By Mahvish Rukhsana Khan
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Reviewed by Susan Anderson
Ms Khan was a law student born of Afghani parents in the United States. She became involved with the Guantanamo detainees as an interpreter for their English speaking lawyers. She began that work in 2004 when she was still a student and recently finished her law degree at the University of Miami.
One US reviewer said Ms Khan is naive to believe the stories of the detainees.1 This attitude misses the nearly unavoidable point of this book. It really does not matter so much whether the stories of the detainees are true or not. The question is not whether these men are guilty of offences. The only relevant question silently posed in this book is whether the detainees ought to have been charged with offences or released so that they can be tried.
This book is well written. The author sets out the stories told to her by Guantanamo Bay detainees and essays, poems and diaries kept by some of those detainees. In addition, Ms Khan tells the stories of these men which she, or the lawyers with whom she worked, discovered through their own investigations. Most of the men she describes in the book were eventually released without charge.
A Sudanese journalist, Sami al-Haj, was covering the war in Afghanistan when he was detained by US armed forces.2 Ms Khan describes Mr al-Haj in some detail. She includes excerpts of his diary and writings wherein he describes being tortured, physically abused and force fed during his long hunger strike.
The chapter on Mr al-Haj is confronting. Mr al-Haj was fluent in English. He was never charged or even accused of having committed an offence. Mr al-Haj was held from December 2001 until May 2008.3 Although a worldwide media campaign aimed at securing his freedom maintained interest in his cause, the Sudanese government takes credit for his release citing their negotiations with the Americans over their release of equipment needed for the construction of the USA’s embassy building in Sudan.4 There does not seem to be an official explanation of why this man was detained, why he was not charged, or why he was released.
US sources5 claim that terrorists are “taught to lie” about torture in western prisons citing the “Manchester Manual”.6 The manual was discovered by British police in Manchester and translated into English. It was tendered in evidence in the embassy bombing trial in New York. It seems clear that this manual did contain that advice.
The argument that detainees tell lies about the way they were treated in western prisons would be more credible if it were the case that no detainees in any US facility had been mistreated. The US Military’s investigation of Abu Graib indicates that abuse amounting to torture did take place there.7 The findings contained in the military report include using dogs to terrorise detainees, use of nudity and photography to humiliate prisoners, beatings, forcing detainees to stand for long periods and forcing the detainees to strip and go out in cold weather. Similar claims of abuse were made by some of the detainees Ms Khan writes about in her book.
This book is important, not for finding the truth of what is occurring in Guantanamo Bay, but to raise the question whether it is possible that these things are happening in a facility owned and controlled by a western democracy. It is of particular interest for common law lawyers because the United States purports to provide protections to all those within its borders and, in particular, protections which provide for natural justice.
Susan Anderson
Footnotes
- New York Post, 29 June 2008, Gordon Cucullu — “My Guantanamo Diary — All About Naïve.”
- Page 179.
- 13 April 2008 — “Sami al’Haj -The Banned Torture Pictures of a Journalist in Guantanamo Bay”: www.andyworthington.co.uk
- http://www.sudan-embassy.co.uk/en/content/view/134/40/
- http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3187
- http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/manualpart1_1.pdf
- http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug2004/d20040825fay.pdf
By Jane Mayer
Reviewed by Dan O’Gorman
The Dark Side outlines violation of the United States Constitution that occurred in the pursuit of terrorists following the attacks of 11 September 2001, including the descent into the torture of terrorist suspects, both of which are likely to haunt the US for a very long time. It also outlines the battle for the US’s soul.
The Dark Side chronicles key post-September 11 decision-makers taking decisions that were intended to combat terrorism and strengthen national security. Such decisions were taken in an atmosphere of chaos and fear which was exploited by zealots. Decisions allegedly taken to combat terrorism around the world not only violated the Constitution but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda and subjected many prisoners to treatment that in earlier years would have been condemned as unacceptable by most people
The list of abuses by the United States in the name of eliminating terrorism is unbelievable. Terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere were subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, head and belly slapping, temperature extremes, hooding, stress positions and psychological ploys designed to humiliate and create fear, and 10 or 15 such techniques were permitted at any one time. Terrorist suspects were rounded up and treated as illegal enemy combatants who were not entitled to the protections of traditionally accepted laws of war and were secretly held outside the reach of any law. The CIA had a global network of secret black prison sites in the form of an “extraordinary rendition” program that saw the extradition of terrorist suspects from one foreign country to another outside the recognised legal process. This program resulted in terrorism suspects in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East being abducted by unaccountable and unidentified hooded or masked American agents and forced onto planes that flew them to foreign countries where they would vanish without their families or anyone else hearing of their whereabouts. President Bush eventually admitted, in September 2006, that American had been holding secret prisoners for years without charges and outside the reach of authorities and had subjected them to an “alternative set of procedures”. The call by the “9/11 Commission” for the humane treatment of terrorism suspects was explicitly rejected by the Bush Administration.
Despite the United States being a signatory to the Geneva Conventions and the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, The Dark Side cites examples of both the “successful” torture of prisoners and examples of such torture merely leading to the provision of false information.
The Dark Side argues that most of these activities were authorised by people who had a vested interested in convictions and who believed that the use of the traditional criminal courts were too big a risk, hence the creation of the specially created military courts. It also argues that the violations of people’s civil liberties in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq has radicalised entire populations and that whatever the short-term gains, the torture of terrorist suspects has resulted in incalculable losses to the moral standing of the United States, its place in the world, and its sense of itself. These illegal practices weakened the United States’ legal and moral authority and provided Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups a recruiting and motivational tool.
Both lawyers and medical practitioners became tainted by being compliant in this legalised cruelty that was part of the Bush Administration’s deliberate policy. However, those who spoke out against such activities as being short-sighted and self-defeating were shunned and excluded and suffered an enormous price.
Seven years after September 11, not a single terror suspect held outside the United States criminal court system has been tried, and of the 759 detainees acknowledged to have been held in Guantánamo , approximately 340 remain there and only a handful have been charged. Fortunately, the Supreme Court eventually became involved and it, inter-alia, ruled that (a) Guantánamo Bay was not beyond the reach of US law (Rasul v Bush), (b) the Executive could not indefinitely hold suspects without charges, and due process entitled them to a lawyer and the right to challenge their detention before a “neutral decision-maker” (Hamdi v Rumsfeld, in which Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court’s most conservative Justice, not only ruled against the Bush Administration’s arguments but also stated that indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive strikes at “the very core of liberty”), and (c) the Bush Administration was required to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its war on terror (Hamden v Rumsfeld).
The Dark Side explores a very dark chapter in American history which saw its President boast in his State of the Union address in January 2003:
“More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies” (my emphasis).
This is a very well researched and argued publication, and is a “must read” for anyone with an interest in human rights and the threat to human rights that occurs when politicians legislate in an atmosphere of fear and with little regard for basic human rights and the rule of law.
Dan O’Gorman
