Dixon, J. Wells - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

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Good afternoon.

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Good afternoon.

Interviewer

We're really 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 and involvement

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with detainees and others involving Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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We are hoping to provide you an opportunity

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to tell your story in your own words

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and we're creating an archive of stories

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so that people in America and around the world

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will have a better opportunity to understand what happened.

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Hopefully your experiences will help us understand that.

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Future generations must know what happened

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in Guantanamo and by telling your story,

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you're contributing to (indistinct).

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So we appreciate your willingness to speak with us today

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and if there's any time you wanna take a break,

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let us know

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and if you do say something that you would like to remove,

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we can remove it if you tell us.

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Good to know, okay.

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Yeah.

We'd like to begin with just some basic information

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like your name and hometown and birthday and age

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and why don't we start with that?

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Sure, so my full name is Jonathan Wells Dixon,

1:15

although everyone calls me Wells.

1:18

I am 42 years old, was born in October 1971.

1:20

My hometown is West Hartford, Connecticut

1:26

although I've lived a number of different places.

1:28

My father was in the army for several years

1:31

and so in Germany and Pittsburgh

1:33

and I actually was born in San Francisco,

1:36

so California native.

1:38

Interviewer

Where do you live now?

1:42

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Right now, I live in Fairfield, Connecticut

1:43

which is just outside of New York City.

1:45

Interviewer

Can you tell us

1:48

a little about your education

1:49

and then about your work background as well?

1:50

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Sure, I went to the Loomis Chaffee School

1:52

which is a boarding school in Connecticut

1:55

and graduated from there in 1989.

1:57

I went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,

2:01

graduated in 1993.

2:04

Then I worked for about three and a half years

2:08

as a bond underwriter, so in finance and insurance

2:11

in Baltimore and also in Denver, Colorado

2:15

and then went to law school

2:18

at the University of Colorado, graduated in 1999.

2:20

After that, I did a two-year clerkship for a federal judge

2:25

in Connecticut, Judge Christopher Droney,

2:30

who is now on the second circuit here in New York

2:33

and after clerking for Judge Droney,

2:37

I went to work for Gary Naftalis

2:40

who is a well-known lawyer here in New York City

2:43

at the law firm, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel.

2:49

It's a big New York City law firm and he works there.

2:52

My specialty there was white collar criminal defense

2:56

and securities litigation

2:59

and I worked there for a number of years

3:01

and ultimately joined the Center for Constitutional Rights.

3:03

Interviewer

You chose how that happened?

3:06

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Sure, the Center for Constitutional Rights

3:08

is the nonprofit legal organization that really spearheaded

3:12

or began the Guantanamo Litigation.

3:17

CCR, as we refer to the center

3:20

represented the first detainees, that is they filed

3:25

the first cases in U.S courts

3:27

challenging the detention of men held at Guantanamo

3:30

and litigated those cases really between February, 2002

3:33

which is right after the first men arrived at Guantanamo

3:41

and 2004.

3:44

The case went up to the Supreme Court of the United States

3:46

which held in a case called Rasul v. Bush,

3:49

which was litigated by CCR that the men in Guantanamo

3:53

do in fact have the right to challenge their detention

3:55

at Guantanamo because this is something

3:58

that the government had contested for several years

3:59

but the Supreme Court said, no, the men have the right

4:03

to get inside the courthouse door

4:05

and more importantly, that lawyers for these men

4:07

have the right to go to Guantanamo

4:11

to meet the people who are held there.

4:13

That really opened up Guantanamo in many ways.

4:17

Guantanamo was created and designed

4:22

to be a place entirely outside the law.

4:25

I mean, as others have commented, it really was based

4:28

on three principles.

4:34

One was total secrecy from the outside world,

4:35

one was a complete isolation from the outside world

4:38

and the third was total dependency.

4:42

It was an environment in which the detainees

4:45

were completely reliant on their captors,

4:47

on their interrogators for everything

4:51

from the most basic human needs, food, shelter

4:53

to so-called luxuries, which could range

4:59

from everything from toilet paper and toothpaste

5:02

to receiving a letter from home.

5:04

Rasul was a really important case

5:10

because it broke that cycle.

5:12

It really brought a little bit of daylight to Guantanamo

5:15

and lawyers from the center,

5:17

specifically, one of my colleagues, Gita Gutierrez

5:21

was able to go to Guantanamo for the first time in 2004.

5:24

It was a remarkable experience for her in the sense

5:29

that she got to, not only meet her clients

5:33

for the first time, but was able to really start to learn

5:37

who was detained and why they were detained

5:41

and what had happened to them.

5:43

It created a need for lawyers.

5:53

Every time she would show up to a meeting,

5:57

the detainee or the person she was meeting with would say,

5:59

"There are all these other people in the cells near me

6:03

who wanna have lawyers.

6:06

Can you get people to represent them?"

6:07

Or family members of these men would contact us

6:08

from the four corners of the world saying,

6:12

"Can you help my son?"

6:15

"Can you help my husband?"

6:17

To make a long story short, there became very quickly

6:20

a great need for lawyers to represent these men.

6:23

CCR couldn't do it by itself

6:28

and so CCR undertook this effort to recruit

6:30

and to train lawyers to represent men held at Guantanamo.

6:34

There was a big effort, especially in New York

6:39

and Washington but certainly not exclusively.

