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Okay, good morning.
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Good morning.
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We are very grateful to you
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for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo Project.
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We invite you to speak of your experiences
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with the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center.
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And we are hoping to provide you
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with an opportunity to tell your story in your own words.
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People in America and around the world
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need to know about Guantanamo and the detention center.
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And hopefully you're telling your story
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will help them understand what had happened
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and what is still happening.
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Future generations must also know
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what happened in Guantanamo
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and we appreciate you contributing to history
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by speaking with us today.
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If there's any time you want to take a break,
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please let us know.
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And if there's something you said
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that you feel you'd like us to remove
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we can move it if you'd let us know today as well.
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And we'd like to begin by asking you your name and
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your age, and date of birth, and your education,
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a little bit of your background,
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where you were born
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and where you're living now as well.
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Okay.
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Well, thank you very much for the opportunity.
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My name is Juan E Mendez.
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And I'm an Argentine lawyer.
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I am actually a lawyer in the United States as well.
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I studied law in Argentina, graduated in 1970.
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But then when I came to the States I went back to school
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and I got accredited to the bar
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in the District of Columbia in 1981.
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And I've always worked on human rights matters.
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Nowadays, I teach full time
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here at the Washington College of Law
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of the American University.
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I until only a few days ago
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I was the United Nations special rapporteur on torture.
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A position that I held for six years,
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two terms of three years each.
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I became involved in
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human rights and particularly on issues of torture
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when I was even a law student in Argentina,
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because my country in the late 60s and early 70s
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was undergoing a very serious problem of armed conflict
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and violence.
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And prompting also successive
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takeovers by the military and coup de tat.
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And so torture was an everyday occurrence
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where people who were arrested
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at least those who were arrested for political reasons.
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And I started defending people,
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trying to stop their torture,
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trying to get them released from prison even
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shortly before graduating.
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And then of course, more extensively when I graduated.
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And in 1973, we recovered democracy briefly
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and the situation was still very violent however.
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So very soon we started having political prisoners again
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and I defended political prisoners
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between 70 and 75, more or less.
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And part of the our defense of political prisoners
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was to show that they had been tortured.
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Eventually in 1975, I was myself arrested.
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Actually I was arrested in 1974 first
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in my hometown, the Mar del Plata.
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But at that time I was held for only three days
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and not mistreated
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and then released.
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But that signal for me that I had to leave my hometown
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because it was becoming very dangerous.
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So I went to Buenos Aires,
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and a year later in August of 1975, I was arrested.
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And this time I was very severely tortured
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with electric prod, mostly,
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but also with beatings, et cetera.
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For how long was that?
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Well, I was held incommunicado for about eight days
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but the torture actually happened in the first three days.
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Maybe even less than that.
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It was difficult to estimate because they kept me awake
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and took me to different places.
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All told, I think I had five sessions of the picana,
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as we called it the cattle prod,
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in about, I don't know
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what seemed like a long day, day and a half maybe.
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And then after that
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I was recognized as a legitimate detainee
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and so they didn't torture me anymore, but then...
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What does that mean?
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Well, in the sense that they recognize
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that they were holding me.
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Before that when I was being tortured they
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it was kind of clandestine detention.
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So when I was put in a regular police station
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I was still incommunicado
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but they weren't torturing me anymore.
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And then I was sent to a penitentiary
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where I was with other political prisoners.
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Just about everybody had the same treatment.
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Some were tortured even more severely than me,
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or at least for longer periods.
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And
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in the penitentiary the conditions were very good
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at the beginning but very bad towards the end.
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And then eventually in 77
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I was allowed to leave the country.
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I was literally escorted to a plane.
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I was not released in Argentina,
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but that's because they didn't have any charges
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against me and they were holding me
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in administrative detention.
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And they basically, because of international pressure,
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allowed me to go into exile.
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And I came to the United States and,
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you know, soon thereafter I started working
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on international human rights.
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Just a little bit about that,
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did we ask why were you well-known
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as you said there was international pressure?
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No, I wasn't particularly well-known.
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I was a young attorney.
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I mean, a attorneys were
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well known for defending political prisoners,
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but by the time I was arrested
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some of the more prominent better known ones had been killed
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or had had to go into exile.
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So, a younger generation of attorneys including me
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were beginning to do this work.
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We did it in somewhat different conditions.
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We weren't, you know, we didn't use publicity a whole lot
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because it was very dangerous.
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So we met our clients
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or the families of people who were arrested in bars
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and restaurants
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and we came early to the court,
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left a brief and run away,
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because otherwise we might be arrested.
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So, but of those group of younger attorneys,
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I was fortunate to be the first one to be arrested.
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Because many of them, I think seven at least
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of a group of maybe 10,
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were arrested after the military coup was already in place.
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And they're all counted among the disappeared.
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Did they threaten you with death
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while you were there?
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Oh yeah.
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Well, during the torture sessions, they did it all the time.
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But even more cynically, I would,
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it was so painful that I I actually asked them to kill me
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and they would say, yeah
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but after we finished with all this.
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Was it just designed
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to have you leave the country or to no longer represent
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people who are arrested?
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No, no. They were asking,
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they were trying to get intelligence from me.
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They wanted to know how we organize a network
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of attorneys that allowed us to react quickly
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to detention of activists.
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And they wanted to dismantle that.
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And so they wanted me to tell them who the others were,
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where we met, et cetera.
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How we got the information.
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So they, because they were considering us the attorneys
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as part of the subversive organization
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and in their language that they were fighting.
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And of course, some of those organizations
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were armed and violent and some were not.
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And we defended all of them.
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So, no they were looking for intelligence.
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I mean, they weren't even looking for evidence against me
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because if they had found something maybe they would have,
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you know, subjected to some kind of
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court appearance and trial,
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but instead they just held me in
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prolonged administrative detention without trial.
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I should stress as most of the prisoners they had then,
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I think had last count maybe something like 8,000
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young men and women who were held for several years
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in administrative detention.
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And of those, I was again
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pretty lucky that because of international pressure
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I was allowed to go into exile relatively early on.
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I spent a year and a half in prison,
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but the average of the friends that I made there
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spend four, three, four, five years in prison.
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Some up to eight.
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And the international pressure
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was mostly because not because I was well-known or anything,
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but because I had been a foreign exchange student
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in the United States,
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and the family that I had lived with in Iowa,
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now living in Illinois and at that time
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I mean, living in Illinois,
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had been in contact with me.
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So when they learned that I was in custody
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they staged a campaign to get me out.
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And the campaign involved senators
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and members of Congress of the United States,
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the State Department,
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but also Amnesty International
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that adopted me as a prisoner of conscience.
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And, you know, it was at a time when there was
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in Europe and the United States,
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some concerns about what was going on in Argentina
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but not a whole lot of information.
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And so my case, it was well-documented and everything
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became a good case for Amnesty and for others to work on.
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Again, for the third time I was lucky there too.
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So when you came to the US
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did you fall on your feet it sounded like, right?
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Well, I was allowed to go to Paris,
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not to the United States and there I met my family.
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My wife and two of my children there, who were born already,
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were waiting for me in Brazil,
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and they flew to Paris so we could get together.
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But we didn't want to stay in Europe
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and so we asked to come to the United States.
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And about six weeks later, this is 1977.
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We came to the United States.
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We stayed with that American family at first,
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for rest and recuperation.
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And then as soon as I could I got a job and started working.
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And then we moved on.
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We lived for about a year in Illinois,
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working with the Catholic church
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and working with immigrants.
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But then we came to Washington in 78
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to work in public interest law.
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And simultaneously I started the process
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of getting my accreditation
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as a lawyer in the United States.
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Then I worked for many years for Human Rights Watch,
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what is now Human Rights Watch
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when I started it was called something else.
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But I worked for like 15 years with them.
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What kind of work did you do then,
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which is similar to what you did subsequently?
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Well,
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I started the America's Program for Human Rights Watch,
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and then later directed it,
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at first I wasn't the director
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but I was the first person hired to work on that.
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And I also opened their Washington office.
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It was just me at the beginning.
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We basically the job was to monitor and report
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on violations happening in the hemisphere.
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So I wrote about Argentina
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but I also started investigating the Central American wars.
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And I traveled extensively in El Salvador,
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Nicaragua, Guatemala,
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documenting violations by all.
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First by the governments
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but then by all sides in the conflicts there.
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And we published reports.
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Now as an adjunct to that we started doing some
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international judicial activities
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like filing cases before
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the Inter-American System of Protection,
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the Inter-American Commission and Inter-American Court.
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Eventually filing amicus curiae in the United States as well
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in cases involving,
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you know, matters of human rights that we knew about.
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So, I always did have a little bit of legal
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side to my job with Human Rights Watch.
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And that's why eventually the last three years
272
00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:51.900
of my tenure with Human Rights Watch, I was general counsel.
273
00:13:51.900 --> 00:13:54.100
Somebody else was running the Americas Program
274
00:13:54.100 --> 00:13:56.023
but I was a general counsel.
275
00:13:57.220 --> 00:13:59.323
And what did that entail?
276
00:14:00.290 --> 00:14:02.310
It was a reorganization that we had
277
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and the senior management
278
00:14:04.360 --> 00:14:07.090
included several regional directors
279
00:14:07.090 --> 00:14:09.830
of five areas of the world,
280
00:14:09.830 --> 00:14:12.123
a couple of thematic directors were three.
281
00:14:13.774 --> 00:14:15.460
And I was the general counsel.
282
00:14:15.460 --> 00:14:18.480
I was responsible for policies of the organization.
283
00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:22.610
Tried to unify what we said in different parts of the world,
284
00:14:22.610 --> 00:14:25.540
but also for legal analysis,
285
00:14:25.540 --> 00:14:28.730
that was where we said that something was a violation
286
00:14:28.730 --> 00:14:29.920
of human rights,
287
00:14:29.920 --> 00:14:32.300
it was a violation of clearly established
288
00:14:32.300 --> 00:14:33.603
international standards.
289
00:14:35.387 --> 00:14:37.663
So that was mostly my job at the time.
290
00:14:38.500 --> 00:14:40.510
but I also participated in
291
00:14:41.660 --> 00:14:43.830
our advocacy or lobbying for
292
00:14:44.950 --> 00:14:47.540
the creation of the International Criminal Court,
293
00:14:47.540 --> 00:14:49.260
which happened after I left.
294
00:14:49.260 --> 00:14:51.670
But, you know, had been,
295
00:14:51.670 --> 00:14:54.160
it was a process that had been going on for several years
296
00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:56.200
and we participated in that.
297
00:14:56.200 --> 00:14:57.850
I mean, we're going to get into Guantanamo,
298
00:14:57.850 --> 00:14:59.970
but this background is important to me
299
00:14:59.970 --> 00:15:04.270
because do you see patterns of
300
00:15:04.270 --> 00:15:06.810
solitary confinement, isolation and torture
301
00:15:06.810 --> 00:15:08.820
the things you yourself experienced
302
00:15:08.820 --> 00:15:10.870
and other people experienced in Argentina,
303
00:15:10.870 --> 00:15:13.000
and you'll find similar patterns
304
00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:14.750
in the other countries you went to?
305
00:15:16.410 --> 00:15:17.243
Yeah, well,
306
00:15:18.530 --> 00:15:19.580
in Argentina
307
00:15:20.500 --> 00:15:23.523
the worst feature was disappearances.
308
00:15:24.950 --> 00:15:27.140
And from what we know now
309
00:15:27.140 --> 00:15:29.870
people were held in clandestine detention centers
310
00:15:29.870 --> 00:15:33.150
but not necessarily isolated from each other.
311
00:15:33.150 --> 00:15:35.960
Eventually they murdered most of them
312
00:15:37.110 --> 00:15:39.660
and threw them from planes into the ocean
313
00:15:39.660 --> 00:15:41.933
or buried them clandestinely et cetera.
314
00:15:45.150 --> 00:15:46.950
For those of us who were in the,
315
00:15:46.950 --> 00:15:51.400
you know, kind of regular prison system
316
00:15:51.400 --> 00:15:53.113
as recognized prisoners,
317
00:15:54.260 --> 00:15:57.493
we had very severe conditions of detention.
318
00:15:58.330 --> 00:15:59.680
With threats and
319
00:16:03.110 --> 00:16:04.600
a few even more serious thing.
320
00:16:04.600 --> 00:16:08.190
For example, people who were with me in the same cellblock
321
00:16:08.190 --> 00:16:10.530
were taken away and murdered as well.
322
00:16:10.530 --> 00:16:14.253
So we were all under a constant threat of being executed.
323
00:16:15.210 --> 00:16:18.813
But they didn't use solitary confinement either,
324
00:16:19.750 --> 00:16:23.950
we were in medium to high security.
325
00:16:23.950 --> 00:16:26.880
High security for that period in Argentina,
326
00:16:26.880 --> 00:16:30.693
nothing compared to prisons now here in the US but,
327
00:16:32.020 --> 00:16:34.640
you know, cell blocks had had individual cells
328
00:16:34.640 --> 00:16:37.350
but they didn't keep us in individual cells all the time.
329
00:16:37.350 --> 00:16:39.560
We came out, I don't know,
330
00:16:39.560 --> 00:16:41.490
two or three hours in the morning
331
00:16:41.490 --> 00:16:43.176
and two or three hours in the afternoon.
332
00:16:43.176 --> 00:16:45.393
And we had contact with each other.
333
00:16:46.770 --> 00:16:50.383
They did use isolation for punishment,
334
00:16:50.383 --> 00:16:52.720
but it was disciplinary punishment.
335
00:16:52.720 --> 00:16:53.990
And it was severe.
336
00:16:53.990 --> 00:16:55.810
I mean, it would actually beat you up
337
00:16:55.810 --> 00:16:58.103
when you were in the isolation cells.
338
00:16:59.690 --> 00:17:02.020
But it was relatively limited in time.
339
00:17:02.020 --> 00:17:05.650
I mean, I think they still applied the their prison rules
340
00:17:06.670 --> 00:17:09.670
which at that time
341
00:17:09.670 --> 00:17:14.310
mandated up to 21 days in isolation as a maximum.
342
00:17:14.310 --> 00:17:15.550
And they more or less respect,
343
00:17:15.550 --> 00:17:16.913
well, they did respect it.
344
00:17:17.850 --> 00:17:20.573
I was in isolation only once for three days.
345
00:17:21.620 --> 00:17:24.560
Not counting the eight days of incommunicado detention
346
00:17:24.560 --> 00:17:26.500
there I was of course isolated.
347
00:17:26.500 --> 00:17:27.333
But,
348
00:17:29.050 --> 00:17:30.490
in the prison itself
349
00:17:30.490 --> 00:17:33.930
I was there only once for three days
350
00:17:33.930 --> 00:17:35.700
and it was pretty bad.
351
00:17:35.700 --> 00:17:39.518
But they didn't use solitary confinement
352
00:17:39.518 --> 00:17:43.590
as a weapon against people as much as they did other things
353
00:17:43.590 --> 00:17:45.630
and were much worse.
354
00:17:45.630 --> 00:17:48.860
So I got to understand solitary confinement
355
00:17:50.210 --> 00:17:53.463
basically when I became the special rapporteur.
356
00:17:54.760 --> 00:17:58.280
And I started understanding what was going on
357
00:17:58.280 --> 00:18:00.050
especially in this country,
358
00:18:00.050 --> 00:18:04.030
but then pretty quickly I realized that it was being used
359
00:18:04.030 --> 00:18:07.550
more and more extensively in many parts of the world
360
00:18:07.550 --> 00:18:10.140
and for different purposes, for different reasons,
361
00:18:10.140 --> 00:18:13.480
with less due process guarantees
362
00:18:14.320 --> 00:18:16.220
for lengthier periods.
