BE PART OF THE SOLUTION: JOIN US FOR A WEEK OF ACTIVITIES IN JUNE

This June will mark the 15th anniversary of TASSC International’s June Survivor Week. We invite you to participate in our activities during the week, and to organize a local commemoration on June 26 in recognition of the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. During the week, survivors will participate in a three day human rights training, visit Congress, speak on different panels, and vigil in front of the White House.

Schedule of activities for the Washington DC Metropolitan area include the following public events:

Tuesday, June 19: Rebuilding a Life After Torture

9 am – 5 pm, Catholic University, Pryzbala Center

11:15 am – 12 noon: VOICES OF SURVIVORS

Survivors will share their stories of rebuilding a life after torture.   Stories will highlight the pre asylum/ post asylum life, why torture occurs, and ongoing human rights violations worldwide including inside U.S. detention centers.

1:00 pm – 2:30 pm  HELPING SURVIVORS TELL THEIR STORIES
Advocates from torture and trauma treatment centers share experiences of guiding survivors through elements of the trauma story for the purposes of healing and social advocacy.

3:00 pm – 4:30 pm  HELPING SURVIVORS TELL THEIR STORIES

Repeat of the 1:00 – 2:30 workship.
Sponsored by Program for Advocates of Torture and Trauma (PSTT) with a Panel of Survivors from TASSC International

Wednesday, June 20: International Communities of Healing

Day of reflection for survivors of torture and International Communities of Healing.

Thursday, June 21: Justice for Survivors of Torture

9 am – 5 pm, Catholic University of America, Aquinas Hall auditorium

9 am – 12 noon:  ENDING TORTURE, DISAPPEARANCE AND IMPUNITY

Panel I: Juan Mendez (UN Special Rapporteur on Torture), Aileen Bacalso (International Coalition against Enforced Disappearances – ICAED), and Prof. Richard Wilson (American University International Human Rights Law Clinic)

Panel II: Survivors of Torture Respond

1 pm – 5 pm: ENDING DETENTION OF SURVIVORS & ASYLUM SEEKERS IN THE U.S.

Panel I: Survivors of Torture Share Experiences of Human Trafficking & U.S. Detention

Panel II: Advocates from Lutheran Immigrantion and Refugee Services (LIRS) and Detention Watch Network (DWN) respond

6 pm - 8 pm: Celebrating TASSC 15th Anniversary: All Welcome!

Busboys & Poets, 5331 Baltimore Avenue, Hyattsville MD 20781

Come join survivors and supporters of TASSC for an evening of solidarity and 15th anniversary celebration at Busboys & Poets in the new Hyattsville, MD location.

Friday, June 22: Congressional Advocacy Day

Survivors and supporters from TASSC International and student interns from The Washington Center will team up to visit Congressional representatives to advocate for an end to torture, indefinite detention, and detention of survivors / asylum seekers in the U.S.

Saturday, June 23: TASSC’s 15th Annual Survivor Week Vigil

 7 am – 7pm, Lafayette Park, in front of the White House

Join survivors from around the world for the 15th annual Torture Survivors Week vigil in Washington D.C. As a movement of torture survivors, TASSC International issues a clear call to end torture, enforced disappearance, and impunity – wherever they occur – and to support all efforts to disclose the truth, bring justice to the families of victims and survivors, and to hold accountable governments responsible for torture.

Sunday, June 24: DC March Against Torture, Guantanamo & NDAA

1:00 pm – 2:30 pm: Gather at the Capitol Reflecting Pool and March to the White House

• Ensure accountability for torture: investigate, prosecute and provide remedy for victims and their families
• Close Guantanamo
• End indefinite detention and repeal the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
• Make public the Sentate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture

Cosponsors: Amnesty International, National Religious Campaign against Torture, Witness against Torture, ACLU, Physicians for Human Rights, TASSC International and many others

Monday, June 25: Congressional Advocacy Day

Survivors and supporters from TASSC International and student interns from The Washington Center will team up to visit Congressional representatives to advocate for an end to torture, indefinite detention, and detention of survivors / asylum seekers in the U.S.

Tuesday, June 26: UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Join us in marking the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (June 26) in your local community. Look for activities and commemorative vigils in your area, and reach out to survivors and communities of faith to participate. TASSC will work together with the National Religious Campaign against Torture (NRCAT) and begin posting these activities as they are confirmed.

