The Guantanamo Files

Andy Worthington

Description

In 2006, four years after the illegal prison in Guantánamo Bay opened, the Pentagon finally released the names of the 773 men held there, as well as 7,000 pages of transcripts from tribunals assessing their status as 'enemy combatants'. Andy Worthington is the only person to have analysed every page of these transcripts and this book reveals the stories of all those imprisoned in Guantanamo.



Deprived of the safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, and, for the most part, sold to the Americans by their allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the detainees have struggled for five years to have their stories heard. Looking in detail at the circumstances of their capture, and at the coercive interrogations and unsubstantiated allegations that have been used to justify their detention. Stories of torture in Afghanistan and Guantanamo are uncovered, as well as new information about the process of 'extraordinary rendition' that underpins the US administration's 'war on terror'.



Who will speak for the 773 men who have been held in Guantanamo? This passionate and brilliantly detailed book brings their stories to the world for the first time.
Introduction

1. 'Operation Enduring Freedom'

2. The Qala-i-Janghi massacre

3. The convoy of death

4. Tora Bora

5. Escape to Pakistan: 'Osama's bodyguards'

6. Escape to Pakistan: Saudis and Yemenis

7. Flight to Pakistan: the diaspora

8. Kandahar

9. From Sheberghan to Kandahar

10. Others captured in Afghanistan

11. Guantanamo opens

12. House raids and other arrests in Pakistan

13. The capture of Abu Zubaydah and its aftermath

14. Bagram

15. Torture, abuse and false confessions in Guantanamo

16. 'Extraordinary rendition,' 'ghost' prisoners and secret prisons

17. Losing the war in Afghanistan

18. Challenging the law

19. Suicides, hunger strikes, medical malpractice and the abuse of the Koran

20. Endgame?

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Droit privé
• Droit privé
• Droit privé
• Droit privé
• Criminal Law
• Droit et juridique
• USA
• United States of America
• General officer
• Terrorism
• LAW
• General
• États-Unis
• Droit pénal
• droit pénal
• Droit pénal
• Droit pénal
• Droit pénal

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781783715534
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Guantánamo Files
The Guantánamo Files
The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison
ANDY WORTHINGTON
First published 2007 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Andy Worthington 2007
The right of Andy Worthington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN-13    978 0 7453 2665 8 ISBN-10    0 7453 2665 X
Paperback ISBN-13    978 0 7453 2664 1 ISBN-10    0 7453 2664 1
ePub ISBN-13    978 1 7837 1553 4
Mobi ISBN-13    978 1 7837 1554 1
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed and bound in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments
Map
Preface
1.
“Operation Enduring Freedom”
Osama bin Laden: Wanted, Dead or Alive
“Operation Enduring Freedom”
2.
The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre
The “uprising”
The survivors’ stories
3.
The Convoy of Death
Yerghanek and Qala Zeini
Sheberghan
4.
Tora Bora
Tora Bora
The survivors
5.
Escape to Pakistan: “Osama’s Bodyguards”
The first group of prisoners
Religious teachers and humanitarian aid workers
6.
Escape to Pakistan: Saudis and Yemenis
The second group of prisoners
The Saudi foot soldiers
The Saudi humanitarian aid workers and religious teachers
The Yemenis
7.
Escape to Pakistan: The Diaspora
The Jalalabad connection: Europeans and North Africans
Other Europeans and North Africans
Other humanitarian aid workers and religious teachers
The Uyghurs
Detention in Pakistan
8.
Kandahar
The fall of Kandahar and the escape of Mullah Omar
The prison opens
Abusive treatment during detention
Abandoning the Geneva Conventions
Interrogations
Abuse during interrogations by the CIA and Special Forces
9.
From Sheberghan to Kandahar
Screening
Afghans transferred from Sheberghan
Pakistanis transferred from Sheberghan
An Australian exception
10.
Others Captured in Afghanistan
Other foreigners transferred to Kandahar
The “spies”
Other Afghan prisoners
The Taliban prisoners
11.
Guantánamo opens
“Enemy combatants”
Intelligence failures
Camp X-Ray
The Extreme Reaction Force
12.
House Raids and Other Arrests in Pakistan
Random arrests
The first house raids
The capture of Riyadh the Facilitator
13.
The Capture of Abu Zubaydah and its Aftermath
The capture of Abu Zubaydah
Other house raids
Other random arrests
14.
Bagram
From Kandahar to Bagram
Torture and abuse
Afghans sent to Bagram
Other foreigners captured in Afghanistan
Murders in Bagram
15.
Torture, Abuse and False Confessions in Guantánamo
The abusive reign of Geoffrey Miller
“Setting the conditions”
Torture and the Pentagon
The torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani
False confessions
16.
“Extraordinary Rendition,” “Ghost” Prisoners and Secret Prisons
“Extraordinary rendition”
The al-Wafa prisoners
Tortured in Egypt
Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The six Bosnians
The “Dark Prison”
Rendered from Zambia
Tortured in Morocco
The “Salt Pit”
The capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh
The Yemeni colonel
Rendered from the Gambia
Renditions in 2003
Captured by the Russian mafia
17.
Losing the War in Afghanistan
More murders in US custody
Capturing Karzai’s men
Other betrayals
Teenagers and farmers
A sad conclusion
18.
Challenging the Law
The first challenges
Testimonies of released prisoners
Landmark decisions in the Supreme Court
Combatant Status Review Tribunals
The first Military Commissions
The Detainee Treatment Act
19.
Suicides and Hunger Strikes
The three suicides
Other suicide attempts
Hunger strikes and the abuse of the Koran
Medical malpractice
20.
Endgame?
Another landmark decision in the Supreme Court
The 14 “high-value” prisoners
The Military Commissions Act
No end in sight
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the support of Roger van Zwanenberg, my editor at Pluto, who saw its potential in the summer of 2006 when I approached him with a proposal. Nor would it have been possible without the efforts of those at the Associated Press, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights to force the US government to release the documents relating to the prisoners in Guantánamo that formed the basis of my research. It’s a testament to the importance of the American legal system—and its beleaguered Constitution—that Freedom of Information legislation exists to compel an administration bent on unfettered executive power to release documents which, on close inspection, reveal the errors, ineptitude and cruelty underpinning the Guantánamo regime.
Thanks are also due to the many people who have helped with information and encouragement, including Clive Stafford Smith, Zachary Katznelson and Cori Crider at Reprieve, Maryam Hassan, Dr. Adnan Siddiqui, Moazzam Begg and Asim Qureshi at Cageprisoners, Marc Falkoff, Candace Gorman, Anant Raut, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, Mark and Josh Denbeaux, Anna Cayton-Holland, Shawn Nolan, Louise Christian, Katharine Newall Bierman and Joanne Mariner at Human Rights Watch, Farid Khan at the Afghan embassy, Val Stevenson, Peter Bergen, Marty Fisher, Stephen Grey, Mike Otterman, David Rose, Jo Glanville, Seth Farber, Polly Nash and Farah Stockman at the Boston Globe .
And finally, as with everything I do, this project would not have been possible without the support of my wife Dot and our son Tyler. I dedicate it to Tyler, in the hope that he will grow up to see a more just and less brutal world, to the children of those in Guantánamo, deprived of their fathers for so many years, and, of course, to the prisoners themselves, not only in Guantánamo but also in every other illegal prison established in the wake of 9/11. It’s a sign of the current US administration’s shameful dismissal of established legal principles that, after nearly six years of imprisonment, a book like this is required to tell their stories.

