Dakwar, Jamil - Interview master file
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- | Good morning. | 0:05 |
Interviewer | We're very grateful to you | 0:06 |
for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo Project. | 0:07 | |
We'd like you to speak of your experiences | 0:12 | |
and involvement in Guantanamo Bay issues. | 0:14 | |
We are hoping to provide you an opportunity to | 0:17 | |
tell your story in your own words, | 0:20 | |
we're creating an archive | 0:23 | |
of stories so that people in America and around | 0:24 | |
the world will have a better understanding of what happened. | 0:27 | |
Future generations wants to know what happened in Guantanamo | 0:33 | |
and by telling your story, you're contributing to history. | 0:37 | |
We appreciate your willingness to speak with us today. | 0:41 | |
And if you wanna take a break any time | 0:44 | |
please let us know. | 0:45 | |
And if you do say something that you'd | 0:47 | |
like us to remove, we can remove it, let us know. | 0:48 | |
And we'd like to begin by having you tell us your name | 0:52 | |
and your place of birth and your birth date and age. | 0:55 | |
- | My name is Jamil Dakwar, | 1:02 |
I am now 42 years old. | 1:04 | |
I was born in Haifa, which is in North of Israel. | 1:08 | |
And I moved to the United States in 2002. | 1:13 | |
Interviewer | And what was the year and date, | 1:16 |
what's your birth date? | 1:18 | |
- | August 23rd, 73. | 1:19 |
Interviewer | 1973? | 1:22 |
- | Yeah. | 1:23 |
Interviewer | And before you moved to the US, | 1:24 |
what were you doing? | 1:28 | |
Just a little bit about your schooling and background? | 1:29 | |
- | Sure, I was practicing human rights law | 1:32 |
in Israel and in an organization, | 1:35 | |
a human rights group called Adalah, which means justice | 1:37 | |
the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. | 1:40 | |
It's a group that was formed in 1996 to protect the rights | 1:44 | |
of the Palestinian minority within Israel | 1:48 | |
but later on expanded its mandate | 1:52 | |
after the beginning of the second Intifada | 1:54 | |
to take cases also in the West Bank and Gaza | 1:56 | |
particularly petitioning the Israeli Supreme Court. | 2:00 | |
So I was doing human rights, lawyering and litigation | 2:03 | |
on a wider range of issues | 2:08 | |
including on issues of torture and detention. | 2:09 | |
Interviewer | Will you, could you give some background | 2:13 |
on your education if you said you do lawyering? | 2:15 | |
- | So, yeah, I went to law school | 2:18 |
at Tel Aviv University law school | 2:19 | |
and I was admitted to the Israeli bar | 2:21 | |
and practiced law in Israel for about four or five years | 2:26 | |
and then moved to the United States where I did my LLM | 2:31 | |
at NYU School of Law. | 2:34 | |
And then I joined Human Rights Watch as a fellow. | 2:37 | |
And then after that | 2:40 | |
I joined the ACLU as a staff attorney in 2004. | 2:42 | |
So that's briefly my biography. | 2:47 | |
Interviewer | And what brought you to America? | 2:50 |
- | It really, it was a chance to after four or five years | 2:53 |
of doing intensive human rights lawyering got an opportunity | 2:58 | |
to do my LLM, a spot of public interest scholarship | 3:04 | |
that was offered. | 3:07 | |
And my partner and my wife at the time also | 3:09 | |
received her Fulbright to do her PhD at Columbia University. | 3:12 | |
So there was time for us to take a break, | 3:15 | |
come to United States, pursue our graduate degrees | 3:20 | |
and reflect on some of the experiences that we had | 3:24 | |
in our country. | 3:28 | |
And the plan was actually to go back after, | 3:30 | |
a few years, three, four years or so, but | 3:33 | |
as things happened, things changed. | 3:38 | |
And maybe partly because of the work that I started to do | 3:40 | |
with the ACLU that I felt that that was something | 3:44 | |
that really gave me an opportunity to advocate | 3:46 | |
and continue to work on human rights issues, but more | 3:50 | |
focusing on the United States with really global | 3:53 | |
wider implications on human rights broadly, | 3:56 | |
particularly after 9/11. | 4:00 | |
And that was a time that that was clear | 4:01 | |
that the United States has been setting very | 4:04 | |
dangerous precedent as far as international law. | 4:07 | |
So that was the reason that we kind of stayed | 4:11 | |
with more particularly situation | 4:14 | |
in our country has become a more difficult | 4:18 | |
both the escalation and increase | 4:21 | |
of racism and racial discrimination in Israel. | 4:26 | |
And the fact that it wasn't really getting any better | 4:29 | |
for Palestinians more generally, particularly | 4:33 | |
for Palestinians in the West bank and Gaza. | 4:35 | |
So while we are connected, we visit, | 4:38 | |
we have strong connections, | 4:41 | |
but we decided to stay in the United States. | 4:43 | |
Interviewer | Where were you in 9/11? | 4:48 |
- | I was actually on my way back from a court hearing, | 4:51 |
I argued a case on behalf of villagers | 4:56 | |
a Palestinian village that they had home demolition | 5:00 | |
or demolition order issued | 5:07 | |
against the mosque in the Northern | 5:09 | |
of Israel in the Galilee village of Hosni. | 5:12 | |
And I was representing the village. | 5:18 | |
It was just this very small community | 5:21 | |
that was, as I was representing them | 5:23 | |
they were really getting recognition | 5:28 | |
of getting their planning and housing permits, et cetera. | 5:29 | |
But the only mosque that was | 5:34 | |
in the village was under demolition procedures. | 5:36 | |
And I was trying to very hard to defend the mosque. | 5:39 | |
So I was just finishing a court hearing in Acre | 5:44 | |
which is North of Haifa, | 5:48 | |
driving back and going to a funeral | 5:52 | |
to one of my colleagues who her father died. | 5:55 | |
And so they were already there | 6:00 | |
and I was just running late | 6:02 | |
because at the court hearing. | 6:03 | |
And I heard the news on the radio. | 6:05 | |
And with the time difference | 6:09 | |
it was an afternoon time around, | 6:10 | |
two or 3:00 PM in Israel time that I heard the news that | 6:13 | |
the first plane hit the Twin Towers. | 6:18 | |
And then when I got to the funeral | 6:22 | |
I actually was the one who told everybody who was there | 6:24 | |
because at the time there was really no mobiles | 6:27 | |
and the smartphones or internet or tweets or alerts. | 6:30 | |
And unfortunately I was the one who told everybody | 6:36 | |
that there was something really terrible happened | 6:41 | |
on the same day, just moments ago. | 6:44 | |
And then I remember going back to my parents' place, | 6:47 | |
picking up my son who was about a year, | 6:52 | |
he was a year and a half, and I was watching | 6:59 | |
on TV, as unfortunately seeing | 7:05 | |
the towers collapse live on my parents' TV in Haifa. | 7:09 | |
Interviewer | Did that have any impact | 7:14 |
on your coming to America? | 7:16 | |
- | It was very difficult for us to decide | 7:18 |
to move to the United States because we've been hearing | 7:22 | |
we heard about the consequences | 7:24 | |
of the 9/11, especially as a human rights lawyer, | 7:27 | |
we already had connections to some | 7:32 | |
of the organizations active in the United States. | 7:34 | |
So we've heard reports, we heard from people who live there. | 7:38 | |
It wasn't that easy to be there as | 7:40 | |
an Arab Palestinian family to move to the United States, | 7:43 | |
but we were determined. | 7:48 | |
We thought that it was the right thing to do. | 7:51 | |
We felt that it still in New York was a place where we felt | 7:53 | |
that it would be much easier to adapt | 7:58 | |
and to start a new life for, | 8:02 | |
at least study there while doing it. | 8:04 | |
And I think that made us make a decision | 8:06 | |
and continue to pursue our graduate degrees | 8:09 | |
but it wasn't an easy decision. | 8:15 | |
And I remember that there was a lot | 8:17 | |
of concerns about what would happen. | 8:20 | |
And in fact, when we arrived, | 8:22 | |
the registration for all the Arab males | 8:24 | |
from countries that were | 8:28 | |
either Arab or Muslim countries had to register | 8:30 | |
under a special registration program | 8:33 | |
that was put in place after 9/11. | 8:35 | |
And that was one of the first things that | 8:38 | |
we knew that that was going on | 8:39 | |
obviously all the security, | 8:44 | |
that's something that we have been already used to | 8:46 | |
as Palestinians living in Israel, | 8:50 | |
going through airport security every time, | 8:53 | |
for Palestinians, you were treated as a second class | 8:56 | |
and a suspect person regardless of what you do. | 8:59 | |
And in fact then that was so | 9:02 | |
we kind of had already been used to this kind of reality. | 9:05 | |
And I maybe made it a little bit easier. | 9:15 | |
The fact that, you live around Columbia University | 9:17 | |
where it's an international community | 9:20 | |
was much more openness | 9:23 | |
and tolerance and less of the backlash of after 9/11 | 9:25 | |
I think made it much easier for us to really settle | 9:30 | |
down and to start our lives here. | 9:35 | |
Interviewer | Well, before we go into Guantanamo, | 9:40 |
you can make me think, | 9:41 | |
is there anything that surprised you when you came | 9:42 | |
to America that you didn't expect? | 9:44 | |
- | Well, yes. | 9:48 |
I mean, the level, I mean, I've had a chance | 9:49 | |
to live for one year | 9:52 | |
in the United States in Washington, D.C in 97, 98. | 9:53 | |
So I had the experience | 9:56 | |
of knowing what the United States is and living here. | 9:57 | |
So it wasn't like the first time first living experience | 10:02 | |
in the United States | 10:05 | |
but it was the first experience after 9/11. | 10:06 | |
So that was clearly different in the sense | 10:09 | |
that there were a lot of, | 10:13 | |
the conversation, the political conversation | 10:16 | |
was also shifting and changing. | 10:19 | |
And remember that it wasn't really easy | 10:22 | |
to immediately say who you are, where you come from | 10:27 | |
as a Palestinian Arab. | 10:30 | |
And there was always this notion that | 10:32 | |
you wanna be careful about where you going, | 10:37 | |
what you're saying, | 10:41 | |
you're also not a citizen here | 10:43 | |
that you could easily be if in a few it could, | 10:45 | |
there are all these reports | 10:50 | |
about FBI into investigations | 10:51 | |
and people being monitored under surveillance | 10:54 | |
and a roundup of mainly Middle Easterns really, South Asian, | 10:58 | |
who were living in New York area. | 11:05 | |
So that didn't make it easier for us, but it was. | 11:08 | |
I remember that it was still incredibly encouraging to | 11:12 | |
see how communities where particularly the civil rights | 11:19 | |
or human rights community was pushing back, | 11:24 | |
was trying very hard to send the message | 11:26 | |
that we should not be, | 11:32 | |
we should not abandon the rule of law. | 11:35 | |
We should not abandon the respect for human rights | 11:37 | |
that this is not, this is an emergency | 11:40 | |
that we should not take it as a way | 11:43 | |
to violate more human rights. | 11:45 | |
And I think that that moment, | 11:48 | |
you're seeing more people and organizations like the ACLU, | 11:49 | |
like Center for Constitutional Rights and others kind of | 11:54 | |
echoing that message. | 11:58 | |
It was really reassuring. | 11:59 | |
And give it gives you hope, | 12:01 | |
or gave us hope that this is a place that | 12:03 | |
despite the tragedy of 9/11, despite the reactions | 12:06 | |
and the terrible consequences of the 9/11 | 12:09 | |
as far as a violation of human rights | 12:13 | |
in the name of national security, you still had. | 12:15 | |
You've seen the people who did not accept that. | 12:18 | |
And there was a movement. | 12:22 | |
And that actually became more vivid closer | 12:24 | |
to the decision of the United States to invade Iraq | 12:29 | |
and seeing the protests, the wide protest, | 12:34 | |
thousands of people taking the streets | 12:36 | |
protesting what is now is really clearly misguided | 12:38 | |
and, or wrong decision, and even illegal decision | 12:43 | |
to invade Iraq under international law. | 12:48 | |
Seeing people just doing that in New York | 12:51 | |
and other places was very, very important to realize | 12:54 | |
that this place is a place where you can | 12:59 | |
still fight for justice | 13:03 | |
where you can fight for human rights. | 13:04 | |
And then the other things that | 13:06 | |
was shocking is just the fact that there, | 13:07 | |
as everybody who comes to New York city, | 13:13 | |
you are amazed by how great the city is | 13:15 | |
but at the same time, you cannot ignore what you see, | 13:18 | |
the disparities that you see between, | 13:24 | |
just having people not having shelters | 13:27 | |
or having adequate housing, | 13:30 | |
people badly treated, policing | 13:32 | |
that is often unfair and biased. | 13:38 | |
And all of those things make you | 13:43 | |
wonder whether you made the right decision | 13:49 | |
whether this is the place where you want your kids to grow. | 13:50 | |
So with that in mind I think what helped us is | 13:54 | |
that the fact that we were committed to join | 13:58 | |
the people, the movement here, organizations, | 14:02 | |
civil society working to change the reality. | 14:06 | |
And I think that probably makes it easier | 14:08 | |
when your day-to-day job is to fight injustice | 14:11 | |
whether it's domestic abuses here in United States | 14:17 | |
or human rights violations that happen in Guantanamo | 14:20 | |
or (indistinct), or in secret CIA facilities. | 14:24 | |
Interviewer | Exactly when did you come to the US? | 14:28 |
- | In July of 2002. | 14:31 |
Interviewer | And you said you off camera, | 14:37 |
you said you knew about Guantanamo before you arrived | 14:40 | |
'cause Guantanamo opened in January of two. | 14:43 | |
So what did about it? | 14:46 | |
- | So during that time, | 14:49 |
you gotta remember the second Intifada started | 14:51 | |
in October of 2000 and where there were massive protests, | 14:55 | |
started really with massive protests | 15:03 | |
but it escalated into confrontation and armed | 15:04 | |
conflict in many places including, | 15:07 | |
and especially in Gaza and in West Bank | 15:13 | |
but it also affected the Palestinian citizen in Israel, | 15:16 | |
the Palestinian community revolted it, | 15:23 | |
in solidarity but also an expression of their grievances or | 15:25 | |
their injustice against them | 15:28 | |
particularly around land issues at the time. | 15:30 | |
So, but the second Intifada brought up or | 15:33 | |
brought back or escalated the rights violations | 15:39 | |
particularly by the Israeli forces. | 15:42 | |
And one of the cases that I was working on at | 15:45 | |
the time was a case trying to get access to a | 15:47 | |
detention facility that was created by the Israeli army | 15:52 | |
outside the outskirts of Ramallah | 15:58 | |
it's called the Ofer Detention Camp. | 16:00 | |
It's really started tents, | 16:03 | |
similar to the tents or the, | 16:04 | |
what really started at Guantanamo. | 16:07 | |
And they brought, and that was in following | 16:09 | |
Operation Defensive Shield in April of 2002. | 16:13 | |
And the Israeli army re-invaded the West Bank | 16:19 | |
major cities, had gone into fighting with a resistance | 16:23 | |
in places like the refugee camp in West Bank of | 16:30 | |
Jenin refugee camp, where scores of many people were, | 16:34 | |
hundreds of people were killed. | 16:41 | |
There were serious abuses committed | 16:43 | |
including war crimes that were well-documented at the time | 16:46 | |
by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International | 16:51 | |
but there were also widespread of detention. | 16:53 | |
They were rounding up people and | 16:55 | |
the military commander issued new orders to | 16:57 | |
