Obama’s unfulfilled Gitmo promise

• Five years after his election, the U.S. President has not closed the prison on the illegally held Guantánamo Naval Base

By Manuel E. Yepe

THE failure to fulfill electoral promises made by candidates who win U.S. presidential elections is not news. In fact, this is corroborated by the corporate press in that nation.

 

However, in the case of current President Barack Obama – whose triumph had much to do with the relatively daring promises which allowed him to overcome the odds against him, given his ethnic and social origins and age, among other aspects – his failure to meet his promises has placed him in a position which could prove damaging to the Democratic Party in the 2016 elections.

 

One glaringly evident case little mentioned in the media is that, during his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama described the case of Gitmo (as the illegally naval base is identified in the United States) as “a sad chapter in American history,” and promised that, if he were to be elected, the base would closed in 2009.

 

Shortly after his election, the new president reiterated his promise to close the base in an ABC television interview.

 

However, in November 2009, Obama was forced to acknowledge that it was not possible to set a specific date for the closure, while announcing that it would most likely occur at some undetermined point in 2009.

 

On December 15, 2009, a presidential memorandum issued by Obama ordered the closing of the prison camp and the transfer of the detainees to the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois. Shortly afterward, in a letter to Congressman Frank Wolf, who was making every effort to avoid the transfer of the Guantánamo detainees to Thomson, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that such a move would violate legal prohibitions which he was determined to uphold.

 

And thus this vacillation has continued to date, in a clear demonstration of the President’s unwillingness to confront the issue, despite popular will as expressed in the elections.

 

It should be noted that there has been no media reference in recent history to the fact that the base’s very existence is indefensible and that a genuine solution must include, as a principal step, the return to Cuba of this occupied territory.

 

During a workshop with Cuban experts on the 110-year occupation of Guantánamo by the United States, which took place recently in Havana, Jonathan Hansen, associate professor at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, affirmed that few in the United States acknowledge that the base must be returned to Cuba, and that the problem is how to make this matter an issue for discussion.

 

The United States occupies this portion of Cuban territory in virtue of an unjust agreement of indefinite duration imposed on Cuba in February 1903, as one of the addendums to the Platt Amendment, introduced as an appendix to the Constitution of the nascent Cuban Republic through pressure from Washington.

 

Sooner or later, Guantánamo must disappear and this ignominious enclave will remain as one more sad page in the history of U.S. imperialism.

 

November 28, 2013

 

Granma.cu

 

Bahamas Blog International

 

GUANTANAMO: A ghost from the Bush era pursues Obama

By Dalia González Delgado:

GUANTANAMO is robbing Obama of sleep. Ten years after the opening of the prison, on illegally occupied territory in Cuba, the issue had been forgotten by many until a hunger strike by hundreds of prisoners returned it to the public consciousness.

 

The illegal U.S. Navy Base in Guantánamo
(Photo: Reuters)

Referring to Guantánamo, The New York Times wrote in an editorial that the detention center "became the embodiment of his [Bush’s] dangerous expansion of executive power and the lawless detentions, secret prisons and torture that went along with them."

 

Obama, hoping to indicate that he had not forgotten his campaign promise, recently said, "I continue to believe that we've got to close Guantanamo. I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe. It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing…

 

"The idea that we would still maintain, forever, a group of individuals who have not been tried - that is contrary to who we are."

 

Not everyone agrees with the President. Washington Post journalist Benjamin declared, "Even if Guantanamo itself miraculously closes, we’ll have to build it again somewhere else."

 

"Guantanamo Bay prison does not serve American security interests," according to Ken Gude, from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington think tank.

 

But his reasoning, like Obama’s, is pragmatic, not humanitarian. Even BBC Mundo stated that there was no need to keep the prisoners in Guantánamo, commenting that the site would inevitably be closed at some point.

 

The reality is that no steps have been taken in the direction suggested by Obama. In fact University of California professor Raúl Hinojosa commented to Russia Today that the hunger strike has made clear that the U.S. is not in control of the situation, given that the administration "has no answer at this time."

 

According to General John Kelly, of the U.S. Army Southern Command and the commanding officer at the prison, the detainees had hope that Obama would close the facility and "were devastated... when the president backed off."

 

The prison was opened after the September 11, 2011 attacks, to house those suspected of terrorism, although no evidence existed against them. The indefinite detentions, and testimony given by those released, have earned the detention center an appropriate reputation as a concentration camp. Different forms of torture are practiced there, including isolation within cells at extreme temperatures and waterboarding.

 

Guantánamo is one of the worst legacies of George W. Bush, who showing no sign of remorse, recently stated that he felt fine about the "hard decisions" he had made "to protect America."

 

The legal limbo in which 166 prisoners live – there had been more than 700 – has generated criticism internationally, from countries as well as human rights organizations.

 

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), president of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has requested that the administration re-start the process of transferring and releasing 86 prisoners who, three years ago, were granted permission to return to their countries of origin.

 

Although Obama may not have the political will to close the prison, he could at least exert pressure to reinitiate this process halted two years ago.