Each year, TASSC receives hundreds of survivors of torture who are seeking help to apply for political asylum in the United States. Many come from Africa, where they were detained and tortured by their governments on account of their political or religious beliefs, or their racial or ethnic identity.

To our shock and surprise, more than forty survivors who came to TASSC in the past two years from Africa, most of them from Ethiopia and Eritrea, reached the United States by traveling through Latin America and crossing the U.S. – Mexico border to ask for political asylum. They were subsequently detained in immigration detention centers in Texas, Arizona and California for weeks, months, and sometimes years before being released on bond to apply for asylum.

TASSC traveled to the U.S. – Mexico border in February to visit survivors in immigration detention, and to meet with communities providing alternatives to detention in San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, Tucson, Phoenix, and San Diego. We also had access to survivors who either had been released from or were currently in detention facilities in Texas, Arizona and California.

Many of these immigrant detention centers are run by private corporations – the Geo Corporation or the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) – and by the federal government (ICE). We heard first-hand from survivors about the treatment to which they are subjected, including weeks and months in solitary confinement, as well as lack of access to their families or to legal representation.

We also met with immigration lawyers, torture treatment centers, and community-based alternatives to detention supported by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), the Presbyterian Church USA, or local Catholic dioceses.

The following article was written by the Detention Watch Network, of which TASSC is a member.

Detention Watch Network Deplores Latest Anti-Immigrant Hearing in Congress

Washington, D.C. While nearly 400,000 immigrants are incarcerated each year in an expanding archipelago of punitive and life-threatening detention centers, Congress continues to deny the moral and human rights crisis caused by mass detention. On March 28, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) convened a hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement to continue his callous assault on immigrants and immigrant communities.

The pretext for the hearing is the recent announcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that it will implement a revised version of its internal guidelines on the treatment of immigrants detained in ICE facilities. Detention Watch Network (DWN) condemns this latest round of anti-immigrant showboating by the Republicans and calls upon Congress to repeal mandatory detention, which is the root cause of mass immigrant incarceration.

ICEs new guidelines are intended to help address well-documented civil and human rights abuses that continue to occur daily in immigration detention, abuses that Smith apparently finds laughable, said Andrea Black, Executive Director of DWN. The very title of Wednesday’s hearing, Holiday on ICE, mocks the seriousness of the suffering that immigrants in detention experience and mischaracterizes ICEs new guidelines as mandating cushy resort-like conditions for those in detention.

Far from being hospitality guidelines, as Congressmen Smith has called them, the 2011 Performance Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) fall short of providing the necessary protection for immigrants held by ICE. In 2009, after a scathing government report outlined the inhumane conditions and rampant fiscal waste in detention, the Obama Administration promised to address these problems in the only way possible: by moving away from locking up immigrants and towards new models of custody and supervision that reflect the civil nature of immigration proceedings. So far that has not happened. If anything, ICEs latest standards represent the abandonment of that goal.

In the 2011 PBNDS, like the 2000 and 2008 versions, ICE continues to rely on penal standards rather than re-envision a truly civil system. As a result, immigrants will continue to be held behind bars, often hundreds of miles from their families, with minimal if any access to legal services, vulnerable to the same substandard medical care and abuses that have prevailed in detention to date. Most important, the PBNDS are not enforceable or even legally binding, and there is no independent oversight of facilities to ensure compliance.

But Congressman Smith and the Republicans have chosen to grandstand and lambast the new guidelines as coddling immigrants and increasing detention costs, rather than looking for real solutions to address the detention crisis head-on.

If Lamar Smith is concerned about taxpayers footing the bill for detention, he should consider dedicating his energies to the repeal of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), the legislation he helped pass 16 years ago, which has been almost single-handedly responsible for the tripling of the number of people in detention, said Black. As a result of IIRIRAs draconian mandatory detention provisions, the government needlessly incarcerates thousands of immigrants every year to the tune of $122 per person per day.

Detention Watch Network calls on Congress to pass legislation to reduce the unnecessary, inhumane, and wasteful detention of immigrants. Until Congress acts, the Obama Administration must renew its commitment to urgent reform of the detention system by closing the most egregious detention facilities, by aggressively working with non-governmental organizations to promote community-based supervision programs for those in proceedings, and by pushing for legal regulation and third party oversight of the remaining detention centers.