facilitate their detention and expedite their processing | 17:02 | |
with little accountability, with little oversight. | 17:08 | |
And one of the things that they realized | 17:12 | |
that they needed a new detention facility to house | 17:14 | |
and to detain thousands of Palestinians who were rounded | 17:17 | |
up during that major military offensive. | 17:20 | |
And so detention camp was created. | 17:25 | |
It was called Ofer. | 17:28 | |
I was just outside. | 17:29 | |
Interviewer | Can you spell that? | 17:31 |
- | Ofer, O-F-E-R. | 17:31 |
And we as, the organization I was working for, | 17:35 | |
Adalah and other Israeli human rights organizations | 17:39 | |
petitions the Israeli Supreme Court | 17:43 | |
because there were already reports | 17:45 | |
of abuse of, very poor conditions. | 17:46 | |
It was, although it was April | 17:52 | |
but it was also cold it's still called in this area. | 17:54 | |
There were allegations of torture and abuse, et cetera. | 18:01 | |
So we, after seeing investigative journalists report | 18:06 | |
that was came out by a newspaper | 18:11 | |
we petitioned the Supreme Court calling | 18:14 | |
for access to detention facility. | 18:15 | |
And we, after petitioning the court | 18:18 | |
we got access to the detention camp. | 18:22 | |
And I was one of the few human rights lawyers | 18:25 | |
who got access to Ofer Detention Camp | 18:28 | |
shortly after it was open. | 18:32 | |
And so we had to tour the facility and meet with some | 18:34 | |
of the detainees, meet with officers, | 18:37 | |
military officers and they prepared a report | 18:40 | |
that we then submitted to the court. | 18:42 | |
But I remember during that time | 18:44 | |
around the time that we were litigating the case, | 18:46 | |
we heard about some of the reports coming | 18:48 | |
that the United States has opened a new facility | 18:53 | |
in Guantanamo Bay. | 18:56 | |
And we said, well, wow this seems like the United States | 18:58 | |
is copying the Israeli forces, the Israeli military | 19:02 | |
in doing what it's doing, because it was, | 19:07 | |
there was already kind of some pictures | 19:10 | |
and photos about abuse and mistreatment at least | 19:12 | |
in terms of showing detainees shackled | 19:17 | |
and burnt on the ground and all those things kind of for us, | 19:22 | |
it was, wow, this is something that | 19:31 | |
is not only happening here but it's happening | 19:33 | |
in the United States. | 19:36 | |
And in fact, you've seen right after 9/11 | 19:37 | |
as the Israeli government use 9/11 as a way to say | 19:40 | |
to the US government, we have 9/11 that's what | 19:46 | |
their argument was. | 19:55 | |
We have 9/11 almost every day, | 19:55 | |
and you gotta have to stop criticizing us | 19:58 | |
for what you call human rights violations, | 20:02 | |
because even the Bush administration and the, | 20:05 | |
if you look back and the first months in after he got, | 20:08 | |
was elected from first year he really | 20:13 | |
his administration did not spare for criticism | 20:18 | |
including on Israel's use of targeted killing | 20:22 | |
which later on the United States has adopted | 20:25 | |
as an official policy. | 20:29 | |
Obviously torture was another policy that was used | 20:31 | |
by the Israeli government for years, for decades. | 20:35 | |
It was only curtailed by | 20:38 | |
the Israeli Supreme Court decision in 1999, | 20:40 | |
but it was really not the end of the use | 20:43 | |
of so-called exceptional or moderate physical pressure. | 20:46 | |
And certainly there were calls to re-instate | 20:51 | |
those same torture practices and abuses | 20:57 | |
that happened for decades in Israel. | 21:01 | |
And we know now that the Bush administration | 21:05 | |
actually have looked at some of the | 21:09 | |
practices of the Israeli government | 21:13 | |
including the legal arguments that were made, | 21:15 | |
they actually cited | 21:17 | |
Israeli Supreme Court in arguing that for example | 21:19 | |
certain enhanced interrogation techniques do not | 21:23 | |
amount to torture. | 21:26 | |
And that to us as, or to me, | 21:28 | |
particularly as a human rights lawyer, | 21:32 | |
that already practices law in Israel, | 21:33 | |
understood the Israeli legal system | 21:36 | |
and how Israel normalized torture | 21:40 | |
and how they made it really legal with official approval | 21:42 | |
by even the attorney general realized | 21:46 | |
that there was a lot of similarities there | 21:50 | |
and the comparisons are really striking. | 21:52 | |
So that's kind of one of the reasons | 21:55 | |
that I decided after moving to United States | 21:58 | |
to continue to be involved in human rights advocacy, | 22:01 | |
particularly looking at issues of torture | 22:07 | |
and detention and Guantanamo obviously was one of | 22:08 | |
the first thing that I have been asked | 22:12 | |
by the ACLU to work on, in fact, | 22:16 | |
in one of the very first days of my work at ACLU | 22:18 | |
I was asked to monitor | 22:22 | |
the military commission at Guantanamo, | 22:23 | |
but before I joined ACLU, | 22:26 | |
another way of me coming across or dealing with, | 22:28 | |
or hearing about Guantanamo was when I was working | 22:35 | |
with Human Rights Watch, I was doing research | 22:38 | |
on human rights violations in the aftermath | 22:42 | |
of the suicide bombings that happened in Casa Blanca | 22:47 | |
in May of 2002. | 22:51 | |
There were serious crackdowns on Islamists in particular, | 22:58 | |
there were people who were rounded up, | 23:04 | |
secretly detained, tortured, and abused. | 23:06 | |
And my research at Human Rights Watch | 23:09 | |
specifically looked at how the Moroccan authorities reacted | 23:11 | |
to the Casa Blanca bombing. | 23:15 | |
And my purpose was to show how they fail to | 23:17 | |
meet their international human rights obligations | 23:21 | |
by documenting violations within the criminal justice system | 23:24 | |
but they created a new procedures. | 23:31 | |
They were also some suggestions of creating, | 23:34 | |
passing a terrorism act, just | 23:37 | |
like the United States passed the Patriot Act. | 23:39 | |
And I remember when we concluded our investigation | 23:41 | |
and had a meeting the human rights minister, | 23:44 | |
the Moroccan human rights minister | 23:46 | |
and we conveyed our concerns. | 23:47 | |
One of the things that he reacted to us, he said, well | 23:54 | |
you are coming to me from the United States. | 23:56 | |
You are an American based organization Human Rights Watch. | 23:59 | |
This is what we are doing here. | 24:04 | |
It's part of what happened after 9/11, | 24:05 | |
just like Guantanamo, it's all, | 24:08 | |
he said something like it's all like one package. | 24:10 | |
It's like the whole package. | 24:13 | |
It's like, this is a whole game that we were part of it. | 24:14 | |
So, and I remember that we had to later on | 24:17 | |
go back as a Human Rights Watch researchers, | 24:23 | |
collect all these responses | 24:26 | |
from different government officials | 24:28 | |
around the world that use Guantanamo | 24:30 | |
as a way to justify their own abuses | 24:33 | |
to use it as a way to advocate for ending | 24:36 | |
Guantanamo abuses, ending the regime of Guantanamo, | 24:39 | |
show, look, Guantanamo really created a new, | 24:42 | |
dangerous reality that all other countries | 24:46 | |
that will now see, will say this is a fair game | 24:48 | |
to violate human rights | 24:52 | |
because we have a national security crisis. | 24:53 | |
And it turned out to be true | 24:55 | |
that the United States lost its credibility, | 24:57 | |
had not only encourage other countries to take, | 25:01 | |
to revise their laws, take exceptional | 25:05 | |
or emergency measures, including resorting to torture | 25:08 | |
and abuse in other countries. | 25:11 | |
So that was the second time that I had to deal | 25:16 | |
with in Guantanamo, but really my work | 25:21 | |
on Guantanamo started when I officially started | 25:23 | |
with the ACLU. | 25:25 | |
And literally the first week of my work in November of 2004 | 25:26 | |
I was asked to go down to Guantanamo to monitor | 25:31 | |
the military commission hearing | 25:33 | |
of not other than Salim Ahmed Hamdan, | 25:37 | |
who at the time his case was, | 25:41 | |
he was brought before a military commission | 25:44 | |
while his habeas case, | 25:47 | |
challenging the military commission system | 25:49 | |
was argued or was litigated before the federal court. | 25:51 | |
And I got there a day | 25:56 | |
or two before the hearing and getting, | 26:00 | |
to understand this place Guantanamo, | 26:02 | |
we were, I remember housed in the other side of the base, | 26:05 | |
the old courtroom was used, | 26:11 | |
not the current one that is used | 26:15 | |
for the military commission. | 26:16 | |
The one that used to be, I think, dentistry | 26:17 | |
or was a very small courtroom but with no glass, | 26:20 | |
it was open, you could see everything really, | 26:26 | |
several feet away and it wasn't. | 26:31 | |
But I remember that, what was dramatic about this case | 26:33 | |
is that we all were waiting the hearing to start | 26:38 | |
and were sitting there and, not more than 20 minutes | 26:44 | |
or maybe half an hour into the hearing, | 26:49 | |
the judge got a piece of paper from his assistant and | 26:52 | |
he was asked to take a recess. | 26:58 | |
And so he called for a recess, he went into his chamber | 27:01 | |
and came back and he said that this hearing is adjourned. | 27:04 | |
And we didn't know what was going on. | 27:09 | |
We had no idea what's going on | 27:12 | |
but I remember that at the time Neal Katyal | 27:13 | |
who was presenting Salim Ahmed Hamdan with Charlie Swift, | 27:16 | |
were at the defense table and he looked back at us. | 27:24 | |
We were four monitors representing the four | 27:27 | |
major human rights organizations, | 27:30 | |
including ACLU Human Rights Watch, Amnesty | 27:32 | |
and Human Rights First. | 27:34 | |
And he said, we won. | 27:36 | |
And that was, he won the habeas case, | 27:39 | |
when the federal judge in Washington said | 27:42 | |
that basically the military commission system | 27:45 | |
was in violation of the constitution. | 27:49 | |
And he said that the judge is not, | 27:52 | |
the military commission are not giving | 27:57 | |
the prisoners an opportunity to, | 28:02 | |
under the Geneva Conventions to decide, | 28:04 | |
to determine whether they are actually have POW status. | 28:07 | |
And that in itself, the military commission order that was | 28:11 | |
at the time in place violated the constitution. | 28:16 | |
And so that was pretty dramatic. | 28:21 | |
Interviewer | Well I wanna continue with that trivial | 28:27 |
but I just wanna go back | 28:30 | |
because what you were saying is really interesting | 28:31 | |
we haven't heard it from anyone else. | 28:32 | |
So you're implicating and I just wanna know how far | 28:34 | |
you're going on that. | 28:39 | |
Do you think the US talked to Israel | 28:40 | |
and asked them for advice on how to create Guantanamo | 28:43 | |
and what kind of treatment to use? | 28:48 | |
- | We don't have hard evidence to | 28:53 |
prove that that's what actually happened. | 28:57 | |
And there are a number of documents, | 29:00 | |
official US documents that suggest | 29:03 | |
that the United States officials | 29:06 | |
including legal counsel lawyers, | 29:09 | |
when they were asked to design new policy, | 29:12 | |
particularly around torture issues, | 29:17 | |
that they have actually looked at the Israeli model, | 29:19 | |
looked at the Israeli way of handling issues | 29:22 | |
of detention and interrogation and torture. | 29:27 | |
And in fact, in one of the memos | 29:30 | |
I think it was in The Bybee Memo. | 29:32 | |
One of the Bybee Memo was actually cited, | 29:33 | |
the Supreme Court, Israeli Supreme Court decision from 1998. | 29:36 | |
There were other revelations that we know about | 29:42 | |
including the Senate Intelligence Committee report | 29:46 | |
on interrogation practices, the Senate torture report. | 29:51 | |
And also there's a section there. | 29:53 | |
It also specifically cited how the CIA | 29:56 | |
in this particular case has also used Israeli justification | 29:59 | |
or use of torture or legalized use of torture in order to | 30:06 | |
justify their so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. | 30:09 | |
We've also had some other testimonies | 30:14 | |
one recent one that was made | 30:18 | |
by a former security contractor who was deployed | 30:20 | |
and worked in Iraq, | 30:27 | |
who also describe how they have used Israeli tactics | 30:29 | |
or practices particularly the so-called | 30:34 | |
the kindergarten chair | 30:36 | |
which is essentially a very low chair, small chair | 30:38 | |
that really looks like a kindergarten chairs, | 30:41 | |
that historically, the Israelis have developed it | 30:45 | |
or used it to interrogate and | 30:48 | |
to torture Palestinian prisoners | 30:50 | |
by subjecting them to stress positions. | 30:53 | |
And he specifically talks in his book that just came out | 30:56 | |
on that particular connection that they were actually told | 31:00 | |
and they were provided that as a matter. | 31:05 | |
So we don't know exactly how close the collaboration. | 31:07 | |
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised | 31:11 | |
if there were no close collaboration. | 31:12 | |
We know that after or shortly before the invasion of Iraq, | 31:15 | |
the US army in particular was looking | 31:21 | |
at ways that Israelis were fighting urban warfare | 31:23 | |
including the use of bulldozers that are used | 31:29 | |
by the Israelis to demolish houses | 31:33 | |
and civilian houses in massive ways as it happened | 31:35 | |
in Rafa and Gaza and other places in the West Bank. | 31:39 | |
And so they looked at, | 31:41 | |
I think Chris (indistinct) from The Guardian wrote | 31:43 | |
about that at the time in around 2003. | 31:47 | |
So there are all these connections that are made, | 31:50 | |
but remains to be seen in the future, | 31:54 | |
I'm sure we will have more access | 31:58 | |
to information and to this level of collaboration | 32:00 | |
but more recently we know that the targeted killings program | 32:05 | |
under the Obama administration has also looked | 32:08 | |
at the Israeli model | 32:10 | |
and Israeli practice of use of targeted killings. | 32:13 | |
Interviewer | How do you know that? | 32:16 |
- | They're a part of the, | 32:17 |
some of the memos that were released, | 32:19 | |
have made it clear that they actually | 32:21 | |
when they described the, and discuss the justification | 32:25 | |
for the assassination or the killing of American citizen, | 32:29 | |
Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. | 32:35 | |
And these are so far the only memos | 32:39 | |
that have been released, we're still | 32:42 | |
fighting to release to get other memos declassified. | 32:44 | |
But in this particular case | 32:48 | |
you can see that there's also a discussion | 32:49 | |
of Israeli use of targeted killings, particularly | 32:51 | |
the Israeli Supreme Court decision that was issued | 32:54 | |
in the mid-2000 and looked at the practice | 32:58 | |
of targeted killings. | 33:03 | |
And to what extent it would comply with international law. | 33:04 | |
But I think it is not unreasonable to say | 33:10 | |
that really what Israel has become | 33:16 | |
for the United States is that it's a laboratory. | 33:20 | |
It's a lab where Israeli officials, | 33:22 | |
reigning military and security establishment | 33:26 | |
test different tactics and practices. | 33:28 | |
And they then are, we see them replicated, | 33:31 | |
used in other places, | 33:36 | |
the Gaza or the Dahiya doctrine in the South Lebanon | 33:39 | |
or in Beirut particularly Beirut or the Dahiya | 33:44 | |
and particularly the neighborhood | 33:46 | |
where (indistinct) majority neighborhood | 33:48 | |
and how the Israelis have developed | 33:50 | |
