The Guantanamo Prison Is Sixteen Years Old: A View from the Military Commissions
On 17 January 2018, the Guantanamo military detention facility marks its sixteenth anniversary. At its peak, the prison population was 779. Today, forty-one people remain imprisoned, a few of whom are facing trial in the military commissions. These special tribunals were established by the Bush administration and retained by the Obama and now the Trump administrations. One of the trials has five defendants, all of whom are accused of playing roles in the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks that triggered the US “war on terror.” These five were among fourteen “high value detainees” who arrived in Guantanamo in September 2006, after being held and tortured for years in CIA black sites (secret prisons).
In early December 2017, Lisa Hajjar was one of the journalists who attended a week of hearings in the 9/11 case. In this is a radio interview, she discusses recent developments in the military commissions with Avery Gordon and Elizabeth Robinson, co-hosts of No Alibis, which aired on Wednesday, 10 January 2018 on KCSB FM Santa Barbara 91.9.
The hearings in December 2017 were the twenty-seventh round of pretrial hearings in the 9/11 case since the five defendants were arraigned in May 2012. These hearings were described as “Hawsawi’s week.” Mustafa Hawsawi’s placement in the high-security courtroom symbolizes his place in this group trial; his table is the fifth, behind that of his four co-defendants. Hawsawi is accused of being a money man for the 9/11 conspiracy. Walter Ruiz, the defense counsel who heads the team representing Hawsawi, has been strategizing and striving for years to sever the case of his client from the others; he maintains that Hawsawi’s alleged role in the plot is relatively minor and by trying the five together, the government is bootstrapping him to more serious allegations against others.
Ruiz succeeded in persuading the judge to docket hearings on the government’s evidence connecting Hawsawi to the 9/11 plot, including material evidence and self-incriminating statements he made after he was transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo. The two FBI agents who were there to testify had interrogated Hawsawi in 2007.
These FBI agents were described by the Bush administration as the “clean team.” They were the government’s solution to the conundrum of how to elicit court-worthy incriminating statements from people who had been disappeared and tortured for years by the CIA. Since the 2006 transfer, the government’s position is that whatever statements they had made during their time in CIA custody will not be used by military prosecutors. Whatever statements they made to FBI clean team agents would be deemed court-worthy by virtue of the conduct of interrogations using conventional and lawful means.
The implications of this rhetoric depend on two presumptions: that the FBI was institutionally separate from the CIA and had not dirtied its hands by colluding in the use of torture, and that time itself could be separated between torture-time and post-torture time. Thus, as the narrative goes, the FBI was tasked not just with producing clean evidence but also with assisting in the whitewashing of present post-torture time.
Listen to this interview for the story of “Hawsawi’s week” in the military commissions.
Thursday, January 11, 2018 - 4:39:02 PM
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On 17 January 2018, the Guantanamo military detention facility marks its sixteenth anniversary. At its peak, the prison population was 779. Today, forty-one people remain imprisoned, a few of whom are facing trial in the military commissions. These special tribunals were established by the Bush administration and retained by the Obama and now the Trump administrations. One of the trials has five defendants, all of whom are accused of playing roles in the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks that triggered the US “war on terror.” These five were among fourteen “high value detainees” who arrived in Guantanamo in September 2006, after being held and tortured for years in CIA black sites (secret prisons).
In early December 2017, Lisa Hajjar was one of the journalists who attended a week of hearings in the 9/11 case. In this is a radio interview, she discusses recent developments in the military commissions with Avery Gordon and Elizabeth Robinson, co-hosts of No Alibis, which aired on Wednesday, 10 January 2018 on KCSB FM Santa Barbara 91.9.