363
00:18:16.220 --> 00:18:17.820
Even in Argentina, for example,
364
00:18:17.820 --> 00:18:19.493
now during the democracy,
365
00:18:20.760 --> 00:18:22.870
the prison regulations have changed
366
00:18:22.870 --> 00:18:26.140
and they can have someone inside a prison
367
00:18:27.040 --> 00:18:30.110
who's serving time for a disciplinary offense
368
00:18:30.110 --> 00:18:31.450
up to nine months,
369
00:18:31.450 --> 00:18:34.750
not 21 days but nine months in succession.
370
00:18:34.750 --> 00:18:37.090
But still that was
371
00:18:37.970 --> 00:18:40.788
even in the military dictatorship we didn't,
372
00:18:40.788 --> 00:18:42.520
it wasn't as severe as that.
373
00:18:42.520 --> 00:18:45.700
So, you know, understanding all of these matters
374
00:18:45.700 --> 00:18:47.020
about solitary confinement
375
00:18:47.020 --> 00:18:49.150
beginning with the case of Bradley Manning,
376
00:18:49.150 --> 00:18:50.343
now Chelsea Manning,
377
00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:56.550
which, you know, his case came to light immediately
378
00:18:56.550 --> 00:18:58.900
after I became the special rapporteur
379
00:18:58.900 --> 00:19:01.150
because he was immediately identified
380
00:19:01.150 --> 00:19:03.660
as the source of the WikiLeaks.
381
00:19:03.660 --> 00:19:07.980
And I learned that he was in solitary confinement in Iraq.
382
00:19:07.980 --> 00:19:09.720
He was brought to Quantico,
383
00:19:09.720 --> 00:19:11.760
and he was held in solitary confinement here
384
00:19:11.760 --> 00:19:13.960
for a total of like eight months.
385
00:19:13.960 --> 00:19:14.793
And so
386
00:19:16.650 --> 00:19:20.520
I asked the US government and the Pentagon,
387
00:19:20.520 --> 00:19:22.370
why was he in solitary confinement?
388
00:19:22.370 --> 00:19:23.510
And the answers were
389
00:19:25.110 --> 00:19:28.373
one that because of the seriousness of the offense,
390
00:19:29.639 --> 00:19:30.870
and the other one
391
00:19:30.870 --> 00:19:32.690
they didn't call it solitary confinement.
392
00:19:32.690 --> 00:19:37.350
They said it was prevention of harm watch, they called it.
393
00:19:37.350 --> 00:19:38.183
Harm what?
394
00:19:38.183 --> 00:19:39.730
Of harm watch.
395
00:19:39.730 --> 00:19:41.550
Harm watch.
396
00:19:41.550 --> 00:19:43.603
Prevention of harm watch.
397
00:19:46.740 --> 00:19:48.450
In the end, it doesn't really matter.
398
00:19:48.450 --> 00:19:52.440
When I asked how many hours that he spent alone in his cell?
399
00:19:52.440 --> 00:19:54.310
They said 22, 23 hours,
400
00:19:54.310 --> 00:19:56.840
23, in his case, I think it was.
401
00:19:56.840 --> 00:20:00.480
And that is solitary confinement, whatever you call it.
402
00:20:00.480 --> 00:20:02.730
And so I wrote
403
00:20:04.250 --> 00:20:06.530
a response saying, you know,
404
00:20:06.530 --> 00:20:09.040
the seriousness of the crime
405
00:20:09.040 --> 00:20:13.020
especially a crime that has no violence to it or anything
406
00:20:14.080 --> 00:20:17.110
is no reason to hold somebody in solitary confinement,
407
00:20:17.110 --> 00:20:19.290
especially if he has
408
00:20:20.450 --> 00:20:23.330
not been adjudicated as being guilty of the crime,
409
00:20:23.330 --> 00:20:25.330
he still has a presumption of innocence.
410
00:20:26.980 --> 00:20:29.160
And as for prevention of harm,
411
00:20:29.160 --> 00:20:31.700
the Pentagon said that they couldn't disclose
412
00:20:31.700 --> 00:20:35.023
what the possible harm that they wanted to prevent was.
413
00:20:36.960 --> 00:20:39.510
I suppose they euphemistically wanted to say
414
00:20:39.510 --> 00:20:41.710
it was suicide watch, but I'm not sure.
415
00:20:41.710 --> 00:20:43.160
I mean, they never said that.
416
00:20:45.482 --> 00:20:46.548
Did they respond to you?
417
00:20:46.548 --> 00:20:47.381
They would've respond.
418
00:20:47.381 --> 00:20:48.640
They did respond on and met with me.
419
00:20:48.640 --> 00:20:51.700
I met with a general counsel at the Pentagon
420
00:20:51.700 --> 00:20:56.100
who is now the secretary of Homeland Security.
421
00:20:56.100 --> 00:20:58.960
And he put me in touch with people who were
422
00:20:58.960 --> 00:21:02.600
in charge of more directly military officers
423
00:21:02.600 --> 00:21:03.880
or directly in charge of
424
00:21:05.980 --> 00:21:07.433
Manning's situation.
425
00:21:08.720 --> 00:21:11.570
And of course, as you remember, there was a lot of concern.
426
00:21:11.570 --> 00:21:16.250
I wasn't the only one asking questions about Manning.
427
00:21:16.250 --> 00:21:21.250
But eventually he was moved to Fort Leavenworth,
428
00:21:21.860 --> 00:21:24.660
and there he was no longer held in solitary confinement.
429
00:21:25.500 --> 00:21:28.490
So, my role ended because
430
00:21:29.650 --> 00:21:30.940
my mandate didn't extend
431
00:21:30.940 --> 00:21:32.630
to whether he should be in prison or not.
432
00:21:32.630 --> 00:21:37.210
That's bailey wake of another special procedure,
433
00:21:37.210 --> 00:21:39.250
the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
434
00:21:41.990 --> 00:21:45.000
But on the Manning case,
435
00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:46.423
you know, revealed.
436
00:21:46.423 --> 00:21:48.540
I mean, I started listening
437
00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:51.220
reading about solitary confinement
438
00:21:53.030 --> 00:21:57.410
and we decided to write my first thematic report
439
00:21:57.410 --> 00:21:58.730
about solitary confinement.
440
00:21:58.730 --> 00:22:01.220
The thematic reports are not about countries.
441
00:22:01.220 --> 00:22:03.920
They're about practices around the world.
442
00:22:03.920 --> 00:22:05.000
And so we
443
00:22:07.380 --> 00:22:09.200
investigated it, we researched it
444
00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:11.640
and we found some
445
00:22:11.640 --> 00:22:13.870
unfortunately a lot of it was anecdotal evidence.
446
00:22:13.870 --> 00:22:18.160
In the United States is much better documented.
447
00:22:18.160 --> 00:22:20.290
But in other countries we know for example,
448
00:22:20.290 --> 00:22:23.110
that in Japan and in China,
449
00:22:23.110 --> 00:22:26.380
solitary confinement is the way you serve time
450
00:22:26.380 --> 00:22:30.200
when you are sentenced to a very serious,
451
00:22:30.200 --> 00:22:32.980
sentence to serious prison terms.
452
00:22:32.980 --> 00:22:36.383
So you literally pass 10 years looking at a wall.
453
00:22:38.711 --> 00:22:42.603
In other countries it's mostly a disciplinary measure.
454
00:22:44.311 --> 00:22:46.970
And so we started, we wrote this
455
00:22:49.090 --> 00:22:52.810
this thematic report with a sense of,
456
00:22:52.810 --> 00:22:54.830
you know, trying to determine
457
00:22:54.830 --> 00:22:57.050
that because of prohibition on torture
458
00:22:57.050 --> 00:23:01.560
is prohibition not only a physical torture but anything
459
00:23:01.560 --> 00:23:04.123
that has a psychological effect, mental torture.
460
00:23:05.830 --> 00:23:08.770
We wanted to determine at what point
461
00:23:09.960 --> 00:23:12.090
and what degree of isolation
462
00:23:12.090 --> 00:23:14.640
constituted either a cruel inhuman or degrading treatment
463
00:23:14.640 --> 00:23:15.603
or even torture.
464
00:23:16.703 --> 00:23:19.090
And in that context I started
465
00:23:19.090 --> 00:23:21.730
learning about people who are spending 25 years,
466
00:23:21.730 --> 00:23:25.833
30 years, 34 years in solitary confinement.
467
00:23:27.280 --> 00:23:29.760
Would you say over your lifetime
468
00:23:29.760 --> 00:23:32.650
you've seen States move more
469
00:23:32.650 --> 00:23:34.560
toward doing psychological torture
470
00:23:34.560 --> 00:23:36.110
and away from physical torture?
471
00:23:37.970 --> 00:23:39.179
Well,
472
00:23:39.179 --> 00:23:43.060
I think physical torture
473
00:23:43.060 --> 00:23:45.450
always involves a degree of
474
00:23:46.530 --> 00:23:48.250
mental torture as well.
475
00:23:48.250 --> 00:23:52.580
And when they are beating you and they're saying
476
00:23:52.580 --> 00:23:54.650
and I'm going to do the same to your children.
477
00:23:54.650 --> 00:23:56.713
You know, that's mental.
478
00:23:59.530 --> 00:24:03.570
But, I think we haven't really concentrated
479
00:24:03.570 --> 00:24:05.960
so much on mental torture.
480
00:24:05.960 --> 00:24:07.720
Years ago we would think that
481
00:24:07.720 --> 00:24:10.630
only the Soviets did it, et cetera.
482
00:24:10.630 --> 00:24:13.610
Cause we heard some stories like of Cardinal Vishinsky
483
00:24:13.610 --> 00:24:15.483
and things like that.
484
00:24:15.483 --> 00:24:16.463
But in fact,
485
00:24:17.940 --> 00:24:22.160
you know, I think solitary confinement has crept up on us
486
00:24:22.160 --> 00:24:24.340
without nobody noticing,
487
00:24:24.340 --> 00:24:26.020
because it wasn't all that widely used
488
00:24:26.020 --> 00:24:28.843
even 20 or 30 years ago in the United States.
489
00:24:29.860 --> 00:24:32.680
In fact, as you probably have heard,
490
00:24:32.680 --> 00:24:34.990
it was declared unconstitutional
491
00:24:34.990 --> 00:24:36.760
by the United States Supreme Court
492
00:24:36.760 --> 00:24:39.343
in the end of the 19th century.
493
00:24:41.580 --> 00:24:43.610
Because it had been used extensively
494
00:24:43.610 --> 00:24:45.540
during the 19th century.
495
00:24:45.540 --> 00:24:48.650
So in, you know, in the first 70 years or so
496
00:24:48.650 --> 00:24:51.590
of the 20th century, it wasn't used.
497
00:24:51.590 --> 00:24:54.200
And then when they started building
498
00:24:54.200 --> 00:24:56.343
maximum security prisons, they were,
499
00:24:57.270 --> 00:24:59.070
you know, they build them with facilities
500
00:24:59.070 --> 00:25:02.490
to allow for segregation and isolation
501
00:25:02.490 --> 00:25:04.690
from the prison population.
502
00:25:04.690 --> 00:25:09.690
And as you can imagine, if you build them, they will come.
503
00:25:09.720 --> 00:25:12.580
So, they did use them.
504
00:25:12.580 --> 00:25:14.130
And so all of a sudden we have
505
00:25:14.130 --> 00:25:16.160
some people estimate a hundred thousand people
506
00:25:16.160 --> 00:25:19.110
at any given day in solitary confinement,
507
00:25:19.110 --> 00:25:21.040
and in prolonged solitary confinement
508
00:25:21.040 --> 00:25:22.893
or indefinite solitary confinement.
509
00:25:23.950 --> 00:25:26.650
So you became aware of this
510
00:25:26.650 --> 00:25:29.410
and you're weren't aware of this when you first started.
511
00:25:29.410 --> 00:25:32.200
And we were told by many people,
512
00:25:32.200 --> 00:25:34.090
many of the detainees we've interviewed,
513
00:25:34.090 --> 00:25:35.500
that they thought Guantanamo
514
00:25:35.500 --> 00:25:37.680
was more a psychological prison
515
00:25:37.680 --> 00:25:39.990
than a physical torture prison.
516
00:25:39.990 --> 00:25:43.190
Well, that's hard to say because there's
517
00:25:44.180 --> 00:25:45.580
what we know now,
518
00:25:45.580 --> 00:25:47.420
especially through the select committee
519
00:25:47.420 --> 00:25:48.663
on intelligence report,
520
00:25:50.320 --> 00:25:54.580
but also from some other, well the
521
00:25:54.580 --> 00:25:59.560
report of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate
522
00:26:00.420 --> 00:26:03.900
that was issued at the end of the Bush administration,
523
00:26:03.900 --> 00:26:06.090
also contained some
524
00:26:06.090 --> 00:26:10.913
clues that the torture in Abu Ghraib and in Bagram migrated,
525
00:26:11.820 --> 00:26:14.990
the report says from Guantanamo.
526
00:26:14.990 --> 00:26:16.730
And that's physical torture.
527
00:26:16.730 --> 00:26:18.180
And physical and mental, of course,
528
00:26:18.180 --> 00:26:20.530
but it's not strictly speaking psychological
529
00:26:20.530 --> 00:26:21.870
and nothing else.
530
00:26:21.870 --> 00:26:25.020
So I think, as far I can reconstruct it
531
00:26:25.020 --> 00:26:28.030
but it's difficult to know without interviewing people
532
00:26:28.030 --> 00:26:29.030
who are still there.
533
00:26:30.910 --> 00:26:32.840
There was a lot of physical torture
534
00:26:32.840 --> 00:26:35.863
of a very serious kind in Guantanamo early on.
535
00:26:37.010 --> 00:26:39.419
And there was also isolation, and segregation,
536
00:26:39.419 --> 00:26:42.193
and solitary confinement there.
537
00:26:44.580 --> 00:26:45.413
But,
538
00:26:46.910 --> 00:26:50.820
I also understand that it gradually let up a bit
539
00:26:51.900 --> 00:26:54.680
especially under the scrutiny and all that.
540
00:26:54.680 --> 00:26:55.553
So,
541
00:26:57.390 --> 00:27:01.984
you'd have to look at Guantanamo on a,
542
00:27:01.984 --> 00:27:03.750
you know, kind of an historical continuum
543
00:27:03.750 --> 00:27:05.933
to know what was happening when.
544
00:27:08.150 --> 00:27:11.390
Is Guantanamo
545
00:27:11.390 --> 00:27:13.380
representative of the kind of
546
00:27:14.560 --> 00:27:17.750
behavior that states commit when they torture people.
547
00:27:17.750 --> 00:27:22.280
Or would you put it into the same framework
548
00:27:22.280 --> 00:27:25.760
as Argentina or the countries in Central America
549
00:27:25.760 --> 00:27:26.970
that you looked at or
550
00:27:28.390 --> 00:27:30.200
is it somehow unique or different?
551
00:27:30.200 --> 00:27:31.053
Well, I mean,
552
00:27:32.450 --> 00:27:34.070
the uniqueness of Guantanamo
553
00:27:34.070 --> 00:27:35.960
is that it's military detention.