this way of striking in a civilian neighborhood. | 33:52 | |
And we saw that developed in Gaza. | 34:00 | |
And then very recently we've seen the military, | 34:04 | |
US military actually confirming that they looked at | 34:09 | |
practice luck knock on the roof practice. | 34:14 | |
The knocking on the roof practice is a way | 34:18 | |
that the Israeli government has developed in Gaza | 34:20 | |
during its military offensive on Gaza, | 34:25 | |
particularly in 2014, the summer of 2014 | 34:28 | |
and during the 50 day war on Gaza, | 34:32 | |
the Israeli military developed some tactic that would | 34:35 | |
then they use it to say that we actually warned civilians | 34:39 | |
that before we bombarded before | 34:44 | |
we targeted a particular civilian objective | 34:46 | |
by sending a missile or attack a part | 34:50 | |
of a building of a civilian structure. | 34:56 | |
And that was the warning. | 34:59 | |
And so the civilians who were in that structure had knew | 35:00 | |
that moments after that, less than a minute, | 35:05 | |
minute and a half | 35:09 | |
it would actually be completely demolished, bombarded. | 35:10 | |
And so the Israeli said that they used throwing leaflets | 35:15 | |
and other warnings calling civilians | 35:19 | |
asking them to flee, to leave and including using | 35:23 | |
that knock on the roof. | 35:27 | |
The knock is a missile knock part of the civilian structure. | 35:28 | |
Warning civilians, obviously that was complete failure | 35:33 | |
because not only that civilians in Gaza, | 35:40 | |
they had no place to go | 35:42 | |
because ultimately there was no safe haven to | 35:44 | |
civilians to go to. | 35:48 | |
And if you look at the map | 35:50 | |
I think there was a interactive map developed | 35:53 | |
after the 2014 war that showed | 35:56 | |
that literally all places in Gaza were targeted militarily. | 35:59 | |
There were all strikes in | 36:03 | |
almost all over the Gaza strip. | 36:04 | |
So there was no safe haven. | 36:07 | |
Gazans could not leave the Gaza strip | 36:09 | |
which something that usually civilians can do | 36:12 | |
in a time of armed conflict or a war, | 36:15 | |
fleeing going across the border. | 36:17 | |
They could not go inside Israel obviously, | 36:19 | |
they could not go to Egypt. | 36:21 | |
No one, there were some people who tried to take bullets | 36:23 | |
but ultimately they actually, | 36:26 | |
some people actually tragically died, | 36:30 | |
trying to flee through the water. | 36:33 | |
But essentially that practice, | 36:36 | |
the knocking on the roof become counterproductive was | 36:38 | |
in violation of international humanitarian law | 36:44 | |
because it really did not amount | 36:46 | |
to a reasonable warning to civilians. | 36:48 | |
And that even if that warning was made | 36:51 | |
that did not turn this particular place | 36:54 | |
into a military objective. | 36:56 | |
So the US military just recently acknowledging | 36:58 | |
that they use the same practice | 37:02 | |
in Iraq and Syria while they were attacking ISIS targets, | 37:03 | |
where there were some civilians living | 37:11 | |
and they actually cite that. | 37:12 | |
It did not save the life | 37:16 | |
of a woman who left the building | 37:18 | |
but then went back and when the strike happened | 37:21 | |
she actually got killed in that building. | 37:24 | |
So these things across the borders | 37:26 | |
there's collaboration, cooperation between countries | 37:29 | |
certainly between very close allies happen all the time. | 37:32 | |
There might, WikiLeaks cables have shed | 37:37 | |
some more light on that collaboration | 37:40 | |
but it doesn't have the smoking gun that | 37:42 | |
or the hard evidence to show | 37:45 | |
that the Americans actually sought | 37:46 | |
and received full advice from the Israelis | 37:51 | |
on how to conduct the so-called war on terror after 9/11. | 37:53 | |
Yet we don't have that information yet. | 37:57 | |
Interviewer | You used an interesting word (indistinct). | 37:59 |
(indistinct) | 38:01 | |
When we interviewed detainees. | 38:04 | |
Many of us told us that Guantanamo | 38:06 | |
was a psychological prison | 38:07 | |
more than a physical torture, was that true? | 38:09 | |
And they felt that it was used | 38:13 | |
as experiment that Americans | 38:14 | |
they felt America was using that to experiment | 38:16 | |
on various psychological tortures. | 38:18 | |
Do you have any sense on that | 38:21 | |
and would that have also been duplication | 38:22 | |
of some Israeli procedures? | 38:26 | |
- | Well, all the interrogation procedures that were used | 38:28 |
by the US military, some form of those military | 38:33 | |
interrogations were at some point used | 38:38 | |
by the Israeli government. | 38:40 | |
Certainly distress positions, | 38:42 | |
the sleep deprivation, the use of loud noisy music. | 38:45 | |
These are all the hallmark | 38:52 | |
of the Israeli interrogation manual. | 38:54 | |
And which continued to some extent after 1999, | 38:58 | |
again after the Israeli Supreme Court | 39:03 | |
ordered the government to end, order the Shabak, | 39:04 | |
the Israeli General Security Services | 39:07 | |
to end the use of some of interrogations, | 39:11 | |
but left certain loopholes. | 39:13 | |
So there was already a set of interrogation methods | 39:16 | |
that were known and used in Israel | 39:21 | |
and they may very well been adopted | 39:24 | |
in the way that we saw it in Guantanamo, | 39:28 | |
certainly the sleep deprivation program or the so-called | 39:30 | |
the frequent-flyer. | 39:34 | |
Interviewer | That came from Israel? | 39:36 |
- | The sleep deprivation program in Israel has been prominent | 39:38 |
in the system of interrogation system. | 39:41 | |
In fact the way that detainees and prisoners describe it, | 39:46 | |
after the 1999 Supreme Court decision in Israel | 39:52 | |
is that the way that the government officials went | 39:56 | |
around it is by making shifts, | 39:59 | |
meaning they were making the justification that we needed to | 40:03 | |
do these interrogations because of necessity | 40:10 | |
that we need to complete the investigation | 40:19 | |
in a very short time. | 40:22 | |
And they were stopping it and starting it | 40:23 | |
in a very short time and not really allowing | 40:28 | |
detainees to sleep in a reasonable time. | 40:30 | |
And you really talking about, | 40:33 | |
less than three or four hours of sleep per day | 40:34 | |
which is what the sleep deprivation program | 40:38 | |
or the frequent-flyer program was all about. | 40:40 | |
I'm not sure if it's exactly the same, | 40:44 | |
shifting detainees from one cell to another, | 40:46 | |
how it happened in Guantanamo, | 40:49 | |
but the fact that they were virtually | 40:51 | |
interrogated, Palestinian prisoners | 40:55 | |
in Israeli jails interrogated virtually around the clock | 40:57 | |
resembles at least the frequent-flyer program at Guantanamo. | 41:00 | |
Interviewer | One more thing you said earlier | 41:07 |
before we go back to Guantanamo and that is | 41:10 | |
you said that many countries, | 41:12 | |
you mentioned Morocco but then you said other countries, | 41:15 | |
used Guantanamo to justify their own bad behavior. | 41:19 | |
Two questions about that | 41:24 | |
if you can mention some other countries | 41:25 | |
but also do not think these companies | 41:27 | |
would have done it any way | 41:31 | |
and they just use America as a cover-up or | 41:32 | |
were they actually influenced by American's behavior? | 41:34 | |
- | Yes, I don't think that they needed United States | 41:39 |
to approve those abuses | 41:47 | |
or those practices or policies, yeah. | 41:51 | |
The United States, as we know, | 41:54 | |
over the history had a double-talk | 42:01 | |
or there was a double standards | 42:05 | |
in the way that the human rights talk | 42:06 | |
or the foreign policy talk that | 42:10 | |
we hold other countries accountable. | 42:14 | |
We call on government X to follow the law, et cetera | 42:18 | |
while turning a blind eye, | 42:24 | |
or sometimes even knowingly ignoring | 42:26 | |
and facilitating even a torture, | 42:31 | |
whether it's during the dirty wars | 42:35 | |
in Latin America to other places around the world. | 42:36 | |
So there was always been, | 42:41 | |
I think the world is, I mean | 42:44 | |
people who studied this and know it from up close, | 42:46 | |
they know that the United States, is not very | 42:51 | |
it's not been always genuine about | 42:54 | |
it's respect or concern about human rights. | 42:57 | |
It was really often used | 43:04 | |
to advance other foreign policy interests. | 43:06 | |
And so those countries after 9/11 thought | 43:09 | |
that that was high time for them to go all in | 43:15 | |
in terms of like doubling down | 43:19 | |
on what they were already been doing, | 43:21 | |
so they had, they got the US off their back. | 43:23 | |
The US was reluctant to publicly | 43:27 | |
at least condemn those violations. | 43:29 | |
They got support from the US in different ways. | 43:33 | |
Sometimes it got security support | 43:36 | |
all kinds of things that they needed | 43:40 | |
in order to crack down on (indistinct). | 43:42 | |
And we know that the (indistinct) cases, | 43:43 | |
one good example of how the Chinese | 43:46 | |
and Americans have collaborated on that. | 43:49 | |
Interviewer | Why did they? | 43:53 |
- | Well there was the common goal of, | 43:54 |
China has its own interest. | 44:00 | |
It's on internal, so to speak security interest. | 44:02 | |
And the United States has its own post 9/11 interest | 44:07 | |
in cracking down on or looking for those | 44:10 | |
who are responsible for 9/11. | 44:15 | |
And so those both most countries interests | 44:17 | |
converged and came together when it was, | 44:21 | |
I will do this for you, you do this for me. | 44:24 | |
And that was done not only for China, | 44:27 | |
there were other countries. | 44:30 | |
In fact, there were other countries where they | 44:31 | |
needed the United States financial support. | 44:33 | |
They needed the United States diplomatic support, | 44:36 | |
places like Macedonia, | 44:39 | |
places if you look at all the other cases | 44:41 | |
where the United States have used the fact | 44:44 | |
that they needed the United States in order to get into | 44:48 | |
the UN on some international systems of improving | 44:51 | |
their standing in the world | 44:59 | |
getting them a better trade deals or advantages. | 45:01 | |
So all of those were part of the trade. | 45:08 | |
Were part of the dealing that were going on and on | 45:12 | |
and certainly the people who suffered most | 45:16 | |
or people who had to their rights were violated. | 45:19 | |
And a lot of them were people who we know for sure | 45:23 | |
that they were innocent people. | 45:27 | |
Over majority of people for example, Guantanamo | 45:29 | |
belong to that category | 45:32 | |
of people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time | 45:34 | |
and certainly had not had any way to prove | 45:37 | |
or be able to defend themselves. | 45:41 | |
And so the United States have after 9/11 facilitated, | 45:43 | |
encouraged rights violations in other countries, | 45:51 | |
turned a blind eye to other violations where | 45:54 | |
were already endemic in certain countries, like in Egypt, | 45:57 | |
Egypt before 9/11. | 46:00 | |
And I looked at the situation in torture | 46:02 | |
and detention in Egypt when I worked at Human Rights Watch, | 46:04 | |
there was a history of decades | 46:09 | |
long history of use of torture | 46:11 | |
to the point that the committee against torture | 46:13 | |
and other international human rights bodies | 46:19 | |
have determined that torture was widespread | 46:22 | |
in places like Egypt, that there was no doubt about it. | 46:25 | |
There's no question about it. | 46:32 | |
And yet Egypt was one of US closest allies | 46:34 | |
where several detainees, prisoners were picked up | 46:38 | |
in the so-called war on terror, | 46:43 | |
as part of the under condition program found themselves | 46:45 | |
in Egyptian prisons, tortured | 46:49 | |
at the behest of the United States government. | 46:52 | |
A lot of these abuses have not been fully revealed. | 46:56 | |
No accountability has taken place. | 47:01 | |
There's still people who | 47:05 | |
who are calling for justice or calling | 47:07 | |
for transparency or calling for accountability. | 47:10 | |
But so that was the normal practice | 47:13 | |
for the United States to create a web | 47:16 | |
of countries that would be the so-called | 47:21 | |
partners in the fight against terrorism | 47:25 | |
but we could call it partners | 47:28 | |
in the mission to violate human rights | 47:30 | |
in the name of national security. | 47:34 | |
And that's really what happened in many | 47:36 | |
many places around the world. | 47:38 | |
So definitely the United States, | 47:39 | |
they were not waiting for United States to okay | 47:42 | |
or to give them that approval. | 47:44 | |
And we're living in those consequences. | 47:49 | |
I mean, today, the fact that the United States is | 47:51 | |
in a way peril, and there was a paralyzed in terms | 47:55 | |
of responding to some certain crisis | 48:02 | |
because of the fact that these have evolved | 48:04 | |
and made more complicated by resorting | 48:09 | |
to illegal actions after 9/11 | 48:11 | |
and made it much more difficult | 48:14 | |
for countries and for societies to believe | 48:16 | |
that there was any good and really believing | 48:20 | |
in human rights when human rights could just be traded off, | 48:23 | |
it could be used as a propaganda | 48:26 | |
as part of advancing your foreign policy. | 48:29 | |
And you're not really genuine about it. | 48:33 | |
And you're picking and choosing | 48:34 | |
and you cherry picking what really suits you as far | 48:36 | |
as international human rights requirements and obligations. | 48:38 | |
Interviewer | Have you become more civical | 48:43 |
or at least skeptical since you've come to America | 48:45 | |
after listening to you work with us, | 48:49 | |
is it not surprisingly to you | 48:51 | |
since you worked in Israel? | 48:53 | |
- | No, it's not surprising. | 48:55 |
I mean, it's always been, we have to realize | 48:56 | |
that government are the ones who create laws, | 48:59 | |
international law, not exception to that. | 49:06 | |
And they create it in a way that will be, | 49:10 | |
give them leeway and they give them the ability | 49:14 | |
to act with much less accountability | 49:17 | |
with much less transparency. | 49:21 | |
There's always this competition or this tension | 49:22 | |
between government always wanna grab more power | 49:28 | |
and be less accountable and less transparent, | 49:34 | |
work in the dark, take shortcuts | 49:37 | |
and certainly when it comes to people | 49:43 | |
who are powerless or not their citizens in particular | 49:47 | |
or not given any attention by the international community, | 49:52 | |
by the media, it's easier for the governments | 49:57 | |
to do those things. | 50:00 | |
So it was, I don't think that it was surprising to people. | 50:03 | |
I mean, I remember sitting in the Human Rights Watch | 50:09 | |
staff meeting when the Abu Ghraib pictures | 50:14 | |
were revealed by CBS News and the 60 Minutes. | 50:20 | |
And they were colleagues of who had more experience | 50:25 | |
than myself in working | 50:28 | |
and investigating human rights violations. | 50:32 | |
And they were very shocked. | 50:33 | |
They were completely shocked at seeing those things. | 50:36 | |
And I was not as shocked as they were, | 50:40 | |
I mean, as far as, I did not think | 50:43 | |
that the United States would be, | 50:46 | |
you're not doing those kinds of things. | 50:50 | |
And that's when we didn't even know enough | 50:52 | |
about the CIA torture program | 50:54 | |
you're talking about spring of 2004, | 50:57 | |
and yet what came, what was revealed after that, | 51:03 | |
months and years after that, | 51:09 | |