The hearings in December 2017 were the twenty-seventh round of pretrial hearings in the 9/11 case since the five defendants were arraigned in May 2012. These hearings were described as “Hawsawi’s week.” Mustafa Hawsawi’s placement in the high-security courtroom symbolizes his place in this group trial; his table is the fifth, behind that of his four co-defendants. Hawsawi is accused of being a money man for the 9/11 conspiracy. Walter Ruiz, the defense counsel who heads the team representing Hawsawi, has been strategizing and striving for years to sever the case of his client from the others; he maintains that Hawsawi’s alleged role in the plot is relatively minor and by trying the five together, the government is bootstrapping him to more serious allegations against others.
Ruiz succeeded in persuading the judge to docket hearings on the government’s evidence connecting Hawsawi to the 9/11 plot, including material evidence and self-incriminating statements he made after he was transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo. The two FBI agents who were there to testify had interrogated Hawsawi in 2007.
Thus, as the narrative goes, the FBI was tasked not just with producing clean evidence but also with assisting in the whitewashing of present post-torture time.
These FBI agents were described by the Bush administration as the “clean team.” They were the government’s solution to the conundrum of how to elicit court-worthy incriminating statements from people who had been disappeared and tortured for years by the CIA. Since the 2006 transfer, the government’s position is that whatever statements they had made during their time in CIA custody will not be used by military prosecutors. Whatever statements they made to FBI clean team agents would be deemed court-worthy by virtue of the conduct of interrogations using conventional and lawful means.
The implications of this rhetoric depend on two presumptions: that the FBI was institutionally separate from the CIA and had not dirtied its hands by colluding in the use of torture, and that time itself could be separated between torture-time and post-torture time. Thus, as the narrative goes, the FBI was tasked not just with producing clean evidence but also with assisting in the whitewashing of present post-torture time.
Listen to this interview for the story of “Hawsawi’s week” in the military commissions.
For better or worse, my expertise is what is legal in war. It may seem, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the laws of war, that it’s almost oxymoronic. Legal in war? But there is a thing called international humanitarian law. And “humanitarian” signals the centrality of protecting civilians in the context of any war. The things that constitute gross violations of IHL—or war crimes—include deliberately targeting civilians, deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, excessive use of force, siege warfare, collective punishment, and forced displacement. All of these are war crimes, and we have seen all of these things happening. That is the reality of Gaza now. For 16 years, Gaza has been described as the world’s largest open-air prison, and now it can be described as the world’s largest crime scene. It is a crime scene.
Now that Henry Kissinger is dead, the time is ripe to reveal my personal relationship with him. In 1969 when I was eight years old and for several years thereafter, Kissinger was my role model. Why, you might wonder, would a child want to emulate Kissinger? My answer is a coming of age tale of political consciousness.
The War in Court traces the fight against US torture in the context of the “war on terror” and the complicated legacy it has left. My long-running interest in torture grew out of my curiosity about the relationship between law and political conflict.
Arab Studies Institute Announces Release of Gaza in Context Pedagogy Project
Israel does not have a Hamas problem, it does not have a Gaza problem, it has a Palestine problem. It has been two years since Israel’s most brutal attack on the Palestinian people of Palestine in its history. Despite overwhelming evidence of the disparity of power between Israel and all Palestinians and the aggressiveness of Israel`s exercise of its power, including excessive and brutal violence and collective punishment in Gaza in the form of occupation, siege, and frequent military assaults against dense and captive civilian populations, mainstream media and educational materials continue to frame Israel as the victim. This pedagogical project aims to correct the propagandistic character of mainstream media and educational coverage. Gaza in Context provides historical context, explaining Palestinian resistance, for what has been an Israeli narrative that exceptionalizes Gaza and removes it from the larger Palestinian struggle. This is an opportunity to understand the violence and Israel’s settler-colonial project.
A 20-minute multi-media film that combines lecture, animation, typography, and footage from Palestine is the centerpiece of the project. Its other components include a teaching guide for instructional purposes, a bibliography for research purposes, and a compendium of Jadaliyya articles featured in what we call a JadMag. All of these elements are housed on the project’s own website, which is part of a larger research project on Palestine headed by the Forum on Arab and Muslim Affairs at the ArabStudiesInstitute. All of these are open-source materials and available to all.