 

May 23, 2013

 

Granma.cu

 

Bahamas Blog International

 

UN criticizes U.S. detention camp on Guantánamo Naval Base

UNITED NATIONS.— The United Nations has criticized the U.S. government for maintaining its detention center in the illegally occupied Guantánamo Naval Base, despite assurances it would be closed.

In addition, it called on Washington to allow a UN Human Rights Commission delegation to visit the prison, with free and open access and the possibility of speaking in private with the prisoners.

These issues were raised in Geneva on April 5, by Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who condemned the indefinite incarceration of many of the prisoners, which she stated amounted to arbitrary detention.

The official highlighted the cases of prisoners detained indefinitely, some of them for more than 10 years. This practice contradicts the United States' stance as an upholder of human rights and weakens its position in terms of such violations taking place elsewhere, she added.

The Human Rights Commissioner referred to the prisoners on hunger strike as victims of uncertainty and anxiety caused by prolonged detention.

Similarly, she recalled promises made by U.S. President Barack Obama four years ago regarding the closure of this prison, commenting that systematic abuses of the human rights of individuals continue year after year. (PL)

 

April 11, 2013

 

Granma.cu

 

Bahamas Blog International

 

Guantánamo detention camp: deaths by dryboarding

By Ernesto Carmona, Chilean journalist and writer

IN June of 2006, three prisoners were found dead in the U.S. detention camp on the Guantánamo Naval Base, hanging in their cells from what looked like improvised nooses. Although the Defense Department (DoD) declared "death by suicide," the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) found evidence to the contrary, including the fact that the prisoners’ hands were tied behind their backs. The NCIS evidence suggests that they could have died during fatal interrogation sessions involving the controlled asphyxia technique or dryboarding, a variant of the submarine torture used in countries like Chile during the military dictatorship, which consisted of asphyxiating prisoners by placing a plastic bag over their heads or prolonged immersion with the mouth and nose under water.

The censored NCIS report, validated on November 21, 2011 by the MediaFreedomInternational.org webpage, notes that the Guantánamo Base prison camp has given rise to controversy since it was established as a detention and interrogation center in 2002, described as such by the Bush administration. Guantánamo is Cuban territory illegally occupied by the United States since 1903.

The 2006 NCIS investigation was updated thanks to investigative journalist Almerindo Ojeda, of Truthout, whose extensive work on the NCIS reports poses many questions as to the veracity of the official account presented to the media by U.S. authorities in the Bush era. Much of the NCIS material prompts the following questions:

• Why did the prisoners have their hands tied when they were found hanging in their cells?

• Why were the prisoners gagged with cloth?

• Why did all three prisoners have masks?

• Why was there a bloody T-shirt around the neck of one of the prisoners found hanging in his cell?

• Why is there a page missing from a log book begun on the day the deaths were discovered?

Why were the neck organs (the larynx, the hyoid bone and the thyroid cartilage) removed from one of the corpses?

Ojeda’s analysis also includes statements by a number of guards working in Guantánamo, who stated that had seen the three prisoners transferred to secret detention centers inside the naval base. Later, the prisoners, already dead, were taken to the medical clinic with their throats stuffed with cloth and visible bruises on their bodies.

Qatari national Ali Saleh al-Marri, lawfully resident in the United States, was subjected to dryboarding after being declared an enemy combatant by George W. Bush in 2003, narrowly escaping death at the hands of government interrogators. Connecting the dots between Ali Al-Marri’s interrogation and dry boarding with the NCIS reports on the three Guantánamo prisoners led Ojeda to the conclusion that death by controlled asphyxiation is the most plausible explanation to date and, doubtless, a much stronger one than the official account of suicide by hanging.

The Ojeda report concluded, "In light of the unanswered questions, one thing remains clear: there is a need for a thorough, independent and transparent investigation into the June 10, 2006, deaths at Guantánamo and, more broadly, for a thorough, independent and transparent inquiry into all the practices and policies of detention enacted since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001."

In March 2012, Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, acknowledged that he was investigating evidence of autopsies which cast doubt on official explanations of the deaths of Guantánamo prisoners Abdul Rahman al Amri and Mohammad Saleh al Hanashi, both of whom died of suicide, according to the Defense Department, in 2007 and 2009, respectively.

The new details surrounding their deaths, as reported by Truthout, challenges the government account of what took place. The new information was assembled on the basis of autopsy reports on the prisoners and other findings related to their detention conditions in Guantánamo, included in detainee statements and those of their lawyers.

The autopsy reports confirmed that Saudi national Abdul al Amri had been found hanging with his hands tied behind his back, and had been tested after his death for the presence of the controversial drug mefloquine (Lariam). Mefloquine can cause neurotoxic and serious psychiatric side.

In the case of Mohammad al Hanashi, the autopsy examiners stated that they had never seen the actual device (or ligature) by which he was said to have strangled himself to death. The ligature was reportedly made from an elastic underwear band from a pair of white briefs. But news reports indicate that this was not the type of underwear in use at Guantánamo at this time. There was also some question as to whether Al Hanashi had been on suicide watch at the time of his death, as he was not found wearing the requisite "suicide smock" typically used on actively suicidal prisoners, despite the fact he had made five suicide attempts in the four weeks prior to his death. (Mapocho Press)

 

January 10, 2013

 

granma.cu

 

Bahamas Blog International