###

The Detention Watch Network is a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to educate the public and policy makers about the U.S. immigration detention and deportation system and advocate for humane reform. For more information visit: www.detentionwatchnetwork.org

Thirty years later, survivors and family members of the victims have placed former members of the Argentine military, responsible for crimes against humanity and state terrorism on trial. Former sites of torture have been turned into human rights museums in acts that condemn the crimes against humanity that took place there, and stand as a commitment that “Never Again!” must these crimes be allowed to occur.

The following video shows one of the most infamous sites, ESMA: the Navy Mechanical School, where over 5,000 Argentine citizens were disappeared, tortured, and executed, many by drugging them and dropping their bodies over the South Atlantic ocean. Several of their bodies have washed ashore and  been positively identified through DNA testing.

The chapel in the ESMA was used by a Catholic priest who was present while prisoners were tortured, and who absolved the military men responsible for torture. It has now been renamed a chapel for human rights, in honor of the late Patrick Rice, survivor of torture and member of TASSC.

ESMA – Argentina\’s Human Rights Museum

Click Here: From Selma to Guantanamo

U.S. Court Rules that Salvadoran General Guilty of Torture Can Be Deported.

 Center for Justice and Accountability.

San Francisco, CA.

On February 23, 2012, a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Gen. Eugenio Vides Casanova, the former defense minister of El Salvador, can be removed under U.S. immigration law for the torture of Salvadoran citizens, the 1980 killings of four American churchwomen, and the 1981 killings of two Americans and a Salvadoran land reformer.

The removal order caps off CJA’s long struggle to bring Vides Casanova to justice for his crimes.  In 1999, CJA filed suit against Vides Casanova for human rights abuses.  Our courageous clients, Dr. Juan Romagoza Arce, Neris Gonzalez, and Carlos Mauricio, endured torture at the hands of troops under Casanova’s command.  [The three Salvadorans are members of TASSC International]

In 2002, a West Palm Beach, Fla., jury returned at $54.6 million judgment against Generals José Guillermo García and Carlos Vides Casanova, a verdict that led to the deportation proceedings against Vides Casanova.  In January 2006, the 11th Circuit court upheld the verdict on appeal and, in July 2006, Vides Casanova was forced to relinquish over $300,000 of his assets.

For over a decade our clients, partners, and staff have worked diligently to ensure that the Generals are fully held to account.  With the support of Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Coburn (R-OK), CJA requested that DHS and DOJ review prosecution and/or deportation against the defendants.

The removal order against Vides Casanova is an important step towards accountability.  A separate removal order against General Garcia is being sought.

In Another Story…

Former Somali General Pleads Guilty to Torture and Other War Crimes in U.S. Court

On February 23, 2012, former Somali General Mohamad Ali Samantar accepted liability before U.S. federal judge Leonie Brinkema for torture, extrajudicial killing, war crimes and other human rights abuses committed against the civilian population of Somalia during the brutal Siad Barre regime.  This draws to an end a seven year quest in the U.S. courts for justice for those harmed by General Samantar and troops under his command. 

After the collapse of the Siad Barre dictatorship, General Samantar fled Somalia and then ultimately settled in Fairfax, Virginia where he has lived openly for the past fifteen years.

Samantar accepted liability in open court today and in the presence of survivors include the four plaintiffs:

•    Mr. Bashe Abdi Yousuf, then a young business man who was arbitrarily detained, tortured, and kept in solitary confinement for over six years;

•    Mr. Aziz Mohamed Deria, whose father and brother were abducted by Somali soldiers, threatened with execution, and never seen again;

•    Mr. Buralle Salah Mohamoud, a rural goat herder, who was abducted and tortured by Somali soldiers, along with his two brothers, who were summarily executed; and

•    Mr. Ahmed Jama Gulaid, then a Somali soldier, who was arbitrarily detained and shot by firing squad, but miraculously survived, waking up under the bodies of other Somali soldiers with whom he had served.

This is the first time that anyone has been held to account for the atrocities committed by the brutal Siad Barre regime in Somalia. General Samantar was the Minister of Defense and the Commander of the Armed Forces.

In the words of Steven Schulman of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld:

“Today, a strong message has been sent to former foreign officials who come to America after they are no longer in power – they cannot come to the U.S. and escape accountability for crimes committed against humanity in their home country.   Today’s developments are historic as this is the first time an official has been held accountable for the atrocities committed by the Siad Barre regime.  Our clients showed great strength in pursuing this case and once and for all, justice has been served.”