554
00:27:35.960 --> 00:27:40.460
So, and the laws of war and conflict clearly state that
555
00:27:40.460 --> 00:27:42.130
for the duration of the conflict
556
00:27:43.100 --> 00:27:45.490
states can detain enemy soldiers
557
00:27:47.802 --> 00:27:51.270
and hold them until the conflict ends.
558
00:27:52.931 --> 00:27:55.683
Of course, it also says that they cannot be tortured.
559
00:27:56.730 --> 00:27:57.730
They can be interrogated
560
00:27:57.730 --> 00:28:00.840
but if they choose to give rank and serial number
561
00:28:00.840 --> 00:28:02.980
that's all they have to give.
562
00:28:02.980 --> 00:28:04.980
And that was not observed in Guantanamo.
563
00:28:06.020 --> 00:28:07.970
I don't think it's even observed today.
564
00:28:09.150 --> 00:28:12.070
But leaving that aside, the problem is that
565
00:28:12.070 --> 00:28:15.870
the laws of war applied to a conflict
566
00:28:15.870 --> 00:28:17.380
that is between states
567
00:28:17.380 --> 00:28:20.333
or between a state and some of its citizens,
568
00:28:21.170 --> 00:28:23.130
but that has a beginning and an end
569
00:28:23.130 --> 00:28:28.080
and a territorial geographic space.
570
00:28:28.080 --> 00:28:32.870
When you use the euphemism of war on terror
571
00:28:32.870 --> 00:28:35.583
then the war becomes,
572
00:28:36.608 --> 00:28:40.660
you know, infinite in time and space.
573
00:28:40.660 --> 00:28:43.360
And the targets of the war also
574
00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:47.752
become a lot more diffuse
575
00:28:47.752 --> 00:28:50.190
and indistinct.
576
00:28:50.190 --> 00:28:54.000
So it's one thing to hold an enemy combatant
577
00:28:54.000 --> 00:28:55.760
until the end of hostilities,
578
00:28:55.760 --> 00:29:00.560
but you can't hold a civilian until the end of hostilities.
579
00:29:00.560 --> 00:29:04.440
And if you decide by yourself and nobody checks
580
00:29:04.440 --> 00:29:06.270
whether you actually detained a civilian
581
00:29:06.270 --> 00:29:10.113
or an enemy combatant, then that's a very serious violation.
582
00:29:12.410 --> 00:29:17.410
I think that the Guantanamo is egregious mostly
583
00:29:17.860 --> 00:29:22.050
firstly the attempt of using an offshore detention facility
584
00:29:23.050 --> 00:29:28.050
theoretically as a means of escaping scrutiny by US courts.
585
00:29:28.220 --> 00:29:30.960
Now the Supreme Court settled that early on.
586
00:29:30.960 --> 00:29:31.793
Or, you know,
587
00:29:31.793 --> 00:29:35.000
settled it as a matter of theoretical settlement.
588
00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:38.110
But unfortunately the courts below have
589
00:29:39.170 --> 00:29:42.480
literally dissembled decisions on,
590
00:29:42.480 --> 00:29:45.423
you know they they're meaningless quite frankly anymore.
591
00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:49.050
But it's also, Guantanamo is a side
592
00:29:50.210 --> 00:29:53.883
where military commissions are operating.
593
00:29:55.795 --> 00:29:59.190
And, you know, military commissions to judge,
594
00:29:59.190 --> 00:30:03.520
to prosecute violations of the laws of war by the enemy
595
00:30:03.520 --> 00:30:04.753
are also permitted.
596
00:30:05.680 --> 00:30:08.890
But military commissions to prosecute people
597
00:30:08.890 --> 00:30:10.820
for what are, you know,
598
00:30:10.820 --> 00:30:12.980
civilian offenses if you will, like
599
00:30:14.530 --> 00:30:18.783
giving aid and comfort, or money, or whatever financing,
600
00:30:20.250 --> 00:30:24.003
you know, probably exceed what any country can do.
601
00:30:25.640 --> 00:30:29.292
In terms of conditions of detention and treatment,
602
00:30:29.292 --> 00:30:31.140
well, I think Guantanamo is unique
603
00:30:31.140 --> 00:30:33.340
in the sense that there's just
604
00:30:33.340 --> 00:30:36.893
no independent monitoring of it at all.
605
00:30:37.880 --> 00:30:42.450
My predecessor and three other special procedures
606
00:30:42.450 --> 00:30:45.230
asked to visit Guantanamo early on.
607
00:30:45.230 --> 00:30:47.030
And in 2004,
608
00:30:47.030 --> 00:30:49.640
you know, when Guantanamo was in use
609
00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:53.070
by about two years only, they were invited.
610
00:30:53.070 --> 00:30:54.037
But they were invited under conditions
611
00:30:54.037 --> 00:30:56.700
that they could not accept.
612
00:30:56.700 --> 00:30:59.094
And so when I became the...
613
00:30:59.094 --> 00:31:00.250
Can you describe those conditions
614
00:31:00.250 --> 00:31:01.263
that were given.
615
00:31:01.263 --> 00:31:02.483
Well, I was going to say they were the same conditions
616
00:31:02.483 --> 00:31:04.740
that were given to me eight years later,
617
00:31:04.740 --> 00:31:07.890
But yeah, I mean the conditions are essentially
618
00:31:07.890 --> 00:31:09.970
that you go there to be given a briefing
619
00:31:09.970 --> 00:31:11.380
by the authorities.
620
00:31:11.380 --> 00:31:13.580
To visit some parts of the detention center
621
00:31:13.580 --> 00:31:14.870
but not all of them.
622
00:31:14.870 --> 00:31:18.060
And specifically that you cannot talk to any inmate.
623
00:31:18.060 --> 00:31:21.640
And so of course they had to decline.
624
00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:24.033
And so when I became the special rapporteur,
625
00:31:25.708 --> 00:31:28.177
I asked to go to Guantanamo early on.
626
00:31:28.177 --> 00:31:30.330
And so as I said,
627
00:31:30.330 --> 00:31:34.080
as soon as I was talking to the Pentagon about Manning
628
00:31:34.080 --> 00:31:36.200
I was also talking about.
629
00:31:36.200 --> 00:31:38.870
And in 2012,
630
00:31:38.870 --> 00:31:40.380
I was sent a letter
631
00:31:42.320 --> 00:31:45.070
essentially inviting me but on the exact
632
00:31:45.070 --> 00:31:48.520
same terms that had been offered eight years earlier.
633
00:31:48.520 --> 00:31:50.010
And I had told them, "Look,
634
00:31:50.010 --> 00:31:51.620
if you give me the same terms
635
00:31:51.620 --> 00:31:53.313
I won't be able to accept them.
636
00:31:54.500 --> 00:31:57.250
But as everybody knows, this is a new day,
637
00:31:57.250 --> 00:31:59.314
there's a new government,
638
00:31:59.314 --> 00:32:01.480
there are many less people in Guantanamo now,
639
00:32:01.480 --> 00:32:05.210
for all we know you're ready to close it."
640
00:32:05.210 --> 00:32:06.520
So I was hoping
641
00:32:07.400 --> 00:32:11.000
that they would give me more sensible conditions.
642
00:32:11.000 --> 00:32:12.120
But no, they didn't.
643
00:32:12.120 --> 00:32:15.143
And unfortunately that position has not changed.
644
00:32:16.230 --> 00:32:19.663
I continued to ask for terms that I could accept,
645
00:32:21.490 --> 00:32:24.289
but I mean,
646
00:32:24.289 --> 00:32:28.020
I don't have a dialogue with the Pentagon anymore.
647
00:32:28.020 --> 00:32:32.430
But in presentations to the Committee Against Torture,
648
00:32:32.430 --> 00:32:33.900
for example, that the United States
649
00:32:33.900 --> 00:32:36.920
has to come every five years before it,
650
00:32:36.920 --> 00:32:40.660
the official position of the United States
651
00:32:40.660 --> 00:32:42.367
is that Guantanamo is a military prison
652
00:32:42.367 --> 00:32:44.363
and so it has different rules.
653
00:32:46.720 --> 00:32:48.430
But I would say that that is,
654
00:32:48.430 --> 00:32:50.020
you know, obviously there are many,
655
00:32:50.020 --> 00:32:52.020
there may be many prisons around the world
656
00:32:52.020 --> 00:32:54.830
that are not subject to any scrutiny,
657
00:32:54.830 --> 00:32:57.660
but officially, and specifically
658
00:32:57.660 --> 00:33:00.653
under these conditions Guantanamo stands alone.
659
00:33:02.230 --> 00:33:03.180
So,
660
00:33:04.630 --> 00:33:07.670
it stands alone because America believes
661
00:33:07.670 --> 00:33:09.770
in human rights and the rule of law
662
00:33:09.770 --> 00:33:12.200
and it's violating that, or it stands alone.
663
00:33:12.200 --> 00:33:14.000
If others prisons around the world
664
00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:16.280
also one would allow you to visit them
665
00:33:16.280 --> 00:33:17.630
and speak to the prisoners,
666
00:33:18.820 --> 00:33:21.260
why does it stand out?
667
00:33:21.260 --> 00:33:22.840
Well,
668
00:33:22.840 --> 00:33:24.690
I am invited and allowed
669
00:33:24.690 --> 00:33:27.000
to speak to prisoners whenever I go,
670
00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:28.443
cause otherwise I don't go.
671
00:33:29.540 --> 00:33:34.137
I had visited like 12 countries during my term
672
00:33:36.423 --> 00:33:41.380
and everywhere I was given the access that I require.
673
00:33:41.380 --> 00:33:44.210
And I've been in very bad prisons.
674
00:33:44.210 --> 00:33:46.230
Just to give you a sense,
675
00:33:46.230 --> 00:33:48.770
I visited Morocco and Western Sahara,
676
00:33:48.770 --> 00:33:50.050
I visited Brazil.
677
00:33:50.050 --> 00:33:51.463
I visited Mexico,
678
00:33:54.040 --> 00:33:55.760
Tunisia,
679
00:33:55.760 --> 00:33:59.020
Tajikistan and Kurdistan, Ghana.
680
00:33:59.020 --> 00:34:01.143
And only one country, Gambia,
681
00:34:02.410 --> 00:34:05.203
they prohibited me from entering a prison and we
682
00:34:07.560 --> 00:34:10.850
almost shut down the mission and left.
683
00:34:10.850 --> 00:34:13.020
In the end we decided to stay
684
00:34:13.020 --> 00:34:15.180
because the mission was almost over.
685
00:34:15.180 --> 00:34:17.510
And we feel, if we left before time
686
00:34:17.510 --> 00:34:21.030
we wouldn't be able to publish an official report.
687
00:34:21.030 --> 00:34:21.863
But,
688
00:34:24.277 --> 00:34:26.170
as a way of protesting
689
00:34:26.170 --> 00:34:28.530
the violation of the terms that they had offered me
690
00:34:28.530 --> 00:34:30.380
cause otherwise I wouldn't have gone.
691
00:34:31.690 --> 00:34:35.260
We had refused to go to any other detention center.
692
00:34:35.260 --> 00:34:39.640
And we published on the basis of testimony that we got
693
00:34:39.640 --> 00:34:42.050
from people abroad in exile
694
00:34:42.050 --> 00:34:44.343
or in country but we're not in custody.
695
00:34:45.550 --> 00:34:49.050
And significantly, when I was, you know
696
00:34:49.050 --> 00:34:51.890
having lengthy debates with the cabinet
697
00:34:51.890 --> 00:34:55.433
of the government of Gambia,
698
00:34:57.220 --> 00:34:59.240
someone, you know
699
00:34:59.240 --> 00:35:02.030
very thought was very enlightened me,
700
00:35:02.030 --> 00:35:06.580
enlightened and he told me, "Well, do you go to Guantanamo?"
701
00:35:06.580 --> 00:35:08.197
And I said, "No."
702
00:35:09.340 --> 00:35:11.520
And I explained all these conditions.
703
00:35:11.520 --> 00:35:14.760
And they said, "Well, we don't.
704
00:35:14.760 --> 00:35:16.760
If you don't go to Guantanamo,
705
00:35:16.760 --> 00:35:19.903
we won't let you go into this maximum security prison
706
00:35:19.903 --> 00:35:21.760
that we have here."
707
00:35:21.760 --> 00:35:23.280
And so I told him, "So you're saying
708
00:35:23.280 --> 00:35:26.030
that the conditions are more or less like Guantanamo.
709
00:35:26.030 --> 00:35:28.997
Thanks. I'll bear it in mind."
710
00:35:30.641 --> 00:35:32.370
When you tell the Americans
711
00:35:32.370 --> 00:35:37.010
that you're permitted to all these other countries,
712
00:35:37.010 --> 00:35:38.433
did they respond to that?
713
00:35:39.680 --> 00:35:43.690
No, I think their official response is that they don't
714
00:35:45.600 --> 00:35:49.960
they don't prevent me from visiting other prisons,
715
00:35:49.960 --> 00:35:52.020
but Guantanamo is a military prison
716
00:35:52.020 --> 00:35:55.340
and they can only offer the same conditions
717
00:35:55.340 --> 00:35:59.010
to everyone that they offer journalists,
718
00:35:59.010 --> 00:36:01.223
and that they offer members of Congress.
719
00:36:02.200 --> 00:36:04.530
And, you know, those conditions don't apply to us.
720
00:36:04.530 --> 00:36:07.970
I mean, we are special procedures we have to have.
721
00:36:07.970 --> 00:36:10.460
And we can't accept them because if we're
722
00:36:10.460 --> 00:36:13.370
you can imagine if I were to accept that condition
723
00:36:14.310 --> 00:36:16.270
every other country in the world would say, yeah
724
00:36:16.270 --> 00:36:20.513
you can come, but you can only get a briefing, a tour,
725
00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:23.530
and you can't talk to any prisoner.
726
00:36:23.530 --> 00:36:24.840
I have to say that the United States
727
00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:28.750
is not only country that does on authorized visits.
728
00:36:28.750 --> 00:36:32.610
For example, I've been asking for years to go to,
729
00:36:32.610 --> 00:36:34.940
well, my predecessors and I,
730
00:36:34.940 --> 00:36:38.230
30 years, we've been asking to go to India prisons.
731
00:36:38.230 --> 00:36:39.820
No answer.
732
00:36:39.820 --> 00:36:41.970
More recently I've been asking to go to Cuba,
733
00:36:41.970 --> 00:36:43.883
Venezuela, Iran,
734
00:36:45.170 --> 00:36:47.800
and they don't even bother to answer anymore.
735
00:36:47.800 --> 00:36:52.800
We've asked to go to the Russian Federation
736
00:36:53.370 --> 00:36:56.080
and the Russian Federation says, ""Yes, you can come.
737
00:36:56.080 --> 00:36:57.930
But each interview with an inmate
738
00:36:57.930 --> 00:37:00.820
has to be approved on a case by case basis."
739
00:37:00.820 --> 00:37:02.210
And of course I can't accept that
740
00:37:02.210 --> 00:37:04.663
because that would put people in jeopardy.
741
00:37:06.870 --> 00:37:10.699
So yeah, there are restrictions in many countries,
742
00:37:10.699 --> 00:37:12.560
but I would say not in most.
743
00:37:12.560 --> 00:37:15.430
As I said, I visited countries that have serious
744
00:37:16.580 --> 00:37:20.000
prison conditions and issues of torture.
745
00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:21.730
And they do allow me to visit.
746
00:37:21.730 --> 00:37:23.360
Did you go to China?