perhaps, shocked us more than other thing | 51:13 | |
is the fact that, it was made it part of a policy | 51:17 | |
not an isolated incident | 51:21 | |
as the United States government tried to portray it. | 51:25 | |
these are just a few bad apples. | 51:28 | |
There was nothing of that | 51:31 | |
that really has to do with government policy. | 51:32 | |
It was not this, the leadership was really innocent in there | 51:35 | |
but if you, now we have more records and more documents | 51:40 | |
and more documentation and evidence to show | 51:44 | |
that it was a matter of a policy torture | 51:47 | |
and abuse was a policy the US military was part | 51:49 | |
of a policy is part of the CIA secret detention programme. | 51:52 | |
And what is interesting about that too, | 52:00 | |
is that they have used the United States | 52:03 | |
domestic legal formulations or legal precedent in order to | 52:06 | |
justify some of these abuses. | 52:16 | |
And you see that across, if you read the torture | 52:19 | |
memos in some of the memos that tried to come up with | 52:23 | |
for example, the what's the definition | 52:26 | |
of cruel inhumane or degrading treatment? | 52:29 | |
The equivalent which is prohibited under international law. | 52:32 | |
And they're both the in Convention Against Torture | 52:37 | |
and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights | 52:38 | |
but it's also has equivalent language | 52:43 | |
in the Eighth Amendment to the US constitution, | 52:46 | |
the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. | 52:48 | |
And you see how lawyers resort to interpretation | 52:53 | |
of the law, the Supreme Court jurisprudence | 52:57 | |
in order to make the case that you're actually | 52:59 | |
allowed to do those things in our domestic prisons. | 53:02 | |
So why can't we not do them abroad, | 53:05 | |
after all these are non-citizens. | 53:08 | |
If the Supreme Court gave us the green light to do to, | 53:11 | |
okay, those abuses or mistreatment | 53:14 | |
we should be able to do that. | 53:17 | |
And I think that, that it was for a lot of people shocking | 53:20 | |
but not to my colleagues who worked | 53:26 | |
on prison abuses in the United States, | 53:28 | |
the National Prison Project of the ACLU, for example | 53:32 | |
had been documenting, working on prison abuse | 53:34 | |
in the United States for years, as well as many others | 53:38 | |
other organizations and advocates and lawyers. | 53:41 | |
And they're familiar with prolonged solitary confinement. | 53:44 | |
They're familiar with abuses | 53:47 | |
in prisons and jails and detention facilities. | 53:48 | |
But the difference is that it was never really, | 53:56 | |
was never really part of the plan where | 54:01 | |
lawyers came together in the US government | 54:03 | |
and said we're now going to go | 54:06 | |
and torture these individuals and subject them. | 54:07 | |
There were some incidents, obviously | 54:11 | |
like the Burge torture case incident in Chicago | 54:13 | |
where there was the tourist police commander | 54:16 | |
who made a decision that we were gonna be torture those | 54:19 | |
but by and large, it was sanctioned by the, | 54:23 | |
I think the interpretation by the Supreme Court | 54:30 | |
of what the Eighth Amendment is for better or worse | 54:36 | |
it was interpretation that allowed these abuses | 54:39 | |
and made policies of segregation or isolation | 54:43 | |
or solitary confinement to be legal. | 54:47 | |
Even though there wasn't really like | 54:52 | |
a master plan to torture detainees | 54:54 | |
or prisoners in the United States | 55:00 | |
but that environment have made it easier. | 55:01 | |
I think for the United States | 55:05 | |
to go abroad and to cross the line. | 55:07 | |
And we actually know that a number | 55:11 | |
of former correctional leaders | 55:13 | |
were asked to create the prisons in Iraq after the war. | 55:17 | |
Some of the people who actually bad history | 55:22 | |
of running abusive facilities in the United States, | 55:25 | |
this information came out. | 55:30 | |
We know, for example, now because of | 55:31 | |
the Senate torture report that the Bureau of Prisons, | 55:33 | |
the Federal Bureau of Prison | 55:38 | |
have made a visit to a secret facility run | 55:40 | |
by the CIA in Afghanistan. | 55:43 | |
That gives you, wonder why, what business | 55:48 | |
the Federal Bureau of Prisons has in inspecting | 55:51 | |
or going to visit a secret facility in Afghanistan | 55:54 | |
run by the CIA that had no experience | 55:58 | |
of running detention facilities, | 56:01 | |
no experience with interrogation. | 56:02 | |
And was really experimenting on human being | 56:04 | |
through psychologists that were hired to design | 56:08 | |
and implement the torture program | 56:10 | |
as we know it now and through other kinds of ways. | 56:12 | |
So there's these connections that | 56:16 | |
I think very important to expose | 56:18 | |
as also the community, the legal community | 56:20 | |
tried to do with Guantanamo. | 56:22 | |
The forced feeding in Guantanamo would not have made legal | 56:24 | |
or justified that easily if it was not justified | 56:28 | |
in the United States under the judicial approval. | 56:31 | |
We know that that courts had deferred | 56:37 | |
to prison managers | 56:41 | |
to state authorities. | 56:45 | |
And the same was made clear in | 56:50 | |
some of those cases that were brought to the court, | 56:53 | |
obviously there were other hurdles, | 56:57 | |
there was an attempt to dismiss those cases | 56:59 | |
on jurisdictional grounds | 57:03 | |
under the military commission Act | 57:06 | |
and the Detainee Treatment Act and other basis legal basis. | 57:07 | |
But ultimately when those cases made their way to the courts | 57:11 | |
in force-feeding of Guantanamo detainees, | 57:15 | |
you really had the conversions of domestic jurisprudence | 57:17 | |
very bad one that does not take into account | 57:23 | |
international law as far as treatment of prisoners, | 57:26 | |
including ethical guidelines issued by internationally | 57:30 | |
renowned organizations, medical association | 57:38 | |
that made it very clear for example, | 57:45 | |
that force-feeding is a violation, is ethically wrong. | 57:46 | |
And legally misguided is particularly when | 57:53 | |
the detainees have, | 57:59 | |
are competent to make a decision about their hunger strike. | 58:01 | |
Only when there was questions about the mental | 58:05 | |
competency of the detainees or prisoners that you really | 58:09 | |
can go ahead and conduct a force-feeding | 58:12 | |
without obviously causing a severe suffering | 58:18 | |
or cruel inhumane degrading treatment. | 58:23 | |
So there's a lot of connections that were made | 58:25 | |
and continue to be made between what the United States | 58:27 | |
practices within the US military overseas, | 58:31 | |
on Guantanamo and other places. | 58:35 | |
And what happened in the United States | 58:36 | |
that I think important to grapple with | 58:38 | |
and to compare and to reckon with. | 58:41 | |
Interviewer | Fascinating the intertwining | 58:46 |
of the two jurisdictions as you see it. | 58:48 | |
I think that's really interesting and important. | 58:51 | |
I wanna go back to that | 58:53 | |
but I just wanna ask you, do you think | 58:55 | |
since the deprivation is something that the US also learned | 58:57 | |
from Israel or knew on its own | 59:03 | |
'cause it started that very early in terms | 59:07 | |
of just when they flew the detainees to Guantanamo. | 59:09 | |
- | No, I think there was already been | 59:14 |
in the army field manual, | 59:17 | |
sense of deprivation, and it wasn't something | 59:20 | |
that the United States had to learn from Israel. | 59:22 | |
If you look at the way that José Padilla was treated | 59:26 | |
and he was after all a US citizen and | 59:30 | |
he was first detained as an enemy combatant, | 59:34 | |
as unlawful enemy combatant | 59:41 | |
in the United States military custody. | 59:42 | |
And later on, after a legal battle | 59:46 | |
and after legal challenge really was, | 59:50 | |
the US government was pushed to transfer him | 59:52 | |
to civilian custody, | 59:55 | |
and then he was prosecuted. | 59:56 | |
But his treatment violated, | 59:59 | |
was in a way, the way that it was justified, | 1:00:03 | |
it was, following some of the military procedures | 1:00:06 | |
that will allow certain detainees to be isolated. | 1:00:13 | |
In the army field manual there's an Annex M | 1:00:19 | |
that specifically talks about sensory deprivation, | 1:00:22 | |
sleep deprivation, other practices that are problematic, | 1:00:25 | |
and actually already being called as, | 1:00:31 | |
in violation of the Convention Against Torture | 1:00:34 | |
by the Committee Against Torture, | 1:00:37 | |
as recently as November of 2014, | 1:00:38 | |
when the United States government was | 1:00:42 | |
last time reviewed by the committee, | 1:00:44 | |
and so there were already been practices and procedures | 1:00:48 | |
that have been put in place before 9/11. | 1:00:54 | |
And there've been only used, refreshed. | 1:00:56 | |
If you look at the Delta, | 1:01:01 | |
the Camp Delta manual | 1:01:05 | |
that was actually one of the WikiLeaks | 1:01:07 | |
first WikiLeaks documents. | 1:01:09 | |
I remember that the document was made public when | 1:01:13 | |
I was in Guantanamo, I believe it was in 2006 | 1:01:18 | |
in one of the military commission hearings that we | 1:01:24 | |
were monitoring and this manual became public. | 1:01:26 | |
It was just leaked to the press. | 1:01:32 | |
I think it was WikiLeaks, was behind that. | 1:01:35 | |
And when you look at the manual, | 1:01:37 | |
when it talks about sleep deprivation, | 1:01:41 | |
isolation, deprivation, and even | 1:01:44 | |
hiding detainees from the ICRC. | 1:01:47 | |
Interviewer | The manual said that? | 1:01:50 |
- | Yes, from the International Committee of the Red Cross. | 1:01:51 |
Now, when the Bush administration was using | 1:01:54 | |
the International Committee on the Red Cross, | 1:01:58 | |
as the only international humanitarian organization | 1:02:01 | |
that had access to detainees following | 1:02:03 | |
the creation of the military base. | 1:02:06 | |
We had a manual that made it very clear | 1:02:08 | |
that they were hiding detainees, | 1:02:11 | |
as a matter of a procedure, | 1:02:14 | |
standard operation procedure. | 1:02:17 | |
So that's so kind of in a way revealed what many thought, | 1:02:18 | |
knew that it was happening certainly | 1:02:25 | |
from Guantanamo detainees testimonies | 1:02:26 | |
and meetings with their lawyers. | 1:02:29 | |
So there was not, there was enough | 1:02:32 | |
in the United States manuals | 1:02:39 | |
and practices that were reused or refreshed to deal | 1:02:43 | |
with the situation in, whether it's Guantanamo, (indistinct) | 1:02:51 | |
but the regime that was created after 9/11 needed, | 1:02:56 | |
the government decided | 1:03:04 | |
that they wanted to create a additional layer of | 1:03:05 | |
or a new special program of torture | 1:03:10 | |
that was for the US military that was approved | 1:03:13 | |
by the highest level of the government, | 1:03:15 | |
particularly by former secretary of defense Rumsfeld. | 1:03:17 | |
And in the CIA context, | 1:03:21 | |
they did it through a separate program. | 1:03:23 | |
Although there were some relationship between the two. | 1:03:26 | |
Interviewer | When you first came to Guantanamo | 1:03:37 |
the first time, what was your sense when you got there? | 1:03:38 | |
What were you thinking? | 1:03:42 | |
- | I mean, it was really surreal because | 1:03:45 |
it was a way the security arrangement | 1:03:48 | |
for observers was very tight. | 1:03:55 | |
So you could not leave without having an escort anywhere | 1:03:58 | |
outside your, the guest house where we were stayed | 1:04:01 | |
on the thing, the Windward side, | 1:04:06 | |
the other side of the base. | 1:04:08 | |
You're disconnected from the rest of the world, | 1:04:13 | |
your blackberries at the time, mobiles don't work. | 1:04:16 | |
There's a particular network that only functions there. | 1:04:20 | |
You're not really sure what's happening | 1:04:24 | |
in different parts of the camp | 1:04:28 | |
and in different parts of the base, | 1:04:29 | |
because as monitors, | 1:04:34 | |
as military commission monitors | 1:04:36 | |
we didn't have access to the camps. | 1:04:37 | |
We didn't have access to the detention facilities. | 1:04:41 | |
So while we requested from day one | 1:04:45 | |
to have access to detention facilities | 1:04:49 | |
and to do that without interference so | 1:04:52 | |
we have a chance to even meet with the detainees, | 1:04:55 | |
interview them how they are being treated. | 1:04:58 | |
We were denied that request. | 1:05:02 | |
And since then both the Bush administration | 1:05:05 | |
and the Obama administration denied human rights | 1:05:08 | |
monitors access to detention facilities | 1:05:12 | |
to inspect and to interview detainees | 1:05:17 | |
and to make sure that they were treated humanely | 1:05:20 | |
and in line with international law standards, et cetera. | 1:05:24 | |
And that's one of the really challenges, | 1:05:29 | |
is lack of transparency, | 1:05:30 | |
lack of ability to know what's going on | 1:05:32 | |
to the people who you are going to monitor their trial | 1:05:34 | |
because part of monitoring trial is | 1:05:37 | |
that you're supposed to know where they are detained. | 1:05:39 | |
You're supposed to know how they are detained, | 1:05:42 | |
what are the legal justification, | 1:05:44 | |
what are the, | 1:05:46 | |
even the transfer to, and if there are any concerns, | 1:05:47 | |
any problems as monitors | 1:05:50 | |
you're supposed to be able to address them to deal | 1:05:51 | |
with that with the government, with the authorities. | 1:05:54 | |
And as we've seen in the last several years, | 1:05:57 | |
issues of detention, conditions of detention | 1:06:00 | |
have come up in different ways | 1:06:03 | |
and certainly within the military commissions, | 1:06:05 | |
even though the government has asked constantly try | 1:06:07 | |
to reject the authority of the presiding officer | 1:06:10 | |
as they were called then, | 1:06:15 | |
and evolved into a military judge to hear those arguments, | 1:06:17 | |
arguments of from ill treatment, | 1:06:25 | |
really issues of abusive and humiliating searches | 1:06:34 | |
and transfers from the detention to the court, | 1:06:39 | |
to the military commission, | 1:06:44 | |
situation of abusing even the incidents | 1:06:47 | |
of the Koran being decarcerated | 1:06:53 | |
in a way that made it much worse for | 1:06:55 | |
the United States to really able to claim | 1:07:00 | |
that they were really following the humane treatment. | 1:07:03 | |
So all of these things that were coming up constantly, so. | 1:07:07 | |
- | How common is it Jamil | 1:07:10 |
for a nation to allow human rights monitors. | 1:07:12 | |
- | It is not, unfortunately is not | 1:07:17 |
a practice that is followed by all nations | 1:07:22 | |
but more nations than before, more countries today | 1:07:26 | |
than let's say, 20 years ago, for example | 1:07:31 | |
have an so-called outstanding invitation | 1:07:34 | |
to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture. | 1:07:37 | |
Interviewer | But we don't, US doesn't. | 1:07:44 |
- | US doesn't. | 1:07:45 |
So the United States have been asked repeatedly | 1:07:47 | |
by the Special Rapporteur on torture | 1:07:51 | |
and other special procedures of the United Nations, | 1:07:54 | |
other experts who wanted to look | 1:07:57 | |
at conditions of confinement, treatment of detainees, | 1:07:58 | |
and they were denied access | 1:08:03 | |
because they would not give them confidential interviews | 1:08:04 | |
or conventional meetings with the detainees | 1:08:09 | |
and would not give them full access | 1:08:10 | |
to all the detention facilities. | 1:08:13 | |
And if you are not able to get unimpeded access, | 1:08:16 | |
