply done | 1:20:14 | |
in order to prevent hunger strikes | 1:20:17 | |
and to really insert or inflict severe pain. | 1:20:21 | |
So I think we came | 1:20:26 | |
to very clear conclusions that torture has been applied | 1:20:29 | |
both psychologically and physically torture. | 1:20:33 | |
Also, of course | 1:20:36 | |
if there was anything that they wouldn't comply | 1:20:37 | |
then you have this rapid intervention forces | 1:20:39 | |
and they were beating them up quite heavily. | 1:20:41 | |
So we established that there was torture the | 1:20:46 | |
and we were clearly saying | 1:20:50 | |
that the very fact of detaining them there | 1:20:53 | |
was violating international humanitarian law | 1:20:57 | |
under the standards of the international court of justice | 1:21:00 | |
the wall opinion in Israel, and others | 1:21:03 | |
plus international human rights law in particular | 1:21:08 | |
the international covenant on civil and political rights | 1:21:10 | |
which the United States had rectified. | 1:21:12 | |
So article nine of the covenant. | 1:21:15 | |
So it is a very clear legal analysis | 1:21:16 | |
and legal conclusions, which led us. | 1:21:20 | |
And I was, the others were a little bit hesitant | 1:21:25 | |
but I insisted the logical consequence is | 1:21:28 | |
that we have to recommend the closure, the immediate closure | 1:21:31 | |
of the Guantanamo bay detention facilities | 1:21:36 | |
because they as such violate international law | 1:21:39 | |
and the removal of the persons | 1:21:42 | |
to any of the normal criminal detention centers | 1:21:44 | |
on the territory of the United States | 1:21:50 | |
where they could have access to lawyers | 1:21:52 | |
in the normal and normal procedures, not necessarily | 1:21:54 | |
before a military code, but before a civilian court. | 1:21:57 | |
So that were our conclusions. | 1:21:59 | |
And I think at that time | 1:22:02 | |
we were the only ones, the only international | 1:22:03 | |
the first international body that clearly arrived | 1:22:07 | |
at these conclusions. | 1:22:09 | |
We have later also Inter-American commission reports | 1:22:11 | |
et cetera, but it was | 1:22:14 | |
for us important that the European Union immediately | 1:22:15 | |
reacted, the EU presidency at the next summit between Bush | 1:22:17 | |
and the European heads of state and government said | 1:22:24 | |
that they should close it down and the European parliament. | 1:22:29 | |
And so it created | 1:22:33 | |
that many of the allies actually then said | 1:22:36 | |
Guantanamo bay simply is illegal. | 1:22:38 | |
And you have to do something about | 1:22:43 | |
and I still remember very well when Bush came | 1:22:44 | |
to Vienna because Australia the presidency in June, 2006 | 1:22:47 | |
and our report was published in February, 2006 | 1:22:50 | |
that president Bush then said, okay | 1:22:55 | |
we can close down Guantanamo bay. | 1:22:59 | |
If you're European take the detainees it's fine with us. | 1:23:00 | |
So that whether he meant it seriously, I don't know | 1:23:05 | |
but that's what he offered at the US Summit. | 1:23:06 | |
And I spent quite a lot of time in convincing European | 1:23:11 | |
governments to take Guantanamo detainees | 1:23:20 | |
but I was not very successful. | 1:23:24 | |
So the Germans took a few, the Portuguese took a few, | 1:23:25 | |
the Swiss and the others. | 1:23:28 | |
But for instance, even my own government, I went, I spoke | 1:23:30 | |
to the president and the minister of interior, | 1:23:33 | |
whatever and they didn't take one. | 1:23:35 | |
I spoke to the Bosnian. | 1:23:37 | |
So if you and I cooperated again with the state department | 1:23:38 | |
they had a, they had their own war crimes, people | 1:23:41 | |
who were trying to actually find other countries. | 1:23:46 | |
The first one was Albania who took some | 1:23:50 | |
of the wiggles over the, not very happy in Albania | 1:23:52 | |
but in the very distributed later. | 1:23:56 | |
And so there was this policy | 1:23:59 | |
under the Bush administration already to try | 1:24:02 | |
to transfer people, which under the Obama administration | 1:24:04 | |
again under Obama tried to assist whatever I could | 1:24:07 | |
in finding other governments to take Guantanamo detainees. | 1:24:12 | |
Interviewer | And how did you explain | 1:24:18 |
to those governments when they said | 1:24:19 | |
if the US won't take them, why should we? | 1:24:20 | |
Okay, thank you. | 1:24:23 | |
- | Because I'm deeply convinced | 1:24:26 |
that Europe was also a little bit hyper-critical. | 1:24:27 | |
I mean, Europe closely cooperated with the United States | 1:24:34 | |
of America in what they call the global war | 1:24:39 | |
on terror when the Europeans called | 1:24:42 | |
and the global fight against terror | 1:24:43 | |
but the intelligence cooperated and the military cooperated. | 1:24:46 | |