747
00:37:23.360 --> 00:37:24.730
Well, I didn't go to China
748
00:37:24.730 --> 00:37:27.050
because my predecessor had gone to China
749
00:37:27.050 --> 00:37:29.440
right before I became.
750
00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:34.440
So since we have 193 and 194 countries to deal with
751
00:37:35.450 --> 00:37:39.200
I only asked to go to countries that had not been visited
752
00:37:39.200 --> 00:37:41.420
in the last 10 years or so.
753
00:37:41.420 --> 00:37:44.210
So, but I also quite frankly I think
754
00:37:45.160 --> 00:37:48.400
China was very angry at my predecessors.
755
00:37:48.400 --> 00:37:51.730
So I would imagine they would not have
756
00:37:51.730 --> 00:37:55.690
you know, being look favorably upon my visit.
757
00:37:55.690 --> 00:37:58.900
But now it's been more than 10 years,
758
00:37:58.900 --> 00:38:01.897
so I'm hoping my successor will try.
759
00:38:01.897 --> 00:38:03.200
Did you believe,
760
00:38:03.200 --> 00:38:04.830
it sounds like you believe that
761
00:38:04.830 --> 00:38:07.880
once President Obama became president
762
00:38:07.880 --> 00:38:10.130
you might have an opening that you didn't have
763
00:38:10.130 --> 00:38:12.230
under the Bush administration?
764
00:38:12.230 --> 00:38:13.950
Yeah, but not only that because
765
00:38:13.950 --> 00:38:15.600
even under the Bush administration
766
00:38:15.600 --> 00:38:18.890
conditions as far as we could ascertain
767
00:38:18.890 --> 00:38:23.890
from journalistic sources had changed pretty dramatically.
768
00:38:24.400 --> 00:38:27.990
In 2004, they had like 800 prisoners there.
769
00:38:27.990 --> 00:38:31.010
In 2011,
770
00:38:31.010 --> 00:38:35.490
it was down to 200 or so, 250 maybe.
771
00:38:35.490 --> 00:38:37.063
And now they're 60.
772
00:38:37.930 --> 00:38:39.480
So it's even
773
00:38:40.380 --> 00:38:43.090
less understandable why they don't
774
00:38:43.090 --> 00:38:45.280
open up and let us see it.
775
00:38:45.280 --> 00:38:46.753
But just to get to that question
776
00:38:46.753 --> 00:38:48.473
did you think President Obama
777
00:38:48.473 --> 00:38:51.770
would have a different policy from President Bush
778
00:38:51.770 --> 00:38:53.370
when he became elected?
779
00:38:53.370 --> 00:38:55.320
Well, I mean,
780
00:38:55.320 --> 00:38:58.320
during the campaign he said he was going to close Guantanamo
781
00:38:59.664 --> 00:39:00.514
immediately after
782
00:39:03.310 --> 00:39:04.210
taking office
783
00:39:06.790 --> 00:39:08.310
he issued that executive order
784
00:39:08.310 --> 00:39:10.823
prohibiting torture under all circumstances.
785
00:39:12.870 --> 00:39:17.160
And he continues to this day
786
00:39:17.160 --> 00:39:19.323
saying that he wants to close Guantanamo.
787
00:39:20.190 --> 00:39:21.933
So I,
788
00:39:24.760 --> 00:39:28.100
that's why I think the conditions for a
789
00:39:28.100 --> 00:39:30.663
more reasonable visit were there.
790
00:39:31.810 --> 00:39:33.790
But unfortunately it hasn't happened.
791
00:39:33.790 --> 00:39:35.000
I have to say that I
792
00:39:35.910 --> 00:39:39.190
tried also to go to prisons in the mainland afterwards,
793
00:39:39.190 --> 00:39:42.800
I started asking for a visit maybe in 2013.
794
00:39:45.610 --> 00:39:48.900
But for the last three and a half years
795
00:39:48.900 --> 00:39:51.790
I've been asking to go to prisons
796
00:39:51.790 --> 00:39:55.263
and I haven't been able to visit there either.
797
00:39:56.100 --> 00:39:57.760
Visits non military prison or...
798
00:39:57.760 --> 00:39:59.910
No, no, no, no civilian prisons.
799
00:39:59.910 --> 00:40:00.743
In America...
800
00:40:00.743 --> 00:40:01.793
Yeah.
801
00:40:02.710 --> 00:40:07.280
I narrowed my request to look at solitary confinement.
802
00:40:07.280 --> 00:40:08.900
So then, you know
803
00:40:08.900 --> 00:40:11.970
they started processing an invitation
804
00:40:11.970 --> 00:40:15.370
then months later they asked me, where do I want to go?
805
00:40:15.370 --> 00:40:16.860
And I said, "Well, I want to go everywhere."
806
00:40:16.860 --> 00:40:19.430
But you know, "Just tell them,
807
00:40:19.430 --> 00:40:22.360
tell everybody that I'm coming and I'll visit."
808
00:40:22.360 --> 00:40:24.700
And I know that's not easy because
809
00:40:24.700 --> 00:40:28.130
of the federal state will I have to ask for.
810
00:40:28.130 --> 00:40:32.060
So, at some point they come back and they say
811
00:40:35.500 --> 00:40:37.290
you have to tell us which states
812
00:40:39.983 --> 00:40:43.410
and the federal prisons are unavailable.
813
00:40:43.410 --> 00:40:45.130
And so I said, "Well, no,
814
00:40:45.130 --> 00:40:46.450
let's go back to the drawing board.
815
00:40:46.450 --> 00:40:48.350
I mean, what do you mean unavailable?
816
00:40:48.350 --> 00:40:49.770
Unavailable today?
817
00:40:49.770 --> 00:40:51.980
Are they going to be available next year?
818
00:40:51.980 --> 00:40:54.440
Because otherwise I can't let you
819
00:40:54.440 --> 00:40:57.110
allow me to visit a say California prisons,
820
00:40:57.110 --> 00:40:58.607
but not federal prisons."
821
00:40:59.642 --> 00:41:00.793
And so then they,
822
00:41:01.700 --> 00:41:04.267
then I did relent a bit and I said, "Okay,
823
00:41:04.267 --> 00:41:08.080
I want to go to California, Louisiana, Pennsylvania,
824
00:41:08.080 --> 00:41:11.120
Illinois, New York State."
825
00:41:11.120 --> 00:41:12.150
I think that was it.
826
00:41:12.150 --> 00:41:14.357
And then they asked me which prisons, you know
827
00:41:14.357 --> 00:41:17.210
and I said, "Okay, I'll give you two
828
00:41:17.210 --> 00:41:18.890
or three prisons in each of those states."
829
00:41:18.890 --> 00:41:22.310
And I submitted them.
830
00:41:22.310 --> 00:41:23.690
At that point
831
00:41:23.690 --> 00:41:28.690
about a year ago September of 2015,
832
00:41:28.920 --> 00:41:31.170
I had a meeting at the State Department
833
00:41:31.170 --> 00:41:32.970
and they told me that
834
00:41:32.970 --> 00:41:36.583
state after state had declined to invite me.
835
00:41:39.068 --> 00:41:44.040
And the only prison that was inviting me was Rikers island.
836
00:41:44.040 --> 00:41:46.390
That's a city prison as you know, not a.
837
00:41:46.390 --> 00:41:50.860
But even state prisons in the same state I couldn't visit.
838
00:41:50.860 --> 00:41:55.543
And then, and as for ADX in Colorado, a federal prison,
839
00:41:56.671 --> 00:41:59.890
they said that they were okay with the
840
00:41:59.890 --> 00:42:02.170
conditions that I was asking for.
841
00:42:02.170 --> 00:42:04.663
That they would monitor visually but not audio,
842
00:42:05.840 --> 00:42:07.620
if I talk to inmates.
843
00:42:07.620 --> 00:42:11.060
But that I couldn't visit with anybody accused
844
00:42:11.060 --> 00:42:13.113
or convicted of terrorism.
845
00:42:14.090 --> 00:42:16.430
So I told them that we had to go back to the drawing board.
846
00:42:16.430 --> 00:42:17.710
I couldn't accept those terms.
847
00:42:17.710 --> 00:42:20.230
I can't accept the government telling me
848
00:42:20.230 --> 00:42:22.770
who, which prisoners I can talk to.
849
00:42:22.770 --> 00:42:26.800
You can imagine if they select the prisoners for me
850
00:42:26.800 --> 00:42:28.970
how do I know that what these people tell me
851
00:42:28.970 --> 00:42:30.273
is what really happens.
852
00:42:32.580 --> 00:42:34.080
And unfortunately
853
00:42:36.910 --> 00:42:39.373
that's where it ended.
854
00:42:39.373 --> 00:42:44.373
A year later, I have no better conditions than those.
855
00:42:44.700 --> 00:42:47.700
I'm hoping that my successor will continue
856
00:42:47.700 --> 00:42:49.400
to ask for an invitation
857
00:42:49.400 --> 00:42:52.190
and that eventually he'll be given better terms.
858
00:42:52.190 --> 00:42:55.490
But I've had to be public about this.
859
00:42:55.490 --> 00:42:58.760
I've had to say that this is not the kind
860
00:42:58.760 --> 00:43:00.440
of cooperation that
861
00:43:00.440 --> 00:43:04.039
the special procedures should get from the United States.
862
00:43:04.039 --> 00:43:05.378
Even with the argument that
863
00:43:05.378 --> 00:43:07.710
Guantanamo is a military prison.
864
00:43:07.710 --> 00:43:09.140
Doesn't apply to the others.
865
00:43:09.140 --> 00:43:11.830
You are right so yeah.
866
00:43:11.830 --> 00:43:15.350
I have to say that after long waits and,
867
00:43:15.350 --> 00:43:16.200
you know, because
868
00:43:18.070 --> 00:43:19.980
I accepted the possibility of being
869
00:43:19.980 --> 00:43:23.170
an expert witness in some litigation.
870
00:43:23.170 --> 00:43:24.730
And in that capacity,
871
00:43:24.730 --> 00:43:26.350
I went to interview prisoners
872
00:43:26.350 --> 00:43:29.210
in Pelican Bay in Northern California
873
00:43:29.210 --> 00:43:32.793
and in a prison near Philadelphia called Granderson.
874
00:43:34.450 --> 00:43:36.100
Both cases have been settled now.
875
00:43:37.360 --> 00:43:42.210
So, but I did present a report after interviewing.
876
00:43:42.210 --> 00:43:43.610
So, and in both basis,
877
00:43:43.610 --> 00:43:48.320
they showed me the solitary confinement cells.
878
00:43:48.320 --> 00:43:50.860
So, I mean, it's a limited way.
879
00:43:50.860 --> 00:43:53.410
That's not the way I would like to do the visit
880
00:43:53.410 --> 00:43:55.290
because you know,
881
00:43:57.550 --> 00:44:00.690
when you visit, you go with with authorities.
882
00:44:00.690 --> 00:44:02.920
When you interview, you interview privately.
883
00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:05.970
But when you're visiting the facilities,
884
00:44:05.970 --> 00:44:07.660
they are walking with you.
885
00:44:07.660 --> 00:44:09.410
That's not the way I want to do it.
886
00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:11.700
But because in that case,
887
00:44:11.700 --> 00:44:15.160
I was acting as as an expert witness
888
00:44:15.160 --> 00:44:19.070
not as a special rapporteur, I made that exception.
889
00:44:19.070 --> 00:44:21.740
Do you ever worry about retribution
890
00:44:21.740 --> 00:44:25.130
against the prisoners who agree to speak to you?
891
00:44:25.130 --> 00:44:26.820
Yes and we try to monitor.
892
00:44:26.820 --> 00:44:28.110
The problem for
893
00:44:30.190 --> 00:44:32.463
me and my team is that we are,
894
00:44:34.140 --> 00:44:36.480
you know, we don't have too many resources
895
00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:38.430
and we don't have people in country.
896
00:44:38.430 --> 00:44:42.010
So, monitoring that nothing happens after we leave
897
00:44:42.010 --> 00:44:43.700
is very complicated.
898
00:44:43.700 --> 00:44:47.430
The another body called the special,
899
00:44:47.430 --> 00:44:48.453
sorry the,
900
00:44:50.160 --> 00:44:52.720
The Subcommittee On The Prevention Of Torture
901
00:44:52.720 --> 00:44:56.290
which is a treaty body that visits prisons regularly,
902
00:44:56.290 --> 00:44:59.820
they report that they get reprisals almost every,
903
00:44:59.820 --> 00:45:01.940
in every country that they visit.
904
00:45:01.940 --> 00:45:03.973
But they have a capacity to monitor.
905
00:45:04.810 --> 00:45:09.800
In my years, I encountered problems with reprisals
906
00:45:10.870 --> 00:45:11.880
one or two times.
907
00:45:11.880 --> 00:45:13.633
One in Morocco once.
908
00:45:15.460 --> 00:45:17.590
And it was not so much,
909
00:45:17.590 --> 00:45:20.020
you know, well, it was serious but it wasn't
910
00:45:22.350 --> 00:45:25.220
egregious because the
911
00:45:25.220 --> 00:45:29.890
inmate who had talked to us was visited during the night
912
00:45:29.890 --> 00:45:33.090
and asked to tell what he had told us.
913
00:45:33.090 --> 00:45:35.140
And of course he found it threatening but
914
00:45:36.520 --> 00:45:39.453
we made a stink and it didn't go beyond that.
915
00:45:41.040 --> 00:45:44.050
From your studies over Guantanamo,
916
00:45:44.050 --> 00:45:46.720
even though you weren't able to visit on your terms,
917
00:45:46.720 --> 00:45:50.463
could you describe what you know about solitary confinement
918
00:45:50.463 --> 00:45:53.253
in Guantanamo and how it's evolved?
919
00:45:54.830 --> 00:45:56.474
Yeah.
920
00:45:56.474 --> 00:45:59.620
I think the evidence is very diffused on that.
921
00:45:59.620 --> 00:46:01.180
I know for example,
922
00:46:01.180 --> 00:46:05.230
because the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
923
00:46:05.230 --> 00:46:07.310
did not particularly concentrate.
924
00:46:07.310 --> 00:46:08.840
I mean, at least the summary
925
00:46:08.840 --> 00:46:10.840
that is the only thing that is public,
926
00:46:10.840 --> 00:46:13.713
doesn't concentrate on solitary confinement as such.
927
00:46:15.859 --> 00:46:18.350
And also because it doesn't deal only with Guantanamo,
928
00:46:18.350 --> 00:46:20.530
but with all the extraordinary renditions
929
00:46:20.530 --> 00:46:22.373
and black sites, et cetera.
930
00:46:24.670 --> 00:46:28.580
And also it's a report that is more based on
931
00:46:29.580 --> 00:46:31.290
you know, based on
932
00:46:31.290 --> 00:46:34.470
determining that the CIA lied to the Senate.
933
00:46:34.470 --> 00:46:36.040
And that,
934
00:46:36.040 --> 00:46:39.820
and then in fact it later light again when it said
935
00:46:39.820 --> 00:46:42.550
that torture had given good results.
936
00:46:42.550 --> 00:46:46.030
So, in terms of intelligence, I mean.
937
00:46:46.030 --> 00:46:48.193
So and for that reason,
938
00:46:49.174 --> 00:46:52.150
the report is a very good source but it's incomplete.
939
00:46:52.150 --> 00:46:54.410
I mean, they didn't specifically
940
00:46:54.410 --> 00:46:56.640
look at solitary confinement.
