 Well, welcome all. I'm David Skerman, a senior policy analyst with New America's International Security Program. We're here to talk about the 17th anniversary of Guantanamo's use in the war on terror. We've held this event, I believe, pretty much every year since 2011. It's one of the most important events we do marking a critical decision that the US made in the war on terror that still shapes us today. At last count, there were 40 people still left and detained in Guantanamo. When Trump took over a couple of years ago, there were, I believe, 41. During that time, one person was transferred out as part of an ongoing court case. In Spain, I believe, extradited, and then no one else us left. In fact, I believe the office in charge of both relocation and tracking those who were already gone was closed. On the other hand, no one has been put into Guantanamo since the Bush administration, so now more than a decade. Yet even so, we still have discussions of potentially placement of ISIS fighters there. So, it hasn't gone away. So, to discuss all of that, we have Andy Worthington, co-founder of Close Guantanamo, Laura Pitter, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's US program, and Thomas Wollner, also a co-founder of Close Guantanamo, and OF Council at Sherman and Sterling. He was also the lead counsel for the Brazil and Bumidian cases, which really shaped the entire legal structure regarding where we are now with Guantanamo and the few advances that were successfully grabbed. With that, I'll turn it over to them for short opening statements. We'll have some moderated discussion and then throw it out to you for your questions and answers. Andy? Okay. Hello, everybody. Thank you, New America, for this. Thank you, everybody, for turning up. Those that I know and there are many activists here that I do and everybody that I don't know, thank you for turning up because, of course, we're here to mark an occasion that is almost totally ignored in the US media. And how can that be? It's 17 years today that the prison opened and then that's 6,210 days. This is from a project that Tom and I set up as part of the Close Guantanamo campaign called the Gitmo Clock. If you go and look at it, it counts in real time how long Guantanamo has been open, 6,210 days. Now, fundamentally, every single one of those days that the prison has been open ought to be a source of shame for all decent American people who care about the rule of law. Because Guantanamo is a place where people are not held according to the norms that apply if you're going to deprive somebody of their liberty. You either do that by them being a criminal suspect and you put them on trial, or you take them off the battlefield and hold them unmolested with the protections of the Geneva Conventions until the end of hostilities. But that didn't happen at Guantanamo. And the only countries that would do this kind of thing to people normally are countries that don't claim to respect the rule of law and that we would call quite rightly dictatorships. So while I'm delighted that you're all here and so thankful that you still care, where I'm staying across town in DC, I got up this morning and looked at the front cover of the New York Times which had been delivered. Nothing. No mention of it. How could it not be front page news that the 17th anniversary is today of this terrible lawless place? And so we need to keep working to get to a position where one day we can have this place shut down. Obviously the circumstances that we're under now, that's very difficult to imagine. We had eight years of President Obama who promised to close the prison and then fundamentally lacked the political will to do that in the face of opposition from Republicans. And then we got Donald Trump. And not just in the field of Guantanamo but in many of the things that Obama had done or had not undone that had carried on from the Bush administration. Nobody was really thinking what would happen if somebody really dangerous became the president of the United States. And the position we've been in, as David briefly mentioned since Trump came into office, was he came in promising all kinds of outrageous things that he was going to send new people to Guantanamo. That he wanted to bring back torture as official U.S. policy. Now fortunately, even with unhinged advisors around him in many ways, not very far from Trump but people who realize that actually sending new prisoners to Guantanamo, I hope I'm right in this, sending new prisoners to Guantanamo is not helpful because this is not a place where the law applies in any meaningful sense. It was set up so that the Bush administration could hold human beings entirely without any rights whatsoever and do what they wanted to do to them, which involved torturing them and abusing them. And that was the situation that prevailed for fundamentally actually, it was two and a half years until the Rasul case when liars got access to the prisoners, which pierced the veil of secrecy that enabled torture to take place. But it took nearly four and a half years for the Supreme Court to say to the Bush administration, you can't hold anyone without fundamentally understanding that everyone is protected by Common Article III of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits torture and other forms of abuse. So Trump has been, Trump's worst impulses have been held in check, but we are looking today at a prison that he has effectively sealed shut. No one is getting out of Guantanamo under Donald Trump and there's nothing that any of us can do about it, which should demonstrate to us how fundamentally wrong the place is. I could describe the men held there as political prisoners. I'm not saying that there aren't people there accused of serious crimes, but the means to prosecute them successfully are broken. There are people held there who I am absolutely convinced did nothing, apart from be a very low level foot soldier, let's say in Afghanistan, who has had a bad attitude over the last 17 years because of the way they've been treated. We are stuck with this situation where no one can get out of the prison and we need to highlight it. Perhaps you don't want to call the men held there Trump's political prisoners. Maybe you would like to call them Trump's personal prisoners. He has a little collection of 40 people that he holds in Guantanamo that no one can touch. Now Tom will tell you that I hope that there are still hopefully some legal ways in which this long, long disaster may be challenged. But we are fundamentally faced with this position where we have a president who was certainly elected, but in the power that he has over Guantanamo he behaves like a despot and we should not stand for that. So whatever we can do on an ongoing basis to resist that, and I've known some of you people for kind of 10 years now, we're all not as young as we were, but I think we all know that we can't give up on this because I think you understand the fundamental importance of closing Guantanamo and you feel the shame of this prison being opened every single day because of what it represents. So thank you. And thank you Andy for your continued efforts to highlight what's happening there. Oh sorry. Can you hear me now? You can hear me now? Okay I'll try to talk into my microphone. I wanted to say thank you Andy for continuing to highlight what's been going on there and keeping his page going and updating and his work has been essential. Yes I completely agree and I guess what I sort of wanted to talk about today, I actually just made this argument in a essay that's going to be out in a book that's coming out from Karen Greenberg's Fordham Center on Law and Security, that we need a sort of Korematsu style reckoning about the standard that's been used at Guantanamo to keep people there. I mean the reason why we still have 40 men there is because of the standard that the U.S. Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit allowed to exist and created for keeping detainees at Guantanamo and that the Obama administration fought hard to implement. And one reason why we need that is because we know so much more now about who the men were in Guantanamo, who the government was constantly saying were too dangerous to release and pose such a serious threat to security to do so. There's many more, many have been released and we know their stories. We know the story of Muhammad Duslahi and I see his lawyer in the audience here today. I know that he gave a presentation last yesterday, I believe, through Skype this morning. He wrote the book Guantanamo Diaries and told the world, which became a New York Times bestseller and told the world about who he was and I think it's apparent when you read that that you realize that this person that the U.S. government claimed was the most dangerous man in Guantanamo was nothing of the sort. We know who Bmydian is, we know who Mansour, who has now been placed in Serbia is, we know who Marat Kunaz is, we know who so many of the individuals who were released are, we know their stories and we know that they are not the threat that the government was saying they were and we know that now the standard was so low that that kept the detainees there and that standard actually was created in part by our new U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh who was one of three judges on the DC Circuit who created the initial standard at Guantanamo which allowed the government to keep detainees there based on a preponderance of the evidence which is the lowest form of evidence basically more than the lowest forms in the criminals and any justice system in the U.S. using hearsay and using their so-called conditional probability analysis that allowed and forced actually the judges at the lower court to decide to consider even unreliable pieces of evidence in determining whether or not they could be held at Guantanamo. So they forced the courts to use that standard and keeping detainees there and they ended up having to reverse all the lower court decisions of detainees who had been granted using that standard and then later in a later case called Latif even lowered that standard further by deciding that the lower courts had to consider had to give the government's evidence enormous credibility when we knew that it didn't have credibility and you can even just look at Judge Tatl's dissent in that decision to see how unreliable the evidence was that they were using to keep detainees at Guantanamo. So you know that standard and you see how problematic that standard was by looking at who has been released now. I don't know how that Korematsu style reckoning is going to happen. Korematsu of course is the case that was on the U.S. books for years that justified the detention of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II and was only recently overturned with I think it was last year in one of the travel bank cases. But that standard is what is now at play. But I know that really actually challenging that standard and bringing cases is the only hope that many of the detainees who are still there have. It's important that we reckon with that standard because it's what will likely be used if the U.S. does bring more detainees to Guantanamo which of course the Trump administration is considering. We know that now there are 40 men there five of whom have already been cleared by even the Obama administration for release. Even those who haven't been cleared are men who you know we know have been there since they were very young. The evidence against them is very very weak but if you use that standard even very weak evidence will keep detainees at Guantanamo. So at the same time the Center for Constitutional Rights and I don't know if Thomas you're involved in this but they are bringing new challenges and the court that existed and created that standard several years ago is different now and perhaps there's a possibility of them looking at things in a new way given what we know but it's incredibly important that we have that reckoning and I do agree that the courts are probably the best way to challenge that at this point. So thank you all for being here and for your support. Well I said I have no idea what to say here I wake up every day look at the television for a brief moment and get very depressed. In the world of Donald Trump where everything seems terribly crazy and unfair Guantanamo has even become smaller and less attention to you know when somebody's talking about building a wall for five or almost six billion dollars when it really makes no sense or lies about this or lies about that it takes the focus away from this who the hell cares about 40 people at Guantanamo today and saying to when when Guantanamo started I you know I brought a case on behalf of the Kuwaitis who were there in May of 2002 it's interesting let me tell you the history a bit because something's going on we brought a case all we asked for at that time was that there would be a fair hearing for these people to see whether there was really a basis for detaining them we know more now but we knew then that these people were shipped off to Guantanamo they weren't captured on any battlefield they were turned over to US forces mostly by local tribes people or local governments in exchange for substantial bounties which said you know feed your family for life turn in an Arab terrorist so any Arab there was fair game to turn in and then they came into the US custody and they were without a hearing and the Geneva Convention says if there's any question you should have a hearing right then and we did that in the last call for they were just shipped off to Guantanamo every Arab turned in in this Afghan Pakistan area was shipped off to Guantanamo so we asked just for a fair hearing to see whether there was a basis for it that's 17 years ago and they still haven't gotten a fair hearing we went to the distance to the courts here in DC and the courts first said well look because they're aliens foreigners without property or presence in the sovereign territory of the United States they have no rights under the law no rights under the Constitution and no access to our courts the Supreme Court reversed in the Rasool case and said we may not have sovereign du jour legal sovereignty over Guantanamo but it's we have de facto sovereignty it's within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and these people as much as American citizens have the right to habeas corpus under the first statute passed by the first Congress in the United States Congress then revoked that can you believe that I mean how could they revoke habeas corpus they revoked habeas corpus for the people in Guantanamo and we went back to court and said you can't do that because it's constitutionally guaranteed I mean I think this is sort of interesting the DC circuit then same judge has said well you don't have constitutional rights because these people are just aliens without property or presence in the sovereign territory in the United States so they have no constitutional rights whatsoever went back to the Supreme Court in the Bometti in case the Supreme Court reversed and said you know they may not be in the technical sovereign territory but we control the base and under a long precedent they have the constitutional right to habeas corpus we then habeas cases went back to the courts and a number of them were won and then the DC circuit entered an opinion same judge and it's really I think more important than the cases that you mentioned the seminal case was the court said well they might have the right to have procedural right to have a hearing but because they're aliens without property or presence in the United States they have no right to do process of law so if you have a hearing that hearing can take place and you have no right to do process so they can't see the evidence against them in most cases they don't know what the charges are and they go blind in these areas no effective way to challenge the detentions it is disgusting that the Obama administration rather than sort of rejecting those use those to deny habeas corpus aggressively asserted those cases to deny habeas corpus because I think the Obama administration wanted to make decisions itself about who it would release and who it wouldn't it's a result of that and we tried to get that changed at the end and said look you could who knows even somebody like Donald Trump could be elected someday and you don't want to leave a lawless enclave outside the law for a guy like that to have it and the Obama administration just poo pooed it by the way Hillary when she left the State Department sent Obama memo saying you've got to close this place but he didn't so now we're left with this place and we're left with a surreal situation with a crazy man as president of the United States who lies and cheats and insults everyone and that's taken all the steam out of what we can do so I don't know what to say except we're in court now trying to restore due process trying to get the courts to reverse that if we get that I think it'll make a significant difference let me say the one encouraging um back to me is to see the people who've come here today this is more than last year or something I and I'm I'm encouraged that people still care I think the relevant question for us is what can we do and I think we've got to effectively go out and elect Democrats now to to change the power we've got to take this country back Guantanamo to me was the start of the United States weaving a path of law leaving the path of