And as I said, in Romania, Poland | 1:24:51 | |
and Lithuania, they even had black sites | 1:24:54 | |
where those people have been tortured. | 1:24:57 | |
But in the British, the Irish, the Portuguese, I mean, | 1:25:00 | |
they all those rendition flights could actually land there | 1:25:04 | |
and they would actually have an obligation | 1:25:07 | |
to free those people, et cetera. | 1:25:12 | |
So there was a lot of, I mean, Europe was also, | 1:25:15 | |
I mean we had also terrorist attacks | 1:25:19 | |
in London and Madrid, et cetera. | 1:25:21 | |
So where this cooperation, close cooperation between the US | 1:25:23 | |
and Europe also helped Europeans to become safer. | 1:25:28 | |
So there was a close cooperation. | 1:25:33 | |
It was a little bit hypercritical to say | 1:25:35 | |
but you have this Guantanamo bay | 1:25:37 | |
and you're violating and whatever. | 1:25:40 | |
So I think there would have been an obligation | 1:25:42 | |
in my opinion, a moral or political obligation for Europeans | 1:25:44 | |
at the time in particular afterwards with Obama, | 1:25:49 | |
Obama was really serious. | 1:25:52 | |
And if European governments | 1:25:54 | |
would have taken more Guantanamo detainees. | 1:25:57 | |
Perhaps it would have been in a position to close it down. | 1:25:58 | |
So I think there was a common responsibility | 1:26:02 | |
and Europeans did not live up to that. | 1:26:06 | |
Interviewer | And why did some European countries not | 1:26:09 |
take them with the excuses? | 1:26:11 | |
- | Because they were afraid that, I mean, | 1:26:13 |
we tried to do it as secretly as possible. | 1:26:17 | |
And usually the public, would even not, know, | 1:26:20 | |
I mean, for instance the Germans took some | 1:26:25 | |
without really the media and public. | 1:26:28 | |
It really didn't become a matter | 1:26:35 | |
of public knowledge, but still, of course they were afraid. | 1:26:37 | |
You don't know. | 1:26:43 | |
I mean, again, it's stigma. | 1:26:44 | |
If you want to have been | 1:26:45 | |
in Guantanamo bay, you are stigmatized. | 1:26:47 | |
And I, as I said, I talk long | 1:26:50 | |
with the Bosnian government representatives whom | 1:26:51 | |
I again knew quite well, because I was quite long in Bosnia. | 1:26:55 | |
And, and, and yeah, if you are coming from Guantanamo bay | 1:26:59 | |
there must be something wrong with you. | 1:27:06 | |
You must be at least, an Islamic extremist, or whatever. | 1:27:07 | |
So it was this kind of attitude | 1:27:13 | |
although we could prove them | 1:27:15 | |
those people are totally innocent. | 1:27:17 | |
They might be strong believers in Islam. | 1:27:18 | |
Yeah, there are many people in Bosnia. | 1:27:21 | |
Bosnia has a majority of Muslim population. | 1:27:23 | |
So of course there's nothing wrong about that | 1:27:25 | |
but they are not extremists or terrorists. | 1:27:27 | |
And the same as the wiggles, of course they are. | 1:27:31 | |
That's why they left China because they are Muslims. | 1:27:34 | |
And they were persecuted in Neo OMG. | 1:27:39 | |
And I visited prisons there. | 1:27:43 | |
I Neo OMG, when I was in the China mission in order to speak | 1:27:45 | |
with those people who were for political reasons | 1:27:50 | |
in my opinion or religious reasons, in prison. | 1:27:54 | |
And I, they were subjected to torture | 1:27:56 | |
and heavy repercussions by the Chinese government. | 1:27:59 | |
And they were simply, at the wrong time at the wrong place. | 1:28:02 | |
But there's certain they wanted actually to flee China | 1:28:05 | |
in order to finally arrive at the United States. | 1:28:08 | |
And now they were arrested | 1:28:10 | |
in Pakistan and sent to Guantanamo bay. | 1:28:12 | |
I mean, it was totally irrational only because some of those | 1:28:14 | |
because they got a lot of money for arresting some | 1:28:20 | |
some kinds of people who look suspicious. | 1:28:26 | |
So it's, but you have this stigma and European governments | 1:28:27 | |
at that time, we are afraid of terrorism. | 1:28:33 | |
And they felt if you take those people | 1:28:35 | |
then the risk of terrorism might increase it's as irrational | 1:28:36 | |
as it is today with the migration and the refugees. | 1:28:40 | |
Most of the recent terrorist attacks in parcels | 1:28:45 | |
in Paris were done by Belgian and French nationals. | 1:28:50 | |
But in the public perception, the public opinion | 1:28:56 | |
parties and media it's the refugee crisis | 1:29:01 | |
because there are so many refugees from Syria. | 1:29:04 | |
We have now more terrorist attacks. | 1:29:06 | |
It simply is not at true. | 1:29:09 | |
But the perception | 1:29:11 | |
it's the same as the Guantanamo detainees. | 1:29:12 | |
Interviewer | We're going to take a short break. | 1:29:15 |
So Johnny's switched to cause there are many more questions, | 1:29:16 | |
