39 men in orange and an awkward question: Is the only way out of Guantanamo is by death?

2021-09-10T12:05:08.145Z

Human rights violations and prisoners without conviction. The US jail in Cuba is an open wound for the White House. Here are the alleged 5 leaders of the attack.

Human rights violations and prisoners without conviction.
The US jail in Cuba is an open wound for the White House.
Here are the alleged 5 leaders of the attack.

Carolina brunstein

09/09/2021 17:17

Clarín.com
World

Updated 09/09/2021 10:48 PM

For many, it is a symbol of the "war on terrorism" launched by the George W. Bush administration after the attacks of September 11, 2001. For others, an emblem of

human rights violations

by the military of the United States against suspects.

The US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, converted into a prison to house terrorists is, 20 years after the attacks, an open wound for the White House.

Barack Obama described it as "a stain on America's national honor."

And promised to close it.

Could not.

Joe Biden has the same intentions.

But it will not be easy, despite the fact that the jail is dilapidated and a large part of the prisoners remain in

legal limbo

Detainees in the prison of the US military base in Guantánamo, Cuba.

ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO

Behind those barbed wire fences and large watchtowers are the five accused of the attack, who await the start of a trial in which they could be sentenced to death.

The process had a tentative start date in January of this year.

But the terms are delayed and it is not known when they will be sentenced.

The five men

The alleged leaders of the plan that left nearly 3,000 dead exactly 20 years ago in New York were captured and taken to Guantánamo at different times.

The five were indicted for conspiracy,

attack on civilians, murder, hijacking of planes and terrorism

on May 5, 2012, in a special national security chamber in a Guantánamo court.

Here, a short presentation:

Orange men.

I pray in Guantanamo.

REUTERS

Khalid Shaikh Mohammad

He was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and transferred to the US base at Guantanamo before being charged.

The official report of the 9/11 attacks describes him as the architect, that is, one of the men who participated in the design of the plan to crash planes against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Washington attributes other attacks to him such as the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center, the 2002 Bali explosions and the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, beheaded in Pakistan, in front of the cameras, in a crime that shocked the world, in 2002.

Walid bin Attash

Born in 1978 in Yemen, he was also arrested in April 2003 in Pakistan.

He was in CIA custody for almost three years and was taken to Guantánamo in 2006. He was Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard.

He is charged with selecting and helping train several of the men who later hijacked the planes that crashed into the Towers.

Ammar al Baluchi

Born in Pakistan in 1977, he was arrested in his country in April 2003 and, according to the "Torture Report" of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, spent about 1,180 days in CIA custody before being transferred to Guantanamo in September. 2006.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Photo: AP

According to the United States, it was part of the economic support of the 19 attackers of 9/11, to whom it provided "plane tickets, traveller's checks and hotel reservations," according to a note from the BBC network.

Ramzi bin al Shibh

Also of Yemeni origin and born in 1972, he is accused of being a key facilitator for the attacks.

He was arrested during a shootout with authorities in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002 and sent to a secret detention center until September 2006.

Mustafa al Hawsawi

Of Saudi origin and born in 1968, he is accused of having provided financial support for the attacks.

Although human rights groups have questioned the accusation after a CIA cable leaked in which the agency showed reservations about its participation in the plot.

The "Torture Report" explains that he was arrested in March 2003 and that he spent about 1,260 days in CIA custody and transferred to Guantánamo in 2006.

The other prisoners

On July 19, the United States repatriated a Moroccan detained in Guantánamo.

It was the first transfer of a prisoner from that center under the Biden government.

Abdul Latif Nasir, born in 1965, had been arrested in 2002. He was accused of supplying arms to the Al Qaeda network, which Washington accuses of the 9/11 attacks.

But he was never charged with a crime.

Now there are 39 detainees

in the jail opened in 2002 to house prisoners of war.

Most have been behind bars for nearly two decades without charge or trial.

Ten other prisoners, who are no longer considered a threat to the national security of the United States, also have the green light to be released.

Among them, the oldest there, 73-year-old Pakistani Saifullah Paracha, who spent 16 years in US custody.

Their departure from Guantánamo depends on the willingness of their country of origin or a third country to receive them.

Interior of the Guantanamo prison.

DPA

The history

The Guantánamo prison was conceived in January 2002 to prevent “enemy combatants” captured in Bush's war on terror from being subject to US law.

By locating the prison on the Caribbean island - no more than 800 kilometers from Miami, but outside the United States - it was excluded from the Geneva Convention, which protects prisoners of war.

He did not therefore require that the habeas corpus guarantee be applied to a number of prisoners that he kept alien to the world.

The Bush administration itself argued that "enemy combatant" status meant

they could be denied some legal protections

In January 2002 the first prisoners began to arrive and little by little the makeshift jail at that military base in eastern Cuba was filled with some of the world's most wanted men.

The image of these prisoners, handcuffed and wearing orange overalls, became synonymous with the US response to 9/11, as well as the wars launched in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the time of greatest occupation, Guantánamo

was home to 779 people.

Many had been tortured in secret CIA sites after being captured.

According to the Human Rights First organization, 500 detainees were transferred or released during the Republican Bush administration and another 197 were transferred or released during the Obama term.

At least nine detainees died in custody.

In a report published earlier this year denouncing "continued human rights violations" at the base, Amnesty International called once again, this time on the newly inaugurated Biden, to close the prison.

“These are detentions that are inescapably linked to multiple layers of illegal government conduct over the years: secret transfers, incommunicado interrogations, force-feeding of hunger strikers, torture, forced disappearance, and a total lack of procedural guarantees. ”Daphne Eviatar, security director for Amnesty's Human Rights program, told the British newspaper

The Independent.

The details of what happened - does it happen? - in there remain largely confidential.

The CIA and the Pentagon handle the information in

secret documents

But the data and images that were leaked in these years were enough to horrify human rights defenders around the world.

In 2014, the US Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that the Guantanamo prison was part of an "indefinite secret detention program", which used violent methods of torture, such as the "submarine" (suffocation), sleep deprivation, sexual harassment and a list of physical abuse.

A failure of Barack Obama

“In the dark corridors of Abu Ghraib - the American jail in Iraq that showed the starkest face of the abuse and torture of the US military against prisoners of war - and in the detention cells of Guantánamo, we have compromised our most precious values ”, assured the young Obama during the 2008 electoral campaign.

A group of Muslim detainees, in the Guantanamo prison / Reuters

Two days after settling in the White House, in January 2009, the Democrat signed a decree to close Guantánamo.

His idea was that the prisoners would be taken to the continental United States to be tried by civil courts.

But the very unpopular decision was

blocked in Congress.

In these two decades, many of the inmates of the center rebelled with hunger strikes and, in some cases, even committed suicide due to the lack of expectations of being released.

Some years ago, Carlos Warner, defense attorney for 11 of those inmates, told the

Madrid

newspaper

El País

: "The only way to get out of Guantánamo is to die."

The finale is still open for 39 men in orange jumpsuits.

I kept reading

From New York to Padua, the journey of a beam that survived among the rubble

The Twin Towers imposter: she said she came out of hell, deceived the world and fell for a journalist

Passenger on the last train to Manhattan: chronicle of a journey to the heart of hell

Between reality and fiction: What really happened to the corpse of Osama Bin Laden?