Guantánamo Bay
In early December, a senate hearing was held on closing Guantánamo, the first of its kind in over 6 years. As Guantánamo heads towards its twentieth anniversary, having opened in its current incarnation on 11 January 2002, senators from both Congress and the Democrats broadly rehashed arguments on why Guantánamo should remain open or close they have made over the past two decades. Both, however, expressed dissatisfaction at the Biden administration’s stance on the facility. Although Biden’s administration has stated that closing Guantánamo is a goal, it has not taken any measures or set out any plans to this end. One of the witnesses at the hearing was Chief Defense Counsel for Military Commissions Brig. Gen. John Baker who “argued that the ongoing cases must be brought to "as rapid as a conclusion as possible […] Notice I don't say as just a conclusion as possible. It is too late in the process for the current military commissions to do justice for anyone," he said, calling the proceedings a "failed experiment" and noting they had only resulted in one final conviction.”
The New York Times has also reported that the Pentagon is reportedly building a second courthouse at Guantánamo scheduled for completion by 2023, even though no trial dates have been scheduled in any of the pending cases, some of which remain at pre-trial stage a decade after charges were pressed. In its almost 20 year history, more prisoners have died than have been convicted at Guantánamo, and the majority of those convictions have been overturned on appeal. More than half of the current 39 remaining prisoners face no charges or trial. Trials held at Guantánamo do not meet internationally recognised general standards for a fair trial or justice.
A two-week pre-trial hearing was held in the case of Yemeni prisoner Abd Al-Nashiri, accused of attacks on a US naval vessel in the Gulf of Aden in 2002. Part of the hearings were held in closed session and considered evidence in the case and the ability of the defendant, who faces the death penalty, to attend these hearings as the journey to and from the courtroom to his prison cell have long caused him severe pain and discomfort: “His lawyers are seeking a court order to let him spend the night before a hearing at a specially equipped holding cell at the court, as a disabled prisoner in another case has done”. His lawyers called in a torture expert in an attempt to have him excused from attending as the defendant “who was subjected to waterboarding and a mock execution by the C.I.A. in 2002 still has nightmares of drowning, sleeps with a light on in his cell and can shower only in a trickle of water. When he has been driven to court in a standard windowless detainee transport van, the defendant, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 56, also gets nauseated and vomits from flashbacks to a period when agents confined him nude and shivering inside a chilled, cramped box, part of the “enhanced interrogation” program at the agency’s secret sites.” The testimony given by Dr Sondra Crosby highlighted how Guantánamo “still has no formal program for providing care to torture victims”. The hearing revealed some details of the torture he suffered while in CIA custody.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/us/politics/guantanamo-bay-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri.html
Lt. Col. Michael D. Zimmerman, the fourth judge in the case of Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi, who was charged in 2014, has stepped down from the case after being offered a fellowship at the FBI. “Unlike federal judges, who are given lifetime appointments, military judges generally serve for a few years at military commissions and then move on to other legal roles or retire, creating delays and disrupting continuity in cases.” Before leaving the case, he cancelled the next scheduled pre-trial hearing set for 4-7 January 2022. Al-Iraqi’s defence lawyers “Monday called on Colonel Zimmerman to quit and to vacate rulings he had made since being assigned to the case in September 2020” but he declined to do that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/us/politics/guantanamo-judge-quits.html