Preface

But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood …
William Shakespeare, Hamlet , Act I, Scene 5
On January 11, 2002, exactly four months after the terrible events of 9/11, the first of 774 prisoners arrived at a hastily erected prison—Camp X-Ray—located on a US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. 1 A territorial anomaly, leased from Cuba since 1903, Guantánamo was specifically chosen as a prison for those captured in the “War on Terror,” because it was presumed to be beyond the reach of the American courts.
Until recently, it was impossible to tell the stories of these men. Held without charge, without trial, without access to their families, and, initially, without access to lawyers, they are part of a peculiarly lawless experiment conducted by the US administration, which has chosen to disregard both the Geneva Conventions and the established rules of war, holding the men not as criminals or as prisoners of war, but as “illegal enemy combatants,” a category of prisoner which is recognized only by the White House and the Pentagon.
As the administration fashioned Guantánamo into what Lord Steyn, a British law lord, described as a “legal black hole,” 2 those in overall charge of the prison—President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld—maintained such a strict veil of secrecy that for four years they refused even to reveal the names of the prisoners. Although some reporters—in particular, teams at the Washington Post and the British-based website Cageprisoners, run by Muslim volunteers—built up partial lists of the prisoners, and a number of shocking stories were told by some of the 260 prisoners who were released during this period, it was not possible to provide a comprehensive overview of the prisoners and their stories until spring 2006, when, in response to Freedom of Information legislation filed by the Associated Press, the Pentagon was forced to reveal the names and nationalities of all the prisoners held in Guantánamo, as well as 7,000 pages of transcripts of tribunals convened by the authorities to assess their status as “enemy combatants.”
The tribunal process was, like everything else at Guantánamo, both illegal and deeply flawed. The prisoners were not allowed legal representation, and were prevented from seeing the classified evidence against them, which often consisted of allegations based on hearsay or torture, but they were at least allowed to tell their own stories, which were otherwise completely unknown. Through a careful study of these documents, as well as discussions with lawyers representing the prisoners, and an analysis of press reports, interviews with released prisoners and other reports compiled by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, I have been able to put together the first detailed history of Guantánamo and its prisoners.
Beginning with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the chapters that follow explain, in detail, the genesis of the prison, its counterparts in Afghanistan, its development from 2002 to the present day, its role as a prison devoted to interrogation and torture, the legal challenges th