Guantánamo Bay
On 12 July, the US House of Representatives passed a draft US$733
billion defence spending bill for 2020, its version of the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) for the coming year. This includes provisions on
Guantánamo, which this year allow prisoners to be transferred to the US
mainland for medical treatment and an amendment authorising judges at the
Guantánamo military commissions to broadcast hearings. These can currently only
be viewed by attending the hearings in person or at closed circuit television
sites at US military bases. The amendment, tabled by Representative Adam Schiff,
is aimed at improving the transparency of the process: “The military
commissions at Guantanamo have been out of sight, and therefore out of mind,
for far too long. As Guantanamo nears its third decade, and with trials still
years away, it is all the more important that victim’s families, the media, and
the public are able to follow the trials before the military commissions. I’m
pleased that my amendment was included in the defense bill and it had now
passed the House, and I will push for its inclusion in the final legislation.”
The Bill has yet to be passed and this process will take several
more months, including reconciling this version with that of the US Senate. It
must then be signed into law by President Trump.
During the latest pre-trial hearing in the case of five men accused
of involvement in terrorist attacks in New York in September 2001, the
prosecution presented to the new judge in the case, Air Force Col. Shane Cohen,
who has presided over two hearings so far, its case that the detainee torture
programme was legally sanctioned, and thus the torture programme was “certainly
nothing outrageous”. On the same day, the US government handed over new
documents related to the programme to the parties: “The latest tranche included
instant-messenger chats between personnel involved in the interrogations at CIA
black sites” which defence lawyers are still looking into.
Extraordinary Rendition
The CIA is currently seeking to push through an amendment expanding
the scope of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) which
offers anonymity and protection to intelligence agents posted abroad. As part
of a raft of intelligence bills this year, the CIA is seeking to have
amendments made that extend the scope of the Act with the result “that
intelligence agencies could criminalize the disclosure of the identities of
clandestine officers and agents in perpetuity, including after retirement or
even after death”. The amendment, tabled by the CIA and which has remained in
the same wording as it proposed, is currently being fast tracked through
Congress and is supported by Rep. Adam Schiff who at the same time is calling
for transparency in the Guantánamo military tribunals. Such an expansion of
this Act would offer protection to CIA officers, including Gina Haspel, who
have been named as operatives in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition and those
who are sought as witnesses in the ongoing pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo.
The expansion of this law and its “threat of prosecution could
impair reporting in the public interest where the threat of physical harm to an
intelligence officer is minimal.”
On 10 July, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the
Rendition Project published a 400-page report on the CIA’s "rendition,
detention, interrogation" (RDI) programme, the most expansive study of the
extraordinary rendition programme yet, looking at its origins and up to the end
of the Bush era in 2008. The report “CIA Torture Unredacted” builds on
the findings of the 2014 US Senate Intelligence Committee Report and provides a
list of at least 100 prisoners who were held at CIA black site torture prisons
around the world.
The British government has told parliament that there will be no
judge-led inquiry into the UK’s complicity in prisoner torture under the US’s
extraordinary rendition programme. A year after the release of a report by the
parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) on British complicity
in US torture and prisoner abuse, to which the government promised to respond
within weeks, it has finally turned down the recommendation to launch an
independent inquiry, which had been promised by Conservative Prime Minister
David Cameron in 2010. The “Detainee Inquiry” launched in his era collapsed in
2012 due to the withdrawal of the victims and NGOs from the process due to the
limited terms of the inquiry and criminal investigations. The ISC report
deplored the scant information made available to it and the refusal to allow it
to interview a range of different people involved. The ISC report and various
reports have found the British government and its intelligence agencies to have
been involved in the torture and abuse of British and foreign prisoners in
breach of its domestic and international obligations. Without an inquiry into
exactly what the UK knew and did, it is impossible to know whether or not it is
involved currently in similar practices or in facilitating them, such as
through the training of foreign armies.
LGC Activities:
The August Shut Guantánamo! demo will be on 1st August
at 12-2pm outside the US Embassy, Nine Elms Lane, SW11 (nearest underground:
Vauxhall): https://www.facebook.com/events/639190026595505/
