French journalist Marie-Monique Robin's award-winning documentary ‘Torture made in USA', a remarkable investigation into a secret US programme, launched after the 2001 ‘9/11' terror attacks that allowed for the practice of torture in its operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and at the US Naval Base of Guantánamo Bay, has now been released in France on DVD.
Extracts of the documentary were first exclusively presented by Mediapart in partnership with Robin in 2009, and it was broadcast in full by Franco-German TV channel Arte in June this year (see 'Boîte Noire' at bottom of page for more).
The investigation includes exclusive interviews with former US Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff, Larry Wilkerson, with Matthew Waxman, former advisor to Powell's successor Condoleeza Rice, with Alberto Mora, former US Navy General Counsel, and Michael Scheuer, a principal figure of the CIA's ‘Extraordinary Renditions' programme.
Notably, it also features an interview with General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of the coalition ground forces in Iraq, confirming for the first time on camera the practice of torture in total violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (see interview extract below, with French dubbing).
One of the consequences of the so-called ‘war on terror' launched by former US president George W Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney was to create a legal black hole concerning the future of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. For despite a pledge by Barack Obama to close it, it remains in activity. Here, in an article included with the just-released DVD of ‘Torture made in USA', Mediapart's Thomas Cantaloube analyses the imbroglio in which the US president now finds himself.
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‘Obama Orders Guantánamo Prisoners Transferred to Next President' titled US satirical paper The Onion on April 14th 2011. The dark humour sums up the impasse Washington has found itself in for nearly ten years now regarding the 172 detainees still behind bars at the United States Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But above all, it points an accusing finger at the current occupier of the White House, who still hasn't been able to wriggle his way out of the legal ‘black hole' created by his predecessor George W. Bush.
The days of orange jumpsuits, gags and interrogations that clearly fell into the category of torture on the American base are over, and have been for several years now. However, the fate of the prisoners accused of conducting terrorist operations against the US remains practically the same as when they were first held captive. In the hands of the country that often boasts it is a model of democracy, these prisoners are stuck in a procedural limbo that is unable to judge them, sentence them or even acquit them.
In January 2009, in the early days of his mandate as 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama solemnly announced the closure of the Guantánamo prison camp within a year. At the same time, he announced his intention to release, as quickly as possible, the detainees considered not dangerous, and to transfer for trial in US civil courts those likely to be condemned.
More than two years later, Obama has not kept his promises. Some will say he inherited an impossible situation from the Bush administration, which was always quick on the draw: act first, think later. Others accuse him of submitting to pressure from generally conservative politicians who find a ‘far west' justice suitable for modern democracy. Whatever, the president who'd promised to change the face of his country is continuing the practice of arbitrary, indefinite detention.
The Bush administration didn't shout it from the rooftops, but it released roughly 500 of the some 800 detainees who found themselves on the naval base starting in January 2002. Barack Obama followed this policy of releasing prisoners captured by error, or eventually considered not dangerous, by attempting to send them back to their home countries or a host nation. The operative word here is ‘attempting,' because a certain number of the captives cannot be sent back to their home countries either because they are not welcome (Algerians, Chinese Uighurs), or because there is a huge risk they will turn to terrorism on their return (Yemenites).
No legal charges nor sanctions for torturers
The Obama administration has thus set up a small diplomatic unit in charge of persuading host countries, particularly in Europe, to offer asylum to prisoners whose situation is complex, if not hopeless. Washington's new diplomatic approach - humbler, more open to the world - initially made it possible to expect better results than under Bush. Wearied, however, no country has hurried to help the US to rid itself of the thorn in its side. France, for example, has only accepted two foreign detainees on its soil.
With the prospect of closing the Guantánamo camp as promised, Obama also announced the transfer of remaining detainees to a maximum-security prison on US mainland, where they could be judged by federal courts. By doing so he intended to end the process of the military tribunals used until now and which have been contested on all sides.
Enter Washington politics, which he did not take into account. Most of the Republican congressmen and women - and a non-negligible number of Democrats - rose up against the transfer, with confusing, bad-faith arguments along the lines of ‘out of the question to bring terrorists to the homeland,' ‘the civil courts are not suited to judge them,' ‘if they're acquitted, they'll be able to live in the United States.'
The US Congress refused to finance any transfers and blocked the allocation of funding for building a detention center, reducing White House plans to naught. A great majority of Americans are convinced that all detainees on the Cuban island are infamous criminals; worse, they are completely uninterested in the detainees' fate and the fact that their detention has no legal basis whatsoever. Americans supported Congress on the issue of blocking funding.
This is what finally led Barack Obama in April 2011 to reopen military tribunal proceedings and implicitly admit he could not close Guantánamo as he had planned.
The last point on which the Obama administration was unable to meet expectations concerns the responsibility of those involved in setting up the Guantánamo detention center. Neither Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009, nor Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary from 2001 to 2006, nor Alberto Gonzalez, White House Counsel from 2001 to 2005 and U.S. Attorney General until 2007, were ever bothered by or even threatened with a serious inquiry about the decisions they made that drew the United States outside the framework of international law.
On the other hand some efforts towards transparency were made by the new administration. It revealed internal documents that lead to the setting up of Guantánamo and other documents justifying the use of torture. Two Bush administration lawyers in particular, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, were the key draftsmen of the so-called ‘Torture Memos', and though the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility report recommended that sanctions be taken against Yoo and Bybee, neither was ever actually disbarred or disciplined.
The Attorney General in fact refused to prosecute them, concurring with the attitude of the CIA director Leon Panetta, who announced in 2009 that he did not intend to sanction agents having taken part in various torture procedures and kidnappings abroad.
Even though this is not what he initially intended, Barack Obama has confirmed the impunity that bureaucrats and American political leaders benefitted from under Bush, and he has, for the main part, pursued the policy of his predecessor concerning Guantanamo.
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English version: Jeanne Cheynel(Editing by Graham Tearse)