President Obama Takes First Steps on Gitmo, Considers How to Go About Re-Balancing the Scales (News & Commentary Round-Up)

by Damozel | AOL News reports that Obama is already circulating a draft order to close Gitmo (via bmaz).  "Closing the facility in Cuba "would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice," read the draft prepared for the new president's signature." (AOL News) 

Meanwhile, Obama has asked military prosecutors for a 120-day halt in their proceedings against Guantanamo prisoners (AP).   Peter Finn at The Washington Post reports:

The legal maneuver appears designed to provide the Obama administration time to refashion the prosecution system and potentially treat detainees as criminal defendants in federal court or have them face war-crimes charges in military courts-martial. It is also possible that the administration could re-form and relocate the military commissions before resuming trials.  (WaPo)

So it's a step --- though only a step --- in the right direction. Greenwald:

Subsequent actions that the Obama administration is clearly considering could severely undermine both the symbolic and substantive value of this act, particularly if they go and create new "national security courts" of the kind aggressively advocated by newly-appointed Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, which would likely enable coerced evidence to be used in order to obtain convictions of accused Terrorists.  Even with Obama's order yesterday, many of the most vital questions surrounding the closing of Guantanamo remain unanswered.

Still, this order clearly signals that Obama -- even for one day -- did not want his name anywhere near the grotesque mockery of justice known as the "Guantanamo military commissions," tribunals that were created when his own political party, in the weeks before the 2006 mid-term elections, helped to enact the Military Commissions Act (see this photograph for a vivid illustration of the extent to which what happens at Guantanamo is now Obama's responsibility in every sense of the word).  That one of his very first acts as President was to do everything in his power to put a stop to the ongoing military commissions -- including those of detainees accused of participation in the 9/11 attacks -- is as strong a first-day repudiation of those military commissions as one can imagine.

Some military officials "who tried to make a success of the system" are supposedly disappointed.  Oh really?  Cry me a river. 

Let's review:

The Bush administration opened a cluster of chain-link cages called Camp X-Ray on this naval base seven years ago, and on Jan. 11, 2002, a military flight delivered the first 20 suspected terrorists and Taliban fighters. In the ensuing years, nearly 800 prisoners would arrive.

But the military commissions system devised by the administration to try the detainees ran into numerous setbacks. The Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to administration claims, detainees at Guantanamo were entitled to challenge their detentions and that the naval base was not beyond the reach of federal law.

Eventually more than 550 detainees were released; only three were ever put on trial and convicted.

Global opinion turned dramatically against U.S. use of the facility. Organizations such as Amnesty International called it a "gulag." And both Obama and his opponent for the presidency, Sen. John McCain, said they wanted it closed -- as, finally, did former president George W. Bush.  (WaPo)

Of course, not everyone in the Bush Administration agreed.  The Prince of Darkness himself remains a dissenting voice, bleating in the wilderness. 

[F]ormer vice president Richard B. Cheney said late last year that Guantanamo should be kept open until "the end of the war on terror" -- a time, he noted, that "nobody can specify." (WaPo)

The ACLU is calling for all charges against all detainees to be dropped.  "[T]he ACLU believes all charges against the prisoners should be dropped...A shutdown of this discredited system is warranted," [their spokesman] said.  (WaPo)  

Whatever you think of the ACLU's position, there is no doubt that the procedures used against the detainees were fatally flawed.  Somewhere between the ACLU's position and Cheney there must be some middle ground.   The question is how you go about balancing the scales after years of injustice.

mcjoan at Kos writes:

Those that are "brought to justice" should be given actual justice, tried in existing federal criminal courts. The military commission trials have proven to be little more than kangaroo courts, show trials devised for maximum PR benefit but not for justice. Any kind of continuation of the military commissions system doesn't provide the sharp break from Bush administration policies the world is asking for.

TPM reports that US attorney and former JAG officer David Iglesias --- fired by the DoJ during the Bush administration's purge of attorneys who wouldn't prosecute politically motivated cases --- has been reactivated as part of a prosecution team assigned to Guantanamo detainees.

[H]e signaled what seemed to be a change in tone from the Bush years. "We want to make sure that those terrorists that did commit acts will be brought to justice -- and those that did not will be released."

Asked about the unlikelihood of being named to a frontline job in the war on terror, after being fired as a US Attorney for alienating the Bush administration, Iglesias allowed: "It's been very ironic."

Ironic indeed.

Perhaps we might eventually recover some of our lost moral standing.

Obama's direction to prosecutors to seek a suspension of the military commissions trials which was granted by the judge also met with approval from the European Commission. EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot released a statement:

"I am delighted that one of the first actions of President Obama was to turn the page on this sad episode of Guantanamo prison...."For me, this is very symbolic. In a lawful state, everybody should enjoy the right to defence."  (Talk Left)

Among those affected by Obama's decision is Canadian Omar Khadr, taken into custody while he was still in his teens.