In the words of CJA client Bashe Yousuf:

“For many, many years, I have been looking for justice — for my day in court and not just for me personally, but for the thousands of people in Somalia who were tortured, and murdered. It has been many years and required a lot of patience, but today Samantar is finally being held accountable for ordering these horrific crimes.  It is hard to put into words what this means for me and so many others who were impacted by the Siad Barre regime. It gives me great comfort that I can put this chapter of my life behind.”

This case was filed by the Center for Justice & Accountability in 2004 and was litigated by CJA and pro bono co-counsel from Akin Gump.  

Center for Justice and Accountability.

San Francisco, CA.

As a young woman in the state of San Vicente, El Salvador, Neris Gonzalez worked to improve health care and education in her small, agricultural village of San Nicolas Lempa. Her efforts earned her the respect and admiration of the San Nicolas villagers, but they also made her a target for the violence the Salvadoran military used to exert control over the civilian population.

The mid-1970′s brought conflict and terror to her village as the growing military, civilian and government conflicts grew into what would be a twelve-year civil war.

On December 26, 1979, National Guard soldiers seized Neris from an outdoor market near San Nicolas Lempa. She was taken to the basement of the National Guard Post where she was held captive, tortured and raped. Neris survived the abuse but the trauma of what she had endured haunted her.

In 1997 she sought political asylum in the US and began receiving treatment for the wounds inflicted by torture. Subsequently, she directed an organization in Chicago that teaches ecological awareness and sustainable agricultural methods. She is currently working at an environmental non-profit organization in Washington D.C. She plans to move to El Salvador to continue to work on human rights issues.

Neris’s work for agrarian and health care reform

?The third of 12 children, Neris left her family’s home at the age of 16 to marry. Upon her separation from her husband, just one year after the birth of her first child, Carolina, Neris returned home and began working with the local church as a health educator. She traveled throughout the state of San Vicente fighting to improve health care and education, eventually traveling to the capital of San Salvador to plead with government officials for more money for schools and health care initiatives.

??Neris was well known and respected throughout the village of San Nicolas Lempa for her contributions to the community. At one point, Neris discovered that farm managers and merchants were lying to the laborers about the weight of the goods being sold to them – stealing off the top of their already miniscule salary. In response, Neris launched a campaign to spread literacy throughout the village and became known as “the woman who taught the compesinos to count to 100.” ??But political tensions and conflict continued to escalate.

Neris said that the first sign of the violence that would become the 12-year civil war was the presence of National Guardsmen at every plantation in the state of San Vicente. Soon after, Neris and others began to find mutilated corpses strewn about the village streets. These were the dead bodies of labor organizers, health workers and students. ??

On March 22, 1977 Father Rutilio Grande, Neris’s mentor and colleague, was ambushed and killed by National Guard forces, allegedly for speaking out for the rights of compesinos . Just weeks earlier Father Grande had delivered a sermon in which he assured his congregation: “The very violence that they [the state and military forces] create unites us and brings us together even though they beat us down”.

Her abduction and detention

?On December 26, 1979, while shopping at an outdoor market just outside her village of San Nicolas Lempa, soldiers from the Salvadoran National Guard abducted Neris. They took her to a National Guard post and imprisoned her in the basement of the facility for two weeks. During this time Neris endured horrific forms of emotional and physical torture, including repeated rape, electric shocks, beatings, and being forced to watch the torture of others. ??

For Neris, though, the guardsmen’s torture reached beyond her own individual suffering; her unborn son was also their victim. She was eight months pregnant at the time of her capture and although she prayed and pleaded for her son to remain unharmed, the guardsman barbarically targeted the unborn child.

She remembers, “I was feeling my own torture, but I was also feeling the torture of my son… I was almost dead thinking of my son”. Although Neris gave birth to the child, he died two months later as a result of the injuries incurred in the abuse.??

After her torture, Neris was dumped, unconscious, in an area outside of San Vicente. A local villager took Neris into her home and she began her long recovery. About a week later, Neris was taken to a church in San Salvador, where she received medical treatment at a clinic and recuperated at the neighboring convent.

After, she continued to work vehemently to help rebuild the communities, specifically the agricultural areas destroyed by the civil war. But she was plagued by her memories of the abuse.

Asylum in the US

Finally, thanks to the financial sponsorship of religious groups, Neris obtained political asylum in the US in 1988 and began treatment at the Marjorie Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture.

She began therapy three times a week and was able to earn an income working with children. Subsequently, she founded a project she named ECOVIDA, a group that promotes sustainable agriculture and supports small farming communities. In large part due to the Kovler Center, her weekly therapy, her work with children and her reunion with her two daughters, Neris says she was once again “able to find her voice and her true self.”