941
00:46:56.640 --> 00:46:59.790
My understanding is that Guantanamo Bay
942
00:46:59.790 --> 00:47:01.653
is several prisons in one.
943
00:47:03.210 --> 00:47:06.380
And that there are some that have had
944
00:47:06.380 --> 00:47:09.630
a little more access and some less,
945
00:47:09.630 --> 00:47:11.480
that at some point,
946
00:47:11.480 --> 00:47:16.480
maybe not now but during this what 14 years,
947
00:47:16.597 --> 00:47:19.143
some of the prisoners were in solitary.
948
00:47:21.490 --> 00:47:24.960
But to establish, you know
949
00:47:24.960 --> 00:47:28.623
who and for how long, and for what reason, et cetera,
950
00:47:29.860 --> 00:47:31.600
it has become very difficult.
951
00:47:31.600 --> 00:47:35.910
I mean, we are getting the story on a piecemeal basis
952
00:47:35.910 --> 00:47:38.980
and we're the more that we learned the more
953
00:47:41.520 --> 00:47:43.103
egregious it seems.
954
00:47:44.270 --> 00:47:46.390
But my sense is that we have
955
00:47:46.390 --> 00:47:49.023
only scratched the surface so far.
956
00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:52.220
And you had written that
957
00:47:52.220 --> 00:47:55.833
you believe that after 15 days of solitary confinement,
958
00:47:57.670 --> 00:47:58.840
there are serious
959
00:48:00.190 --> 00:48:03.240
applications that aren't able to be reversed.
960
00:48:03.240 --> 00:48:04.600
Well,
961
00:48:04.600 --> 00:48:07.210
what I said in my
962
00:48:07.210 --> 00:48:09.960
thematic report that was published was given
963
00:48:09.960 --> 00:48:13.623
to the General Assembly of the UN in October of 2011,
964
00:48:14.800 --> 00:48:19.120
was that I was trying to determine that solitary confinement
965
00:48:19.120 --> 00:48:21.080
could cross the line into cruel inhuman
966
00:48:21.080 --> 00:48:24.430
and degrading treatment or even torture.
967
00:48:24.430 --> 00:48:29.430
And I used the prohibition of mental torture as a basis.
968
00:48:29.600 --> 00:48:32.790
And then I used scientific literature,
969
00:48:32.790 --> 00:48:35.090
psychiatric literature mostly,
970
00:48:35.090 --> 00:48:38.740
that says that after 15 days
971
00:48:38.740 --> 00:48:39.840
of being alone
972
00:48:41.013 --> 00:48:43.893
and not having meaningful social contact with anybody,
973
00:48:44.970 --> 00:48:47.450
your mind starts working differently.
974
00:48:47.450 --> 00:48:48.920
The same literature
975
00:48:50.760 --> 00:48:53.290
ascertains that in some cases not all,
976
00:48:53.290 --> 00:48:56.113
but it could be irreversible consequences.
977
00:48:56.990 --> 00:49:00.370
So, basically the argument then that I made was,
978
00:49:00.370 --> 00:49:03.390
you know, first we should prohibit
979
00:49:04.380 --> 00:49:07.030
prolonged solitary confinement.
980
00:49:07.030 --> 00:49:08.440
And the reason we should prohibit
981
00:49:08.440 --> 00:49:09.900
prolonged solitary confinement
982
00:49:09.900 --> 00:49:12.440
is that short term solitary confinement
983
00:49:12.440 --> 00:49:14.740
may have some legitimate uses.
984
00:49:14.740 --> 00:49:19.390
For example, to protect someone who would be vulnerable
985
00:49:19.390 --> 00:49:22.890
if left in the general population.
986
00:49:22.890 --> 00:49:24.180
Or to
987
00:49:25.820 --> 00:49:29.890
isolate a predator that could be dangerous to others.
988
00:49:29.890 --> 00:49:33.660
Or for very serious disciplinary offenses.
989
00:49:33.660 --> 00:49:35.790
but then it should be short term
990
00:49:35.790 --> 00:49:39.623
and it should be surrounded by due process guarantees.
991
00:49:42.587 --> 00:49:46.260
And, you know, then trying to determine what
992
00:49:46.260 --> 00:49:49.470
constitutes prolonged solitary confinement.
993
00:49:49.470 --> 00:49:52.880
I came up with a somewhat arbitrary
994
00:49:53.730 --> 00:49:55.280
term of 15 days.
995
00:49:55.280 --> 00:49:57.770
But I say somewhat arbitrary because it is
996
00:49:58.920 --> 00:50:01.100
born from or
997
00:50:01.100 --> 00:50:03.950
borrowed from the psychiatric literature.
998
00:50:03.950 --> 00:50:05.953
It's not arbitrary in that sense.
999
00:50:07.400 --> 00:50:10.200
I'm sure there are people who can be
1000
00:50:10.200 --> 00:50:12.100
20 days in solitary confinement
1001
00:50:12.100 --> 00:50:14.550
and the next day they are fine.
1002
00:50:14.550 --> 00:50:15.383
But,
1003
00:50:16.360 --> 00:50:21.080
if you're going to legislate a cart
1004
00:50:21.080 --> 00:50:23.120
then what data are you going to use?
1005
00:50:23.120 --> 00:50:28.120
And I later, you know, in you in public speaking, I said,
1006
00:50:28.640 --> 00:50:33.640
well, you know, maybe 15 days for absolute confinement,
1007
00:50:33.670 --> 00:50:37.230
but if you have a couple hours a day that you can exercise
1008
00:50:37.230 --> 00:50:39.280
maybe a
1009
00:50:39.280 --> 00:50:42.130
a slightly longer term would be okay.
1010
00:50:42.130 --> 00:50:45.380
But it should be counted in days, not even in weeks,
1011
00:50:45.380 --> 00:50:47.840
and certainly not in months or years.
1012
00:50:47.840 --> 00:50:50.080
And the other thing that I called for
1013
00:50:50.080 --> 00:50:54.640
was a complete ban on indefinite solitary confinement.
1014
00:50:54.640 --> 00:50:56.710
Because if you don't know,
1015
00:50:56.710 --> 00:50:58.310
you know, when it's going to end
1016
00:50:59.374 --> 00:51:02.480
it stands to reason that they do have,
1017
00:51:02.480 --> 00:51:05.930
it just adds to your anxiety to say the least,
1018
00:51:05.930 --> 00:51:09.310
We also called for a ban on
1019
00:51:09.310 --> 00:51:12.090
solitary confinement of any duration
1020
00:51:12.090 --> 00:51:16.770
when used against people with any mental disability,
1021
00:51:16.770 --> 00:51:18.870
and to children.
1022
00:51:18.870 --> 00:51:20.750
Anybody under 18.
1023
00:51:20.750 --> 00:51:22.640
And that again was
1024
00:51:23.960 --> 00:51:27.090
drawn from the psychiatric literature
1025
00:51:28.120 --> 00:51:32.020
that says clearly that children suffer isolation
1026
00:51:32.020 --> 00:51:34.270
in different ways than adults.
1027
00:51:34.270 --> 00:51:37.490
And also because people with mental disabilities
1028
00:51:37.490 --> 00:51:39.620
only get those disabilities
1029
00:51:39.620 --> 00:51:43.363
only get exacerbated by isolation.
1030
00:51:45.500 --> 00:51:46.333
And then
1031
00:51:47.540 --> 00:51:50.560
we also called on a ban on pregnant women
1032
00:51:50.560 --> 00:51:52.863
and women who were breastfeeding.
1033
00:51:54.410 --> 00:51:57.060
Those would be absolute, I mean, not even short term.
1034
00:51:58.060 --> 00:51:59.320
A couple of years later
1035
00:51:59.320 --> 00:52:03.090
when a document called the standard minimum rules
1036
00:52:03.090 --> 00:52:06.123
for the treatment of prisoners was revised,
1037
00:52:09.580 --> 00:52:13.320
the Standard Minimum Rules didn't contain anything on
1038
00:52:13.320 --> 00:52:15.933
regulating solitary confinement.
1039
00:52:17.410 --> 00:52:18.950
All they said was
1040
00:52:20.410 --> 00:52:22.010
that if anybody was going to be put
1041
00:52:22.010 --> 00:52:23.280
in solitary confinement
1042
00:52:24.410 --> 00:52:26.660
they should get medical attention or medical.
1043
00:52:26.660 --> 00:52:29.010
They should be examined medically.
1044
00:52:29.010 --> 00:52:30.761
What were those standard minimum rules?
1045
00:52:30.761 --> 00:52:31.770
Well, the Standard Minimum Rules
1046
00:52:31.770 --> 00:52:33.670
is a document from the 50s.
1047
00:52:33.670 --> 00:52:35.740
It was done
1048
00:52:35.740 --> 00:52:39.050
by what was then called the Crime Prevention Branch
1049
00:52:39.050 --> 00:52:40.728
of the United Nations.
1050
00:52:40.728 --> 00:52:43.550
It's an institutional the United Nations
1051
00:52:43.550 --> 00:52:45.130
that's based in Vienna.
1052
00:52:45.130 --> 00:52:47.100
And that does
1053
00:52:47.100 --> 00:52:50.980
standard setting around, questions of
1054
00:52:50.980 --> 00:52:53.120
criminal justice basically.
1055
00:52:53.120 --> 00:52:54.890
And this is their,
1056
00:52:54.890 --> 00:52:58.454
this document has been a widely cited.
1057
00:52:58.454 --> 00:53:00.470
It's not binding.
1058
00:53:00.470 --> 00:53:05.470
It's a soft law document as they call it,
1059
00:53:05.570 --> 00:53:07.220
but it's widely cited
1060
00:53:07.220 --> 00:53:08.743
and considered authoritative.
1061
00:53:12.573 --> 00:53:15.297
It was revised in the last couple of years
1062
00:53:15.297 --> 00:53:18.940
and now the rules are called the Nelson Mandela Rules.
1063
00:53:18.940 --> 00:53:23.940
And it includes now regulation of solitary confinement.
1064
00:53:25.130 --> 00:53:27.503
And it adopted what I had proposed.
1065
00:53:28.370 --> 00:53:30.610
A ban on anything beyond 15 days,
1066
00:53:30.610 --> 00:53:33.330
a ban on indefinite solitary confinement,
1067
00:53:33.330 --> 00:53:36.860
a ban on confinement of any duration
1068
00:53:36.860 --> 00:53:40.143
for these three categories of prisoners that I mentioned.
1069
00:53:41.154 --> 00:53:43.970
So did you study in
1070
00:53:43.970 --> 00:53:46.260
about juveniles who were in Guantanamo?
1071
00:53:46.260 --> 00:53:48.170
Did you do any work in that area?
1072
00:53:48.170 --> 00:53:49.813
No, we know of some people,
1073
00:53:49.813 --> 00:53:54.159
like I think the Canadian who...
1074
00:53:54.159 --> 00:53:57.027
Omar Khadr.
Yes
1075
00:53:57.027 --> 00:53:58.390
And is that a violation
1076
00:53:58.390 --> 00:54:00.740
as a UN sees it or is it?
1077
00:54:00.740 --> 00:54:01.990
But we don't know the facts.
1078
00:54:01.990 --> 00:54:04.430
I mean, I don't know if he was held in solitary confinement
1079
00:54:04.430 --> 00:54:06.750
in when he was in Guantanamo.
1080
00:54:06.750 --> 00:54:10.170
I mean, at least maybe someone knows
1081
00:54:10.170 --> 00:54:14.060
cause he's now in Canada, he must have been interviewed.
1082
00:54:14.060 --> 00:54:16.920
But if he was held for in solitary,
1083
00:54:16.920 --> 00:54:18.243
yes it's a violation.
1084
00:54:20.452 --> 00:54:22.102
But you have to bear in mind that
1085
00:54:23.675 --> 00:54:28.200
the Nelson Mandela Rules were approved in 2015.
1086
00:54:28.200 --> 00:54:30.800
So, although there's nothing wrong
1087
00:54:30.800 --> 00:54:33.210
with applying them retroactively
1088
00:54:33.210 --> 00:54:35.073
because it's not a criminal statute.
1089
00:54:37.389 --> 00:54:40.520
The government can escape it by saying,
1090
00:54:40.520 --> 00:54:43.070
well it wasn't in place at the time.
1091
00:54:43.070 --> 00:54:46.200
So there was no probation on keeping
1092
00:54:46.200 --> 00:54:48.480
juvenile offenders in solitary.
1093
00:54:48.480 --> 00:54:50.460
One of Omar Khadr's lawyers
1094
00:54:50.460 --> 00:54:53.117
on military wise spoke to us and he told us that
1095
00:54:53.117 --> 00:54:57.690
the US in theory would use a 30 day standard
1096
00:54:57.690 --> 00:55:01.003
for isolation or solitary confinement,
1097
00:55:01.003 --> 00:55:04.600
but that they told the lawyer
1098
00:55:04.600 --> 00:55:09.230
that Omar Khadr wasn't in that situation circumstances
1099
00:55:09.230 --> 00:55:12.290
because he had a slid at the bottom of his cell.
1100
00:55:12.290 --> 00:55:15.630
And he could yell through that slid to neighboring
1101
00:55:17.240 --> 00:55:19.900
detainees and therefore he wasn't really in solitary.
1102
00:55:19.900 --> 00:55:21.490
Had you had that kind of argument?
1103
00:55:21.490 --> 00:55:22.640
Yeah, I have.
1104
00:55:22.640 --> 00:55:25.750
And, you know, and that's why we call it
1105
00:55:25.750 --> 00:55:27.920
meaningful social contact.
1106
00:55:27.920 --> 00:55:29.840
In Pelican Bay for example,
1107
00:55:29.840 --> 00:55:33.260
all the cells are in a row,
1108
00:55:33.260 --> 00:55:34.770
one one after the other.
1109
00:55:34.770 --> 00:55:37.600
But with the open door.
1110
00:55:37.600 --> 00:55:38.433
Not the open door.
1111
00:55:38.433 --> 00:55:42.740
The closed but barred door facing front.
1112
00:55:42.740 --> 00:55:45.833
So you can only talk to your neighbors by yelling.
1113
00:55:49.566 --> 00:55:51.490
And the guards don't let you yell
1114
00:55:51.490 --> 00:55:53.990
because it's very disruptive.
1115
00:55:53.990 --> 00:55:57.390
So in essence the inmates told us,
1116
00:55:57.390 --> 00:56:00.000
yeah, especially if they've been there 20 years
1117
00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:04.350
that they actually don't want to speak to dissemble voices.
1118
00:56:04.350 --> 00:56:07.883
I mean, they don't even do that anymore.
1119
00:56:09.550 --> 00:56:12.240
So when we talk about meaningful social contact
1120
00:56:12.240 --> 00:56:14.260
we exclude contact with guard.
1121
00:56:14.260 --> 00:56:16.810
Many states, including the United States
1122
00:56:16.810 --> 00:56:20.380
come back and say, what do you mean solitary confinement?
1123
00:56:20.380 --> 00:56:21.960
There's somebody brings them their food,
1124
00:56:21.960 --> 00:56:25.870
they also have medical doctors come and examine them,
1125
00:56:25.870 --> 00:56:27.490
the guards are, you know
1126
00:56:27.490 --> 00:56:30.060
keeping track on them all the time.
1127
00:56:30.060 --> 00:56:34.200
And what the Nelson Mandela Rule say is, you know
1128
00:56:34.200 --> 00:56:37.100
the contact has to be with other inmates,
1129
00:56:37.100 --> 00:56:39.660
with, you know, people who they relate to
1130
00:56:39.660 --> 00:56:41.833
and not in an adversarial way.