according with the UN protocol, | 1:08:20 | |
you are not able to conduct a meaningful visit | 1:08:22 | |
or meaningful monitoring visit. | 1:08:27 | |
So the United States did create a very bad precedent | 1:08:29 | |
by denying independent experts by United nations | 1:08:32 | |
to monitor detention facilities, | 1:08:37 | |
not only Guantanamo but also elsewhere | 1:08:39 | |
and only offered partial access. | 1:08:42 | |
That is so-called VIP access | 1:08:46 | |
essentially base like Disney show | 1:08:48 | |
where you so and shot around the, | 1:08:50 | |
how well the detainees are treated | 1:08:55 | |
but the truth of the matter, | 1:08:57 | |
there's still a major camp in Guantanamo, | 1:08:58 | |
that is off limit to the entire world, | 1:09:03 | |
entire human rights community, | 1:09:09 | |
entire city and people don't | 1:09:11 | |
have access to what happens there. | 1:09:13 | |
What happened there still secret and classified. | 1:09:15 | |
And we are told that because | 1:09:22 | |
the International Committee of the Red Cross, | 1:09:24 | |
the ICRC has access to the detainees, | 1:09:25 | |
no other access is required. | 1:09:28 | |
But the truth of the matter is ICRC access | 1:09:30 | |
is serving a very specific goal, | 1:09:33 | |
specific goal of improving humane treatment of detainees | 1:09:38 | |
but doing so in a non-public manner, | 1:09:43 | |
doing so confidentially. | 1:09:47 | |
The teams go in very dedicated, committed, | 1:09:49 | |
they go in regularly, visit detainees, | 1:09:53 | |
supposed to have access to all detainees. | 1:09:56 | |
And we know that that was not the case | 1:09:58 | |
but now seemingly things improve | 1:09:59 | |
and they would report to the government. | 1:10:02 | |
But what is important for the United States to show is | 1:10:05 | |
that these reports has to come | 1:10:07 | |
out on a regular basis to the public | 1:10:09 | |
both the American public and the world to see | 1:10:11 | |
and to hear that actually there was no abuse in Guantanamo, | 1:10:15 | |
their conditions in fact have improved. | 1:10:19 | |
And they are consistent with international law, | 1:10:22 | |
particularly Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention | 1:10:25 | |
and other human rights standards, | 1:10:27 | |
that has not happened yet. | 1:10:30 | |
And even under the Obama administration | 1:10:32 | |
United states government rejected visits like so, | 1:10:33 | |
one thing that we kept and I personally have worked | 1:10:36 | |
over the years to increase transparency | 1:10:40 | |
and allow more access to Guantanamo facilities. | 1:10:42 | |
And we were always told that | 1:10:47 | |
that's not what the government would allow | 1:10:50 | |
because it jeopardizes national security. | 1:10:56 | |
And you've got to understand that these kinds of, | 1:10:59 | |
because, for example, having someone | 1:11:01 | |
like Juan Mendez sit with some Guantanamo detainees | 1:11:05 | |
and those detainees may say something that could be | 1:11:13 | |
revealing state secrets or classified information. | 1:11:16 | |
God forbid they could tell him | 1:11:23 | |
about what happened to them in secret detention | 1:11:25 | |
or as they were tortured that for the government | 1:11:28 | |
is something that would need to be protected. | 1:11:32 | |
It is really remarkable how | 1:11:38 | |
people who are still there been held | 1:11:42 | |
for so many years, | 1:11:45 | |
that you could still think that anything that they could say | 1:11:47 | |
or to an independent expert with | 1:11:50 | |
with a strict protocol of maintaining | 1:11:53 | |
not disclosing information that would even | 1:11:58 | |
potentially harm national security, | 1:12:01 | |
that in that kind of situation | 1:12:03 | |
that will jeopardize national security. | 1:12:05 | |
Clearly it was about not adding pressure to | 1:12:07 | |
the United States did not want, | 1:12:13 | |
did not welcome that scrutiny for two reasons | 1:12:14 | |
either there was something wrong going on right now | 1:12:18 | |
or happened that the United States was trying to hide, | 1:12:21 | |
or the fact that those individuals can say something | 1:12:25 | |
about what happened to them in a credible way | 1:12:28 | |
to a credible authority that would maybe be made public. | 1:12:31 | |
It might really embarrass the government | 1:12:35 | |
that the government decided | 1:12:37 | |
that it wanted to remain secret. | 1:12:39 | |
In both cases, I think United States appear, look bad. | 1:12:43 | |
It looks like they're hiding something. | 1:12:49 | |
And if you look at even the first review that | 1:12:53 | |
the Obama administration did in 2009 | 1:12:57 | |
on conditions of confinement on treatment of detainees | 1:13:03 | |
under the executive order that the president signed | 1:13:07 | |
second day in office, | 1:13:10 | |
he ordered to conduct a report | 1:13:13 | |
to basically investigate whether the treatment | 1:13:21 | |
of detainees at Guantanamo meet the requirement | 1:13:24 | |
of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. | 1:13:27 | |
And he appointed an Admiral who went down | 1:13:30 | |
with his team and work very hard in a very short time. | 1:13:34 | |
And one of the recommendations that were made by | 1:13:40 | |
this Admiral Welsh is that the United States government | 1:13:44 | |
should consider allowing additional access | 1:13:47 | |
by non-governmental organizations | 1:13:51 | |
to Guantanamo, to increase transparency. | 1:13:54 | |
Unfortunately, this recommendation has never been followed | 1:13:58 | |
or if it was followed, it was followed very | 1:14:01 | |
partially and not in a meaningful way. | 1:14:03 | |
So that was one of the things that we worked on. | 1:14:05 | |
Another area was, revealing documents. | 1:14:11 | |
One of the things that the ACLU has done | 1:14:14 | |
over the years was using Freedom of Information Act, | 1:14:16 | |
request and litigation to get access | 1:14:20 | |
to information about government abuses, | 1:14:23 | |
especially in Guantanamo, or also in Guantanamo. | 1:14:26 | |
And we have received over a hundred thousands | 1:14:30 | |
of pages of documents that showed how detainees were abused. | 1:14:34 | |
I remember one of the first document | 1:14:43 | |
that we received documented how the FBI warned | 1:14:45 | |
against some of the interrogation | 1:14:49 | |
practices that they observed at Guantanamo. | 1:14:50 | |
And they decided not to participate | 1:14:54 | |
in those interrogation sessions, | 1:14:59 | |
because they thought that they violated | 1:15:00 | |
their own rules, the FBI rules. | 1:15:02 | |
So the struggle I think for transparency, | 1:15:07 | |
Guantanamo, it continues. | 1:15:09 | |
I mean, we have made progress, | 1:15:10 | |
really partly because of the pressure | 1:15:14 | |
on the government, from different actors, | 1:15:16 | |
from the media, from human rights organizations, | 1:15:18 | |
from lawyers getting access, | 1:15:21 | |
more information through their clients | 1:15:23 | |
through Freedom of Information Act, | 1:15:27 | |
from international bodies, | 1:15:28 | |
pushing the United States | 1:15:30 | |
and the United States had to provide more answers | 1:15:31 | |
on what's was going on. | 1:15:36 | |
But the transparency is not, | 1:15:37 | |
the struggle is not over yet. | 1:15:39 | |
Interviewer | Did it surprise you that | 1:15:42 |
Obama resisted as much | 1:15:43 | |
as Bush did on transparency issues? | 1:15:46 | |
- | It did surprise us in the beginning | 1:15:50 |
of his administration because he said, | 1:15:54 | |
and it was a quote that | 1:15:56 | |
"my administration will be one of the most | 1:15:57 | |
"transparent administrations in the history | 1:15:59 | |
"of the United States." | 1:16:02 | |
And he, I think he followed, | 1:16:03 | |
this announcement was not followed by concrete actions | 1:16:10 | |
as to make sure that transparency is indeed the hallmark | 1:16:15 | |
of this administration. | 1:16:20 | |
And the reason was I think because there was pushback | 1:16:20 | |
from military and the security establishment, | 1:16:24 | |
and they did not want to go along with that. | 1:16:29 | |
We've seen that happening very very vividly | 1:16:33 | |
with a struggle to declassify the summary and findings | 1:16:36 | |
of the Senate interrogation report, where it was clear | 1:16:40 | |
that there were, | 1:16:46 | |
The White House turned into a mediator, | 1:16:48 | |
or instead of making, calling the shots | 1:16:50 | |
and deciding as the commander in chief | 1:16:54 | |
as the president deciding on who has the authority to | 1:16:56 | |
declassify information has turned the white house officials | 1:16:59 | |
into mediators between the CIA | 1:17:03 | |
and the Senate Intelligence Committee chair | 1:17:05 | |
at the time, Dianne Feinstein. | 1:17:11 | |
If really the government or the president | 1:17:15 | |
was sincere about that, | 1:17:19 | |
he would be more forceful about pushing | 1:17:21 | |
for these documents to be released, | 1:17:26 | |
in many cases we needed to litigate years, | 1:17:30 | |
these cases and in order to get the government to agree | 1:17:35 | |
including the torture memos. | 1:17:39 | |
I mean, there was. | 1:17:41 | |
And the president said that, | 1:17:42 | |
in his first national security speech in 2009 | 1:17:44 | |
when he delivered a speech in the National Archives | 1:17:49 | |
and had to admit that we had to litigate, | 1:17:54 | |
we have to respond to litigation. | 1:17:58 | |
And that's why I'm releasing those torture memos | 1:18:00 | |
and remains to be a struggle, | 1:18:03 | |
at almost every, in almost every level that we need to | 1:18:06 | |
it's not that easy to get that information. | 1:18:11 | |
Interviewer | Can I go back to the beginning Jamil | 1:18:15 |
Why did ACLU get involved in the beginning | 1:18:17 | |
with Guantanamo, can you give us all a history | 1:18:21 | |
of what caused ACLU's involvement | 1:18:24 | |
and exactly how they saw themselves in the involvement? | 1:18:26 | |
- | Sure, so the ACLU main involvement really started | 1:18:30 |
with first calling for more transparency. | 1:18:35 | |
And I think leading the struggle for more transparency | 1:18:42 | |
of what's happening in Guantanamo, | 1:18:46 | |
the ACLU was not the organization, | 1:18:48 | |
the first organization | 1:18:51 | |
to offer legal representation or to file the | 1:18:51 | |
first habeas cases that were filed in federal courts. | 1:18:58 | |
That certainly is a credit that should be given | 1:19:02 | |
to the Center for Constitutional Rights. | 1:19:07 | |
Interviewer | Do you know why they said you do that? | 1:19:09 |
- | I think I was not there when that decision was made | 1:19:14 |
but I think that it was not legally | 1:19:18 | |
a viable option for, | 1:19:26 | |
it was not really seen as something that | 1:19:30 | |
you could easily challenge in court. | 1:19:33 | |
It was also politically perhaps risky to take that on, | 1:19:38 | |
obviously Michael Laettner, late Michael Laettner | 1:19:45 | |
and Center for Constitutional Rights | 1:19:47 | |
and other lawyers did that and succeeded, | 1:19:49 | |
but they also had doubts about the odds of winning. | 1:19:54 | |
And they really thought that there was | 1:19:58 | |
a long shot and they would do it for the sake | 1:20:00 | |
of historic record and for the sake of | 1:20:03 | |
making it clear that the government is | 1:20:05 | |
denying a judicial review, | 1:20:11 | |
denying judicial access, and judicial oversight. | 1:20:13 | |
So the ACLU, I think, had not represented individuals | 1:20:19 | |
in general, and certainly not in overseas battles | 1:20:25 | |
or even though we've always called | 1:20:28 | |
for protection of the constitution | 1:20:31 | |
and in a time of peace and at a time of war, | 1:20:34 | |
we've always challenged abuse of power. | 1:20:38 | |
And I think at the time, the ACLU was more | 1:20:43 | |
focused on challenging and pushing back | 1:20:47 | |
against the domestic framework | 1:20:50 | |
that was reframed to allow certain abuses | 1:20:53 | |
to take place providing, | 1:20:59 | |
for example, the FBI with authorities to do surveillance, | 1:21:01 | |
to do wiretapping through the enactment of the Patriot Act, | 1:21:05 | |
the ACLU was active there, was on the forefront | 1:21:12 | |
and the subsequent litigation that followed that as well. | 1:21:16 | |
I mean, the cases that were submitted were filed. | 1:21:18 | |
But it also worked on some other | 1:21:22 | |
post 9/11 transparency issues, | 1:21:24 | |
there was no access to information | 1:21:28 | |
about people who were rounded up post 9/11 | 1:21:29 | |
there was access to closed deportation hearings. | 1:21:34 | |
A number of cases were not successful | 1:21:41 | |
but the first case that was really successful | 1:21:43 | |
that really related to Guantanamo was | 1:21:45 | |
the Freedom of Information Act case | 1:21:48 | |
that was litigated by colleagues of mine, who were hired | 1:21:50 | |
to start a national security project. | 1:21:56 | |
And they also found that that was a long shot. | 1:22:00 | |
Interviewer | What were they looking forward to achieving? | 1:22:04 |
- | It was really an attempt to follow the lead of | 1:22:06 |
some of the journalistic work and exposes | 1:22:10 | |
and investigative journalism that revealed violations | 1:22:15 | |
and abuses against detainees that were held in US custody. | 1:22:19 | |
And so there were bits and pieces that were revealed, | 1:22:23 | |
but certainly the 2003, 2004 (indistinct) rape, abuses | 1:22:27 | |
made it very clear that that | 1:22:38 | |
was really extreme and more widespread | 1:22:40 | |
than people thought. | 1:22:45 | |
Other work that was done | 1:22:48 | |
by other human rights organizations in, | 1:22:49 | |
they met with detainees who were released | 1:22:52 | |
from some of these facilities early on. | 1:22:55 | |
So the idea was, the government should | 1:22:59 | |
tell the American public | 1:23:02 | |
what is happening in those dark far places, | 1:23:03 | |
like (indistinct), like Iraq prisons, | 1:23:08 | |
like Afghanistan prisons, like Bagram, | 1:23:12 | |
and Guantanamo Bay. | 1:23:14 | |
And so the first batches of documents were really, | 1:23:16 | |
when they arrived, | 1:23:20 | |
it was surprising to know so much that was not known. | 1:23:21 | |
And so that's when the ACLU really decided | 1:23:28 | |
to use this information to inform the public, | 1:23:32 | |
to work with media organizations, | 1:23:36 | |
to work with lawyers who already | 1:23:39 | |
and other human rights organizations | 1:23:41 | |
to piece together the story of post 9/11 abuses. | 1:23:43 | |
So that was really the ACLU role was at | 1:23:50 | |
the time between 2002, 2001-2002, | 1:23:53 | |
shortly after Guantanamo opened 2002 to 2004 | 1:23:56 | |
and five pushing for more transparency trying | 1:24:01 | |
to be the guardian of the rule of law and even | 1:24:07 | |
in some statements to the media and other work | 1:24:15 | |
but it did not include challenging the | 1:24:20 | |
illegal detention at Guantanamo, | 1:24:23 | |
but that changed, in 2004 as the Bush administration | 1:24:26 | |
decided to start the first military commission hearings | 1:24:32 | |
in the summer, on August of 2004. | 1:24:36 | |
The ACLU was one of four organizations that requested | 1:24:42 | |
and received official observer status | 1:24:45 | |
at the military commissions, | 1:24:48 | |
and Anthony Romero in fact, | 1:24:51 | |
the executive director of the ACLU | 1:24:53 | |
was one of the first observers | 1:24:54 | |
to monitor and to report on what's happening there. | 1:24:56 | |
And there was very little known about Guantanamo | 1:25:01 | |
because very few reporting there were | 1:25:04 | |
media access was limited, | 1:25:07 | |
and monitoring the military commissions allowed you | 1:25:09 | |
access to the base, access to what's happening | 1:25:13 | |
in the base generally, | 1:25:17 | |
even though you didn't have access to the camps, | 1:25:18 | |
