Padmanabhan, Vijay - short clip - DetaineeIdentificationProblems

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-	I think that the administration may have been	0:00
	on solid ground in sort of generally deciding	0:02
	this group of people are unlawful enemy combatants	0:05
	because they don't fight for a state.	0:07
	They don't follow the laws and customs of war.	0:10
	They don't carry their arms openly.	0:12
	They engage in perfidy.	0:13
	They target civilians.	0:15
	They do things that we don't think	0:16
	of lawful combatants as doing, right?	0:17
	But so I don't think that	0:20
	that was the problem.	0:21
	I don't think it was that	0:23
	there was more process that was needed	0:24
	to distinguish between lawful and unlawful combatant.	0:25
	The problem was some were not combatants	0:27
	and some were combatants.	0:30
	So we had to figure out	0:31
	who are the people here that actually took	0:32
	up arms and were fighting	0:34
	or were organizing financing for Al-Qaeda,	0:35
	whatever it was that these people were up to,	0:37
	and who were people who were	0:39
	in the wrong place at the wrong time.	0:40
	There's a greater risk of misidentification	0:42
	with respect to these people,	0:44
	one.	0:46
	And two, once we made the decision not to grant them	0:46
	POW status, which I think is legally defensible,	0:49
	but it has a pernicious policy effect, which is	0:52
	that these people aren't going to say, admit	0:54
	I'm a combatant.	0:58
	No, traditionally part of the reason why there's no	0:58
	identification problem is because people	1:01
	say I'm a combatant because they want to get	1:03
	the POW privilege and they don't want to be prosecuted	1:05
	for shooting on the battlefield.	1:08
	When we're not giving these people POW privileges,	1:10
	their incentive to be honest about who they are is reduced.	1:12
	So everybody says I was a farmer.	1:17
	I was a sheepherder.	1:19
	I was, you know, they're not all gonna say that, right?	1:20
	And so, we have to have a process to be able	1:22
	to determine who was really the sheepherder	1:25
	and who was really the soldier.	1:28
	And last thing I'll say is, you know,	1:30
	process is not perfect.	1:32
	You know, the government during the Bush administration,	1:34
	we had our process in place.	1:36
	And that process resulted in releasing people	1:38
	who turned out to be dangerous terrorists.	1:40
	Somebody blew himself,	1:42
	two people blew themselves up in a market in Mosul	1:43
	after being returned to Kuwait.	1:45
	An individual who got a very high position	1:48
	in Al-Qaeda in Yemen,	1:50
	who subsequently was involved	1:53
	in the cartridge bomber, cartridge printer bomber plot,	1:55
	was at Guantanamo Bay at one point.	2:00
	And federal courts have made mistakes as well.	2:02
	It's just, you know, it's a human process.	2:04
	So, there are going to be mistakes made,	2:06
	but there's no way of avoiding process.	2:08

Item Info

Title:

Padmanabhan, Vijay - short clip - DetaineeIdentificationProblems

Date:

April 14, 2012

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Padmanabhan, Vijay

Role:

Government

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
State Dept. Chief Counsel
Vijay Padmanabhan, male, age 34, worked in the U.S. State Department (2003-2008) as lead counsel on law of war litigation, collaborated with the Justice Department on Supreme Court cases, and led an inter-agency policy coordination committee on U.S. detention policy in the conflict with al Qaida.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

United States

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

1:25:23

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

Unless otherwise noted, copyright is held by Peter Hongisberg. Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, you are free to use and share these materials subject to the following conditions: You must attribute Peter Hongisberg as the rights holder. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. You may not distribute any modifications to the materials. For other uses, including commercial uses, please contact Rubenstein Library at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/ask.

Identifier:

89ff763805e9a6ddf72b645c332efc92
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r4028wz5h
1e9d4fb3-0c22-4581-a72e-39c43c112bcc

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Padmanabhan, Vijay - short clip - DetaineeIdentificationProblems

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