but if you don't mind, you've been fabulous, | 1:29:18 | |
really fabulous but I just want to, we need | 1:29:21 | |
to switch his cards. | 1:29:23 | |
- | It's fine. | 1:29:25 |
Interviewer | Okay, I want to ask you, one | 1:29:26 |
of the things that became apparent about Guantanamo | 1:29:31 | |
is that the US didn't release the names | 1:29:34 | |
of the people in 2006. | 1:29:36 | |
And so for four years, some families didn't even | 1:29:38 | |
know their sons, husbands brothers were in there. | 1:29:41 | |
Did you ever think | 1:29:45 | |
or did the rapporteur and disappearances ever think | 1:29:47 | |
that maybe Guantanamo fit into that category? | 1:29:52 | |
- | Of course, yes. | 1:29:55 |
I mean the black sites in any case | 1:29:57 | |
and they were always also a suspicion | 1:30:00 | |
that there might be a black site | 1:30:04 | |
within the Guantanamo detention facilities. | 1:30:06 | |
And when we made this report on secret detention to fight | 1:30:10 | |
against terrorism, we looked into what it means. | 1:30:15 | |
And if persons are deprived | 1:30:19 | |
of Liberty by a government law authority | 1:30:23 | |
and nobody knows where they are in particular | 1:30:28 | |
they have no contacts of the families, | 1:30:32 | |
the families are investigating | 1:30:34 | |
and they don't get any kind of answer. | 1:30:36 | |
Then according to the definition | 1:30:38 | |
of enforced disappearances in the UN convention | 1:30:41 | |
on enforced disappearances is fulfilled. | 1:30:44 | |
So it's a it is to deprive somebody | 1:30:46 | |
of liberty was the intention then that you will be | 1:30:51 | |
for a prolonged period of time incommunicado detention. | 1:30:54 | |
So that is disappearances. | 1:30:58 | |
Interviewer | And did you do any studies | 1:31:01 |
about juveniles in Guantanamo? | 1:31:04 | |
Was that? | 1:31:05 | |
- | Unfortunately not now, of course I have this new mandate | 1:31:07 |
on children deprived of liberty. | 1:31:11 | |
So I will look also in the, in the context | 1:31:13 | |
of armed conflicts and also in the context of fighting | 1:31:17 | |
against terrorism and other national security, crimes. | 1:31:21 | |
I will put a particular focus on that | 1:31:27 | |
in addition to the normal criminal justice | 1:31:29 | |
and migration, unaccompanied minors, et cetera. | 1:31:31 | |
But at that time I didn't, and I should also, I mean | 1:31:35 | |
divert juveniles of course, in Guantanamo bay | 1:31:38 | |
but I never interviewed any of them. | 1:31:42 | |
So they were still kept and | 1:31:45 | |
or for whatever reason I couldn't. | 1:31:47 | |
So I didn't put any particular emphasis on this. | 1:31:50 | |
Interviewer | And what about suicides or deaths? | 1:31:53 |
Did you look into that? | 1:31:55 | |
- | Yes, yes that we did. | 1:31:56 |
I did in many of us are by later reports | 1:31:58 | |
that I there were quite a number of suicides | 1:32:04 | |
and we clearly have the evidence | 1:32:09 | |
that for many of those people | 1:32:15 | |
the worst after the first torture experiences | 1:32:21 | |
but afterwards they were no longer tortured | 1:32:26 | |
but they also were not released. | 1:32:29 | |
And for them, the worst was the uncertainty. | 1:32:30 | |
When they asked, when can I be released? | 1:32:36 | |
I mean, if you are put on trial, then the trial | 1:32:39 | |
take some time and finally you're convicted | 1:32:43 | |
and then you're sentenced | 1:32:45 | |
to five years or 10 years or whatever. | 1:32:46 | |
And then you can start hoping again | 1:32:48 | |
there might be a time I will be a free man again. | 1:32:52 | |
If they asked how long do I have to stay in Guantanamo? | 1:32:59 | |
The standard answer was until the end | 1:33:02 | |
of the global war on terror. | 1:33:05 | |
And if then they were so brave to ask, | 1:33:07 | |
but when will that be? | 1:33:10 | |
The answer was never. | 1:33:12 | |
So kind of the people got this feeling. | 1:33:14 | |
We might be detained there until the end of our lives. | 1:33:17 | |
It's un determined detention, unlimited detention | 1:33:21 | |
and that was for them diverse. | 1:33:26 | |
And again, you can say that's a form of torture. | 1:33:30 | |
It is, it is a deliberate infliction of pain or suffering | 1:33:32 | |
and keeping them in this, in this kind of idea. | 1:33:37 | |
And then, yeah, you have no idea. | 1:33:43 | |
You will never be actually released | 1:33:46 | |
if you are innocent in particular, but, but also | 1:33:48 | |
if you are not, I mean, it's that is terrible. | 1:33:53 | |
So why where there not more people actually put on trial, | 1:33:57 | |
whether before military commissions | 1:34:03 | |
or before ordinary courts. | 1:34:05 | |
So it's, for me also a sign that the Bush administration | 1:34:07 | |
and partly it was afterwards were not primarily | 1:34:13 | |
actually interested to bring those people on trial | 1:34:15 | |
