Since UFPJ’s founding, our member organizations—September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Witness Against Torture, CODEPINK, and many others—have worked to close the illegal off-shore detention facility on the Guantánamo Naval Base and to move any detainees who could be legally charged to trial in federal courts. Among the former government officials who support closure of Guantánamo are five Secretaries of Defense, eight Secretaries of State, six national Security Advisors, five Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and dozens of retired generals and admirals.
Let President Biden hear from your organization—tell him to finally Close Guantánamo on his watch! Find the organizational sign-on letter here.
On January 11, 2023, the detention facility at Guantánamo will turn twenty-one. Over its disgraceful years of operation, it has detained 779 Muslim men from nations across the world. Nine of them died at Guantanamo. President Bush, under whose leadership the detention facility was opened, transferred 532 men out of Guantanamo and later said, “I very much would like to end Guantánamo. I very much would like to get people to a court.” He could not.
President Obama’s Administration expended significant energy trying to fulfill his campaign promise to shutter the facility. He transferred 198 detainees out, but the facility was not shut down. President Trump, who had no interest in closing the prison, transferred one detainee. President Biden has transferred five.
Today 35 men remain at Gua
ntánamo; 20 of them are cleared for immediate transfer. ALL of the detainees are survivors of torture and other extreme trauma. The continued operation of the Guantánamo detention facility has been a recruiting tool for terrorist organizations and is an ever-present reminder of the profound human rights abuses and violations of international law the U.S. engaged in following the 9/11 attacks. At an annual cost of $540 million, or more than $15 million per detainee, it is by far the most expensive prison to ever operate.
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a founding member of UFPJ is working as part of a larger human rights and security coalition to once and for all close Guantánamo. Non-governmental organizations, in the U.S. and other nations, are urged to endorse the appeal to President Biden to act now and Close Guantánamo. Find the organizational sign-on letter here.
Just what will it require for President Biden to succeed where Bush and Obama failed?
TRANFER THOSE CURRENTLY CLEARED FOR RELEASE: Finding nations to receive the 20 men at Guantánamo currently cleared for transfer by the Periodic Review Board (PRB) must be the focus of a determined effort by the Department of State and the staff under recently appointed senior diplomat Tina Laidanow. Many of these men have been cleared for transfer for years and their frustration and the anguish of their families festers with every passing day. The PRB is composed of senior officials from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State; the Joint Staff; and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The PRB is tasked with determining “whether law of war detention remains necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States” and also considers a range of other factors, including diplomatic considerations, security assurances, the detainee’s mental and physical health, and his record in confinement.
ACKNOWLEDGE AND MAKE REDRESS FOR ILLEGAL TORTURE: Three men at Guantánamo are currently “forever prisoners,” held in indefinite law-of-war detention, charged with no crime, and yet not recommended for transfer, largely because their brutal torture by U.S. officials makes any legal proceedings impossible. This is contrary to international law that the U.S. has ratified, and it contradicts everything that the U.S. purports to respect as a nation upholding the rule of law. The cases of these three detainees will continue to be fought in federal and international courts. The Justice Department and the Department of State need to resolve this intolerable situation. The men must be resettled where they can receive badly needed torture rehabilitation as required by the Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. ratified in 1988; rehabilitation that cannot be provided at Guantánamo.
HONOR PLEA AGREEMENTS: Another detainee, Majid Khan was convicted of delivering funds to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia; the funds were later used to finance a terrorist bombing in Indonesia. In 2012 Khan pleaded guilty and became a government cooperator. In 2021, before a jury of military officers in open court, Khan apologized for his actions, then he gave a lengthy description of his torture by the C.I.A. saying he forgave those who had carried out his torture. Seven of the jurors wrote a clemency letter on Khan’s behalf. Khan completed his sentence in March of 2022, but the U.S. has failed to identify a country that will receive him. Khan has sued the Biden Administration for his release. His resettlement must be a priority for the State Department before Khan’s plight becomes a deeply divisive legal battle. Swift resolution of this case will determine if other cases can be resolved through plea agreements.
ANTICIPATE FUTURE COMPLETION OF SENTENCES: Last summer, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who says his real name is Nashwan al-Tamir, pleaded guilty to commanding insurgents in Afghanistan that committed lethal attacks on U.S. allied forces in 2003 and 2004. He has a degenerative disc disease that causes advancing paralysis and has undergone repeated surgeries at Guantánamo, although the base hospital does not meet the proper standard of care mandated by international law. Al-Tamir will be sentenced in 2024 and the terms of his plea agreement give the U.S. two years to find a place to send him for resettlement where he can get suitable health care, or the deal is withdrawn, and he goes to trial. Arranging his ultimate resettlement must be a priority for the State Department NOW, so that the totally failed military commission system at Guantánamo does not restart proceedings in his case.
ADDRESS PAST IRREGULARITIES IN THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS: Ali Hamza al-Bahlul is currently serving a life sentence imposed by the Guantánamo military commissions, in 2008, for being a propaganda chief for Al Qaeda. He refused to authorize his court-appointed attorney and did not participate in his trial. Two of his convictions were later overturned in federal courts. The military commission conviction continues to be litigated in the courts.
END THE M
ILITARY COMMISSIONS: The remaining nine men at Guantánamo, which brings the total to 35, have all been charged in the Military Commissions created at Guantánamo by an act of Congress. To date, none of the cases involving these men—who include the five men accused of the 9/11 attacks, and the man accused of organizing the attack on the U.S.S. Cole—have begun or even scheduled the beginning of a trial. The reason, as General John Baker, longtime military commission chief defense counsel told the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, is the government’s “original sin, torture.” It “impacts and undermines every aspect of these prosecutions,” he explained. Baker specifically criticized the government’s reliance on evidence obtained by torture: “The foundations of any guilty verdicts and capital sentences obtained in the current military commissions are thus being built on quicksand.” The prosecutors in the 9/11 case initiated a plea negotiation process in March of 2022. The defendants, their attorneys, and the prosecuting attorneys are waiting to learn from the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, the Department of Justice, and the Department of State exactly what “policy principles” will govern potential appeals. President Biden needs to speed up this inter-agency review so that the 9/11 case and the other failed legal proceeding at Guantánamo can be ended. Those sentenced should serve time somewhere other than Guantánamo.
Members of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows recognize and regret that proceeding with closing Guantánamo in this way will forever be an acknowledgment of the U.S. government’s failure to uphold the rule of law in the wake of 9/11. Above all this included the profound violation of Muslim men’s human rights and legal rights; and decisions made at the highest levels of our government to brutally torture the 9/11 defendants and others at black sites abroad and at Guantánamo, rather than plan for fair and transparent trials. This ultimately denied 9/11 family members, all U.S. citizens, and the rest of the world transparency, justice, and accountability for one of the most horrific international crimes in world history.