lawfulness and really abandoning the principles upon which this nation is founded I didn't think it could last long but it really was the first step um you know I say we can talk about torture and the fact that we tortured is amazing but the worst torture for these guys if you're in Guantanamo is being stuck there without the ability to have a fair hearing you never convicted never charged for many of them and you stuck there without the the most rudimentary requirements of the rule of law so we've got to try to change it thanks thanks so I want to pick up on this question of the route forward because it really does seem like at least for the past two years and seemingly continuing there's been just an absolute stalling of any progress towards closing Guantanamo and then before Trump was elected you had a different form of stalling under the Obama administration so there seems that there are three possible routes by which progress towards closing it could be made there's the executive route there's the legislature could act or through the courts you talked a bit about the courts we just had a new house elected is there any movement on Guantanamo in the house do you expect any um and if so where from well I know that there were some meetings arranged yesterday with with various people in congress so some people to do with the various committees on intelligence and I didn't go to the meetings yesterday so I don't know all the details I thought it was very promising that these kind of approaches were being made to lawmakers because I think it's finally breaking through the complete sense of futility with the legislature that people had for the first two years of Donald Trump when you've got Donald Trump as president and the republicans controlled both the senate and the house what could we do so I would definitely encourage people to get more involved in in speaking to their elected representatives to start that ball rolling again of they you know politicians they can they can make it sound like they're interested or they cannot they'll you know they'll they'll give you their ear for a bit it may lead to nothing but I think it's important to try and make sure that our voices are once more back in the offices of your elected representatives making the case for this stain on America's reputation to be removed yeah I mean I work with a lot of groups that work on Guantanamo and we do a lot of work on the on the hill talking to members of congress and there is a little bit more hope I would say now with with the house I mean there they do have more leverage the the bill that the Guantanamo they all the Guantanamo provisions are in is called the national defense authorization of the act it's a annual bill that gets passed every year and the house side will have some leverage in that negotiation process about some of the provisions that are are going to be in there but it's going to be tough with a presidential veto possibility hanging over their heads but still you know there there is hope and it definitely encouraged people to be reaching out to their representatives and you know making their voices heard so it's a little bit of hope I don't think there's much hope I not not with the house you know and it's a political mix you know you got a president who wants to spend billions of dollars on a silly wall to sort of stir up his base the last thing he would ever want to do for his base would let be let somebody out of Guantanamo I mean it's a Trump doesn't think of what's right or wrong he thinks what what makes him popular with his base or popular overall on the other hand the democrats although they will have some leverage with the annual authorization appropriations bill in military I doubt whether I think it's good to talk them they're not going to use it on an issue that most the public doesn't care about and is controversial they're just and and it would probably be politically unwise for them so you know I I don't think there's much hope now I think the biggest hope is in the courts and and unelecting those who are now in power the moving to the question of the court there's the larger discussion at least on parts of the left right now regarding whether the courts are shifting to a sort of generational conservative system does that shift if you accept that that might be the case in fact Guantanamo is Guantanamo separate from the sort of traditional legal conservative and liberal theories of the court um what does the new justices appointed by Trump mean for Guantanamo these days and what about the lower courts as well yeah you know that's a real legal question maybe I'll think it's unclear frankly what Kavanaugh's appointment the supreme court will mean it is clear that the retirement of Kennedy really you know Kennedy wrote the Bumidian decision it was a five to four decision it was a decision which clearly recognized the individual rights of of the detainees and the basic right to a fair hearing and the reach of the constitution beyond our technical borders to places we control it was a great opinion and he's gone so it's questionable what Kavanaugh will mean uh Kavanaugh was his clerk and respects him and may not want to jab him but more importantly now in the lower courts and you know it's a longer discussion when people say conservative justices are is the people appointed by the Bush administration really who reached these decisions in the DC circuit not that they're conservative they're more than conservative I mean Justice Kennedy and Justice O'Connor are very conservative people politically but they believe firmly in the principles of the United States and most importantly they believed in separation of powers that says you know they I mean the big argument in the Guantanamo in all the Guantanamo cases to start with the government said leave it to us we know what we're doing we have the responsibility for the security of the nation let us decide who to detain and who to release and the courts by O'Connor and Kennedy and Stephen sceptin said no that the courts have an essential role to play as a check against executive detentions essential we need to play that role through the writ of habeas corpus the people who have been appointed after that it's they don't believe in that they believe in deference to executive power I mean people don't understand that they say Trump Trump doesn't understand it oh that's a point conservative judges and justices these people are ideologues who don't believe in separation of powers really and that's that's a critical difference now we have I think it's very important to get these cases because for the courts now because Trump is is packing the courts so there might be a window to get favorable decisions now that there won't be in the future I said if we restore due process to Guantanamo we we will have made a huge step yeah I would just to add that I mean Cavanaugh was one of the three judges who didn't refuse to give teeth to the Bumini indecision on that DC circuit panel right so which which panel the Al Bahani I think was the he was he was on that panel so you know I don't know I'm not hopeful for him I and also he's so deferential to you know yeah exactly what you said deferring to the government on national security claims though there are a lot of alignments with him in Kennedy I'm a little worried that that's where there's going to be the tipping point well that will be the tipping yeah before we move on from the questions of the politics of Guantanamo I think I do have to ask as the 2020 campaign begins to take shape in the primaries you expect Guantanamo to make an appearance either in the primaries or it's a general and do you see any hope for closing it coming down the pike with the potential Trump exit with the Trump exit I mean yes yeah if he leaves somebody else yeah but I doubt it's I would doubt that it's going to be an issue during the campaign I mean it'd be great if it was but I would be very surprised yeah it barely came up in 2016 at all so I doubt it would be in this race as well unfortunately but I agree with Andy I agree I agree with Andy though that it's important for everyone here to write their congressman to write it so you know they're aware of it they're aware it's important but I don't think it's going to rise to a level it's 40 people down there with the crazy man and you know there are other things more important but the political way forward is that you know it could be that if Trump goes if the Democrats were to get in if people are making enough noise about making Guantanamo an issue again then we could be in a better place in several years time than we are now but you we're gonna have to keep meeting every year you all know that anyway and there's better chances that the Senate may go Democrat next