but simply to keep them what they said from the battlefield. | 1:34:18 | |
If you release them, they go back to the battlefield. | 1:34:22 | |
But in reality, for every Guantanamo detainee | 1:34:24 | |
probably hundreds, newly we killed the terrorists, | 1:34:29 | |
went to the so-called battlefield | 1:34:34 | |
whether in Yemen or whether in anywhere else. | 1:34:35 | |
So I think Guantanamo created many more terrorists | 1:34:39 | |
than they actually brought to justice. | 1:34:44 | |
Interviewer | Did you work with the Red Cross at all? | 1:34:49 |
Or they did do their own study? | 1:34:52 | |
- | I, in many of my missions, of course, I worked closely | 1:34:54 |
with the ICRC, not in relation to the Guantanamo study | 1:35:01 | |
because we fully respected the principles | 1:35:07 | |
of confidentiality, neutrality of the Red Cross. | 1:35:11 | |
Of course, as soon as the Red Cross report | 1:35:16 | |
on the high level detainees was leaked. | 1:35:19 | |
And it was certainly not leaked by the ICRC. | 1:35:23 | |
It was certainly leaked from within the US government. | 1:35:26 | |
Yes, because I, I know that ICRC people very well | 1:35:29 | |
and I, they would be very stupid | 1:35:34 | |
if they would have leaked it and they never do that. | 1:35:36 | |
So it's really, they are very, very strict. | 1:35:39 | |
And that's why also I, as an investigator | 1:35:43 | |
into this would respect, this would say, okay | 1:35:48 | |
I respect that you cannot give us any, any kind of details. | 1:35:52 | |
So we did, when we try to find out who was in | 1:35:56 | |
the different black sites, | 1:36:00 | |
we used all kinds of very sophisticated methods | 1:36:03 | |
including access to data files, data strings. | 1:36:06 | |
So, so from a, of course we had access to Europe control | 1:36:12 | |
and United Nations, civil aviation control agencies. | 1:36:15 | |
So we had access to this full data | 1:36:21 | |
and it's a lot we needed specialists to do that for us | 1:36:28 | |
to decode them because they were really | 1:36:32 | |
they did whatever they could in order to kind of lead us | 1:36:35 | |
to the wrong in the wrong direction. | 1:36:41 | |
It was really a kind of detective type of work | 1:36:44 | |
but to really find out that you had to, of course | 1:36:49 | |
the numbers of those air crafts when they were leaving | 1:36:52 | |
in North Carolina and then going to Washington. | 1:36:55 | |
From they're going to, I don't know Egypt and Afghanistan, | 1:36:58 | |
and then back to Guantanamo bay. | 1:37:03 | |
So we could actually trace this very well. | 1:37:06 | |
And then we compared this to the evidence | 1:37:08 | |
that we got from those detainees. | 1:37:12 | |
And many of them didn't know where they have been. | 1:37:15 | |
So again, Benia Muhhamed for instance, | 1:37:19 | |
he was, I mean, you're blindfolded. | 1:37:26 | |
You are, you're also disoriented then. | 1:37:29 | |
So he only knew from the fact | 1:37:32 | |
that he was in Morocco was that at a certain point | 1:37:36 | |
that he saw flags somewhere outside. | 1:37:40 | |
He could look a little bit outside of the window | 1:37:43 | |
a flag with the military art. | 1:37:45 | |
So he knew he was in the military barracks | 1:37:49 | |
and they, they they've. | 1:37:50 | |
And from the language, of course, the, if you speak Arabic | 1:37:53 | |
then the more can I | 1:37:56 | |
because different than Lebanese or whatever. | 1:37:58 | |
So from that they could tell, or some people who were | 1:38:00 | |
in Poland only found out that they were in Poland | 1:38:04 | |
because all of a sudden they got a bottle of water, | 1:38:08 | |
which was written in Polish. | 1:38:12 | |
So of course, so this kind of mistakes you do that you can | 1:38:15 | |
and then we were, and then when we had this kind | 1:38:19 | |
of assumption that it was in Poland | 1:38:23 | |
and we were looking into, how long was the plane flying? | 1:38:25 | |
What did they say? | 1:38:29 | |
They said, okay, if it's a 10 hours flight | 1:38:30 | |
then you could say, okay, if you fly | 1:38:33 | |
from Afghanistan 10 hours, you can reach here et cetera. | 1:38:35 | |
So there's all that together with the interviews | 1:38:38 | |
with detainees, we could, we construct quite well. | 1:38:42 | |
With which rendition flights they were flying. | 1:38:45 | |
And then how long did you stay in a certain place? | 1:38:49 | |
And when did the plane actually take off again? | 1:38:52 | |
So was all that we could, we construct quite well | 1:38:54 | |
which detainees were at which time at which places. | 1:38:58 | |
Interviewer | And is that how you, you said earlier, | 1:39:02 |
you believe the American, the black site in Guantanamo. | 1:39:04 | |
- | We never could really establish it. | 1:39:07 |
There was certainly a time when according | 1:39:10 | |
