Guantanamo Envoy: U.S. Should Have Taken Cleared Prisoners; Some Should Never Have Been Held

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Daniel Fried came across as an eminently reasonable man placed in a disturbingly unreasonable position by his bosses. A senior diplomat, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs for four years, Fried was plucked from his job in March 2009 to become the Obama administration's Special Envoy to Guantánamo, serving as a member of the interagency Task Force charged with reviewing the cases of the remaining Guantánamo prisoners, and responsible, primarily, for finding countries to accept dozens of prisoners who have been cleared for release, either by the Task Force, often based on decisions already taken by Bush-era military review boards, or by the courts, after successful habeas corpus petitions.

These are men who cannot be returned to their home countries because of fears that they will face torture, or further arbitrary imprisonment, on their return, although Fried is also responsible for trying to broker a deal with Yemen, whose nationals make up around 40 percent of the remaining 225 prisoners. Fried spoke mainly to the BBC about negotiations with Europe, but it is apparent that attempts to overcome the long-standing failure to secure a deal with the Yemeni government remains one of the most difficult tasks that he faces.

In an interview for Radio 4's Today program, which was partly filmed and televised on BBC News, Fried gave Jon Manel a largely spin-free account of the problems he faces, some of which have been exacerbated by the U.S. government's unwillingness -- or inability -- to resettle some cleared prisoners on the U.S. mainland.

To my mind, President Obama missed a golden opportunity to bring 17 prisoners to the U.S.. in his early days in office. These men, the Uighurs (Muslims who had fled oppression in China's Xinjiang province, and who were sold to U.S. forces after being betrayed by Pakistani villagers, following their flight from Afghanistan) had been cleared of any involvement with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or any form of international terrorism by the Bush administration and by the U.S. courts, but the President wavered, allowing Guantánamo's supporters in Congress (scaremongers inspired by the hateful and false rhetoric of former Vice President Dick Cheney) to gain the upper hand, eventually persuading Congress to pass legislation blocking the transfer of any cleared prisoners to the U.S. mainland.

Fried began by explaining that his job was "miserable," because he was "cleaning up a problem" inherited from the Bush administration, which had nothing to do with advancing any positive aspects of U.S. policy. "It's not like we're advancing liberty or making peace," he said. He added that working out what to do with the remaining prisoners is "a huge problem and a complicated one," but according to Manel, although he said that he would "not criticize Congress," he stated, unambiguously, "It is fair to say, as just an objective statement, that the U.S. could resettle more detainees [worldwide], had we been willing to take in some."

The interview was also notable for the following frank exchange about the perception of the remaining prisoners as "the worst of the worst," which included, I believe, the first public admission, by a senior Obama administration official, that some of the prisoners were nothing more than low-level Taliban recruits, in an inter-Muslim civil war (with the Northern Alliance) that preceded the 9/11 attacks and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism, and that they should not have been in Guantánamo for the last seven years:

Daniel Fried: The detainees in Guantánamo run a spectrum. Some really are awful. Some qualify as "the worst of the worst," and we're going to put those on trial. Some, frankly, should not have been in Guantánamo for the past seven years.

Jon Manel: So they were innocent?

Daniel Fried: Innocent, guilt ... I look at their files and some of them seem relatively benign, and I have in mind the Uighurs, in particular, but others ...

Jon Manel: They're the minority from China ...

Daniel Fried: That's right, the Uighur minority from China, but if I had to describe -- if there's such a thing as an average Guantánamo detainee, it's someone who was a volunteer, a low-level trainee or a very low-level fighter in a very bad cause, but not a hardened terrorist, not an organizer. Now it is those people whom we're asking Europeans to take a look at, and each government has to evaluate the background of each individual and make a decision.

Despite his criticism of the implications of the failure to accept any cleared prisoners into the United States, Fried did make the point that "parliamentarians in Europe" -- as well as the U.S. - "have raised questions about security, and we have to respect those opinions," although he was also concerned to publicize the successful resettlement of four of the Uighurs in Bermuda (in June), even though it had apparently brought him into conflict with the British government, because, as the BBC described it, "Bermuda is a British overseas territory and Britain was not informed until the last minute."

"The British government, it is fair to say, cannot be considered part of the deal. This was worked out between the Americans and the Bermudans," Fried told Manel, adding, "I will say that I've been admonished by the British government in very clear terms." He insisted, however, that the deal had been successful. "We are very grateful to the Bermudan government and the behavior of the four Uighurs has been exemplary, which really bolsters our contention that they were not any kind of threat," he said, adding, "These are four people who are enjoying freedom who would otherwise be in Guantánamo."

This was an important point to make, although I maintain that the Uighurs' "exemplary" behavior, which "bolsters" the government's "contention that they were not any kind of threat," would have had a far more powerful impact if it had happened in Washington D.C., where American citizens would have been able to appreciate, first-hand, that the Uighurs are not, and have never been terrorists.

In conclusion, Fried told Manel that he was "confident" that the President's January deadline for closing Guantánamo would be met, although he could not guarantee it. "President Obama's timetable is what we've got," he said, "we don't have Plan Bs, we're looking at that timetable. We've got a lot of work to do, we need help getting this done, and we're going to be working hard at it. But you're not going to have Guantánamo II. Whatever solution we come up with, it will be one based firmly on the rule of law and transparency."

Fried's interview coincided with an announcement that Hungary is preparing to take a cleared prisoner from Guantánamo, to add to those already accepted by the UK (Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, in February), France (Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian, in May), and Portugal (Mohammed al-Tumani and Moammar Dokhan, both Syrians, last month). Other countries who have agreed to take cleared prisoners are Belgium, Ireland, Italy (although with some disturbing conditions), and Spain, and discussions are apparently ongoing with both Lithuania and Switzerland.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here.