to the detention facilities and to the detainees. | 1:25:20 | |
And still, that was a very important role that ACLU played. | 1:25:23 | |
And we monitored nearly every military commission hearing | 1:25:27 | |
since 2004, much less frequent in the last year or two | 1:25:30 | |
because of the difficulty of sending observers | 1:25:37 | |
to every hearing when there was more | 1:25:41 | |
and more observers available and able to monitor. | 1:25:44 | |
There was also other arrangements that were | 1:25:49 | |
made to monitor | 1:25:51 | |
the hearings and more reporters in, honestly | 1:25:52 | |
were also, started to get involved | 1:25:57 | |
in monitoring what's going on | 1:26:00 | |
other than Colonel Rosenberg, | 1:26:02 | |
who was really the lead media observer | 1:26:04 | |
at those hearings, but more prominently | 1:26:10 | |
the ACLU decided to create a special project, | 1:26:14 | |
the John Adams Project, when. | 1:26:19 | |
(faintly speaking) | 1:26:22 | |
It was, you have the 2006 the Supreme Court decided | 1:26:24 | |
that the military commission system was | 1:26:29 | |
in violation of the constitution | 1:26:32 | |
and the Geneva Conventions particularly, | 1:26:33 | |
the government decided that that was the time | 1:26:39 | |
for the government to move some | 1:26:43 | |
of the CIA detainees to Guantanamo. | 1:26:47 | |
Some of them, many of them were released | 1:26:51 | |
or transferred to other countries, | 1:26:53 | |
but that move really that was | 1:26:55 | |
the military commission challenge | 1:26:57 | |
of the Hamdan decision, because it was | 1:26:59 | |
made very clear that the United States government may, | 1:27:03 | |
or officials who were involved in mistreatment of detainees | 1:27:07 | |
or not affording them the standard under | 1:27:13 | |
the Common Article 3 of humane treatment, | 1:27:18 | |
may violate the Geneva Convention, | 1:27:20 | |
that would also amount to war crimes. | 1:27:22 | |
And at that point it was clear to the government | 1:27:24 | |
that they needed to basically roll out to end the, | 1:27:28 | |
and obviously there were other things that were going | 1:27:35 | |
on and there was more pressure | 1:27:38 | |
and for more transparency and accountability, | 1:27:39 | |
but there was really the legal opinion | 1:27:42 | |
of Justice Stephens that have made it a warning | 1:27:48 | |
to the government. | 1:27:55 | |
So during that time, and as the government decided to | 1:27:57 | |
enact the military commission Act of 2006 | 1:27:59 | |
and the challenges that followed that | 1:28:03 | |
in where the government for the first time announced | 1:28:05 | |
that it would start to try those who were responsible | 1:28:10 | |
for 9/11 before a military commission, | 1:28:18 | |
knowing that the military commission system was unfair | 1:28:22 | |
and the newly passed military commission Act in 2006, | 1:28:27 | |
did not fix all the problems, the flaws in the system. | 1:28:34 | |
It was another attempt on another round, | 1:28:41 | |
and a failed legal experiment of testing another thing | 1:28:45 | |
and building something from scratch. | 1:28:50 | |
And it was clear that it is an invitation | 1:28:52 | |
to additional rounds of litigation and legal advocacy. | 1:28:55 | |
So as the detainees of Guantanamo started to be tried | 1:29:03 | |
and prepared for trials, particularly the 9/11 trials | 1:29:09 | |
and the United States government was promising the families | 1:29:11 | |
and victims of 9/11, that they will be pursuing justice, | 1:29:14 | |
but that's not justice as we need to be evading | 1:29:18 | |
because they were using the wrong system. | 1:29:21 | |
And as the Bush administration put forward | 1:29:24 | |
the cases started to start to prepare for these cases. | 1:29:26 | |
It made very clear to us that these trials will not be fair | 1:29:30 | |
under the current system. | 1:29:38 | |
And what really was needed is to | 1:29:40 | |
have the most effective and the best legal teams | 1:29:43 | |
to be equipped, to defend these individuals for the sake | 1:29:49 | |
of exposing the flaws of the system, | 1:29:54 | |
the due process violations, | 1:29:57 | |
the violation of the US constitution, | 1:29:58 | |
decades long history of rule law commitments | 1:30:00 | |
and that, and so the collaboration | 1:30:07 | |
with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, | 1:30:10 | |
the ACLU started the John Adams Project | 1:30:15 | |
as a way to provide resources, | 1:30:18 | |
additional resources to | 1:30:21 | |
the Guantanamo military commission defense team | 1:30:24 | |
by assembling first-rate, the nation's best | 1:30:28 | |
capital defense lawyers who | 1:30:36 | |
had experience litigating and representing capital cases | 1:30:38 | |
in the domestic system and they were ready and were up | 1:30:43 | |
for taking this big challenge of representing | 1:30:49 | |
the people who were accused | 1:30:54 | |
of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks, | 1:30:56 | |
not an easy thing to do, | 1:30:59 | |
but there were people who like the ACLU | 1:31:00 | |
were committed to making sure that whatever | 1:31:02 | |
the United States government does | 1:31:09 | |
it reflects its own laws and its own values | 1:31:10 | |
and its own commitments to human rights and the rule of law, | 1:31:13 | |
and that was really an attempt | 1:31:17 | |
to challenge the system this flawed system | 1:31:19 | |
and bringing to an end. | 1:31:25 | |
And ultimately, because of this work, | 1:31:29 | |
there several lawyers who were, | 1:31:34 | |
civilian lawyers that were hired | 1:31:37 | |
and were paid by this fund, | 1:31:39 | |
by special resources that were made available | 1:31:41 | |
by the ACLU and the national criminal defense lawyers, | 1:31:44 | |
in order to work alongside | 1:31:50 | |
with military defense counsel to represent the detainees. | 1:31:52 | |
And that has really been pushed to shut this down. | 1:31:56 | |
And it was made close, | 1:32:03 | |
very close to when the Obama administration | 1:32:04 | |
or the president Obama was campaigning as a candidate. | 1:32:07 | |
And he made promises that he would shut down Guantanamo, | 1:32:11 | |
and he made promises that he would not | 1:32:13 | |
follow these military commissions | 1:32:16 | |
that were really not following the due process. | 1:32:18 | |
And the work of of the John Adams Project | 1:32:24 | |
kind of made a very clear why there need | 1:32:30 | |
to be an end to these cases and we should be brought | 1:32:34 | |
to federal courts if there are credible evidence | 1:32:39 | |
against these individuals to try them in federal courts | 1:32:44 | |
that are tested courts, | 1:32:47 | |
and then the individuals who the United States has | 1:32:48 | |
no credible evidence against them | 1:32:51 | |
can't charge them, bring them to trial. | 1:32:54 | |
They should be released. | 1:32:57 | |
So that was made very clear from the outside | 1:32:58 | |
and I think you ACLU did a historic decision at the time | 1:33:00 | |
and a bold decision to take that case | 1:33:06 | |
while we fail to do the right thing | 1:33:09 | |
maybe in representing the first detainees | 1:33:14 | |
who arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002, | 1:33:17 | |
we decided that that was also historic role | 1:33:21 | |
for ACLU to uphold the rule of law and due process | 1:33:24 | |
and the constitutional human rights principles | 1:33:28 | |
by creating this project. | 1:33:31 | |
Ultimately we know the end of the story, | 1:33:34 | |
which we are now, which is, it's not really end of a story. | 1:33:36 | |
The Obama administration did not shut | 1:33:41 | |
down the military commissions. | 1:33:42 | |
There was an attempt to bring some | 1:33:43 | |
of those cases to the federal courts. | 1:33:45 | |
In fact, the attorney general even filed indictments | 1:33:47 | |
in federal courts here in New York against | 1:33:51 | |
the 9/11 defendants | 1:33:54 | |
this case because of pressure, political pressure | 1:33:57 | |
nothing else, because of political expediency | 1:34:00 | |
it was pushed back, | 1:34:04 | |
sent back to Guantanamo military commissions | 1:34:06 | |
that were ultimately revised again with an eye | 1:34:09 | |
on repairing it to be able to handle those cases | 1:34:14 | |
but ultimately they're still failing to do so. | 1:34:20 | |
And as we see days go on, there are few convictions. | 1:34:23 | |
In fact, there were only three or four convictions | 1:34:29 | |
at Guantanamo, there were still shadow secrecy. | 1:34:31 | |
There was fundamental issues that are being litigated | 1:34:37 | |
as to application of the constitution | 1:34:41 | |
and constitutional principles, wiretapping | 1:34:43 | |
or snooping on military defense team, | 1:34:46 | |
serious violations of confidentiality. | 1:34:51 | |
Other really abuses that only can be, | 1:34:55 | |
that can only fit kangaroo courts | 1:35:01 | |
not military commissions and handled according to the law. | 1:35:03 | |
Man | We need to switch cards. | 1:35:10 |
Interviewer | Need to switch cards? | 1:35:12 |
Okay, I don't have much more of the Guantanamo switch cards | 1:35:14 | |
because I do have a few more questions. | 1:35:16 | |
Okay, I just have a few more questions Jamil. | 1:35:21 | |
One is when the ACLU start the John Adams Project | 1:35:23 | |
did they get any pushback from the donors or | 1:35:26 | |
from people who the board | 1:35:29 | |
or people who were very involved in ACLU? | 1:35:32 | |
- | I think internally there was a pretty consensus | 1:35:35 |
that that was the right thing for the ACLU to do, | 1:35:39 | |
under the leadership of Anthony Romero | 1:35:43 | |
and the legal director, Steve Shapiro, who really, | 1:35:47 | |
made a decision and said, | 1:35:51 | |
this is something that we've been calling for | 1:35:53 | |
a fair trial or release, | 1:35:59 | |
we've been calling for either charge them, | 1:36:01 | |
try them, or release them since day one. | 1:36:04 | |
This is what they should have been saying | 1:36:06 | |
since beginning of the post 9/11. | 1:36:08 | |
And so if the United States government | 1:36:13 | |
is going to try people then we need | 1:36:16 | |
to show that we really sticking to the rule, | 1:36:20 | |
these trials should be fair. | 1:36:23 | |
And so we, not only to talk the talk | 1:36:26 | |
but we needed to walk the walk. | 1:36:30 | |
And I think it was clear. | 1:36:32 | |
I remember having those conversations | 1:36:34 | |
with Steve and Anthony that this is the right thing. | 1:36:36 | |
And I think most people within the organizations were | 1:36:40 | |
on board with that. | 1:36:42 | |
Not all funders or donors liked that work. | 1:36:44 | |
It wasn't something that they would want to fund or support. | 1:36:48 | |
But I think ultimately the ACLU was able to | 1:36:52 | |
find the resources to fund this important work. | 1:36:54 | |
And it paid off, it paid off because | 1:36:58 | |
the professional legal representation | 1:37:02 | |
that you're seeing now at Guantanamo military commissions | 1:37:06 | |
is due to this project, is due to this initiative. | 1:37:10 | |
Interviewer | And you found these top people. | 1:37:16 |
- | Because the top people came and provided | 1:37:17 |
their legal expertise | 1:37:20 | |
and provided the support that was needed. | 1:37:23 | |
It was very few people in the US military | 1:37:26 | |
had tried capital cases, | 1:37:29 | |
and capital case there is specific | 1:37:31 | |
standards under the ABO rule | 1:37:33 | |
or how many people need to be assigned to a case, | 1:37:36 | |
both from a perspective of a criminal defense lawyers | 1:37:39 | |
and other specialists that need to be assigned to a case | 1:37:42 | |
and analyst and researchers, | 1:37:46 | |
and requires immense amount of resources, | 1:37:47 | |
and doing so in a place like Guantanamo, | 1:37:51 | |
where it's constantly, everything is challenged. | 1:37:55 | |
Everything is changing. | 1:37:58 | |
Rules change constantly, | 1:37:59 | |
makes this work even more challenging, | 1:38:02 | |
so the ACLU basically said, | 1:38:05 | |
we don't have the staff | 1:38:08 | |
or the lawyers to defend these individuals | 1:38:09 | |
because we don't do, | 1:38:12 | |
we do have a Capital Defense Project | 1:38:13 | |
that has experienced in litigating cases | 1:38:16 | |
in the United States. | 1:38:19 | |
And ultimately the head of that project became one | 1:38:20 | |
of the 9/11 criminal defense lawyers, Denny LeBoeuf. | 1:38:24 | |
And she continues to be involved as | 1:38:30 | |
the director of the John Adams Project | 1:38:32 | |
but it really required the ACLU to take that unconventional | 1:38:36 | |
maybe very bold decision of doing this. | 1:38:42 | |
There were fortunately, I think there were also | 1:38:50 | |
little pushback or criticism from supporters, | 1:38:53 | |
broadly speaking, I think by 2006-2007 | 1:38:59 | |
people in the United States already been fed | 1:39:06 | |
up with what they have heard and saw | 1:39:08 | |
and learn about what's happening in Guantanamo. | 1:39:11 | |
And you gotta remember that that that was after | 1:39:16 | |
almost three or four times | 1:39:19 | |
at that United States Supreme Court had made decisions | 1:39:21 | |
against the government with regard to Guantanamo policies. | 1:39:27 | |
So there was already public opinion that has been | 1:39:31 | |
at least ready to accept the fact | 1:39:37 | |
that this is not fair. | 1:39:39 | |
This is not right. | 1:39:43 | |
This is not what the United States stands for. | 1:39:45 | |
And to see the ACLU stepping up and doing something to end | 1:39:48 | |
this was pretty much consistent | 1:39:53 | |
with what I think most people | 1:39:55 | |
who really care about the country | 1:39:58 | |
and it's history and it's reputation, et cetera. | 1:40:01 | |
And so that really helped get the ACLU to be able to do that | 1:40:07 | |
without, but we got support from former attorney general, | 1:40:12 | |
Janet Reno, for example | 1:40:16 | |
wrote why it was important for the ACLU and | 1:40:17 | |
for Americans to provide fair trial and why this is needed. | 1:40:22 | |
There was not really as much | 1:40:29 | |
about individuals who were on trial, | 1:40:30 | |
although as a criminal defense lawyers, | 1:40:33 | |
that's their main interest, | 1:40:37 | |
the main interest should be to defend their client. | 1:40:39 | |
And that was the hallmark | 1:40:42 | |
of the American justice system for years, | 1:40:45 | |
is that no matter who the person who was accused, | 1:40:48 | |
they deserve, he or she deserve fair trial and due process | 1:40:52 | |
and where those fundamental principles are violated | 1:40:57 | |
there's something wrong with the country, with the system. | 1:41:00 | |
And that obviously was made very clear to the public. | 1:41:03 | |
And I think if you ask, most people would probably say | 1:41:09 | |
that that was the right thing to do. | 1:41:13 | |
Unfortunately the fear mongering | 1:41:15 | |
and the politicization of Guantanamo | 1:41:18 | |
and the fact that the United States was involved | 1:41:21 | |
in two Wars abroad, Afghanistan, and Iraq | 1:41:26 | |
and the fact that there were attempts | 1:41:29 | |
after 9/11 and in even some incidents | 1:41:32 | |
where were some political violence, | 1:41:35 | |
people were resorted to acts of terrorism | 1:41:37 | |
in the United States. | 1:41:40 | |
Those were used by politicians and by other parts of | 1:41:41 | |
the political system and including sometimes | 1:41:46 | |
in the media to raise concerns regarding some | 1:41:50 | |
policies that United States were doing it right. | 1:41:54 | |
For example, instead of increasing the closure | 1:41:58 | |
of Guantanamo, those fear-mongering | 1:42:01 | |
and the politicization of Guantanamo made it much | 1:42:07 | |
more difficult to close Guantanamo. | 1:42:10 | |
So the Guantanamo become not as | 1:42:12 | |
national security imperative, | 1:42:14 | |
as much as it was political imperative, | 1:42:16 | |