to what Guantanamo detainees said when there was another, | 1:39:15 | |
but it was for short period of time | 1:39:19 | |
that there was another camp. | 1:39:23 | |
And I don't even know whether it has a particular name | 1:39:23 | |
where they felt diverse people, | 1:39:27 | |
even when the international committee | 1:39:31 | |
of the Red Cross, which had access came | 1:39:32 | |
which they were hiding from the ICRC. | 1:39:34 | |
But that is information we receive | 1:39:38 | |
but which we could never really cross check. | 1:39:42 | |
So I was not writing that somewhere | 1:39:45 | |
because we only had the suspicion. | 1:39:49 | |
I think it's true, but I cannot prove it. | 1:39:51 | |
Interviewer | Are you surprised | 1:39:56 |
that Dianne Feinstein didn't | 1:39:58 | |
release the full version and that Obama didn't | 1:40:00 | |
before he left office, did, would you have expected that? | 1:40:03 | |
And I know you wanted that, but- | 1:40:06 | |
- | You mean the intelligence, the Senate intelligence report | 1:40:08 |
I think all the way did the summary is quite extensive. | 1:40:14 | |
And if you read it well, and if you can actually fill | 1:40:19 | |
in those, what I told you, there's different names. | 1:40:23 | |
And sometimes then what was blacked out. | 1:40:28 | |
I think it tells you already quite a lot. | 1:40:32 | |
If you, if you read it, of course it would be better | 1:40:35 | |
if the full report would be released. | 1:40:39 | |
I doubt that this would really endanger today | 1:40:40 | |
national security of the United States. | 1:40:44 | |
But, I'm I think it's important what has been published. | 1:40:47 | |
Interviewer | So rectal feeding showed up there | 1:40:53 |
and it never showed up before. | 1:40:56 | |
Did you know about that before, the rectal feeding? | 1:40:57 | |
- | Yeah, the rectal feeding was mentioned already | 1:41:00 |
before it was mentioned, yes. | 1:41:11 | |
Interviewer | And was Camp Seven, you had no. | 1:41:15 |
Did you know that Camp Seven existed? | 1:41:18 | |
- | Yes. | 1:41:20 |
Interviewer | You did? | 1:41:21 |
- | Yes. | 1:41:21 |
Interviewer | But you couldn't do anything about it? | 1:41:22 |
- | Again yes, it was. | 1:41:24 |
It was the same. | 1:41:25 | |
We had a Camp Seven was often mentioned, yes. | 1:41:26 | |
Interviewer | And what about something called camp Know? | 1:41:29 |
Is that the deep that really do you know anything | 1:41:32 | |
about that? | 1:41:35 | |
There was, they claimed that's | 1:41:36 | |
where some detainees might've been tortured | 1:41:37 | |
and maybe they died there, but no one has been able | 1:41:41 | |
to document it. | 1:41:44 | |
- | Yeah, I have heard once, but I know, | 1:41:46 |
I don't know any, any further information on this, no. | 1:41:48 | |
Interviewer | And what should the US do now, | 1:41:53 |
if we had, you know we were able to do something | 1:41:58 | |
should we continue doing what you suggested | 1:42:02 | |
and prosecute the people from early as | 1:42:05 | |
is should we do something else? | 1:42:07 | |
What should we do? | 1:42:09 | |
- | I think it's in the interest | 1:42:11 |
of the United States to close down Guantanamo Bay. | 1:42:13 | |
I mean, it is such a symbol | 1:42:16 | |
of injustice that is damaging the reputation | 1:42:19 | |
whether it's now under the Bush | 1:42:25 | |
or the Obama or the Trump administration doesn't matter. | 1:42:27 | |
It's the United States of America. | 1:42:30 | |
So I think it needs to be closed down. | 1:42:32 | |
And those who are still there would have to be transferred | 1:42:37 | |
and brought to justice. | 1:42:41 | |
And if even after now, 15 years | 1:42:44 | |
you don't have enough evidence | 1:42:49 | |
that certain people were involved | 1:42:51 | |
in 911 or in any other crimes, then under any kind | 1:42:54 | |
of standards of criminal justice, you must release them. | 1:42:59 | |
I mean, it's, it's simply, I mean | 1:43:02 | |
also in the ordinary criminal justice | 1:43:06 | |
you might be as a church or as a prosecutor | 1:43:08 | |
a hundred percent convinced that you committed this crime. | 1:43:11 | |
But if I cannot prove it, and before a jury trial | 1:43:15 | |
I don't have enough evidence so that the jury | 1:43:19 | |
finally does not convict you. | 1:43:22 | |
Then you have to be released. | 1:43:25 | |
There's always a certain risk | 1:43:26 | |
that you go and commit another crime | 1:43:27 | |
after that is an terrorism is not so much different. | 1:43:30 | |
That's the price that you have to pay | 1:43:34 | |
in a country based on the rule of law | 1:43:37 | |
based on human rights, based on democracy | 1:43:40 | |
that sometimes there are criminals running around | 1:43:43 | |
and there's a certain, we never can create a country | 1:43:46 | |
a situation that is totally safe, that can only be done in a | 1:43:49 | |
in a total dictatorship is for surveillance. | 1:43:54 | |