 

 

Follow Andy Worthington on Twitter: www.twitter.com//GuantanamoAndy

Comments

[AudrieTahoma]

Although I’m sure that there are others that would disagree with me, I believe that in some cases a palace like Guantanamo Bay is needed. The things that went down there are horrible and disgusting, but in a time of war, which we have found ourselves in for the past eight years, there is a call for means that might not always be deemed “moral”. Torture has been around for as long as there has been conflict, and I don’t think that there is going to be a change in that, no matter how hard we try. I know the information they retrieve cannot always be labeled as the truth, but how can one be sure that another person is telling the truth in the first place? It’s as effective as any other method of divulging information.

As far as finding places out of country to take these prisoners…why can’t we bring them into the states? I don’t understand, aren’t they our prisoners? Shouldn’t we be the ones to be responsible for them instead of trying to pawn them off on some European country?

[vippy]

I have said for years now that our troops were not selective when they gathered up prisoners.
They mostly rounded up just people who had nothing to do with nothing. I remember one Australian, who was let go after years of incarceration and he had to sign an agreement he will
never talk about his ordeal. What kind of crap is that. I would be screaming from the rooftop of the largest building if that was me, but then again, maybe they would not have let me go. The British,
who asked for their people back, and Bush turned them down, but eventually he had to let like 50% of them go. I remember one story about a Canadian caught up in this, and a German, who
tried to sue after 4 long years and was told he could not. Now just imagine it would have happened to you. Seems like the USA is always doing a lousy job whatever it attempts. Such a let down for a country that could be so great!

[arcticredriver]

Indeed. Buried in the Fay Jones report was an important trigger for the USA's occupation of Iraq going further off the rails. The USA had no real idea who was an enemy. So the policy was to surround a neighborhood, and round up all the military age men, and send them to Abu Ghraib, or some other prison for a cursory processing and interrogation -- to see who was an enemy.

Maybe the plan was to release the 99 percent who weren't insurgents the next day, or within the week. But the policy was that Iraqi captives could only be released following a meeting of three senior officers -- BG Janis Karpinski, senior military police officer, BG Barbara Fast, the most senior intelligence officer, and Colonel Marc Warren, the most senior JAG officer. These three officers didn't like one another, and had the excuse that they were busy. Consequently, rather than meeting within a few days of every roundup, they went three, four, six months without meeting. And this meant those 99 percent of the young Iraqi men who should probablyy never have been rounded up, and who, having been rounded up, should have been released the next day, spent 3, 4, 6 months in detention. The number of detained men swelled to over 20,000 at a time.

Why didn't Sanchez say -- "I don't care if you don't like one another. Either meet once a week, or delegate the decision to deputies, who meet at least once a week."

[arcticredriver]

I think this comment repeats a common misconception -- that the current struggle with terrorist groups is so dangerous that democratic countries must sacrifice the rule of law. This comment seems to repeat the notion that abandoning the rule of law, the principle of the presumption of innocence, and the USA's international treaty obligations, will make the public less safe.

But the public record demonstrates that this notion couldn't be more wrong.

The presumption of innocence does not only protect suspects. It protects the general public because it forces those who hold suspects to perform sanity checking, and make sure there is good reason to believe those being held are actually those who pose a risk.

Abandoning fact checking and sanity checking cost Iraq hundreds of thousands of lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars in war damage. It cost the USA the lives of 5 thousand brave GIs, and the hundreds of billions spent on the Iraq war so far and hundreds of billions more, when one counts on the lost productivity of those brave GIs left with wounds that will never heal. The single most important trigger for that war was the false confession forced from Ibn Al Sheikh Al Libi. The trust placed in his false confessions is the best example of the danger of abandoning sanity checking.

Real experts, not those who take their lessons from Jack Bauer, have always recognized that organized, sober, professional, humane, rapport-building interrogations are the only reliable kinds of interrogation.

[pjburke]

You may not realize it -- may even deny it -- but you are laying out a position which starts with the built-in presumption that not all human beings possess human dignity which need even be acknowledged, let alone respected.

That is the starting point which is required in order to condone and accept torture.

It is a utilitarian "ends justifies means" position, and leads straight to wholesale, pervasive, society-wide depravity... where the likes of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the numerous "black site" prisons of the CIA, and Bagram prison in Afghanistan become the feeder-site training grounds of our own domestic county jails, state prisons, federal prisons, and police forces.

Torture is not -- nor has it ever been -- about eliciting information... of any kind. That is the useful myth peddled to the (mostly) well-meaning but not very well-informed General Public who, seeing no threat to themselves and who are easily led to believe that the threat is directed only at some Despicable Other, readily accepts that myth.

What history has shown over and over again, however, is that torture always comes home. Soldiers become police officers and corrections officers -- also politicians, prosecutors, and judges -- and do use (or approve) those very same torture techniques on pre-trial suspects in order obtain confessions -- a much easier path to conviction than doing actual criminal investigation. They do use them on prisoners to exert control and command compliance... and they also use torture just for sadistic sport.

[pjburke]

Torture does work... but only as a tool to terrorize and subjugate a population to authoritarian control. It is the tool of the Police State. All those who support torture by our soldiers today are unwittingly asking for an authoritarian police state within ten years time.

[WorldofTomorrow420]

"...but the President (Obama) wavered..." Unfortunately I read that a lot. Obama seems to excel at wavering. If only Hillary....