political interests, narrow political interests, | 1:42:19 | |
dictated what should happen to Guantanamo, | 1:42:22 | |
while really, if you think about it | 1:42:24 | |
the first thing it should be, | 1:42:26 | |
what the rule of law means, | 1:42:27 | |
what human rights, national security combined | 1:42:29 | |
means for a country to operate a place like Guantanamo. | 1:42:33 | |
And yet it turned out to be not about that because people | 1:42:37 | |
on both sides of the political map | 1:42:42 | |
in 2008, during the presidential elections, | 1:42:45 | |
both major presidential candidates | 1:42:48 | |
were for closing Guantanamo. | 1:42:51 | |
In fact, President Bush was for closing Guantanamo. | 1:42:52 | |
He released and transferred most Guantanamo detainees | 1:42:55 | |
before even Obama took office. | 1:42:59 | |
But once you turn something | 1:43:01 | |
into a political debate, political issue | 1:43:03 | |
then you really lose sight of what's happening. | 1:43:09 | |
And that's unfortunate. | 1:43:12 | |
And that makes it, | 1:43:13 | |
that's why when you see some of the polling | 1:43:15 | |
on Guantanamo or the use of torture, | 1:43:17 | |
it's easier for people to say, | 1:43:19 | |
we want Guantanamo to maintain, to keep it open | 1:43:22 | |
because there are really asked. | 1:43:25 | |
They're not really asked | 1:43:28 | |
about these issues when they know all the facts, | 1:43:30 | |
know all the repercussions, they know what really | 1:43:35 | |
that means from a perspective of both domestic | 1:43:38 | |
and international perspectives, | 1:43:41 | |
but it's about the fear. | 1:43:46 | |
How's it gonna affect me as an American? | 1:43:49 | |
Is this gonna kind of haunt me, | 1:43:52 | |
is that gonna make me feel less safe? | 1:43:54 | |
And we know that many | 1:43:56 | |
of the post 9/11 policies have not made United States safer | 1:43:57 | |
or more safe. | 1:44:03 | |
Had made things worse and they were more likely | 1:44:04 | |
than not that they were counter productive to the cause | 1:44:09 | |
of protecting the country and the citizens. | 1:44:13 | |
So now there is more critical analysis | 1:44:18 | |
of what's happened and why it's hard to cut back | 1:44:22 | |
on those policies. | 1:44:28 | |
Well, there's a lot of people who are benefiting from that. | 1:44:30 | |
You have people who are security contractors, | 1:44:33 | |
the fact that there are more people acting | 1:44:37 | |
for security companies than we had pre-9/11 | 1:44:40 | |
that it's harder and harder. | 1:44:45 | |
There's a narrative that was set up | 1:44:47 | |
since 9/11, that is hard to change. | 1:44:50 | |
There are financial interest involved. | 1:44:53 | |
There are people's careers involved. | 1:44:55 | |
They're all of a sudden you have these experts, | 1:44:58 | |
national security experts | 1:45:00 | |
and some of them are being utilized in some of those cases. | 1:45:02 | |
And including at Guantanamo. | 1:45:07 | |
The first full trial that I saw that was in Guantanamo | 1:45:09 | |
was the case of Al-Bahlul is Yemeni detainee | 1:45:17 | |
who was alleged to be a close advisor to Osama bin Laden. | 1:45:24 | |
And who helped him develop communication and media content | 1:45:32 | |
and materials for glorifying Al-Qaeda's | 1:45:38 | |
operations and activities around the world. | 1:45:41 | |
And he was put on trial, | 1:45:44 | |
I was the ACLU observer in the trial. | 1:45:46 | |
He gone to the trial. | 1:45:50 | |
He did not want to be represented. | 1:45:52 | |
He did not really put forward a defense, | 1:45:54 | |
later on, there were cracks in his | 1:45:58 | |
there were challenged the conviction | 1:46:01 | |
he's still serving life sentence in Guantanamo | 1:46:04 | |
but there were serious problems | 1:46:07 | |
that were revealed on appeal. | 1:46:09 | |
But the main point that I wanna make | 1:46:12 | |
is that one of the things | 1:46:13 | |
that the government did was bringing | 1:46:14 | |
so-called a national security expert to show a video of, | 1:46:17 | |
was created by a guy who was really making his living | 1:46:22 | |
on tracking Al-Qaeda and showing what Al-Qaeda videos like, | 1:46:26 | |
and literally he was copying what Al-Bahlul | 1:46:33 | |
has created during his time an active membership | 1:46:36 | |
with Al Qaeda. | 1:46:43 | |
So he made a lot of money. | 1:46:44 | |
He came and was given access | 1:46:46 | |
to Guantanamo military commission | 1:46:49 | |
and was testifying and about, | 1:46:51 | |
and he prepared episodes like the ideology of Al-Qaeda | 1:46:53 | |
and how they evolved, pre-1998, 96 | 1:47:01 | |
for the Fatwah that was issued and after the Fatwah | 1:47:06 | |
and all the different attacks, | 1:47:09 | |
and these are things that are the government knows and does. | 1:47:11 | |
And there had, there were people who are now living | 1:47:17 | |
on just reinventing and recreating this again | 1:47:21 | |
and again, for the sake of showing | 1:47:25 | |
that we there's a constant level of fear | 1:47:26 | |
and constant level of security threat that we had to manage. | 1:47:31 | |
And there's a lot of people who are benefiting from that. | 1:47:35 | |
And I think that in of itself needs to be exposed. | 1:47:37 | |
The fact that the country has moved to | 1:47:41 | |
more security apparatus in | 1:47:44 | |
everything we do just as Dana Priest | 1:47:47 | |
in The Washington Post revealed in terms of, | 1:47:50 | |
how many really people are employed, | 1:47:53 | |
how many companies are doing this kind of work who have, | 1:47:55 | |
security clearance and have access to information | 1:47:59 | |
and what that means to a country | 1:48:02 | |
to a democracy like the United States. | 1:48:03 | |
These are questions that did not go away by | 1:48:07 | |
the fact that Obama decided to change some of the policies. | 1:48:10 | |
In fact, he made some, expanded some | 1:48:14 | |
of the Bush administration policies. | 1:48:17 | |
And I think that the next president | 1:48:19 | |
after 2016 elections | 1:48:23 | |
will likely to enhance some of those policies. | 1:48:26 | |
And it will be more difficult | 1:48:29 | |
because the president already has set | 1:48:30 | |
a tone and a legal reasoning. | 1:48:34 | |
And also some positions that were made as to | 1:48:36 | |
his power as a president | 1:48:39 | |
he's created some precedent, | 1:48:42 | |
I think, equally harmful if not more harmful | 1:48:43 | |
than the Bush administration | 1:48:46 | |
because you have a president | 1:48:48 | |
who knew what he was doing really well | 1:48:50 | |
who is a constitutional lawyer, | 1:48:53 | |
who came to office with understanding that these | 1:48:54 | |
these are failures that we not repeat, | 1:48:58 | |
and yet on a number of areas, national security policies | 1:49:02 | |
certainly the mishandling of closing Guantanamo | 1:49:06 | |
led to this, where we are right now, | 1:49:11 | |
that Guantanamo is not closed. | 1:49:14 | |
There still, it's becoming a political issue. | 1:49:19 | |
It's becoming. | 1:49:22 | |
Interviewer | Will it close? | 1:49:24 |
- | Well I doubt if it will close between now and January. | 1:49:27 |
It will require presidential bold action. | 1:49:31 | |
The president created the Guantanamo. | 1:49:39 | |
And, if you I once used it in one of the blogs that I wrote | 1:49:43 | |
from Guantanamo about the whole concept | 1:49:49 | |
of military commissions, | 1:49:52 | |
military commissions were originally created | 1:49:53 | |
by the president and the president | 1:49:55 | |
as the one who created them can shut them down. | 1:49:58 | |
And similarly is really, | 1:50:03 | |
it's the authority, the source that created | 1:50:04 | |
something is the one that logically is the one | 1:50:09 | |
that to end it, to finish it. | 1:50:13 | |
And this is the same to, for Guantanamo, | 1:50:16 | |
now, obviously with all the different restrictions | 1:50:19 | |
and the rules and the laws that were enacted | 1:50:21 | |
through the appropriation over the years. | 1:50:24 | |
But I think more than anything | 1:50:28 | |
it is about political capital. | 1:50:30 | |
It's about the legacy. | 1:50:32 | |
I think that the president will | 1:50:35 | |
be remembered for a number of things | 1:50:38 | |
as far as his national security legacy, | 1:50:40 | |
he will be remembered | 1:50:43 | |
for ending torture as far as secret detention facilities | 1:50:44 | |
and not allowing it to continue, | 1:50:49 | |
but at the same time and commitment to close Guantanamo | 1:50:53 | |
but not closing it | 1:50:59 | |
and doing other things, meanwhile | 1:51:00 | |
to undermine that purpose | 1:51:02 | |
and using targeted killings | 1:51:05 | |
as a main counter terrorism tool, | 1:51:07 | |
particularly in places outside conventional battlefield, | 1:51:11 | |
places like Yemen, places like Somalia. | 1:51:16 | |
And even in places in Pakistan where | 1:51:18 | |
it's not clear that there is a level of violence | 1:51:19 | |
level that reaches to amount to an armed conflict | 1:51:23 | |
and the more really concerning | 1:51:28 | |
is his unwillingness to make his policies transparent | 1:51:31 | |
and more accountable. | 1:51:39 | |
He has said that he wants to be more transparent. | 1:51:41 | |
In fact, in the 2013 speech and in the | 1:51:44 | |
National Defense University, | 1:51:48 | |
he made for the first time | 1:51:53 | |
the commitment to make his policy on targeted | 1:51:55 | |
killing more transparent. | 1:51:58 | |
And he issued a very short document that summarizes | 1:52:00 | |
the policy or target again, but it was not enough. | 1:52:05 | |
And he promised, and to take steps, | 1:52:08 | |
to make sure that the following | 1:52:14 | |
or the next future president will not | 1:52:16 | |
be open to, or with a free hand to do the same things. | 1:52:18 | |
Because ultimately that is up to the president to | 1:52:23 | |
create a precedent or to show that, | 1:52:28 | |
put limits to his own powers, | 1:52:31 | |
consistent with the constitutional powers under the system. | 1:52:34 | |
So those are things that I think will haunt the president. | 1:52:39 | |
He will be, and the last thing that I would really, | 1:52:42 | |
connects to all of those, | 1:52:49 | |
the lack of accountability for torture | 1:52:51 | |
including torture in Guantanamo. | 1:52:53 | |
When you have massive violations of human rights | 1:52:56 | |
of abuses that were committed and documented, | 1:53:00 | |
very well-documented. | 1:53:03 | |
And yet very few people within the chain of command, | 1:53:04 | |
specifically the higher command have been held accountable. | 1:53:09 | |
It makes it very clear that there was | 1:53:15 | |
no attempt to provide accountability. | 1:53:18 | |
In fact, the Obama administration gave immunity | 1:53:20 | |
to the people who are responsible for those abuses | 1:53:25 | |
because he thought that by doing so, | 1:53:30 | |
he would have the security establishment, | 1:53:32 | |
military defense establishment | 1:53:38 | |
back his own policies moving forward. | 1:53:41 | |
And in some areas, yes they did, | 1:53:44 | |
targeted killing was one of them, | 1:53:46 | |
that he got the backing of both the intelligence | 1:53:47 | |
and the military defense establishment | 1:53:49 | |
as well as people on the hill. | 1:53:52 | |
But that ultimately opened the door for more abuses | 1:53:54 | |
as we know. | 1:53:59 | |
So it is a sad way for, | 1:54:00 | |
if Guantanamo will be closed by the end of Obama term | 1:54:04 | |
it will be because he really decided to | 1:54:10 | |
to do the right thing. | 1:54:14 | |
And the more courageous step of even risking | 1:54:16 | |
the so-called accusation of he's violating the law | 1:54:20 | |
by doing so, I think there are other ways | 1:54:25 | |
that he could do that without violating the law | 1:54:27 | |
because appropriations that go, not the defense, | 1:54:29 | |
other kinds of appropriation could be used | 1:54:32 | |
to close Guantanamo but end of the game | 1:54:34 | |
is not only closing Guantanamo, | 1:54:38 | |
is ending the regime of Guantanamo, | 1:54:40 | |
is ending what Guantanamo symbolizes as far | 1:54:42 | |
as indefinite detention, | 1:54:46 | |
moving Guantanamo to the United States | 1:54:48 | |
without ending indefinite detention | 1:54:51 | |
is a half step forward. | 1:54:54 | |
Ending Guantanamo and making sure that the same pattern, | 1:54:58 | |
the same paradigm will not be repeated elsewhere. | 1:55:03 | |
Now that the United States may be involved | 1:55:07 | |
in more military operations overseas, | 1:55:10 | |
what are the rules for engagement | 1:55:12 | |
and how will these kinds of abuses will not, | 1:55:14 | |
what are the assurances that these will not happen again? | 1:55:18 | |
And as far as fairness of moving trials | 1:55:21 | |
if you just move the military commission system as is, | 1:55:25 | |
it will remain flawed, | 1:55:28 | |
it will remain subject to constant challenge and litigation. | 1:55:30 | |
So will remain to be seen what happens with that. | 1:55:34 | |
Interviewer | Well, the ACLU feel it | 1:55:38 |
that they'll get more documents, | 1:55:41 | |
this foyer request, | 1:55:43 | |
is that something that ACLU really focuses on, | 1:55:44 | |
is that important, an ACLU policy? | 1:55:46 | |
- | Well, the ACLU has been also presenting individuals | 1:55:52 |
in Guantanamo, I mean, we have | 1:55:57 | |
Mohamedou Ould Slahi | 1:55:59 | |
who is a Guantanamo detainee | 1:56:00 | |
from Mauritania who has been held | 1:56:04 | |
without trial or charge for years for over a decade now. | 1:56:09 | |
And his case will be reviewed very soon | 1:56:14 | |
before the Periodic Review Board. | 1:56:18 | |
We hope that he will be released. | 1:56:20 | |
We think that there is no reason | 1:56:22 | |
that he should remain in US custody. | 1:56:23 | |
We've been involved in John Adams Project. | 1:56:27 | |
And that also involves some | 1:56:31 | |
litigation representing detainees. | 1:56:32 | |
We have also challenged the, | 1:56:35 | |
some of the post 9/11 policies | 1:56:40 | |
both domestic and international, | 1:56:43 | |
domestic, they're using the Material Witness Act, | 1:56:45 | |
including some Americans who were caught | 1:56:51 | |
and been held and in one of those cases, | 1:56:53 | |
made it all the way to US Supreme Court. | 1:56:56 | |
There's more and more obviously work | 1:57:01 | |
that is being done around transparency | 1:57:03 | |
and that is using Freedom of Information Act | 1:57:05 | |
to try to challenge or to shed more light | 1:57:09 | |
on targeted killings program, | 1:57:12 | |
shed more light on transparency | 1:57:14 | |
as far as the accountability for the CIA program. | 1:57:16 | |
We have represented torture survivors since 2005, | 1:57:20 | |
torture survivors who were held in US custody abroad | 1:57:28 | |
by the U S military and by the CIA. | 1:57:31 | |
And we just brought another case | 1:57:34 | |
on behalf of three individuals who were victims | 1:57:41 | |
of the CIA torture program based | 1:57:44 | |
on the Senate intelligence interrogation report | 1:57:46 | |
or report on interrogation practices or a torture report. | 1:57:51 | |
So there are a number of ways that the ACLU continues | 1:57:55 | |
to work to make sure that there's more transparency | 1:57:59 | |
and more accountability, | 1:58:04 | |
that laws are consistent with the constitution | 1:58:05 | |
and international law on issues of detention | 1:58:08 | |
the army field manual that needs to be reviewed and revised | 1:58:12 | |
particularly Annex M, | 1:58:15 | |
Guantanamo closure to be fair, safe | 1:58:18 | |
and humane consistent with the rule of law. | 1:58:21 | |
And that this will be the only assurance | 1:58:26 | |
that next president will know that it will not | 1:58:30 | |
be easy to violate the constitution and international law. | 1:58:36 | |
Interviewer | I have only two more questions. | 1:58:41 |
One is, do you think at some point in our future | 1:58:43 | |
there will be some, | 1:58:48 | |
but not reparations apology | 1:58:52 | |