And, but then we are losing the fundaments | 1:43:57 | |
of our principles of Liberty and equality | 1:44:01 | |
and to human dignity on which the constitution | 1:44:04 | |
of the United States is as much based | 1:44:10 | |
as the European Union and other democratic countries. | 1:44:14 | |
So we cannot have absolute security. | 1:44:16 | |
That's a myth. | 1:44:19 | |
And we have to create, of course | 1:44:21 | |
whatever we can to prevent crime | 1:44:23 | |
to prevent terrorism much has been done and is done. | 1:44:26 | |
But Guantanamo Bay certainly doesn't make us safer. | 1:44:29 | |
Interviewer | And when Trump says he wants | 1:44:34 |
to bring people to Guantanamo | 1:44:37 | |
do you believe that it's a possibility? | 1:44:38 | |
- | I don't know whether I still believe what Trump is saying | 1:44:41 |
or not, I hope he is not going to do it. | 1:44:43 | |
I think it's definitely the wrong way. | 1:44:47 | |
As I said, it should be closed down and people should people | 1:44:50 | |
to justice and get a fair trial | 1:44:53 | |
and a fair punishment for whatever they have done. | 1:44:56 | |
It is a form of organized crime. | 1:45:00 | |
It's not an armed conflict. | 1:45:03 | |
Interviewer | And I, is there something | 1:45:07 |
that I didn't ask you that you were thinking about | 1:45:09 | |
before this interview or maybe during the interview | 1:45:12 | |
that you think you'd like to share | 1:45:14 | |
for a history or something just about | 1:45:16 | |
I think you've said it all, but if there is anything. | 1:45:18 | |
- | I think you are very so and clear. | 1:45:20 |
So from my opinion I think the most important | 1:45:24 | |
also experiences that I did I think we are covered, | 1:45:31 | |
both in relation to the Guantanamo report | 1:45:38 | |
and also in relation to the report on secret detention | 1:45:43 | |
the fight against terrorism, which of course closely linked | 1:45:47 | |
and which many states were not happy at all about. | 1:45:51 | |
But that was not because that was | 1:45:55 | |
at the time of you have the Obama administration. | 1:45:58 | |
So the Obama administration actually welcomed his report | 1:46:00 | |
although it primarily dealt with the United States | 1:46:03 | |
of America and its allies, those who were strictly | 1:46:07 | |
against the Russians and the Chinese. | 1:46:10 | |
So those who are not linked to the United States | 1:46:13 | |
but had of course in church, et cetera, had secret places | 1:46:16 | |
of detention, but they held people suspected of terrorism. | 1:46:19 | |
Interviewer | Oh, that's interesting. | 1:46:24 |
So, so you have a really good feeling | 1:46:26 | |
about the Obama administration. | 1:46:28 | |
You feel he did the best he could under the circumstances | 1:46:30 | |
and that he really did change the direction with torture. | 1:46:33 | |
- | Yes, yeah, definitely I think Obama did a very, | 1:46:37 |
very positive things very quickly | 1:46:43 | |
in really stopping this illegal practices. | 1:46:45 | |
Of course there were other things that Obama did | 1:46:49 | |
in relation to drones, et cetera, targeted killings | 1:46:57 | |
where there's a lot of legal debate | 1:47:00 | |
whether this is still justified | 1:47:03 | |
or not outside of an armed conflict. | 1:47:06 | |
And my main criticism | 1:47:10 | |
as I said before after Obama administration, | 1:47:12 | |
is that he was not really willing to dealing with the past. | 1:47:15 | |
I think that is in my opinion, the biggest mistake he did | 1:47:19 | |
in relation to the so-called war on terror. | 1:47:22 | |
Again, I have a very high esteem of Barrack Obama. | 1:47:26 | |
I think he probably meant it. | 1:47:32 | |
He said, he's a person who said | 1:47:35 | |
I wanna stop bad practices | 1:47:39 | |
but I wanna look to the future. | 1:47:42 | |
I want to be a president of all the Americans. | 1:47:43 | |
And I want not to be seen as somebody who takes revenge | 1:47:46 | |
against my Republican predecessor. | 1:47:49 | |
But it's not revenge, it is. | 1:47:53 | |
I think every society that goes | 1:47:56 | |
through these kinds of serious human rights violations, | 1:47:59 | |
serious threats to also the democratic fabric, | 1:48:04 | |
the rule of law in the United States, | 1:48:11 | |
in every other society. | 1:48:14 | |
I think it is important to confront yourself | 1:48:15 | |
with what happened in the past. | 1:48:20 | |
And there are no, I mean, the United States | 1:48:22 | |
is probably one of the very few countries | 1:48:25 | |
that is not willing to really subject itself | 1:48:30 | |
to international scrutiny. | 1:48:33 | |
They have a very bad record in rectifying | 1:48:36 | |
international human rights treaties | 1:48:39 | |
or accepting individual complaints procedure. | 1:48:41 | |
So, so it has to be done on a domestic level. | 1:48:44 | |
