GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, CUBA – Forget about Havana’s haunting music, sexy night clubs, vintage cars and romantic walks through historic streets popularized in “The Godfather” and “The Buena Vista Social Club.”
This ain’t it.
Just getting here has been a slog starting from a Texas airport, a drive to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, a three-hour charter flight, a ferry ride across Guantanamo Bay, a drive to the quarters where we’ll sleep for the next week, and assignment to canvas tents reminiscent of the camp you’re glad your parents never sent you to.
Although there are less barren parts of the base, Camp Justice, where we will live, covers a substantial expanse of khaki-colored terrain. The rest of the 45-square-mile area is inhabited by members of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marines and Navy; civilians; contract workers; prisoners; iguanas, deer and banana rats. The base is generously punctuated by a dreary assortment of obsolete and abandoned buildings, some dating to the 1950s.
The base is home to what is arguably America’s most notorious military prison. It is appropriately grim. It’s not hard to understand the argument for closing this place that, up to now, has cost taxpayers an estimated $500 million in maintenance, salaries, utilities and housing.
Its most redeeming feature, from my point of view, is the number of high-ranking African Americans in charge of various aspects of the base, including Capt. Daryl K. Daniels, Joint Medical Group, a surgeon and commander with the Joint Task Force, who received a Master of Arts degree in Health Services Management from Webster University; my media liaison, Army Lt. Col. Myles B. Caggins III, the Pentagon’s spokesman for Guantanamo matters; and Navy Lt.. John Harrison, who oversees food service for three base cafeterias (and whose Yankee Pot Roast is sublime).
I had hoped to spend time with members of the Black History Organization, but was unable to remain for the two weeks originally planned. The hearing was recessed, yet again, and everyone involved had to leave the base.
In addition to a civilian workforce and contract employees, Guantanamo is also home to other detainees. The focus remains on the five men said to have orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. They are every bit as notorious as the prison that is their home: Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, 49; Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin ‘Attash, 36; Ramzi Bin al Shibh, 52; Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, 37; and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. They aresaid to be the masterminds behind the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
I was among a group of reporters, legal observers and relatives of family members who lost their lives on 9/11. We all came to see legal proceedings involving men who will someday be called to account for the event that forever changed the way they see themselves and others. I was able to take advantage of a DOD opportunity for reporters to cover the hearings. After paying our way to Andrews Air Force Base, we then paid the $400 round-trip air fare to get here.
We’re here to put faces to names we have read and heard about; to sit in on what could be the trial of the century, if there is ever a trial; to witness a slice of history; and to observe the mechanics of this protracted hearing. For almost a decade, a series of motions, pleadings, and wide-ranging digressions have slowed proceedings.
When President Bush declared his amorphous War on Terror in the wake of 9/11, he also broke new legal ground that is slowly moving toward adjudication. A bit of background: In 1950 Congress created the Uniform Code of Military Justice — which replaced the Articles of War created by the Continental Congress in the 18th century. Designed to govern the conduct of the Continental Army, the military justice system continued to operate under the Articles of War until 1951, when the Uniform Code of Military Justice went into effect.
A series of substitution and amended articles ultimately resulted in a presidential post-9/11 authorization for trials by military tribunal for non-U.S. citizens who were identified as members of al Qaeda. That order essentially formalized guidelines for conducting military commissions — a term used interchangeably with “tribunals.” President Bush further decided not to trust the commissions to apply the principles of law and rules of evidence traditionally recognized when trying U.S. criminal cases in district courts. So he changed the rules.
The U.S. could now safely circumvent traditional judicial procedures through a series of instructions. They included a defendant’s right to have a copy of the charges in English and in a language the accused understands, but not the presumption of innocence and other rights commonly afforded in courts-martial and civilian courts. Also included were controversial provisions, such as the potential use of evidence against a defendant that he hasn’t seen, the potential admission of hearsay testimony, unsworn testimony, evidence obtained through coercion, and limited rights to appellate review.
The attorneys for the accused are all highly regarded lawyers considered experts in capital cases. The prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, from all appearances is a highly principled officer. Only months shy of comfortably closing out his career, he was redirected to Guantanamo. His burden is almost as discomfiting as the defense team’s: to bring this hearing to trial with as much transparency and dignity as possible. Since there has never been anything like this tribunal, tracking the detailed proceedings can get dense, with numbers and citations flying back and forth like out-of-control drones.
Martins must navigate a treacherous landscape. Seven military prosecutors have already come and gone – including one who resigned his commission after complaining that the system had been rigged against due process.
This hearing marks the first case since World War II in which a military tribunal has been convened to adjudicate capital war crimes involving a direct attack on the United States. These “high-value detainees” have been here for almost a decade under highly controversial conditions, and recent verified revelations about their torture have muddied already cloudy waters.
When the 400-page synopsis of the 6,400-page U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation (the so-called “Torture Report”) was released late last year, some unwritten rules came to light. We learned that “coercion” turned out to really mean “enhanced interrogation,” which in fact meant torture. This flaunting of the post-war Geneva Conventions had long been suspected overseas, but it arrived on American soil when prisoners arrived on Guantanamo.
The existence of a so-called “black sites” (secret locations where prisoners were subjected to torture) also accounted for why al Hasawi, who was subjected to rectal feeding to counter a hunger strike, sits on a cushion during the hearings. Army Col. David Heath, who is the penal colony’s latest Joint Detention Group commander, says all detainees receive necessary treatment, and forced feeding is administered in a medically approved, humane way.
Those who track torture would disagree. One is Juan Mendez, the current UN expert on what constitutes torture. He has said that even if it is intended to benefit detainees, feeding induced by threats, force or the use of physical restraints are tantamount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
Both Col. Heath and Gen. Martins are adamant about affirming their commitment to transparency and the discontinuation of torture.
Although reporters can see the courtroom through triple panes of bulletproof glass, there is a 40-second delay in sound transmission just in case some classified information slips out. We await the entry of the five men, who appear one, by one, in long, white robes. Within scant hours of opening statements, Ramzi Bin al Shibh announces that he recognizes a newly installed translator as a CIA translator from a previous black site where he and others were tortured.
The hearing comes to a halt. Everyone expresses shock.
The next day, we learned that the CIA operative, who had been identified by sight and by name the day before, is now classified information, a state secret. That and the next day are almost a wash. Finally, the judge recessed the hearing until April.
Our farewell dinner was Mongolian barbecue dinner at the Officer’s Club. Next we were packing swimsuits we never wore and bidding farewell from the air to beaches we never saw.
I settled back in my seat and wondered if the five men in that courtroom were the only war criminals tied up in the War on Terror. I wondered whether a few more were still sleeping soundly at home – including George W. Bush in Texas, Dick Cheney in Wyoming and Donald Rumsfeld in Montana.
Ellen Sweets is an author and award-winning reporter who has written for The St. Louis American, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Dallas Morning News and The Denver Post.