that would be and then we might have some leverage there so this past year they ran a sort of drill at Guantanamo for the possibility of putting in new people seemingly specifically individuals from the fight against ISIS in Syria they say that wasn't for anything in particular and there's no immediate plans do you expect new people to end up in Guantanamo in the next two years I mean I it would be so unfortunate if that happened I do think that there is a lot of resistance in both the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice to making that happen both because it complicates the argument for keeping detainees there because the standard it's not clear that it would necessarily apply to new ISIS detainees but also because I think I do think the Department of Defense and the Justice Department recognize that it's a failure that the military commissions are a failure and that it's not in the US is national security interest to continue Guantanamo and keep it open you know whether or not this administration and other senators like we heard Lindsey Graham the other day was calling for that possibility again make a decision that's stupid but it's definitely possible yeah I you know I think if somebody says to Donald Trump or Lindsey Graham says it'll help you in your campaign if you put some more people in Guantanamo it's red meat to his base I think it's possible I would hope not I would you know there's a little glimmer of hope there that enough people within the DOD and the DOJ know that it is a place where justice goes to die if you want to do things like hold people indefinitely without charge or trial and abuse them it's it's got a track record of that but I think if they're dealing with ISIS prisoners and and they want to deliver justice if they're dealing with anyone and they want to deliver justice then the federal courts are clearly the place to do it so I'm hoping that whoever is keeping him in check about his wildest impulses to send new people there that those people are still there to advise him well yeah I'm sorry Indian I mean it is only attractive to people with that with the view that you want Guantanamo was opened by the Bush administration for one reason they thought following the law would be an impediment in the war against terrorism so they wanted to avoid the law and they had an argument if you hold people beyond the sovereign territory of the United States you have they you have no legal obligations the only attraction of Guantanamo to people with that sort of view is if it's beyond the law that's why I felt if we could restore due process to Guantanamo bring it back within the law and by the way then the presumptions can be examined there's no incentive to do it now it's it's for them to send people to a lawless enclave because it won't be lawless so that's our hope what extent have we seen the sort of supposed trick of Guantanamo where it was claimed to not be under U.S. control and just not have legal protections being recreated in American detention policy by use of partner forces where either Syrian Democratic forces or UAE partners in Yemen are carrying out detention of terrorism suspects that we may finger or otherwise help guide even perhaps participate in raids to capture but insist that we don't have actual control is there legal aspects from the Guantanamo disputes that can help shape policy on that what's the sort of human rights vision for detention policy and potentially post Guantanamo world whether or not it's post Guantanamo by actually resolving it or just because no one ever wants to put people into Guantanamo even if it's never actually closed well yeah I mean and it's a good it's really a legal question the only way the way we prevailed in both the Rassoul case and the Bomidian case was because Guantanamo is really not foreign it is totally controlled by the United States a person who put into Guantanamo has no access to Cuban courts as just Judge Gibbons said in arguing the case you know at putting a Cuban stamp on it and trying to mail it to Fidel Castro wouldn't work I mean it's a totally American place and so the courts view this is really America what a what a sham to say it's beyond that now the DC circuit rejected a similar claim with respect to background to people held there because it said look you know there it is foreign territory there's still foreign control and the intrusion of the United States law there to supersede the local law really isn't right I think the courts would go along with that and say if you have a place in a foreign country where foreign officials are involved in foreign courts even can be appealed to the United States law shouldn't apply the real answer there is this is a disgusting thing to do and the United States should not be involved in it allowing torture or holding people beyond the law wherever it is it's a political decision that should not be made Ward you can basically yeah no I mean they're definitely the US is engaged in operations with partner forces in Syria and Iraq and Yemen and they are very carefully you know keep trying at least to try to make a separation between them and the partner forces and we know the partner forces in Yemen have been accused been accused of horrific forms of torture we've documented it amnesty has documented it even a UN report documented it but the US only recently I think in the last week claims that they have no knowledge of any of that any of that torture and that the forces that they're working with are not under lehi law obligations so and in Syria in the northern part of Syria they are holding other detainees well that their partner forces are holding other detainees in the US helps them and gives them support and funds their detention centers but also claims that they have no control over what happens there so yeah I mean it's it's how the US is engaging in those you know in trying to keep a distance from their partner forces engaging in that we did have the one case of the American who was detained in Iraq the John Doe case that the ACLU brought on his behalf and there was you know some possibility of of the courts maybe having a different view than they did in the vagrom cases in that case but they ultimately ended up because they were forced by the ACLU releasing him after they held him for about I think it was more than a year but that was because he was an American citizen US citizen but yeah unfortunately the courts have decided that people that the US detains outside of the US borders don't have those habeas rights and on top of that the US you know works with partner forces and and those partner forces do what they do and the US tries to keep a distance from that you know let me just say one thing what we really worried about before the Bometean case is that the and they were actually thinking of this going around different countries and having little territories within our prison within the country say look you retain ultimate sovereignty but give us total control within that prison creating little Guantanamo at different places and I think the Bometean case made pretty clear you can't they can't do that you know some some territory where they have total control but the gap is that they could farm it out to their Yemeni's partners. So my last question before we throw it out to the audience returning to sort of the political future we've seen some odd sort of alliance building in politics surrounding other parts of the war on terror in the past year or so sort of a right left alliance on the Yemen war some other authorization of military force issues are we seeing similar signs of that happening on Guantanamo or is Guantanamo still a very polarized sort of issue where there's not a set right left alliance being built. Our Democrats and Republicans getting together on Guantanamo was there on someone no I haven't seen that a lot because people want to Democrats don't want to make 40 people in Guantanamo an issue now even if they're very concerned about it. What I think is a possibility going forward very interesting there's something in the post about it today but the military guys who are now coming out and criticizing Trump these are guys and they were always great supporters in our Guantanamo cases. I think that their voice coming out I mean many of them we know are not only against torture they're against Guantanamo because it's an embarrassment to them to the military to what they believe in. I think that they would be a ripe source to sort of prod into this if you've got McRaven and Mattis and you know I don't know I don't know how Kelly but you know they could be a force to bring people together I think. And I guess one last follow-up. Is there any political force within the actual cover names that that's willing to actually