From mcjoan at Kos:

His case is the most critical at this point. His defense attorneys have evidence he was abused and tortured while in custody at Guantanamo, and while he should have been held in compliance with treaties and international agreements on the treatment of child soldiers, he's been held as an adult....

Glenn Greenwald discusses the case against Mohammed Jawad, accused at an age between 15 and 17 of throwing a grenade at two US soldiers and injuring both severely --- but not accused of belonging either to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The ACLU represents Jawad in his habeas corpus proceeding (a proceeding which the vile Military Commissions Act denied to him but which the Supreme Court, in its 5-4 Boumediene decision, ruled he was constitutionally entitled to have).   The ACLU's habeas brief -- here (.pdf) -- details the severe abuse, coercion, and mental and physical torture which Jawad has endured for the last six years.  The details, by definition, would thoroughly disgust any decent human being [just read paragraphs 15-54 for a brief glimpse (.pdf) of what was done to this teenager under the official, authorized program of the U.S. Government]....

In Afghanistan, Jawad was severely beaten, drugged, and threatened with death for both himself and his family if he refused to confess to the grenade incident.  That occurred just weeks after the incident where two Afghan detainees, including a completely innocent 22-year-old Afghan cab driver, were beaten to death -- murdered -- while detained and interrogated by U.S. troops in Bagram.  The confession Jawad "signed" (with his fingerprint, since he can't write his name) became the centerpiece of the Bush administration's case against him, and yet, it was written in a language Jawad did not speak or read, and was given to him after several days of beatings, druggings and threats -- all while he was likely 15 or 16 years old.

In December, 2003, when he was (at most) 18 years old, Jawad -- according to Guantanamo prison logs -- attempted to kill himself.  In 2004, he was subjected to the so-called "frequent flier" program, where, in a two-week period alone, he was moved to a new cell 112 times -- an average of every 3 hours, in order to ensure he was sleep deprived and disoriented.  Over the six years at Guantanamo, Jawad was repeatedly subjected to extreme cold, bright lights, and various stress positions.  He was often kept in solitary confinement or in "linguistic confinement," isolated from anyone who spoke his only language (Pashto).  As recently as May of 2008, while Jawad was at Guantanamo, he was beaten so badly by guards that, weeks later, he still had extreme bruises on his arms, knees, shoulders, forehead and ribs.   (Salon)

If you're not convinced by Greenwald, perhaps you will be convinced by the very man who was --- at first -- Jawad's chief prosecutor.

[T]he Bronze-Star-recipient Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who since 9/11 has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Africa...became so repelled by the treatment to which Jawad was subjected, by the fact that virutally all of the evidence against him was severely coerced, and by the fact that there is "no credible evidence" to justify his detention, that he first demanded that Jawad be released, then, when Bush officials refused, unsuccessfully demanded to be relieved of his duty to prosecute, and then finally resigned.  (Salon)

Jawad's chief prosecutor has since become one of the key witnesses on Jawad's behalf in the habeas proceeding.  "[Y]ou can (and should) read Lt. Col. Vandeveld's Sworn Declaration in Support of Jawad's Habeas Petition here," says Greenwald.  You can and you should.

Vandeveld says, among much else:

Had I returned to Afghanistan or Iraq, and had I encountered Mohammed Jawad in either of those hostile lands, where two of my friends have been killed in action and one of my very best friends in the world had been terribly wounded, I have no doubt at all -- none -- that Mr. Jawad would pose no threat whatsoever to me, his former prosecutor and now-repentant persecuter.  Six years is long enough for a boy of sixteen to serve in virtual solitary confinement, in a distant land, for reasons he may never fully understand.  (Salon)

Via Talk Left, Switzerland has offered to accept Guantanamo detainees who cannot return home.  "Portugal and France have also expressed a willingness to consider taking detainees."

Memeorandum has more here.

RELATED BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS

Obama's Plans to Close Gitmo  (1-13-2009)

The Torture Administration  (1-9-2009)

Federal Judge Orders Release of Five Guantanamo Detainees  (11-21-2008)

The Hamdan Sentence  (8-7-2009)

The Hamdan Conviction: Bad Procedure   (8-7-2008)

'You Don't Care About Me,' Sobbed Teen Gitmo Detainee (7-16-2008) 

Were 'Brainwashing' Techniques Used on US Servicemen in Korea Part of the Training at Guantanamo?  (6-13-2008)

5 of 9 Justices Support Basic Human Rights for Detainees  (6-12-2008)