1131
00:56:43.310 --> 00:56:47.113
So, prison personnel don't count for this purposes.
1132
00:56:49.570 --> 00:56:52.060
And this question of being able to yell
1133
00:56:52.060 --> 00:56:54.533
through some slid in the door,
1134
00:56:56.408 --> 00:56:57.670
you know,
1135
00:56:57.670 --> 00:56:59.480
it's a ridiculous argument.
1136
00:56:59.480 --> 00:57:00.660
I mean, you're still isolated.
1137
00:57:00.660 --> 00:57:04.059
In fact, because you yell because you're isolated.
1138
00:57:04.059 --> 00:57:04.892
So,
1139
00:57:06.670 --> 00:57:07.660
there's also
1140
00:57:09.890 --> 00:57:11.830
and I think this was used in Guantanamo,
1141
00:57:11.830 --> 00:57:15.633
that the military rules on interrogation, not on detention,
1142
00:57:16.550 --> 00:57:21.190
allow for what the rules called separation of an inmate.
1143
00:57:21.190 --> 00:57:24.393
And they allow for up to 30 days, but renewable.
1144
00:57:26.660 --> 00:57:30.275
And it's a technique to soften up the prisoner
1145
00:57:30.275 --> 00:57:32.790
so he would talk.
1146
00:57:32.790 --> 00:57:37.390
And that I firmly believe that that's a form of coercion
1147
00:57:37.390 --> 00:57:39.080
and it's impermissible.
1148
00:57:39.080 --> 00:57:41.120
Even if it's not,
1149
00:57:41.120 --> 00:57:43.460
it's not waterboarding,
1150
00:57:43.460 --> 00:57:47.040
it's not electric shock,
1151
00:57:47.040 --> 00:57:50.103
it's not beating somebody to a pulp,
1152
00:57:51.816 --> 00:57:53.100
it's still coercion.
1153
00:57:53.100 --> 00:57:54.518
And
1154
00:57:54.518 --> 00:57:58.870
it's impermissible in international law.
1155
00:57:58.870 --> 00:57:59.703
In fact,
1156
00:58:02.870 --> 00:58:05.560
some news organization
1157
00:58:05.560 --> 00:58:08.920
through freedom of information act request obtain
1158
00:58:10.060 --> 00:58:13.607
those regulations that are applied in Bagram and in,
1159
00:58:18.240 --> 00:58:20.270
Kandahar or in Guantanamo or?
1160
00:58:20.270 --> 00:58:21.233
No, no in Iraq.
1161
00:58:22.491 --> 00:58:24.541
Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib.
1162
00:58:25.450 --> 00:58:26.283
And
1163
00:58:27.860 --> 00:58:30.910
the rules themselves allow for
1164
00:58:30.910 --> 00:58:32.960
period of separation of 30 days
1165
00:58:32.960 --> 00:58:35.090
but they are renewable also.
1166
00:58:35.090 --> 00:58:35.923
So,
1167
00:58:38.040 --> 00:58:41.000
and this is as a means of interrogation,
1168
00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:44.633
not even as a condition of detention alone.
1169
00:58:45.510 --> 00:58:47.040
So, it's even more
1170
00:58:47.040 --> 00:58:49.480
the relationship with the prohibition on
1171
00:58:50.750 --> 00:58:51.990
cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
1172
00:58:51.990 --> 00:58:53.860
is even more direct in those cases.
1173
00:58:53.860 --> 00:58:55.230
So when US says that
1174
00:58:55.230 --> 00:58:58.630
they follow their own standards by giving
1175
00:58:58.630 --> 00:59:02.310
people no longer than 30 days of a solitary confinement,
1176
00:59:02.310 --> 00:59:05.817
is really not true if in fact they just keep renewing them.
1177
00:59:05.817 --> 00:59:07.160
That's right.
1178
00:59:07.160 --> 00:59:07.993
But,
1179
00:59:09.520 --> 00:59:11.570
that's one aspect of it.
1180
00:59:11.570 --> 00:59:15.210
I mean, I'm not saying that that's the only segregation
1181
00:59:15.210 --> 00:59:19.050
or separation that the Pentagon uses.
1182
00:59:19.050 --> 00:59:23.080
I'm saying that in the course interrogation
1183
00:59:23.080 --> 00:59:25.593
they can use that and they do use it apparently,
1184
00:59:26.456 --> 00:59:29.440
and they can extend it beyond 30 days.
1185
00:59:29.440 --> 00:59:31.640
But that doesn't mean that they don't use it
1186
00:59:31.640 --> 00:59:35.040
for other purposes elsewhere, for example in Guantanamo,
1187
00:59:35.040 --> 00:59:37.540
I don't know they're using it now or not.
1188
00:59:37.540 --> 00:59:39.833
But until we know more,
1189
00:59:42.070 --> 00:59:44.560
outside that regulation they may be using it
1190
00:59:44.560 --> 00:59:46.010
for other purposes.
1191
00:59:46.010 --> 00:59:47.940
You know, what frequent flyer is
1192
00:59:47.940 --> 00:59:50.330
where people have told us that they,
1193
00:59:50.330 --> 00:59:53.540
that detainees were moved every two or three hours
1194
00:59:53.540 --> 00:59:57.340
from cell to cell and for weeks on end.
1195
00:59:57.340 --> 01:00:00.200
In fact, the juvenile was the first person
1196
01:00:00.200 --> 01:00:02.580
who was moved like that and they called it frequent flyer.
1197
01:00:02.580 --> 01:00:04.670
And so as soon as he settled into a cell
1198
01:00:04.670 --> 01:00:06.290
he was picked up and moved to the next cell.
1199
01:00:06.290 --> 01:00:09.370
So he never got to sleep, rest in any cell.
1200
01:00:09.370 --> 01:00:10.570
Had you heard that in...
1201
01:00:11.663 --> 01:00:12.890
Yeah, I've heard about frequent flyer.
1202
01:00:12.890 --> 01:00:14.120
I didn't know the details
1203
01:00:14.120 --> 01:00:15.980
but anything that's sleep deprivation
1204
01:00:17.150 --> 01:00:19.763
is also cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
1205
01:00:23.040 --> 01:00:24.890
I think the European Court of Human Rights
1206
01:00:24.890 --> 01:00:28.530
has some decisions that says sleep deprivation
1207
01:00:28.530 --> 01:00:32.000
that is not made necessary by the,
1208
01:00:32.000 --> 01:00:34.860
you know, regular interrogation cycle.
1209
01:00:34.860 --> 01:00:37.140
You know, that you need to
1210
01:00:37.140 --> 01:00:40.773
finish a criminal file before midnight.
1211
01:00:42.668 --> 01:00:44.680
And even in those cases,
1212
01:00:44.680 --> 01:00:47.240
at least with intervals of four to six hours
1213
01:00:48.175 --> 01:00:52.133
the European Court says, those cases will be okay.
1214
01:00:53.060 --> 01:00:54.450
But sleep deprivation
1215
01:00:54.450 --> 01:00:57.150
only for the purposes of sleep deprivation
1216
01:00:58.558 --> 01:01:01.900
is a form of mental torture
1217
01:01:01.900 --> 01:01:04.020
or even physical, you could say.
1218
01:01:04.020 --> 01:01:06.930
Had you heard of that in Guantanamo?
1219
01:01:06.930 --> 01:01:08.180
No,
1220
01:01:08.180 --> 01:01:09.050
No.
1221
01:01:09.050 --> 01:01:10.760
Not saying that it doesn't happen.
1222
01:01:10.760 --> 01:01:15.760
I haven't had complaints or denunciations of it though.
1223
01:01:19.410 --> 01:01:22.269
Did Guantanamo seem to you
1224
01:01:22.269 --> 01:01:23.627
and you kind of said this before
1225
01:01:23.627 --> 01:01:28.040
but I just think it's important to say it again as
1226
01:01:32.150 --> 01:01:33.003
awful.
1227
01:01:34.500 --> 01:01:38.190
As other prisons that you did experience,
1228
01:01:38.190 --> 01:01:39.980
that you did visit, I mean,
1229
01:01:39.980 --> 01:01:41.760
because people always pointed at one time
1230
01:01:41.760 --> 01:01:43.580
like you gave the example in Gambia
1231
01:01:43.580 --> 01:01:46.200
saying, well you know, Guantanamo did this,
1232
01:01:46.200 --> 01:01:47.910
why can't we do it?
1233
01:01:47.910 --> 01:01:52.840
Is Guantanamo, where does it fall on the range of cases?
1234
01:01:52.840 --> 01:01:55.950
Well, I mean, it's very difficult to compare prisons
1235
01:01:55.950 --> 01:01:56.790
because
1236
01:01:59.130 --> 01:02:01.210
in many countries prisons, for example
1237
01:02:01.210 --> 01:02:03.940
that have very serious overcrowding,
1238
01:02:03.940 --> 01:02:06.090
the people are not isolated
1239
01:02:06.090 --> 01:02:07.820
and they have a lot of liberty.
1240
01:02:07.820 --> 01:02:12.123
So much liberty that then they are predators of each other.
1241
01:02:13.450 --> 01:02:17.900
There's a kind of a tendency to self-govern.
1242
01:02:17.900 --> 01:02:21.170
And that means that gangs become
1243
01:02:22.120 --> 01:02:25.810
the rulers and that those gangs
1244
01:02:25.810 --> 01:02:28.540
have the support of the prison guards, et cetera.
1245
01:02:28.540 --> 01:02:31.160
Those places are incredibly violent,
1246
01:02:31.160 --> 01:02:34.750
and they are unhygienic,
1247
01:02:34.750 --> 01:02:36.160
unsanitary.
1248
01:02:36.160 --> 01:02:38.410
They don't have minimum services.
1249
01:02:38.410 --> 01:02:39.683
The food is awful.
1250
01:02:41.080 --> 01:02:44.860
You know, obviously they don't have religious services.
1251
01:02:44.860 --> 01:02:47.210
So, if you could compare Guantanamo to those
1252
01:02:47.210 --> 01:02:49.078
in those aspects,
1253
01:02:49.078 --> 01:02:52.283
Guantanamo probably is a clean place, I suppose.
1254
01:02:55.090 --> 01:02:56.820
They get their three meals a day.
1255
01:02:56.820 --> 01:02:59.180
They get their Koran.
1256
01:02:59.180 --> 01:03:00.013
But,
1257
01:03:01.230 --> 01:03:03.970
if you compare in terms of
1258
01:03:06.170 --> 01:03:10.800
first their ability to seek judicial determination on the
1259
01:03:11.770 --> 01:03:14.890
on whether they should be in prison or not,
1260
01:03:14.890 --> 01:03:17.610
I mean, they're very places in the world,
1261
01:03:17.610 --> 01:03:19.720
very few places in the world
1262
01:03:19.720 --> 01:03:21.680
that have people for years on end
1263
01:03:21.680 --> 01:03:24.180
without determining that they committed any crime.
1264
01:03:26.110 --> 01:03:29.130
Even military prisons, you know,
1265
01:03:29.130 --> 01:03:32.020
in military conflict there are no conflicts
1266
01:03:32.020 --> 01:03:34.470
around the world today where one
1267
01:03:36.790 --> 01:03:39.710
armed force is keeping the soldiers of another armed force
1268
01:03:39.710 --> 01:03:41.293
until the end of hostilities.
1269
01:03:42.240 --> 01:03:44.620
That's permissible, but there aren't any.
1270
01:03:44.620 --> 01:03:46.770
And if there are, they last a couple of years
1271
01:03:46.770 --> 01:03:49.510
and then they close them down.
1272
01:03:49.510 --> 01:03:51.170
So,
1273
01:03:51.170 --> 01:03:55.850
even in Iraq and Afghanistan the detention
1274
01:03:55.850 --> 01:03:58.480
is, you know,
1275
01:03:58.480 --> 01:04:02.333
move towards the authorities of the country to determine,
1276
01:04:03.430 --> 01:04:06.150
you know, whether they are criminally liable or not
1277
01:04:06.150 --> 01:04:08.520
and then they serve their time.
1278
01:04:08.520 --> 01:04:13.520
But prolonged arbitrary detention of this sorts today is,
1279
01:04:13.820 --> 01:04:15.490
Like in Guantanamo.
1280
01:04:15.490 --> 01:04:17.390
Is unique, yeah.
1281
01:04:17.390 --> 01:04:18.223
I think.
1282
01:04:20.050 --> 01:04:22.330
At least I can't think of a place.
1283
01:04:22.330 --> 01:04:25.250
I mean, there's a lot of arbitrary detention
1284
01:04:25.250 --> 01:04:28.020
for violation of criminal procedure.
1285
01:04:28.020 --> 01:04:30.260
And that, again, that's not my mandate,
1286
01:04:30.260 --> 01:04:33.390
It's a mandate of the Working Group On Arbitrary Detention.
1287
01:04:33.390 --> 01:04:36.210
But many of the cases that they deal with around the world
1288
01:04:36.210 --> 01:04:39.530
have to do with long delays in determining
1289
01:04:39.530 --> 01:04:41.380
whether someone is guilty or innocent
1290
01:04:42.420 --> 01:04:44.523
time that you spend actually in custody.
1291
01:04:45.980 --> 01:04:50.290
Or unfair trials that become arbitrary
1292
01:04:50.290 --> 01:04:52.000
because they're unfair.
1293
01:04:52.000 --> 01:04:56.170
But no trials whatsoever, like we had in Argentina
1294
01:04:56.170 --> 01:05:00.118
when I was in custody or as applied in
1295
01:05:00.118 --> 01:05:03.700
to some of the people who are still in Guantanamo,
1296
01:05:03.700 --> 01:05:05.113
that's not that frequent.
1297
01:05:07.170 --> 01:05:09.780
Had you heard of linguistic isolation?
1298
01:05:09.780 --> 01:05:11.810
Where men were put with people
1299
01:05:11.810 --> 01:05:13.040
who didn't speak their language.
1300
01:05:13.040 --> 01:05:13.873
And so essentially,
1301
01:05:13.873 --> 01:05:17.390
even though they were able to quote communicate with others
1302
01:05:17.390 --> 01:05:19.420
they had no meaningful conversation
1303
01:05:19.420 --> 01:05:21.990
because there was no one they could really talk to.
1304
01:05:21.990 --> 01:05:25.313
Maybe that happened in some places in Guantanamo.
1305
01:05:26.500 --> 01:05:27.960
No, I haven't heard.
1306
01:05:27.960 --> 01:05:28.823
I haven't heard.
1307
01:05:29.929 --> 01:05:30.762
I mean,
1308
01:05:32.105 --> 01:05:33.980
if it's deliberate
1309
01:05:35.644 --> 01:05:36.477
Some people though,
1310
01:05:36.477 --> 01:05:38.213
some lawyers believe did was deliberate
1311
01:05:38.213 --> 01:05:42.310
that some Pakistanis who spoke Urdu were deliberately put
1312
01:05:42.310 --> 01:05:44.630
with people who didn't speak,
1313
01:05:44.630 --> 01:05:46.310
who only spoke Arabic or English.
1314
01:05:46.310 --> 01:05:47.143
Yeah.
1315
01:05:47.143 --> 01:05:49.950
Well, if it's deliberate it's a form of isolation.
1316
01:05:49.950 --> 01:05:51.500
I agree.