deal with the so-called forever proffers issues and that set of proffers or is that even beyond what most of the Democratic parties Guantanamo's stance would be or they too. I think it's a problem that is only really at the moment being focused on in that this is the 26 forever prisoners at Guantanamo so the ones not the five approved for release who haven't been released by Trump or the nine who have been involved in the trial system is that they're subject to the periodic review boards the parole type process that President Obama set up which approved the release of 38 men and 36 of those were freed in the last few years of Obama's presidency. Now no one has been approved for release by the periodic review board since Trump took office. You could say partly that's because the people that they've got left are all the bad people but we know that that's not true because some of them are as I said earlier just foot soldiers a lot of people there are artists making the most amazing work if the Pentagon lets them who have done nothing wrong apart from not having a great attitude about how they've been treated and yet when the periodic review boards under Obama were swaying on these and in some cases deciding that someone had made enough of a case that they really would like to get on with their lives now they're getting a lot older they really don't mean any harm against the United States they were getting released not a single decision suggests to me that this has been politicized so that the review process has been politicized under Trump where the default position is don't release and don't approve any of these people for release and I think that needs discussing I think people who are dealing with the Guantanamo issues obviously have to have a close look at the periodic review boards do they function anymore because if they if they are never ever going to approve another prisoner for release and it's surely it's not working so it has been rendered redundant under the under the Trump administration let's take some questions let's do here if you can just wait for the mic it's kind of here in the red here Andy Worthington mentioned earlier that rather than people waiting for the those leaders in power to decide who is going to make the next move that we need to continue making noise could you suggest to us what are the most effective ways that we can continue to make noise well I you know I think that the people who are gathered here today from witness against torture and other campaigning groups we've all been doing this for years we've been trying to be out there and to make our case and I don't think there's much more we can do but you know always always keep thinking one of the great things about campaigning is that is that we're very creative people we're always thinking what can we do that might actually have an impact and you know four years ago I was lucky enough that when I'd made a mad suggestion a woman that I didn't know thought it was a great idea and followed it up and we made a giant inflatable figure of Shakur armor the last which is resident in Guantanamo Bay and it became one of those things that grabbed people's attention and it undoubtedly helped to secure the release of Shakur armor from Guantanamo Bay so from an activist point of view we just have to keep thinking and maybe we'll come up with a great idea that will that will attract people and make them understand what's going on otherwise you know we're stuck in Trump land and we all we're doing is seeing tiny little chinks of light of avenues that may be worth doing I think what's clearly come out for me out of this is please take an interest in what Tom and other lawyers are doing in the courts and do what we can to support them but start approaching your elected representatives to let them know that as a voter you're waking up every day absolutely sick that this place is still still in existence and I I do know that senate staffers and house representative staffers tell us that your phone calls actually do help so when there are key decisions to be made on legislation for example and a member of congress gets a flood of telephone calls I would say the emails aren't necessarily as good the kind of formulated prefab emails that our people are encouraged to send out but phone calls actually do have an impact although it's best to use those when there's some decision that needs to be made and and they get flooded with that but I think continuing to call your representatives and let them know that this still is an important issue to use very key are there questions let's continue the fact there thank you all for your I know you've worked very hard the panelists on this issue for a long time and I know it can be very discouraging my name is Daphne aviutar I work with amnesty international us and we also worked on guantanamo for a long time I'm a little more enthusiastic about the possibilities of the new house um new congress and I think there's a lot they can do and I would like to encourage people first of all we have a campaign specifically for tofiga the honey I got postcards I got all sorts of things we can send he is a he's been cleared for release for eight years he was tortured by the CIA it's been determined that there's no reason for him to be held he's still bearing he's still being held congress and this is if you're going to call your congress members the need to hold hearings why do we have five men who have been determined not to be a security threat they've never been charged with crime they've never been charged with committing violence they're still stuck there many have been cleared for eight years that is unconscionable and that's because trump dismantled the state department and the offices that were designed to help transfer people out now under obama that all happened very slowly and that was disappointing but people were moving out there was a process it doesn't exist under trump those offices have been closed so I would say the first thing is tell congress tell your congress members to hold hearings on why those offices have been closed why the state department has been taken apart so that it cannot do its job and this is a critical role for the state department closing wantanamo is critical for the state department in terms of just a matter of foreign relations so I would say that and then as Laura mentioned when the ndaa comes up there are some very important provisions that congress needs obama couldn't close guantanamo ultimately because congress made it impossible so congress needs to lift well in part it no he he had the authority and he just didn't do it okay well you can respond but let me just say that is a myth that people say it's absolutely wrong okay it's still very important for congress to lift the transfer restrictions on transfer to the united states it's the last thing i want to say because so that the next president can close it well let's take that to the panel i don't know if you want to go into the um question of obama's responsibility and how that played out but the question of oversight and um both what's possibility does that have and if you could give one wantanamo or detention policy related oversight issues that a new house could then should take up what would it be well i'd just like to follow up on what i'm what definitely said about the envoys because it's extremely important to mention that that the role of the envoy for guantanamo closure which was set up under barack obama was shut down by um by donald trump and that's not only that the this envoy dealt with resettlement of prisoners because trump and his supporters can turn around and say well we're not releasing anybody so who cares about resettling people it wasn't just that these envoys also followed up on on released prisoners so from a national security point of view one that should appeal to republicans as much as democrats having no government office that deals with guantanamo is not actually sensible from a security point of view so i think that any finding ways to to try and shine that light on congress to say you need to have somebody um in the government representing looking after the guantanamo issues one way or another would be very very helpful yeah i mean i agree with that that's one thing they could ask for and also as um daffy mentioned lifting the restriction on on transfers to the united states when the ndaa comes up um yeah i think those are those would be important but you know one of the things that's happened with the closure of the the envoy office over the last year is that two men who were resettled in senegal and thought that they were safely resettled in senegal because one of them in particular they were their libyans one of them in particular really didn't want to be sent