CCR Executive Director Says Guantánamo Leaks Must Be Met by Release of
Obama Task Force Assessments
Rights Group Critical of Poor Reporting
By New York Times
NEW YORK – April 25 – Today, Center for Constitutional Rights Executive
Director Vince Warren issued the following statement in response to the
leaks of government allegations against 750 Guantánamo detainees and the
multiple news stories that accompanied the leaks:
The documents that have just been released again shed light on the
Bush administration’s disarray and desperation and reaffirm that the
primary goal of Guantánamo was always intelligence gathering and not
keeping so-called dangerous men off the streets. They provide more
public detail on the many innocent men at Guantánamo, many of whom
remained and remain there long after the government knew they were
innocent. The danger is that putting the outdated allegations in these
documents out without proper context can lead to the assumption that
many of the men are more dangerous than they turned out to be.
News organizations around the world have covered the leaks of
allegations against men currently and formerly detained at Guantánamo,
but the New York Times is most notable for its unfiltered recycling of
out of date and long-discredited DOD claims and its sensationalizing of
inflated risk assessments over revelations of abuses committed by the
U.S. For example, the Times lists five Russian men as being recidivists
when not even the DOD continues to include them since they were tortured
on their return to Russia (as documented by Human Rights Watch). A
Center for Constitutional Rights client, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda
bin Qumu, is also listed as a recidivist, when in fact he was jailed on
his return to Libya and is now allegedly fighting with the
U.S.-supported rebels, as is made clear in another article in the same
paper. That the large print, “Released from Guantánamo, They Took Up
Arms” headline is followed by a small print, “against various foes” does
little to mitigate the inflammatory message.
These are only a few of the examples, but they amount to an
irresponsible repetition of the scare stories that abet those forces
seeking to legitimate the continued existence of Guantánamo and the
scheme of detention without charge that the place was created to
facilitate. Even the disclaimer included on the Times website has been
watered down from its previous version: now, buried at the bottom of the
About section of the Guantánamo Docket feature, it reads, “The documents
contain the Defense Department’s assessments of the detainees, some of
which have been challenged in federal court, and in some of the cases
lower court judges have ruled against evidence presented by the
government. Those cases have been appealed.” It fails to mention that
some of the charges were dropped or withdrawn by the government itself,
that a large number were overturned, and it presumes the existence of
evidence when in may cases there was none. The coverage also continues
the Times’ incomprehensible policy of refusing to use the word “torture”
to describe what was done to the men at Guantanamo. Reading the coverage
in the Times and Washington Post, one would never know that the majority
of remaining detainees – ninety of the 172 left – had been cleared for
release by the Interagency Task Force set up in 2009.
Like the Defense Department’s assessments of “recidivism,” the risk
assessments in the files are based on patently unreliable information,
much of it the product of other interrogations at Guantánamo. The files
are years out of date and repeat inaccurate Bush administration
allegations long since put to rest. The Obama administration must
release immediately its own Task Force assessments and, at a minimum,
make public the list of who has been approved for transfer, who has been
designated for trial and who is designated for indefinite detention, so
that foreign governments, the U.S. Congress and the public can get a
more accurate picture of the men who remain at Guantánamo. Without names
and details of cases where the administration claims it needs to detain
individuals without charges or trial, it will continue to be impossible
to have any meaningful public debate about the wisdom of such a policy.
The broad picture these documents paint is not of men “too
dangerous to release” but of a government attempting to justify its
mistakes and detaining, interrogating and abusing men – as well as
teenage boys and men old enough to be suffering from dementia – for
years based on bad evidence, hearsay from self interested jailhouse
informers and sheer incompetence. The files show a breakdown in
accountability for what was done to these men and a lack of transparency
that continues to this day. They show that for more than nine years the
government has been withholding information the public sorely needs in
order to be able to make informed decisions about vital government
policies. They also show that the press – itself a vital component of
our democracy – must also do a better job of holding the government to
account.
CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last nine years –
sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first
attorney to meet with an individual transferred from CIA “ghost
detention” to Guantanamo. CCR has been responsible for organizing and
coordinating hundreds of pro bono lawyers across the country to
represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the
option of legal representation. In addition, CCR has been working to
resettle men who remain at Guantánamo because they cannot return to
their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture.