It's the only country in the world that has not | 1:48:49 | |
rectified the convention the rights of the child. | 1:48:52 | |
I mean, it is a very strange | 1:48:55 | |
or the convention on the elimination of discrimination | 1:48:58 | |
of all forms of discrimination against women, et cetera. | 1:49:03 | |
And they have not accepted the international criminal code. | 1:49:07 | |
And I could go on and not accept the Inter-American code | 1:49:09 | |
of human rights and individual complaints. | 1:49:14 | |
So that's what they call American exceptionalism. | 1:49:16 | |
But then at least the domestic protection | 1:49:19 | |
of human rights must be strong and must be | 1:49:23 | |
in full line, not only this, the US constitution | 1:49:25 | |
but with international obligations. | 1:49:29 | |
And under the convention against torture, | 1:49:31 | |
there is a very, very clear article forward. | 1:49:34 | |
It says every form of torture | 1:49:39 | |
must be a crime under domestic law. | 1:49:41 | |
And that was also implemented. | 1:49:44 | |
There is a section on torture in the channel code | 1:49:47 | |
and it says in article five and the following | 1:49:53 | |
that there should be no safe heaven | 1:49:57 | |
for any torture in the world. | 1:49:59 | |
So the states have a legal obligation | 1:50:01 | |
to investigate every case of torture | 1:50:04 | |
and to bring the perpetrators | 1:50:08 | |
to justice before American courts | 1:50:09 | |
and that obligation the Obama administration violated | 1:50:12 | |
as they violated. | 1:50:17 | |
And I think this, the fact | 1:50:18 | |
that even Obama has still availed himself | 1:50:20 | |
of the state secrecy privilege, which Bush has | 1:50:24 | |
which was usually on, in very exceptional circumstances | 1:50:28 | |
during world war two, for instance | 1:50:32 | |
but Bush has used it widely saying in point simple | 1:50:34 | |
if Kala Del Mazi or anybody else | 1:50:38 | |
is bringing a civil litigation before American courts, | 1:50:42 | |
the president can intervene and say | 1:50:46 | |
but if the courts deal with these cases, | 1:50:49 | |
then this must necessarily expose information | 1:50:53 | |
which might be classified information | 1:50:59 | |
and dangerous for national security. | 1:51:02 | |
In 2004, 2005 perhaps Bush could still | 1:51:06 | |
have a good reason to say that in 2015, | 1:51:11 | |
certainly no more if at that time, because we know | 1:51:16 | |
or there was a long Canadian investigation, | 1:51:22 | |
in the Mayhar case a high level investigation. | 1:51:26 | |
He got, I think, 11 000, 11 million Canadian dollars | 1:51:30 | |
as compensation, only for the fact | 1:51:35 | |
that a Canadian intelligence cooperated with the Americans. | 1:51:38 | |
So we know everything. | 1:51:44 | |
I was investigating the case when I was in Jordan. | 1:51:45 | |
And they told me all kinds of lies | 1:51:48 | |
in Jordan when already the Canadians had investigated this. | 1:51:50 | |
So nothing new would come out, but my I could say | 1:51:54 | |
I got also justice | 1:52:02 | |
before a normal civil court in the United States of America. | 1:52:03 | |
And that that was not allowed is I think again | 1:52:07 | |
undermining the rule of law in the United States. | 1:52:11 | |
And of course their right of torture survivors | 1:52:14 | |
and survivors of extraordinary rendition to get justice. | 1:52:17 | |
And again, if those people would feel there is some justice | 1:52:21 | |
by the United States, it would again be a feeling that | 1:52:25 | |
which I would call as a reconciliation. | 1:52:29 | |
I mean, somehow with those who are kind of affiliated | 1:52:34 | |
with terrorism whatever they feel, you can, | 1:52:38 | |
you can start a new chapter. | 1:52:41 | |
And this new chapter in history, Obama did not start. | 1:52:44 | |
And we don't know what will come now with Trump. | 1:52:48 | |
Interviewer | So Obama want to look forward and not back. | 1:52:51 |
You think that's also why he blocked all these lawsuits | 1:52:55 | |
for the same reason or you think he was really trying | 1:52:58 | |
to protect classified information? | 1:53:01 | |
- | Yes, he was very, very cautious on this. | 1:53:04 |
Perhaps too cautious. | 1:53:09 | |
Interviewer | And the American exceptionalism | 1:53:12 |
thinking has that, do countries still believe that? | 1:53:15 | |
- | It's the American doctrine, and we are different. | 1:53:22 |
We are exceptional, but of course it has now | 1:53:24 | |
a long tradition of undermining the reputation | 1:53:31 | |
of the United States in the field of human rights. | 1:53:35 | |
The US we're always seen, I mean | 1:53:37 | |
human rights started in the French and American revolutions | 1:53:40 | |
in the late 18th century. | 1:53:44 | |
The US were always seen also | 1:53:45 | |
in the United Nations as a main driving force. | 1:53:47 | |