back to libya were repatriated to libya and have disappeared and we presume that they've been killed and this was because there literally is no one in the trump administration that anyone can talk to about any issues involving former guantanamo prisoners we also have nearly two dozen men that were transferred to the united arab emirates that was supposed to go through a rehabilitation program and then be released and the latest that i know about that is that many of them have not been released they are stuck in ongoing imprisonment in the united arab emirates again the same problem no one has anyone in the united states government to talk to that's an absolute disgrace so that's a that's a really good thing to to look at yeah and there's one more provision that um you can push for in the nda which is the possibility of plea agreements happening at guantanamo um there are a number of prisoners that are there and would lead to something um and that could resolve some of their cases but um that plea provision keeps um not getting passed as part of that annual bill i don't know thomas if you want to talk about i mean i do feel like obama is to blame for a lot of why the prisoners are there but he had the authority for the last eight years to close guantanamo and during any kept denying and it said oh congress has stopped me any any you know anyway i don't think it is the issue look all these things are so disgusting so immoral so wrong and we should all be very upset about them that question is you know question is is what to do about them and i i know and and other people have questions i just want to say one thing one thing and aside from people being here that gives me hope you mentioned slahi's book my guantanamo diary that's a fabulous book it it it reminds me very much of i don't know whether it was what was into the whirlwind about the Stalinist camps you know by sonia yeah it was just fantastic the craziness of being in guantanamo where whatever you said was distrusted it wasn't believed that all you could do was lie this surrealist thing that's going to be made into a movie now and if that movie comes out and you see in a personal way what the suffering is of being caught in this crazy that could make a difference i mean how do you build people to care again again about treating muslim men you know fairly i mean so i think i'm hopeful those sorts of things um as i said i'm not hopeful that the house is going to be able to do much in the nda or they will but that's okay i shut up since you brought up slahi's book i have to acknowledge that larry seems who edited that book with slahi's in our audience today so i'll have to thank him for that which is which is raising his hand in the back oh he has this is you know just an opportunity to sort of fill out this point about the you know the continuing limbo that released prisoners live under just to mention specifically muhammadu slahi's position he you know like all prisoners when he was released there was some kind of secret security agreement with the moritanian government that included uh total travel ban that he couldn't leave the country um he was told at the time that that was a two-year travel ban two years just passed he was you know there's nobody at the state department as we know but he was getting signals that he could go ahead and apply for a passport he applied for his passport the moritanian government denied the passport application and said at that time they checked the files and it's actually a three-year travel restriction so now he's waiting another year but that kind of you know that's the situation that all of the released prisoners that were in the obama administration those were released under obama had you know secret agreements with the receiving countries we don't know what the terms of those are they're inaccessible the men don't know what they are um and uh you know under this administration with no one at home as you say with an empty desk at the state department there's no one even to talk to so you know it's just a kind of a vivid example of someone who's you know managed to be in communication with the world despite this travel ban but his position is exceptional in that respect let's go over to the side um from the front i got all right okay thank thank thank thank you all i guess i have two questions that i like your comments on both i guess of a legal nature my my thought on why isis or any other prisoners will not be transferred to guantanamo has to do with something fundamental from the rasool decision which you know persisted and that is simply the right to counsel as you all recall further until 2006 we didn't even know the names of prisoners at guantanamo although things started to come out in late 2004 2005 because they were entitled to counsel even if they subsequently had no substantive rights they had somebody who at least could come back to the united states and you know talk to journalists even um you know amateur journalists like like me but that was more than they wanted more than the bush administration wanted even to recognize these people as having names rather than you know internment serial numbers and so my first suggestion is can you comment on that prospect the fact that regardless of that the habeas is academic at best in light of you know kiemba one or two which whichever one doesn't let them come back to the united states that that alone that the the ability to have counsel will be enough of a reason as a deterrent to use guantanamo for anything beyond the 40 men my second question is more specific for some reason it seemed to be technical but and the um recent ccr habeas opinion the dc circuit denied the government's request to extend its time for briefing based on the government shutdown i'm wondering if there's anything at all to read into that or if that's just a quirk of them wanting to move their docket and thank you i'm gonna come well on the technical question why they didn't extend it the court is actually itself scheduled to run out of funds on the 18th and i thought they don't want to extend it because if they do they don't know when they'll get it and and so they're my expectations they're gonna turn down that petition for on bank and they know it but they didn't want to extend it i think the point you made about counsel is a is a very good one i mean one of the although it might not have been effective in other ways and i hadn't thought about this winning the right to have these people represented by counsel has exposed and identified who they are and that may be an incentive for the trump administration not to send people there a good point did you have comments on that no i think there was on the front and right here yeah hi and thanks for thanks for doing this panel i just wanted to build on the point that what really helps is to put a human name and a human face on these stories like mohammadu salahi and i'll give you two examples uh i spent 12 years representing a man named raveel mangasov and tom helped on that case as well and and he followed it very closely he was once a professional ballet dancer uh he's one of the men uh stuck in the ua e right now and we've had no one to talk to for two years uh in the state department to follow up and enforce the conditions that we thought were in place to assure raveel's freedom and safety from rendition to russia which would be his worst case scenario we hope to have breaking news soon but his story is that he was a he's a he's a wonderful man he's a great ballet dancer and what was he doing in guantanamo i can't explain it to this day but i'll leave you with one last name i have a client right now that i'm helping with and i've been down to guantanamo a few times recently his name is akmin robani and he's one of those artists that is an incredible painter he paints prolifically every day in his cell he's also been hunger striking and we're trying to figure out how to get his art liberated from guantanamo it's art he paints flower pictures of flowers and uh boats and and uh nature scenes um we're hoping that that's a very human way to show the world this is a man uh who's creative and has something good to show the world trying to stage an art show because we're we're sort of out of options in the courts we're sort of out of options and on the legislative branch so it's that public attention in a very personal way that's that recognizes someone's human story that um can really be their best hope um i'm hoping this movie uh really starts to move in that direction as well so keep paying attention to the stories and when you talk about guantanamo um try to try to personalize it with the name of somebody and what you know about their story and not just sort of the the legal outrage and the moral outrage in a in a