1317
01:05:51.500 --> 01:05:52.440
But I
1318
01:05:54.610 --> 01:05:55.540
first I haven't heard,
1319
01:05:55.540 --> 01:05:57.890
but if I had a case like that
1320
01:05:57.890 --> 01:05:59.240
I would ask questions as to
1321
01:06:00.280 --> 01:06:02.820
whether there were alternatives or not.
1322
01:06:02.820 --> 01:06:05.220
If they could find another
1323
01:06:05.220 --> 01:06:07.060
person speaking in the same language
1324
01:06:07.060 --> 01:06:08.970
should they put them together?
1325
01:06:08.970 --> 01:06:10.070
And the answer is yes.
1326
01:06:10.070 --> 01:06:12.490
But it depends on the circumstances
1327
01:06:15.120 --> 01:06:16.470
When
1328
01:06:16.470 --> 01:06:17.630
there was some,
1329
01:06:19.270 --> 01:06:21.810
and it was before you became a rapporteur but
1330
01:06:21.810 --> 01:06:24.360
there was a belief this Arab was one of them,
1331
01:06:24.360 --> 01:06:26.310
that people in to Guantanamo
1332
01:06:26.310 --> 01:06:29.450
were disappeared into Guantanamo initially because
1333
01:06:29.450 --> 01:06:32.710
the US did not release the names of the prisoners until
1334
01:06:32.710 --> 01:06:34.740
2006, I believe.
1335
01:06:34.740 --> 01:06:38.653
Did you do any research in there?
1336
01:06:39.810 --> 01:06:40.663
No.
1337
01:06:42.920 --> 01:06:44.090
Because as you say,
1338
01:06:44.090 --> 01:06:46.690
it was early on in a war against terror.
1339
01:06:46.690 --> 01:06:48.330
But as you probably known,
1340
01:06:48.330 --> 01:06:52.360
there's even now a case going on against Ashcroft
1341
01:06:52.360 --> 01:06:54.823
who was the attorney general at the time,
1342
01:06:56.020 --> 01:06:58.770
on immigration detention in the continent,
1343
01:06:58.770 --> 01:07:01.500
in the continental USA.
1344
01:07:01.500 --> 01:07:03.080
Because they never released the names
1345
01:07:03.080 --> 01:07:06.590
of something like 800 people that they had arrested.
1346
01:07:06.590 --> 01:07:08.303
Many of them they deported.
1347
01:07:09.380 --> 01:07:12.730
Some I suppose they may have released.
1348
01:07:12.730 --> 01:07:16.320
But what's really strange is that
1349
01:07:16.320 --> 01:07:17.730
they didn't confirm the number
1350
01:07:17.730 --> 01:07:20.163
and they didn't give names or anything.
1351
01:07:23.561 --> 01:07:25.080
So I wouldn't be surprised
1352
01:07:26.390 --> 01:07:27.223
if they did.
1353
01:07:27.223 --> 01:07:30.960
And Guantanamo was a closed place all the time.
1354
01:07:30.960 --> 01:07:33.420
and early on,
1355
01:07:33.420 --> 01:07:36.620
we had only the word of the Pentagon
1356
01:07:36.620 --> 01:07:40.120
for how many people were there and not even the names.
1357
01:07:40.120 --> 01:07:41.573
They didn't issue the names.
1358
01:07:42.570 --> 01:07:46.410
So coming from your background in Argentina
1359
01:07:46.410 --> 01:07:50.900
and doing the work you did for Amnesty International
1360
01:07:50.900 --> 01:07:52.720
for all those years,
1361
01:07:52.720 --> 01:07:54.970
do you find it strange here
1362
01:07:54.970 --> 01:07:59.970
in later years that US has become such a focal point of
1363
01:08:03.040 --> 01:08:07.873
torture and arbitrary detention and cruel unusual?
1364
01:08:08.720 --> 01:08:10.760
Well, I mean, at Human Rights Watch
1365
01:08:10.760 --> 01:08:13.960
we started working with other countries.
1366
01:08:13.960 --> 01:08:16.970
But relatively on we started looking at
1367
01:08:16.970 --> 01:08:18.833
inside into the United States,
1368
01:08:21.005 --> 01:08:22.560
on the assumption that every country has
1369
01:08:22.560 --> 01:08:25.553
some human rights performance to improve upon.
1370
01:08:26.640 --> 01:08:29.120
And so we started visiting prisons, for example,
1371
01:08:29.120 --> 01:08:30.380
and things like that.
1372
01:08:30.380 --> 01:08:33.940
It wasn't my job so much but I was aware of it.
1373
01:08:33.940 --> 01:08:35.390
And I did visit
1374
01:08:35.390 --> 01:08:39.000
a maximum security prison in Wabash Valley in Indiana
1375
01:08:41.220 --> 01:08:43.290
for Human Rights Watch.
1376
01:08:43.290 --> 01:08:44.980
But, you know,
1377
01:08:44.980 --> 01:08:48.033
then we also did a little bit of work on police,
1378
01:08:49.000 --> 01:08:51.040
you know, brutality,
1379
01:08:51.040 --> 01:08:55.310
questions of selective enforcement or
1380
01:08:57.140 --> 01:08:59.000
racial profiling, things like that.
1381
01:08:59.000 --> 01:09:02.940
Now, but after 2001
1382
01:09:02.940 --> 01:09:05.170
the portfolio that Human Rights Watch
1383
01:09:05.170 --> 01:09:08.493
does on the United States is extensive.
1384
01:09:09.630 --> 01:09:13.820
And it includes Guantanamo but it includes also
1385
01:09:13.820 --> 01:09:17.913
the trials of people accused of terrorism
1386
01:09:17.913 --> 01:09:20.970
that were never taken to Guantanamo but brought
1387
01:09:21.810 --> 01:09:24.360
sometimes extradited from other countries
1388
01:09:24.360 --> 01:09:28.933
to the United States and then prosecuted and sentenced here.
1389
01:09:29.820 --> 01:09:32.900
But also allegations of
1390
01:09:34.670 --> 01:09:39.370
serious violations committed abroad by US forces.
1391
01:09:39.370 --> 01:09:41.920
So, yeah, I would say that
1392
01:09:48.350 --> 01:09:52.230
when the Bush administration authorities
1393
01:09:52.230 --> 01:09:54.363
said that they were taking the gloves off,
1394
01:09:55.720 --> 01:09:57.960
or that they were going to go to the dark site
1395
01:09:57.960 --> 01:10:00.560
like Cheney said, they meant it.
1396
01:10:00.560 --> 01:10:02.060
And that, that did change.
1397
01:10:02.060 --> 01:10:05.820
And it changed in ways that we never expected
1398
01:10:05.820 --> 01:10:07.873
that could happen in a country like this.
1399
01:10:11.260 --> 01:10:13.330
I also don't think that this is permanent,
1400
01:10:13.330 --> 01:10:14.853
I hope it's not permanent.
1401
01:10:17.930 --> 01:10:21.153
I think we can go back to being,
1402
01:10:23.230 --> 01:10:25.640
I'm not going to say that the United States is an example
1403
01:10:25.640 --> 01:10:27.010
to the world or anything like that,
1404
01:10:27.010 --> 01:10:28.560
I think there are countries that have better
1405
01:10:28.560 --> 01:10:30.930
human rights records completely aside
1406
01:10:30.930 --> 01:10:34.510
from the war on terror than the United States.
1407
01:10:34.510 --> 01:10:36.270
But there are some things that were
1408
01:10:36.270 --> 01:10:39.000
when I came to this country unthinkable
1409
01:10:39.000 --> 01:10:43.510
and hopefully they'll become unthinkable
1410
01:10:45.060 --> 01:10:46.483
not too far from now.
1411
01:10:48.050 --> 01:10:49.920
When we spoke to some detainees,
1412
01:10:49.920 --> 01:10:54.280
they said that when the US first captured them or held them
1413
01:10:54.280 --> 01:10:56.730
they were delighted because
1414
01:10:56.730 --> 01:10:59.120
they felt the US would treat them well.
1415
01:10:59.120 --> 01:11:01.040
And they had a very different image of the US
1416
01:11:01.040 --> 01:11:04.260
to the experience they then had in Guantanamo.
1417
01:11:04.260 --> 01:11:06.460
So did you, as you travel around the world,
1418
01:11:06.460 --> 01:11:07.740
did you pick that up too?
1419
01:11:07.740 --> 01:11:11.320
That people thought the us was better than
1420
01:11:11.320 --> 01:11:12.930
what you're describing?
1421
01:11:12.930 --> 01:11:16.310
Yeah. I mean, not in those precise words
1422
01:11:16.310 --> 01:11:18.310
nobody ever told me that they.
1423
01:11:18.310 --> 01:11:21.210
And besides remember, I became the special rapporteur 2010
1424
01:11:22.770 --> 01:11:24.890
when not too many countries around the world
1425
01:11:24.890 --> 01:11:28.820
had any illusions about the United States being a paradigm
1426
01:11:28.820 --> 01:11:30.420
anymore.
Right.
1427
01:11:32.510 --> 01:11:35.140
I guess, I don't have that much more
1428
01:11:35.140 --> 01:11:36.490
unless you want to talk about,
1429
01:11:36.490 --> 01:11:38.220
and it's not really part of this project
1430
01:11:38.220 --> 01:11:39.740
but if you feel you'd like to add something
1431
01:11:39.740 --> 01:11:44.740
about the black sites just to give a perspective on
1432
01:11:45.477 --> 01:11:47.970
and all that's happened post 911,
1433
01:11:47.970 --> 01:11:50.120
it might be worth something for this...
1434
01:11:50.120 --> 01:11:51.400
Yeah.
1435
01:11:51.400 --> 01:11:52.603
Well,
1436
01:11:52.603 --> 01:11:54.527
I think it's related because many people
1437
01:11:54.527 --> 01:11:57.460
who were in black sites were later brought to Guantanamo
1438
01:11:57.460 --> 01:11:59.770
and sometimes we're taken off Guantanamo,
1439
01:11:59.770 --> 01:12:02.153
taken to black sites and brought back.
1440
01:12:03.420 --> 01:12:04.463
I think the,
1441
01:12:07.380 --> 01:12:08.980
my predecessors,
1442
01:12:08.980 --> 01:12:10.550
my predecessor
1443
01:12:10.550 --> 01:12:11.800
and several other
1444
01:12:14.060 --> 01:12:15.140
special procedures
1445
01:12:15.140 --> 01:12:18.110
or special rapporteur on counter terrorism,
1446
01:12:18.110 --> 01:12:20.373
on human rights during counter terrorism,
1447
01:12:21.243 --> 01:12:23.050
and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
1448
01:12:23.050 --> 01:12:25.510
and the Working Group on Disappearances,
1449
01:12:25.510 --> 01:12:28.520
they conducted or commissioned actually
1450
01:12:28.520 --> 01:12:32.160
a study of detention policies around the world
1451
01:12:32.160 --> 01:12:35.113
that was very revealing, very significant.
1452
01:12:37.254 --> 01:12:38.087
And that, you know,
1453
01:12:38.087 --> 01:12:41.060
later we have tried to
1454
01:12:41.060 --> 01:12:44.000
update it and follow up on it
1455
01:12:44.000 --> 01:12:47.533
but we're not getting cooperation from any states.
1456
01:12:48.989 --> 01:12:51.370
We get trying to get information
1457
01:12:51.370 --> 01:12:54.320
to see if we can update it and see what has happened since.
1458
01:12:55.640 --> 01:12:59.260
But the UN Commission report is really very good.
1459
01:12:59.260 --> 01:13:00.710
Very well done.
1460
01:13:00.710 --> 01:13:04.210
But there's also others and for example,
1461
01:13:04.210 --> 01:13:07.920
Open Society Justice Initiative has a
1462
01:13:07.920 --> 01:13:11.310
report that mentioned something like 54 countries
1463
01:13:11.310 --> 01:13:16.120
around the world cooperating with extraordinary renditions.
1464
01:13:16.120 --> 01:13:18.503
And of course the degrees of cooperation vary.
1465
01:13:19.480 --> 01:13:22.850
For example, some land facilities like in Poland or
1466
01:13:24.180 --> 01:13:28.740
so others allowed planes to use their airspace
1467
01:13:28.740 --> 01:13:31.880
or their landing facilities
1468
01:13:33.130 --> 01:13:35.130
knowing that they carried.
1469
01:13:35.130 --> 01:13:40.130
And also deleting records to, you know, not to leave traces.
1470
01:13:42.620 --> 01:13:44.980
The European Court on Human Rights has already issued
1471
01:13:44.980 --> 01:13:47.410
two or three decisions,
1472
01:13:47.410 --> 01:13:52.410
final decisions against countries like Macedonia
1473
01:13:52.580 --> 01:13:53.760
and Poland
1474
01:13:55.210 --> 01:14:00.210
on cases of people who are one of them is in Guantanamo now.
1475
01:14:01.970 --> 01:14:05.580
And was tortured in Poland by CIA agents.
1476
01:14:05.580 --> 01:14:08.820
So yes, we are learning a lot.
1477
01:14:08.820 --> 01:14:12.850
We learning also about the methods of torture
1478
01:14:15.090 --> 01:14:17.710
but unfortunately we don't have much cooperation
1479
01:14:17.710 --> 01:14:22.710
in the sense of truth telling by the United States.
1480
01:14:23.740 --> 01:14:26.470
Because other than those two
1481
01:14:26.470 --> 01:14:29.210
Senate committee reports that I mentioned,
1482
01:14:29.210 --> 01:14:33.123
and the second one heavily redacted and a summary,
1483
01:14:34.470 --> 01:14:37.360
the United States has not come clean
1484
01:14:37.360 --> 01:14:40.363
on the extent of torture.
1485
01:14:42.950 --> 01:14:46.910
And you know, the extent of torture is one aspect,
1486
01:14:46.910 --> 01:14:50.120
but the international standard is very clear
1487
01:14:50.120 --> 01:14:53.050
that the state is not only is responsible
1488
01:14:53.050 --> 01:14:55.370
for telling the truth about what happened.
1489
01:14:55.370 --> 01:14:57.270
and of course, I mean the whole truth,
1490
01:14:58.170 --> 01:15:02.220
but also for prosecuting those who may be responsible.
1491
01:15:02.220 --> 01:15:04.430
And they're the standard, I mean,
1492
01:15:04.430 --> 01:15:07.090
the official position of the United States right now
1493
01:15:08.020 --> 01:15:11.640
is that they are not providing an amnesty or a pardon
1494
01:15:13.098 --> 01:15:17.890
but so supposedly possibilities of prosecution are open.
1495
01:15:17.890 --> 01:15:21.790
But in fact, the Durham Inquiry
1496
01:15:21.790 --> 01:15:25.520
the special prosecutor that was appointed to look into it
1497
01:15:25.520 --> 01:15:27.610
ended up in a slap in the wrist
1498
01:15:27.610 --> 01:15:29.600
saying that it was wrong too bad
1499
01:15:29.600 --> 01:15:32.053
but not recommending any prosecution.
1500
01:15:33.300 --> 01:15:35.100
And the reason that
1501
01:15:35.100 --> 01:15:37.620
the official reason on the Department of Justice
1502
01:15:37.620 --> 01:15:40.820
has decided not to prosecute any of the cases that are now
1503
01:15:40.820 --> 01:15:41.800
pretty well known
1504
01:15:43.040 --> 01:15:45.687
is because they take the,
1505
01:15:45.687 --> 01:15:49.910
and they do it in a categorical basis that
1506
01:15:49.910 --> 01:15:54.860
anyway anybody who committed torture in those circumstances
1507
01:15:54.860 --> 01:15:58.030
was under the mistaken impression that it was legal,
1508
01:15:58.030 --> 01:16:00.003
because of the so-called torture memos.