Case against the generals

Neris’ treatment also facilitated her quest to see those responsible for her torture brought to justice. In 1999, Neris joined the case, brought by the Center for Justice & Accountability, against former Salvadoran Ministers of Defense Jose Garcia and Carlos Vides Casanova, alleging that the generals bore “command responsibility” for her torture.

On July 23, 2002 the jury found General Vides Casanova and General Garcia responsible for the atrocities committed by their subordinates against Neris, Carlos Maurico, and Juan Romagoza. The verdict ordered the generals to pay $54.6 million to the three plaintiffs.

Neris remarked after the trial that “without the case, my therapy would have been about words, not action. The case was the best therapy possible.”
Read an in depth piece on Neris’s’ life by award-winning journalist Julia Lieblich in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine.

We would like to extend our invitation for you and your family to come and celebrate the New Year at TASSC office on Sunday, January 15, 2012, 2-4 pm.

TASSC, along with our friends and supporters, will contiue to show leadership to end torture wherever it exists and to empower survivors.

As we begin 2012, we are hopeful about what we can accomplish for TASSC together. There is so much good we can do to abolish torture and the will to see it done.

Peace for the New Year! from all of us at TASSC

10 Years Too Many:

National Day of Action
Against Guantánamo

Washington DC – Join Us!

What: Be part of a human chain between the White House and the Capitol in
protest of the 10th anniversary of the Guantánamo prison and the human rights
violations it represents, including torture, detention without charge, unfair trials,
Islamophobia, and impunity for crimes by US government officials.

When: Noon – 2PM Eastern on January 11, 2012 – the 10th anniversary

of Guantánamo prison.
Where: Gather at Lafayette Square at Noon, across from the White House.
We’ll start with a rally in front of the White House and then form a human chain
down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.

Note: Please wear orange or black and bring signs that say “No Guantánamo.

No Torture. No Excuses!”
Sign up: www.witnesstorture.org, www.amnestyusa.org/jan11,
www.ccrjustice.org/closegitmo, or www.nrcat.org/gitmo2012

More Info: jan11@witnesstorture.org, security@aiusa.org,

closegitmo@ccrjustice.org
Help Spread the Word! Copy and share this flier. Sign up and post
“National Day of Action Against Guantanamo” on Facebook. Tweet #closegitmo.

Why? Guantánamo is a global symbol of human rights violations and lawlessness
by the US government. According to military experts it is counterproductive to
security. We call on President & Congress to: Close Guantánamo & end abuses at
Bagram; end indefinite detention & military commissions; charge and fairly try
detained men in federal court or release them; ensure accountability for torture &
other serious abuses; fully investigate; prosecute and provide remedy for victims;
counter Islamophobia underpinning Guantánamo & US detention policies more
broadly; and ensure security with human rights.

Witness Against Torture Amnesty International USA Center for Constitutional Rights National Religious Campaign Against Torture
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Physicians for Human Rights Bill of Rights Defense Committee No More Guantánamos Pax Christi USA Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition
Catholic Worker War Resisters League World Can t Wait Code Pink School of the Americas Watch Voices for Creative Nonviolence National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance

8th Day Center for Justice WarIsACrime.org Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5 Rabbis for Human Rights North America Refuge Media Project War Criminals Watch Arab American Association of New York

Georgetown University Law School

Published on *The Nation* (http://www.thenation.com)

On January 11 it will have been a decade since the first of the men we once called “the worst of the worst” were brought to Guantánamo Bay, a location handpicked by the Bush administration so that it could detain and interrogate terror suspects far from the prying eyes of the law. In the intervening years much has improved at this remote US-controlled enclave in Cuba. Allegations of ongoing torture have ceased; the detainees have access to lawyers and court review; and more than 600 of the 779 men once held there have been released.

But in another way, Guantánamo is a deeper problem today than it ever was. No longer a temporary exception, it has become a permanent fixture in our national firmament. And although at one time we could blame President George W. Bush’s unilateral assertions of unchecked executive power for the abuses there, the continuing problem that is Guantánamo today is shared by all three government branches, and ultimately by all Americans. With President Obama’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on New Year’s Eve, the prison is sure to be with us—and its prisoners sure to continue in their legal limbo—for the indefinite future.