in a general sense which we all share um which we all try to live with every day um but you know keep a name on it so akmin robani is his name he's one of the 40 men that's still there and we're working as hard as we can with reprieve uh who you all know about um to try to bring his story to the public's attention thanks let's get into the front here another movie point um i recently saw vice produced by brad pit and um an extraordinary part of it was that guantanamo made it into a major well produced fascinating film in a critical way and another contribution i felt of that film was the tracing of what came out of the mind of dick cheney dick cheney and the federalist society and this kind of fascist core um that came out of the bush regime and has delivered wholesale these powers to trump and pence um was an understanding that grew even while i was watching the film of how much they needed guantanamo they needed a place outside the law that was outside of the reach they needed it they still need it i don't believe they're gonna give up on it um without a huge outcry from the population so films like this and and stories like this are incredibly important but congress is not going to stop this they didn't stop it under obama it's going to take the people it is going to take millions of us standing up and saying saying no and the work that all you all of you do is so critical to that we need the core cases to fight around we need the exposure we need the stories we need to make it human and most of all we need people to understand that guantanamo right now is not just about only the 40 men there but it is really about is the strongest military power in the world going to be able to lock people up forever without charges or no do we say no you want to address the sort of cultural question has the cultural representation gotten better are we seeing advances on that oh yeah definitely i think i mean i haven't seen vice yet but i hear really good things about it and i had a great interview with the guy who did it and and i recognized that thing he was ill he was reading about cheney and he suddenly realized just quite how bad big cheney was and he got totally into the story and then and then you know then you realize what's going on because cheney was behind so much of this and david addington yeah but um the the sly film i would hope if this is done well really really could be major because what sly his book did for liberal america was really significant but that wasn't the entire population if you can put a film on if you can make a movie and get that out there that really is not zero dark 30 but it's actually the opposite of that muhammadu story of what actually happened then that that could really change change the way people think thank you um my question has to do with the due process issue let's assume happily that you win on the due process issue with the courts what what then happens i mean i know it's not going to be all you know sugar plums and roses but i just would like to know thank you well two things you know first of all for those who are held without charge they could have a hearing and effectively rebut the evidence against them now they can't even see it um in the courts yeah in the courts the courts you know the the ideas that the dc circuit said judge raymond randall is that if you're outside the summon territory of the united states you have no due process rights due process is the fundament of our law um it really the fifth amendment says you can't be deprived of your liberty without due process of law what does due process mean it basically means you have a right to have notice of the charges and evidence against you and a fair opportunity to rebut them people haven't had that um so it will mean that some of those people can get out beyond that there are some possibilities that due process can go farther than that and say that certain of the things being done violate fundamental fairness so those are challenges in the future also it's really what you said that if they have the attraction to it now to guantanamo is it's outside the law while they have lawyers the lawyers can't do anything but go down in there and hold their hand i mean you know it's sort of a pathetic situation and bring them food when they could and do but if they have the rights of a law there's less reason to send anyone there now maybe then they'll do what david said you know they'll just keep them in yemen or do it in yemen prisoners but it will close guantanamo off as a place outside the law i think there was right here in front sir thank you so much thank you so much for all the information you have provided and encouragement of doing different things and looking into different ways of bringing attention but this morning we heard from uh pardis kebriyayi uh from central constitutional right that she she has she's the one who has been a lot of the lawyers who has been going back and forth to guantanamo she sees a lot and that really caught my attention and now we are talking about how to close this place how to end this place she's talking about expansion of building new and new buildings are going on considering what we have right now what is happening right now what has happened during the vice is introduced to the movie theaters i haven't seen it and i'm i'm looking forward to see that and then we have this i call them if not fascist but neo fascist group that are empowered and they are trying to take every little of uh constitution that is left to shred it now we are hitting they're building more and more concretes or whatever they are doing in guantanamo and and now they're talking about national uh emergency what is going to happen how we can have any hope for guantanamo i would say that that one of the things that that it seems to me about guantanamo is the place is falling apart so because they know that they're not releasing anyone imminently then they have to spend a lot of money on building work but the cost of guantanamo is one of those things you know one of the things is that is that you know we must never forget that there that there are some people with very dark hearts in this country who like holding people without charge or trial indefinitely i decided these are bad guys they have no rights there also appear to be other people in positions of power and responsibility in this country who relish spending at least 11 million dollars a year on every single prisoner that they're holding that guantanamo money is no object for them how do they constantly get away with it that money is no object in this ridiculous place where everything costs such a lot of money for everybody involved to get things to and from guantanamo so i want to do ask you all about that i saw that this year there was um some reporting from guantanamo about um the budgeting going forward where they're looking to expand it for 25 years but it's also being held up and it hasn't i may have missed a follow-up report on that but it hasn't been dispersed yet is that a leverage point is that somewhere where things can happen is it what's happening with that um you know i i have heard that there is a lot of new construction at guantanamo i haven't been there since uh march this year but they um or last year but they i i'm not i'm not sure why there's that the budget issue with why certain funds haven't been released um they you know they do still use guantanamo for for other things um there is a whole interdiction uh the coast guard interdicts all these people uh and keeps them on boats and some of them actually in drug cases some of them actually make a transition before they make it to the united states they take them to guantanamo um but you know a lot of that stuff doesn't you don't see that in the public domain um so i'm not sure that just because there's new construction necessarily means that there's gonna they're planning for to bring new detainee detainees there or anything like that but it is interesting and i it's curious what's actually going on yeah another thing we've sort of seen is recent legal actions on um military commission cases that i think there was they recently decided the fbi clean team wasn't so clean after all um that because there had been a memorandum of understanding and some pretty close cooperation including on actual questions with the cia teams that were involved or at least the larger institution involved in torture that that wasn't admissible um what do you see happening on that front and the military commission's over the next year to two years two right answer for me grand hog day that's all the military commissions are they just go round and round and round and round and never get any resolution yeah i mean the military commissions are a complete disaster um partly they