They were without the United States. | 1:53:50 | |
We wouldn't have the United Nations | 1:53:53 | |
in San Francisco in June, 1945. | 1:53:55 | |
It was` Eleanor Roosevelt | 1:53:58 | |
who was the chairperson of the human rights commission. | 1:54:00 | |
When the United Nations universal declaration | 1:54:02 | |
of human rights was adopted in 1948. | 1:54:06 | |
It was very often in also more recently | 1:54:08 | |
the US played a very important role. | 1:54:13 | |
The state department reports are originally | 1:54:15 | |
they were a little bit tainted. | 1:54:19 | |
It was only against the communist states and not others. | 1:54:22 | |
Today, it's a very objective, it's a useful source | 1:54:24 | |
of information describing the actual civil rights situation | 1:54:29 | |
or countries of the world except the United States | 1:54:33 | |
because it's a foreign affairs tool. | 1:54:36 | |
But so they doing quite a lot. | 1:54:39 | |
They're telling others what to do. | 1:54:42 | |
But that is only possible if you're also honest | 1:54:46 | |
in relation to your own human rights records. | 1:54:49 | |
And I think until I would say the Nixon administration, | 1:54:52 | |
until that worked quite well | 1:54:57 | |
and then it deteriorated, and it became | 1:55:00 | |
it was seen as a kind of an arrogance | 1:55:03 | |
and American arrogance. | 1:55:06 | |
We tell the rest of the world | 1:55:08 | |
that they should not violate human rights | 1:55:10 | |
but you have no right to tell us what to do. | 1:55:13 | |
And I think this is an attitude | 1:55:16 | |
that on the longterm is firing back. | 1:55:18 | |
So I think time would have come. | 1:55:23 | |
And again, that's something where I think | 1:55:25 | |
that Obama could have taken more initiative. | 1:55:27 | |
I didn't expect that the US would rectify | 1:55:32 | |
their own statute of the international criminal court. | 1:55:35 | |
There's too much opposition, | 1:55:38 | |
but at least to rectify the women's convention | 1:55:39 | |
and perhaps even the covenant on economic | 1:55:43 | |
social and cultural rights, but in particular | 1:55:46 | |
the children's rights convention. | 1:55:49 | |
There's nothing the US has to fear in the | 1:55:50 | |
Conventional Rights of the Child. | 1:55:54 | |
It's still simply stubbornness. | 1:55:56 | |
So to say we do not want to be under international scrutiny. | 1:55:58 | |
Why not also allowing individual complaints | 1:56:03 | |
to the human rights committee of the United Nations | 1:56:07 | |
or rectifying the Inter-American convention | 1:56:10 | |
on human rights and allowing the Inter-American court | 1:56:14 | |
to war on human rights violations in the United States? | 1:56:16 | |
I mean, it's, it looks a little bit all or most | 1:56:19 | |
of the Latin American states have this jurisdiction | 1:56:23 | |
of the court and usually do comply | 1:56:29 | |
with even very harsh judgements of the Inter-American court. | 1:56:31 | |
So why not? | 1:56:35 | |
I mean, the US has its headquarters in Washington DC. | 1:56:38 | |
So it was the US who established the organization | 1:56:42 | |
of American states, the Panamanian union before. | 1:56:45 | |
So it is, I think it is, it is a little bit anachronistic, | 1:56:48 | |
but it's very difficult to change it because of course you | 1:56:55 | |
need Congress, you need the Senate, and it's not | 1:56:59 | |
that easy to identify international treaties, | 1:57:02 | |
but I mean also under Clinton and under George Bush senior. | 1:57:05 | |
So I mean quite many important treaties under Carter | 1:57:09 | |
where they have been rectified. | 1:57:13 | |
So it is possible if, and that depends very much | 1:57:16 | |
on the administration. | 1:57:17 | |
It's the president. | 1:57:19 | |
If the president says we are a member | 1:57:20 | |
of the international community, we are one | 1:57:22 | |
of the five permanent members of the security council. | 1:57:24 | |
We take particular responsibility for the United Nations. | 1:57:27 | |
So we should also rectify the major core human rights | 1:57:30 | |
treaties and other treaties of the United Nations | 1:57:34 | |
I think would be a normal thing to do. | 1:57:37 | |
And I think the Obama again, could have done more | 1:57:39 | |
in my opinion than he actually did. | 1:57:44 | |
I mean under president Trump, | 1:57:46 | |
that will certainly not be the case. | 1:57:48 | |
Interviewer | Well, I think that's a wonderful way | 1:57:52 |
to end it. | 1:57:54 | |
We need to take 20 seconds of room tone | 1:57:55 | |
before we shut down the cameras. | 1:57:57 | |
So, so Charlie, you wanna set that? | 1:57:59 | |
Charlie | Yeah, we just sit quietly for 20 seconds. | 1:58:02 |
- | Yes, that's fine. | 1:58:04 |
Charlie | Okay, we can room tone. | 1:58:06 |
Item Info
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