Watch the full 20-minute filmor watch one of its four, 5-minute parts.
The film is also available in four 5-minute parts. Each part corresponds to a teaching guide for use within the classroom and beyond. The four parts include: Settler-Colonialism, the History of Palestine-Israel, Situating Gaza, and Structural Violence.
As part of a larger research project, Gaza In Context includes a JadMag entitled, Gaza In Context: War and Settler-Colonialism that features a compendium of relevant Jadaliyya articles as well as a bibiliography featuring 108 sources.
Watch the tutorial to help you navigate the site.
What is being said about Gaza in Context?
"I did not think it was possible to examine in 20 minutes what Gaza in Context does with such compelling clarity: Israeli policies toward Gaza and Palestine, which are inseparable; the core problems affecting Gaza and the deliberateness of the policies that have led to Gaza`s disablement; Gaza`s centrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and some common myths surrounding Gaza and the history of the conflict overall, which are straightforwardly debunked. An immensely valuable teaching tool, the film`s power also lies in its fundamental humanity, a heartfelt entreaty to end the oppression and violence so that all people in this tortured part of the world may aspire to a future in which their children can flourish."--Dr. Sara Roy, senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, co-chair of the Middle East Seminar, and co-chair of the Middle East Forum at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.
"Gaza in Context is a superb film accompanied by an excellent teaching guide with seminal articles on the various aspects of the subject, discussion questions, reading list and bibliography. Not only does the 20- minute- film provide the essential facts necessary for an understanding of the problem it helps the viewer understand the context, history and nature of the Israeli policy that brought the Gaza Strip to where it is today. It does this without committing the common error of treating Gaza in isolation from the rest of Palestine but helps explain the consistency in the Israeli policy over the years and throughout Palestine while focusing on its implications and manifestations for Gaza. The film ends with a cri de Coeur to all of us to do what we can to bring an end to what the film convincingly argues is not a natural but a human-made disaster, and save Gaza from continuing to be a zone of death."-- Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian lawyer, novelist, political activist, affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and a founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq.
"Israel`s deliberate fragmentation of the Palestinian people and their land for the past 70 years has also fragmented the Palestinian narrative and struggle for rights. This is just one reason why it is vital that efforts to stop and reverse Israel`s colonization project adopt a holistic framework of analysis. Gaza in Context does just that: It zeroes in on Israel`s repeated assaults against the besieged strip but then broadens out to show how Israel`s attacks on Gaza are part of a consistent plan against the entire Palestinian people, a plan that from day one has sought to minimize the number of Palestinians in historic Palestine and maximize the number of Israeli Jews. The 20-minute film and accompanying educational materials succinctly provide the missing context in so many accounts of the conflict. It is an excellent entry point for the many thousands who are beginning to support Palestinian rights and an important refresher for others that have been involved in the movement for longer. Spread the word!" --Nadia Hijab, Executive Director, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network
"Gaza in Context is a fantastic educational instrument, conveying in 20 minutes what it would take most people a lifetime to learn. It gives an accurate and visually brilliant portrayal of the tragedy that has befallen not only Gaza, but the entire Palestinian people."--Dr. Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International law, Princeton University, former United Nations Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
"Gaza in Context is an excellent educational resource that places Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza in their proper political context, that of settler colonialism, resistance to such colonialism and the Palestinian struggle to stay alive. In 20 minutes, this film debunks many of the Israeli-perpetuated myths — myths that have been conveniently adopted by others — by focusing on facts. The various articles and discussion questions accompanying the film serve as essential tools for those wishing to learn more."--Diana Buttu, Palestinian lawyer, analyst and former advisor to the PLO.
“Gaza in Context should be required viewing for everyone, including those familiar with the situation in Palestine. Powerful, informative, and persuasive, Noura Erakat delivers a fusillade of facts with concision and passion, obliterating in twenty minutes some three decades of media misinformation about Israel’s occupation of Palestine. An effective teaching tool, irrespective of one’s political position.” -- Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of History and African American Studies, UCLA