1509
01:16:01.080 --> 01:16:03.950
Torture memos were withdrawn even by the Bush administration
1510
01:16:03.950 --> 01:16:05.150
when they were leaked.
1511
01:16:05.150 --> 01:16:08.700
I mean, and at the same time there were a memo.
1512
01:16:08.700 --> 01:16:10.510
I mean, that's not legal advice.
1513
01:16:10.510 --> 01:16:14.910
And that even legal advice that is clearly illegal
1514
01:16:14.910 --> 01:16:17.790
doesn't exempt you from responsibility.
1515
01:16:17.790 --> 01:16:20.770
So, I think the United States is failing
1516
01:16:20.770 --> 01:16:24.030
its international obligation to investigate, prosecuted
1517
01:16:24.030 --> 01:16:26.003
and punished every case of torture,
1518
01:16:27.010 --> 01:16:30.630
with this policy of looking forward and not looking back.
1519
01:16:30.630 --> 01:16:32.880
I do give credit to President Obama
1520
01:16:32.880 --> 01:16:35.393
for apparently putting a stop to torture.
1521
01:16:37.310 --> 01:16:38.470
Because for all I know
1522
01:16:38.470 --> 01:16:40.770
during the years of the Bush administration
1523
01:16:40.770 --> 01:16:44.630
we did know that, you know, maybe 50 cases or so
1524
01:16:44.630 --> 01:16:45.640
of people who were
1525
01:16:48.122 --> 01:16:50.770
given to other countries in extraordinary renditions
1526
01:16:50.770 --> 01:16:53.200
or taken to black sites.
1527
01:16:53.200 --> 01:16:57.170
And since 2009, we don't know if new cases.
1528
01:16:57.170 --> 01:17:02.170
So hopefully that prohibition is firm and holding.
1529
01:17:02.780 --> 01:17:05.730
But you never know because there's also secret
1530
01:17:05.730 --> 01:17:08.213
that there could be just getting better at it.
1531
01:17:09.649 --> 01:17:12.180
And while the United States refuses to come clean
1532
01:17:12.180 --> 01:17:15.970
and to prosecute where the prosecution is warranted,
1533
01:17:15.970 --> 01:17:17.270
there will always be suspicion.
1534
01:17:17.270 --> 01:17:19.530
You know, that there's much more behind the surf
1535
01:17:19.530 --> 01:17:21.650
than beyond the surface.
1536
01:17:21.650 --> 01:17:22.610
Well, how common is it
1537
01:17:22.610 --> 01:17:24.820
for countries to come clean?
1538
01:17:24.820 --> 01:17:26.060
No, it's not coming at all.
1539
01:17:26.060 --> 01:17:26.903
No. I mean,
1540
01:17:28.090 --> 01:17:31.930
countries come clean when their civil society insist a lot,
1541
01:17:31.930 --> 01:17:35.220
when their embarrassment before the community of nations
1542
01:17:35.220 --> 01:17:38.950
is such that they need to do something to show good faith.
1543
01:17:38.950 --> 01:17:41.660
And that of course means that some countries are,
1544
01:17:41.660 --> 01:17:46.140
you know, more isolated from that kind of pressure
1545
01:17:46.140 --> 01:17:47.610
than others.
1546
01:17:47.610 --> 01:17:50.180
So, yes, it's hard to say but powerful countries
1547
01:17:50.180 --> 01:17:52.800
can get away with violating international law
1548
01:17:52.800 --> 01:17:54.333
and poor countries cannot.
1549
01:17:56.140 --> 01:17:59.440
Well, when you said the US is obligated,
1550
01:17:59.440 --> 01:18:01.340
did you say the US is obligated to come clean
1551
01:18:01.340 --> 01:18:03.320
or to prosecute these people?
1552
01:18:03.320 --> 01:18:04.440
Both.
1553
01:18:04.440 --> 01:18:05.950
Under what laws?
1554
01:18:05.950 --> 01:18:07.500
Under the Convention Against Torture.
1555
01:18:07.500 --> 01:18:08.870
The Convention Against Torture
1556
01:18:08.870 --> 01:18:11.470
that the US has signed and ratified
1557
01:18:11.470 --> 01:18:14.880
says very clearly that every instance of torture
1558
01:18:14.880 --> 01:18:16.460
has to be investigated,
1559
01:18:16.460 --> 01:18:21.460
and investigated means publicly disseminated the results,
1560
01:18:21.800 --> 01:18:23.243
but also prosecuted.
1561
01:18:25.828 --> 01:18:26.979
So, yeah...
1562
01:18:26.979 --> 01:18:28.352
How does the US respond to that?
1563
01:18:28.352 --> 01:18:29.185
I'm sorry.
1564
01:18:29.185 --> 01:18:31.237
How does the US respond to that?
1565
01:18:33.640 --> 01:18:36.880
As I said, the official position is that, you know
1566
01:18:36.880 --> 01:18:39.020
if they ever get a good case and prosecuted
1567
01:18:39.020 --> 01:18:40.510
or something like that,
1568
01:18:40.510 --> 01:18:43.190
but that the cases that they have so far
1569
01:18:43.190 --> 01:18:48.180
are protected by this sense that people cannot be prosecuted
1570
01:18:48.180 --> 01:18:51.340
because they thought they were doing the right thing.
1571
01:18:51.340 --> 01:18:52.590
Which is pretty preposterous.
1572
01:18:52.590 --> 01:18:56.070
Because if that's a factual circumstance
1573
01:18:56.070 --> 01:18:59.310
it should be adjudicated by a jury or or by a judge,
1574
01:18:59.310 --> 01:19:02.110
but not by the Department of Justice
1575
01:19:02.110 --> 01:19:04.223
on a categorical basis for everyone.
1576
01:19:07.500 --> 01:19:08.990
Going forward, do you think Guantanamo
1577
01:19:08.990 --> 01:19:11.780
will close under the next administration?
1578
01:19:11.780 --> 01:19:12.613
Well, I hope so.
1579
01:19:12.613 --> 01:19:15.190
I mean, I had hopes that it would close
1580
01:19:15.190 --> 01:19:16.870
under this administration but
1581
01:19:18.170 --> 01:19:19.113
I think,
1582
01:19:21.150 --> 01:19:23.790
you know, no matter who wins the election
1583
01:19:25.580 --> 01:19:28.030
it's going to be difficult to use Guantanamo again
1584
01:19:28.030 --> 01:19:31.913
it's such a stain in the reputation of the United States.
1585
01:19:32.880 --> 01:19:36.990
It complicates it's relations with even the most friendly
1586
01:19:36.990 --> 01:19:40.700
of its allies in so many ways that
1587
01:19:43.687 --> 01:19:47.260
any administration would have to say,
1588
01:19:47.260 --> 01:19:50.130
you know, we have to find some other way.
1589
01:19:50.130 --> 01:19:53.080
It doesn't mean that torture will never be used again
1590
01:19:53.080 --> 01:19:55.540
it doesn't mean that some forms of
1591
01:19:57.250 --> 01:19:59.800
arbitrary detention will be used,
1592
01:19:59.800 --> 01:20:03.760
but President Obama is quite right in saying that
1593
01:20:03.760 --> 01:20:07.330
Guantanamo has become a symbol and a symbol that doesn't
1594
01:20:07.330 --> 01:20:09.310
do any favors to the United States.
1595
01:20:09.310 --> 01:20:14.310
So, my sense is that it'll close down.
1596
01:20:16.580 --> 01:20:18.980
One would hope that it would be a less
1597
01:20:20.740 --> 01:20:22.340
prolonged death
1598
01:20:23.550 --> 01:20:27.240
but I don't think it will be used as extensively at least
1599
01:20:27.240 --> 01:20:28.430
in the future.
1600
01:20:28.430 --> 01:20:30.180
I might have had much more, Juan,
1601
01:20:30.180 --> 01:20:31.013
we are almost finished,
1602
01:20:31.013 --> 01:20:32.780
but I just wanted to go back to something
1603
01:20:32.780 --> 01:20:34.450
that I brought up before.
1604
01:20:34.450 --> 01:20:36.090
The psychological torture,
1605
01:20:36.090 --> 01:20:37.820
do you think looking forward to,
1606
01:20:37.820 --> 01:20:39.230
so looking forward do you think
1607
01:20:39.230 --> 01:20:41.470
that's going to be more common?
1608
01:20:41.470 --> 01:20:43.250
The isolation and solitary confinement
1609
01:20:43.250 --> 01:20:45.670
as opposed to the physical or will they both be
1610
01:20:46.800 --> 01:20:51.404
present in the way countries behave, in the way US behaves?
1611
01:20:51.404 --> 01:20:55.170
All right, I think we're getting a little more awareness
1612
01:20:56.340 --> 01:20:59.803
that solitary confinement is a form of mistreatment.
1613
01:21:01.350 --> 01:21:03.360
Under, you know, prolonged and
1614
01:21:03.360 --> 01:21:05.603
or indefinite solitary confinement.
1615
01:21:08.620 --> 01:21:10.523
It's something that kind of,
1616
01:21:12.690 --> 01:21:14.970
you know, we weren't aware of
1617
01:21:14.970 --> 01:21:19.780
and it was done increasingly in larger and larger numbers.
1618
01:21:19.780 --> 01:21:23.360
And it is a phenomenon that I think is growing
1619
01:21:23.360 --> 01:21:24.620
in other countries as well.
1620
01:21:24.620 --> 01:21:27.483
But also in those other countries there is,
1621
01:21:29.000 --> 01:21:31.010
just like in the United States,
1622
01:21:31.010 --> 01:21:33.613
a move to reflect on it and think about it.
1623
01:21:35.620 --> 01:21:39.090
Are we on the right path here or not?
1624
01:21:39.090 --> 01:21:42.020
And I think in this country especially
1625
01:21:42.020 --> 01:21:45.360
the president himself brought attention to it and, you know,
1626
01:21:45.360 --> 01:21:49.170
visited a prison himself for the first time ever.
1627
01:21:49.170 --> 01:21:51.130
Two justices of the Supreme Court
1628
01:21:51.130 --> 01:21:53.560
have expressed doubts about solitary confinement
1629
01:21:53.560 --> 01:21:55.283
in different cases.
1630
01:21:56.120 --> 01:21:59.200
And there's being congressional hearings.
1631
01:21:59.200 --> 01:22:02.310
There are directors of corrections in many states
1632
01:22:02.310 --> 01:22:07.310
who vocally advocate against solitary confinement.
1633
01:22:07.550 --> 01:22:09.363
So, I think we're getting somewhere.
1634
01:22:10.380 --> 01:22:13.430
I don't think we're going to get a wholesale prohibition,
1635
01:22:13.430 --> 01:22:16.400
I think it's going to be a piecemeal approach.
1636
01:22:16.400 --> 01:22:17.390
But I think
1637
01:22:20.590 --> 01:22:23.230
the days in which these things happen
1638
01:22:23.230 --> 01:22:28.210
because we didn't know about them are gone.
1639
01:22:28.210 --> 01:22:30.720
And so I think from now on we'll have
1640
01:22:30.720 --> 01:22:33.110
hopefully a steady pace towards
1641
01:22:33.110 --> 01:22:36.903
abolition of prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement.
1642
01:22:38.340 --> 01:22:40.120
It's happening in other countries as well.
1643
01:22:40.120 --> 01:22:41.610
For example, in Brazil there
1644
01:22:41.610 --> 01:22:46.610
the Supreme Court has under advisement hasn't ruled on it,
1645
01:22:47.490 --> 01:22:50.560
a challenge to the regulations of solitary confinement
1646
01:22:50.560 --> 01:22:53.460
that exist in their books.
1647
01:22:53.460 --> 01:22:57.990
In Canada, I'm acting as expert witness in two cases
1648
01:22:57.990 --> 01:23:02.053
again challenging solitary confinement in Canada.
1649
01:23:03.210 --> 01:23:04.143
So,
1650
01:23:05.360 --> 01:23:07.420
well in Japan actually,
1651
01:23:07.420 --> 01:23:12.410
recently a woman was released after 20 years in prison
1652
01:23:12.410 --> 01:23:15.160
because he had confessed to killing her daughter.
1653
01:23:15.160 --> 01:23:17.200
And it turns out she hadn't.
1654
01:23:17.200 --> 01:23:19.660
And she only confessed because
1655
01:23:19.660 --> 01:23:22.570
it was the only way for her to leave
1656
01:23:22.570 --> 01:23:25.343
this maddening situation of solitary confinement.
1657
01:23:27.000 --> 01:23:28.763
And so, as a result of that,
1658
01:23:29.640 --> 01:23:33.270
Japanese courts are reviewing many cases
1659
01:23:33.270 --> 01:23:35.170
in which solitary confinement was used
1660
01:23:35.170 --> 01:23:36.803
as a tool of interrogation.
1661
01:23:38.690 --> 01:23:40.540
So I think we have some movement
1662
01:23:40.540 --> 01:23:42.140
in different parts of the world.
1663
01:23:45.240 --> 01:23:46.550
Is there something I didn't ask you
1664
01:23:46.550 --> 01:23:49.440
that you thought about before you came that you just...
1665
01:23:49.440 --> 01:23:51.570
No, not that I can think of.
1666
01:23:51.570 --> 01:23:53.450
Not that I can think of.
1667
01:23:53.450 --> 01:23:55.650
Well, the last thing, and then I think we're done is,
1668
01:23:55.650 --> 01:23:57.853
does UN interface with the ICRC
1669
01:23:57.853 --> 01:24:00.310
does he get to see the ICRC reports
1670
01:24:00.310 --> 01:24:03.390
and can use it in its own work?
1671
01:24:03.390 --> 01:24:05.003
The UN or the US?
UN.
1672
01:24:05.930 --> 01:24:09.060
Well, as you know the ICRC reports are confidential
1673
01:24:09.060 --> 01:24:10.683
to the states and invite them.
1674
01:24:12.004 --> 01:24:13.500
They
1675
01:24:13.500 --> 01:24:16.430
occasionally published reports where
1676
01:24:16.430 --> 01:24:20.800
if, for example, the relevant state misrepresents
1677
01:24:20.800 --> 01:24:21.873
what they told them.
1678
01:24:22.840 --> 01:24:27.840
Or aspects of reports, if they feel that they need to
1679
01:24:28.700 --> 01:24:31.760
you know, that they've discovered something really bad
1680
01:24:31.760 --> 01:24:33.960
and they need to put pressure on the states.
1681
01:24:35.920 --> 01:24:36.790
Otherwise no.
1682
01:24:36.790 --> 01:24:38.140
I mean their confidential means
1683
01:24:38.140 --> 01:24:39.961
confidential for the UN as well.
1684
01:24:39.961 --> 01:24:41.050
You can have access to them...
1685
01:24:41.050 --> 01:24:42.593
No, no, no.
1686
01:24:44.970 --> 01:24:47.340
Well, I think unless there's nothing else
1687
01:24:47.340 --> 01:24:50.250
I think it was a wonderful interview.
1688
01:24:50.250 --> 01:24:54.510
So we need 20 seconds of our room tone before we can end it.
1689
01:24:54.510 --> 01:24:56.576
And Johnny's going to do that and then we can end it.
1690
01:24:56.576 --> 01:24:57.409
Sure.
1691
01:24:58.560 --> 01:24:59.773
We go room tone.