President Bush undoubtedly committed the original sin. Had he followed the rules governing wartime detention from the outset, Guantánamo would not be an international embarrassment. It has long been established that in an ongoing war a country may detain the enemy for the conflict’s duration. But the laws of war require that we afford hearings to those whose status is in doubt, that we release them when the conflict ends and that we treat them humanely throughout. Bush refused to provide hearings, asserted the prerogative to hold people during a never-ending “war on terror” and authorized systematic cruel and inhuman treatment. For years, Guantánamo was synonymous with Bush’s defiantly lawless approach to the “war on terror.”

But we can no longer point the finger only at Bush. He’s been out of office for three years, and Guantánamo is still very much with us. Congress, with the support of many Democrats, has adopted a shortsighted “not in my backyard” attitude, making it impossible for President Obama to deliver on his promise to close Guantánamo. In provisions recently renewed in the NDAA, Congress has barred any transfer of Guantánamo detainees to a US prison, even for criminal trial, and radically restricted the president’s authority to transfer detainees to foreign countries, essentially requiring impossible guarantees that they won’t ever pose a threat to the United States. As a result, even though more than half of the remaining detainees—eighty-nine of 171—have been fully cleared for release by a joint review conducted by the military, CIA, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, they remain stuck there. Locking up people we concede need not be held is the very definition of arbitrary detention, but that has become the norm at Guantánamo.

The courts are also implicated. The Supreme Court twice sought to ensure that Guantánamo would be subject to law. In 2004, in a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which almost no one thought could be won, the Court ruled that the detainees had a statutory right to challenge the legality of their detentions by filing writs of habeas corpus. When Congress repealed the statutory basis for that decision, the Court in 2008 held that the detainees had a constitutional right to seek judicial review—the first time the Court had extended constitutional rights to foreign nationals outside our borders.

But the Court left the details to be worked out by the lower courts, and because all habeas cases must be filed in the District of Columbia, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit—the very court the Supreme Court overturned in its habeas rulings—must hear all appeals in the Guantánamo cases. In a series of decisions that come close to echoing the South’s resistance to the 1954 *Brown v. Board of Education* ruling, the DC Circuit has rendered virtually meaningless the judicial review the Supreme Court says the Constitution guarantees. The DC Circuit allows indefinite detention based on notoriously unreliable intelligence reports, to which it accords a “presumption of regularity,” while denying the detainee an opportunity to confront or rebut them. It upholds indefinite detention based on a mere “preponderance of evidence,” and several judges have said they would not even require that minimal showing. As Judge Laurence Silberman candidly stated, “I doubt any of my colleagues will vote to grant [release] if he or she believes that it is somewhat likely that the petitioner is an Al Qaeda adherent or an active supporter.”

DC district courts have granted habeas in more than thirty cases, but the DC Circuit court has vacated or reversed every order the government has appealed. The Supreme Court, once celebrated for reintroducing the rule of law to Guantánamo, has now rendered judicial review a charade by repeatedly declining to intervene.

What seems to drive Congress and the courts is the desire to eliminate any risk, no matter how remote, that a detainee might harm us in the future. Neither Congress nor the courts, however, seem to have any problem with the countervailing risk, namely that we may be needlessly and arbitrarily locking up human beings for years who pose no threat whatsoever.

Meanwhile, despite his assessment that “the existence of Guantánamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained,” Obama appears to have abandoned his promise to close the prison. He vowed to veto the NDAA because of its restrictions on his authority vis-à-vis detention and trial of Al Qaeda suspects, but he reversed course and signed the bill after a House-Senate conference committee watered down some of its worst provisions. The bill is better because of his veto threat, but it still assures Guantánamo’s continued existence.

At the same time, Obama has blocked all efforts at accountability for the abuses committed there. Even though the vast majority of detainees have been released, suggesting they were not “the worst of the worst” after all, and even though it is widely acknowledged that detainees held there were abused and in some instances tortured, the executive has issued no apologies. Guantánamo apparently means never having to say we’re sorry.

We used to be able to blame the Bush administration for Guantánamo. No more. And although the executive, legislative and judicial branches are all deeply implicated in the ongoing injustice, we can’t really lay the blame on the government. Guantánamo is our problem as citizens. No doubt because only foreigners are held and tried there, Americans have consistently looked the other way, even as the world calls for it to be closed. A 2010 CNN poll found that 60 percent of Americans favor keeping the prison there. Guantánamo will not close until we insist that our government heed the calls for justice that the world has rightly made.

*Source URL:*

http://www.thenation.com/article/165443/guantanamo-ten-years-and-counting