or something else that the US will acknowledge what they did | 1:58:53 | |
and maybe patch 'cause they said it was pushing it forward? | 1:58:59 | |
- | Yes, I think that, that there, | 1:59:02 |
this chapter, Guantanamo chapter | 1:59:04 | |
or the post 9/11 rights violations chapter | 1:59:07 | |
will remain open until there will be final closure | 1:59:12 | |
with providing a full account, | 1:59:15 | |
an official apology for the people who were victims | 1:59:20 | |
of these policies, | 1:59:24 | |
some compensation and in the case of survivors | 1:59:26 | |
of torture and abuse, | 1:59:30 | |
rehabilitation opportunities | 1:59:31 | |
maybe would be too late for some of them. | 1:59:33 | |
They may not be alive. | 1:59:35 | |
As we know from the United States experiences in the past | 1:59:37 | |
it's usually takes decades, | 1:59:41 | |
the Japanese Americans were rounded and interned | 1:59:43 | |
in the internment camp during World War II. | 1:59:48 | |
They had to wait until the mid-1980s | 1:59:52 | |
with President Reagan offering | 1:59:55 | |
official apology and passing law | 1:59:59 | |
to provide a remedy for some compensation, | 2:00:02 | |
some measure of justice for them. | 2:00:05 | |
We already hear from former justices | 2:00:08 | |
of the Supreme Court likes Paul Stevens, | 2:00:11 | |
Justice Stevens who said that | 2:00:14 | |
Guantanamo detainees should be offered even compensation | 2:00:18 | |
for abuses that they experienced. | 2:00:22 | |
We know that people who worked within the US government | 2:00:27 | |
and were challenging, | 2:00:31 | |
or try to push back against those policies, | 2:00:32 | |
spoke against those policies. | 2:00:35 | |
Some of them were whistleblowers | 2:00:37 | |
who paid very high price. | 2:00:38 | |
Some of them left the government. | 2:00:41 | |
Those people shouldn't be honored, | 2:00:43 | |
those people should be | 2:00:45 | |
rewarded for their courage. | 2:00:46 | |
And that has not happened yet. | 2:00:48 | |
So there's a host of steps that the government | 2:00:50 | |
maybe the future government, in my view | 2:00:53 | |
it will take longer than an administration | 2:00:56 | |
or two for the United States to realize that it happened. | 2:00:58 | |
They did the wrong thing. | 2:01:02 | |
And then as long as the concept | 2:01:03 | |
of the war on terror, the concept of open wars, | 2:01:06 | |
with no boundaries, that the United States | 2:01:11 | |
as long as there's this narrative | 2:01:15 | |
and paradigms and thinking about both domestic | 2:01:17 | |
and foreign policy, it would be harder | 2:01:21 | |
for any president to do that | 2:01:24 | |
because it will be seen as automatic challenge, | 2:01:26 | |
direct challenge to the people who are doing | 2:01:29 | |
those exact things in different shapes maybe. | 2:01:33 | |
Maybe redesign, repackaged. | 2:01:36 | |
As we have seen in the targeted killings program, | 2:01:41 | |
we did not have the Office of Legal Counsel | 2:01:45 | |
and justice department authorizing the use | 2:01:48 | |
of torture under Obama. | 2:01:50 | |
It happened under Bush | 2:01:52 | |
but we did have the Office of Legal Counsel authorizing | 2:01:54 | |
and providing the legal justification | 2:01:58 | |
for the first political, | 2:02:01 | |
first killing of American citizen without due process, | 2:02:04 | |
without outside the protection of a legal process. | 2:02:09 | |
So that's really what will take. | 2:02:17 | |
And it will take a civil society, | 2:02:21 | |
active informing continuing to inform the public about | 2:02:23 | |
what happened and what should happen | 2:02:27 | |
to make sure that it doesn't happen again. | 2:02:30 | |
And I think most of the American public | 2:02:33 | |
is not aware of all the details is not informed fully | 2:02:35 | |
about what happened. | 2:02:39 | |
There's need to be more and more exposure to these things. | 2:02:41 | |
And because ultimately | 2:02:45 | |
the people who are living here, | 2:02:47 | |
they feel that this is a remote issue. | 2:02:50 | |
This is happening overseas. | 2:02:52 | |
It's not affecting us, | 2:02:54 | |
whether it's Guantanamo or whether it's Iraq | 2:02:56 | |
or Afghanistan or now in Syria. | 2:02:58 | |
Why should we care, right. | 2:03:00 | |
Same with refugees, | 2:03:03 | |
it seems like this is something that is remote. | 2:03:05 | |
Although historically it has been fundamental | 2:03:06 | |
to the country's values to open the country for refugees, | 2:03:13 | |
although with the same at a mixed message of some people, | 2:03:16 | |
some immigrants who were barred | 2:03:22 | |
from coming to the United States. | 2:03:24 | |
So I think they will have, | 2:03:25 | |
there could be constant educational purposes. | 2:03:26 | |
It goes to go on and the ACLU is one | 2:03:30 | |
of the organizations that is equipped and | 2:03:32 | |
well qualified to do that. | 2:03:36 | |
Interviewer | I think I'm hearing from you | 2:03:40 |
that maybe someday there will be some accountability. | 2:03:41 | |
- | Well, I think as the time passes, | 2:03:46 |
it would be harder to have accountability | 2:03:48 | |
within the United States domestic system. | 2:03:50 | |
It would be, be much harder for reopening | 2:03:54 | |
these cases, more likely than not | 2:03:57 | |
there will be more accountability in abroad, | 2:04:01 | |
in other countries. | 2:04:04 | |
In fact, there were already attempts to investigate US | 2:04:05 | |
officials for Guantanamo violations, abuses | 2:04:09 | |
both in places like Spain and places like even France. | 2:04:13 | |
There's now an attempt to conduct an investigation | 2:04:19 | |
in Germany, there likely to be other places | 2:04:22 | |
where they will be openness to take on. | 2:04:26 | |
It is hard to challenge United States government | 2:04:29 | |
or to put former officials on trial or | 2:04:32 | |
even investigate them for violations of international law. | 2:04:38 | |
Another avenue that would probably | 2:04:41 | |
be open to accountability is | 2:04:44 | |
is the International Criminal Court | 2:04:51 | |
and the United States government | 2:04:53 | |
and I think is very, very concerned about the possibility | 2:04:55 | |
that the ICC prosecutor would open a full investigation. | 2:04:58 | |
There is a preliminary investigation | 2:05:03 | |
into abuses that happen in Afghanistan | 2:05:04 | |
during the time after the Afghanistan became member | 2:05:07 | |
of the court or signed and ratified the Rome Statute. | 2:05:11 | |
And that was in May of 2003. | 2:05:16 | |
So any violations of the ICC that happened | 2:05:19 | |
on Afghan soil would provide the prosecutor | 2:05:22 | |
with the power to conduct an investigation. | 2:05:26 | |
There is a preliminary investigation that's going on. | 2:05:30 | |
It could lead to a full investigation, | 2:05:33 | |
could take time but that could | 2:05:35 | |
be another avenue for accountability. | 2:05:40 | |
It's very hard and unlikely that that that will happen | 2:05:41 | |
again, for the, maybe the main reasons | 2:05:44 | |
of the gravity of these abuses may not amount | 2:05:46 | |
to the same gravity of other abuses of the court | 2:05:50 | |
is looking at, or maybe the political challenge | 2:05:53 | |
of really clashing with the United States | 2:05:58 | |
that was after all in the last seven | 2:06:02 | |
or eight years was trying to work with the ICC, | 2:06:05 | |
to support the ICC, but not on the United States conduct, | 2:06:09 | |
but the conduct of United States foes, | 2:06:13 | |
places like Sudan or places like Libya and elsewhere. | 2:06:16 | |
So will be interesting to see how that develops. | 2:06:22 | |
We have been providing information | 2:06:25 | |
to the ICC prosecutor as part | 2:06:28 | |
of our responsibilities as a human rights organization, | 2:06:31 | |
we were approached by the ICC office. | 2:06:35 | |
We will continue to cooperate | 2:06:38 | |
with the ICC because it's a fundamental responsibility | 2:06:39 | |
of any group that has credible evidence and information | 2:06:42 | |
on a violation of the Rome Statute. | 2:06:46 | |
And we will, and the victims then, | 2:06:50 | |
if that happens, under the Rome Statute, | 2:06:53 | |
the victims of torture in this particular case, | 2:06:56 | |
mistreatment and torture in Afghanistan | 2:06:58 | |
will have formal standing to be able | 2:07:02 | |
to be represented by counsel, | 2:07:05 | |
to be part of that process, | 2:07:07 | |
unlike criminal proceedings in the United States | 2:07:10 | |
and elsewhere where victims | 2:07:15 | |
of torture don't have a formal standing, | 2:07:17 | |
essentially represented by the prosecutor | 2:07:21 | |
when the prosecutor takes the case | 2:07:23 | |
and prosecute the case but they don't have really | 2:07:25 | |
full legal standing to participate in the act. | 2:07:27 | |
That would be something that I think will, | 2:07:32 | |
may evolve into something that will provide | 2:07:35 | |
at least some class of a group of people | 2:07:38 | |
who were abused a chance to be able | 2:07:42 | |
to get some measure of justice. | 2:07:47 | |
Interviewer | Well, Jamil I always ask people | 2:07:50 |
at the end of | 2:07:52 | |
is there anything I didn't ask | 2:07:53 | |
that you thought we should know | 2:07:54 | |
or that you thought before you came in | 2:07:57 | |
you wanted to talk about, is there something, | 2:08:00 | |
I know you've said a lot today, but. | 2:08:02 | |
- | Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing that I had | 2:08:04 |
not had a chance to talk more about is | 2:08:06 | |
the fact that there was a lot of advocacy, | 2:08:08 | |
international advocacy that was done | 2:08:13 | |
at the United Nations level in particular | 2:08:16 | |
before the different human rights treaty bodies. | 2:08:18 | |
Those reviews and advocacy that happened | 2:08:23 | |
were critical in holding the United States accountable | 2:08:28 | |
in different times, | 2:08:32 | |
the 2006 was the first time | 2:08:35 | |
that the US government appeared | 2:08:38 | |
before the Committee Against Torture to talk | 2:08:39 | |
about Guantanamo and to talk about torture elsewhere. | 2:08:41 | |
And they lied. | 2:08:46 | |
They said, we don't torture. | 2:08:48 | |
I mean, as far as they're concerned, | 2:08:50 | |
they were not lying because their definition | 2:08:52 | |
or perception of torture was different | 2:08:55 | |
than the rest of the world. | 2:08:57 | |
But they said we don't torture. | 2:08:59 | |
They made other outrageous statements. | 2:09:01 | |
And there was a lot of of concern among | 2:09:05 | |
international actors of the same bodies | 2:09:10 | |
that the United States government supported | 2:09:12 | |
for years and helped create post-World War II | 2:09:15 | |
were unanimous in their condemnation | 2:09:19 | |
of the United States policy post 9/11. | 2:09:22 | |
And that says a lot, | 2:09:24 | |
from United nations human rights bodies, | 2:09:26 | |
the Committee Against Torture, | 2:09:29 | |
the Human Rights Committee | 2:09:31 | |
and even the | 2:09:32 | |
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination | 2:09:33 | |
to the United Nations experts like the expert on torture | 2:09:35 | |
the working group on (indistinct) detention | 2:09:39 | |
to experts within the Inter-American system on human rights | 2:09:41 | |
the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which held, | 2:09:46 | |
was actually the first human rights | 2:09:49 | |
body to monitor a case from Guantanamo | 2:09:50 | |
to issue a precautionary measure decision against | 2:09:55 | |
the United States shortly after Guantanamo was open | 2:09:59 | |
and continues to monitor and in fact, | 2:10:03 | |
just recently issued a major report on Guantanamo | 2:10:05 | |
to even the | 2:10:08 | |
Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE. | 2:10:10 | |
The United States is a member | 2:10:13 | |
and Canada is a member. | 2:10:15 | |
This is a post World War II entity that, | 2:10:16 | |
evolved during the Cold War has also condemned United States | 2:10:21 | |
for its failure to close Guantanamo | 2:10:25 | |
to provide due process and other abuses. | 2:10:27 | |
And you had that all these testimonies | 2:10:30 | |
and yet feel little accountability | 2:10:32 | |
and unfortunately Guantanamo remains open. | 2:10:36 | |
Interviewer | So, and you will say it's | 2:10:42 |
because US is such a powerful nation. | 2:10:44 | |
They don't have to see to | 2:10:51 | |
any pressures from other countries. | 2:10:53 | |
- | Right. | 2:10:55 |
There is a notion of exceptionalism. | 2:10:55 | |
The US exceptionalism is very strong because | 2:10:57 | |
it's also developed its own powerful diplomatic, | 2:11:00 | |
economic, political military position in the world | 2:11:05 | |
that it is hard to challenge this big superpower. | 2:11:10 | |
And the more, I think the United States | 2:11:19 | |
has be, unfortunately there will be probably | 2:11:26 | |
more vulnerable if it did not have that power. | 2:11:29 | |
The problem is that this power has not been translating | 2:11:32 | |
into always doing the right thing in the world. | 2:11:35 | |
It certainly after 9/11, we saw how it was used | 2:11:39 | |
in order to do other, | 2:11:43 | |
to promote policies and to promote actions | 2:11:47 | |
that did not really help maintain state security, | 2:11:49 | |
peace, and security in the world | 2:11:54 | |
by flouting security council resolutions | 2:11:56 | |
on invading Iraq, for example, | 2:11:59 | |
by violating the Geneva Conventions, | 2:12:02 | |
by creating extra territorial, | 2:12:05 | |
extra judicial detention facilities, | 2:12:08 | |
secretive secret detention facility to torture people | 2:12:10 | |
by creating massive surveillance program. | 2:12:15 | |
All of these things, put together would, | 2:12:18 | |
if they are, they're creating | 2:12:23 | |
a precedent to other governments | 2:12:28 | |
they are setting infrastructure | 2:12:29 | |
that could easily be abused in the future. | 2:12:33 | |
And as we've seen, | 2:12:36 | |
easily can be developed in something | 2:12:39 | |
that would be worse and would fire back, | 2:12:41 | |
would backfire on, | 2:12:44 | |
and cause more harm than good. | 2:12:49 | |
And so I think that remains | 2:12:53 | |
to be the challenge of whether the international partners | 2:12:55 | |
of the United States close allies | 2:13:02 | |
would also see that their interest | 2:13:04 | |
is not with United States interests | 2:13:08 | |
continuing these policies. | 2:13:09 | |
So far it seems that they have been aligned | 2:13:11 | |
because they had more to gain | 2:13:14 | |
from the United States cooperation | 2:13:17 | |
or working with United States | 2:13:20 | |
on these national security challenges and crisis. | 2:13:21 | |
They had more to gain by that than gaining | 2:13:27 | |
by holding United States accountable for the abuses. | 2:13:30 | |
And it's a calculation that every country | 2:13:33 | |
in every part of the world is being made. | 2:13:36 | |
And I think it's our challenge | 2:13:40 | |
as a human rights advocates to expose that | 2:13:42 | |
and to put well on not only the short-term | 2:13:44 | |
but the long-term strategic benefit. | 2:13:47 | |
And as we've seen in the past and the history, | 2:13:52 | |
if you're on the wrong side of history | 2:13:55 | |
this will condemn you, | 2:13:58 | |
this will only bring more ills | 2:13:59 | |
and more trouble than making things better. | 2:14:02 | |
Interviewer | That's an excellent way to end Jamil. | 2:14:08 |
I really appreciate, that's excellent. | 2:14:10 | |
- | Thank you very much. | 2:14:12 |
Interviewer | And we need 20 seconds | 2:14:13 |
of room tone before we shut down the camera. | 2:14:14 | |
So Johnny could start that room tone. | 2:14:17 | |
Johnny | Begin room tone. | 2:14:21 |
Man | To 10? | 2:14:23 |
Johnny | Yeah, just, we'll all be quiet in the room | 2:14:24 |
for a few minutes, for a few seconds. | 2:14:26 | |
Okay, great. | 2:14:41 | |
Thank you. | 2:14:42 |
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