not we're now i think in the sixth the sixth year of pretrial hearings in the 9-11 case maybe more um and um yeah there's i mean that is not it's injustice both for the victims of the crime and for the defendants that are on trial um and i don't see any any improvement on that front whatsoever um that they're they're an abomination and um yes there was a recent good decision i suppose and that the judge in the 9-11 case ruled that um some of the um some of the information obtained from the defendants who are on trial uh after by a clean team which was an FBI team that came in years after the defendants were tortured um couldn't be used in in their cases um but it you know we have no idea whether that is gonna have any resonance going forward or whether it's gonna be appealed and overturned i mean those cases are um just you know basically stuck and um it's it's it's appalling what's happening there are the military commission cases i i'm not involved in the military commissions i'm involved in the people who aren't charged which i think is the greatest you know injustice and actually torture of them to be there that way but the military commission issue is is interesting even as it plays out most of the people charged for the military commissions if they had been tried in the us in the judicial system would have been convicted long ago so the lawyers for those in the military commission sort of rejoice that nothing has happened and that they've become a silly thing because they've been able to delay it all this time it is a an absolute joke but the lawyers i mean they're they're fighting they think it's terrible but they'll recognize and many of them pushed to have their clients tried for the military commission because they knew they could delay it and it's a joke so that's one side it's very interesting now i've always opposed them because i think it's the whole idea that you need to avoid our judicial system and creates new things because the war on terrorism is absurd the guy mostly responsible for that should pay a price for it and he hasn't it's Lindsey Graham Lindsey Graham was the guy who said oh these guys are you know they're they're guys in the war and we should try them through commissions rather than a judicial system which really empowers people it creates people as warriors rather than criminals and it really set up a system that couldn't work and yet he goes around scott free on this i mean he is the creator of this he is so stupid on it and hateful and he should pay a price and nobody's making him do it so that's just my comment i just note that we keep a database here at new america of jihadist terrorism related cases of people in the u.s and i think since 9-11 for a range of crimes with very some of them very minor there's been maybe four quiddles and you know they've been for some very questionable cases um and then in terms of people actually brought from abroad i don't think anyone has been acquitted in full um in a u.s federal court um so it's really not cleared that the justice department and justice system can't handle such cases when they come to the u.s in fact arguably there's questions regarding the dangers of such a high conviction rate in the u.s and let me say this is you're absolutely right the federal courts can handle these cases they've got the procedures to do it and all that and this is another obama fault the fact that he backed down on trying holly shape mohammed in the united states is disgraceful and you know and his attorney general or everybody's backing down and screwing it up disgraceful i think we have time for one or two last questions do we have anyone in the back here let's go to the back i'd just like some happy news how's chakra armor well i haven't seen chakra armor for a while but we have communicated by email and i hear that he's doing very well um you know just getting on with trying to rebuild his life after all those years in guantanamo and his children growing up not knowing who he was um and his wife who had found it extremely difficult with him being away um so the last i heard from him was in june when it when i was with the campaign we were marking six thousand days of guantanamo and um and i sent him a message going like chakra please if you can get a photo and a little message it would be really helpful and he sent a great message to to donald trump and also didn't just send me a photo he sent me about half a dozen all with all with him sitting and wearing having his hair in different ways i didn't ask for a fashion shoot but you know so i think you know i'm looking forward to seeing him again he's a very he's a very charismatic and compelling character in real life as he always was in guantanamo and the thing about chakra that always gets me is that chakra relentlessly talks about about the need to combat injustice in the world i don't know how in guantanamo they turned that into him being a terrorist i honestly don't get it this is a man whose every impulse is to is to bring us together not to sow these kinds of seeds of division and um it was his charisma that got to them presumably they were all lacking in charisma themselves did we have one last question thank you um i wanted to part has had mentioned the problem with severe health problems of many of the men and i'm wondering if that could be used to help them to get health care in the united states he had mentioned that that could be a way to move people out and i also want to ask about international pressure and whether there's anything that could be done through international means but can i just say you've got a doctor here who's trying to help people in guantanamo and i wonder if he had been transferred to miami and operated on he'd been fine instead of didn't uh and get mo was not all the equipment he needed had a real problem with it and now he's had five procedures he's still in pain so it's much cheaper to bring the miami do it and send it back but he went down there with young very nice surgeons not not experienced but not young surgeons without the right equipment and did a poor poor job now he's done five procedures and he's still in pain well that's about all the time we have do you have any concluding remarks anything to flag up for the next year um i mean let's just keep our fingers crossed for these new um cases that are being bought in the um in the um the new habeas cases um a number of them have very compelling stories um those stories are available on ccr's website i know that they're lead counsel in those cases um they are prisoners who are considered forever prisoners but their stories are you know unbelievably compelling they've been there for 16 years um very little if any evidence against them they're um you know we have to keep supporting that and hopefully thomas will be successful in in his pursuits as well well you know let me say i and i feel like i've been such a downer on these things because i think in you know while donald trump is president for the next two years it's going to be very difficult to actually get relief political relief getting people out getting things happening starting a you know somebody in the state department getting that i don't think it's going to happen but i think everyone here whenever they have a chance telling people their congressmen and others and their friends that this is a moral outrage this is not who we can be who we are as americans what we believe in and it hurts us and it does hurt us every day around the world it hurts us so i keeping getting that message out builds the support and i'm hoping the sahi film i haven't seen vice yet but um we'll we'll help and give a stage for that i so i think everyone can do that then that's that's important ultimately the solution is going to be political and we need to build we need to take back power thank you everyone for caring keep telling people why it's important the one thing i do think this come out today that i think um can attract a significant attention from the left and the right is highlighting this notion this truth that there is no one in the united states government that deals with former prisoners that deals with whether they how they're being looked after or not for our side of things but also whether they pose a security threat to the united states on the republican side of things which i think they need to be on as well and i think if we could get um a presence back in the united states government that is something that we can work towards but more fundamentally than that let's just keep hammering away at getting this place closed we have to and we all i'm sure that most of people who are here know that we have to we know the significance of this dreadful place remaining open so let's keep fighting thank you thank you to our panel