6:41

I mean, it was all throughout the country

6:42

to recruit law firms or solo practitioners or academics

6:45

or law students even.

6:50

So I was working at Kramer Levin and my law firm,

6:52

which had longstanding ties to CCR

6:56

was approached and was asked to represent a number of men

7:00

held at Guantanamo and that was something I wanted to do

7:03

as a young associate at the firm

7:08

and it was something the firm thought was important

7:10

and should be done and so that's how I became involved.

7:12

When I was in private practice,

7:17

I was recruited by CCR.

7:19

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What year was this?

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I'm trying to remember, it was the middle of 2005,

7:25

I believe and we, our firm agreed to do it

7:27

and we signed up and then that sort of set in motion

7:31

the process really, of getting approved

7:35

for the representation.

7:39

What I mean by that is in order to go to Guantanamo,

7:41

you have to have a security clearance

7:44

and so you have to go through a very long, complicated,

7:45

very invasive process to get a security clearance.

7:48

It's basically an FBI background check

7:51

where these FBI agents crawl through your background,

7:53

they talk to your friends, they talk to your family,

7:58

they talk to your former girlfriends,

8:00

they talk to friends of friends of friends,

8:02

they comb through your taxes, your financial records

8:04

and it's a very invasive process but it's necessary.

8:07

I mean, it's the only way to go to Guantanamo

8:09

is to have a clearance, to get a clearance,

8:13

to keep a clearance and so we had to go through that process

8:15

at Kramer Levin and it took a little while.

8:18

We filed our first case.

8:24

We then waited for our clearance to be approved

8:26

and didn't get to go to Guantanamo for the first time,

8:29

excuse me, until I think it was either the end of 2005

8:33

or early 2006, I don't remember

8:37

but it was around that time.

8:39

Interviewer

What expectations did you have

8:43

before you went to Guantanamo if you would call...

8:45

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If you think back to the aftermath of September 11th,

8:50

think back to what we were told by officials

8:53

from the U.S government, it was,

8:58

these men were the worst of the worst.

8:59

I think it was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time,

9:01

General Richard Meyers who said that these individuals

9:05

would chew through the hydraulic lines in a C-17,

9:09

which is a military cargo plane to bring it down

9:13

if given the opportunity.

9:18

I mean, these men were completely sort of (indistinct),

9:19

to think about it in retrospect if it weren't so tragic.

9:24

These men were vilified and really demonized in a way

9:29

that, they were dehumanized.

9:32

They were sort of portrayed as these mass murders,

9:38

these sort of superhuman evil doers,

9:41

to use a George Bush term.

9:44

That was one context.

9:50

On the other hand, we were asked to represent Uyghurs

9:51

who, I'd never heard of a Uyghur

9:57

to be completely honest with you.

10:00

In terms of popular culture references,

10:02

there aren't many Uyghurs.

10:05

Everyone's heard of Tibetans, everyone's heard of Sherpas,

10:08

very few people, at least I had not heard of Uyghurs.

10:12

So one of the things that we did

10:16

when we agreed to represent these men

10:20

is we did a lot of research.

10:22

We went to the Uyghur American Association in Washington

10:24

trying to learn as much as we could.

10:28

We talked to Uyghurs,

10:30

we talked to some other private lawyers at other firms,

10:32

Sabin Willett and Susan Baker Manning, I think at McCutchen

10:37

specifically who had already been to Guantanamo

10:41

and had met with some Uyghurs to really learn

10:44

sort of who these people were.

10:49

What is the culture, what is the background,

10:51

where are they from, what language do they speak?

10:53

Well, we knew none of these things.

10:54

I knew none of these things.

10:56

So we went through this very long process of trying to learn

10:57

and get as much background as we could

11:01

before we actually went to Guantanamo for the first time.

11:03

We wanted to be as prepared as we possibly could,

11:08

the way we would be prepared to represent any client

11:10

at the firm, from the largest investment banking client

11:14

to the Uyghurs.

11:18

Interviewer

Who's we?

11:22

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Well, there was a team of us at Kramer Levin

11:24

who were representing these men.

11:26

I think it was one or two partners

11:29

and about four or five associates and a paralegal.

11:32

Interviewer

That many were sent?

11:37

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Yeah, one of the associates who I should add eventually

11:38

and unrelatedly turned out to be my wife,

11:43

not as a result of the representation

11:47

but we just happened to meet--

11:49

Interviewer

Did she travel with you--

11:51

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She had been to Guantanamo.

11:52

Yeah, she's been to Guantanamo a couple of times.

11:53

She represented Ayub, who was one of the children

11:56

who was held in Guantanamo.

12:00

He was one of our first clients.

12:01

Interviewer

Before you went to Guantanamo,

12:06

what image did you have, having done your homework

12:08

and knowing the other side of who the Uyghurs were?

12:12

What did you expect to see?

12:16

What'd you expect to see in the detention center

12:18

as well as the clients?

12:20

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We were really sort of confounded

12:24

'cause we didn't know what to expect.

12:26

I mean, we have been told that all of these men

12:27

were the worst of the worst.

12:29

On the other hand, when we set out to sort of learn

12:30

about the Uyghurs, what we heard right away

12:33

was that the Uyghurs were pro-American, pro-democracy,

12:37

pro-capitalism and we we began to hear

12:42

from some of our other colleagues like Sabin and Susan

12:48

that the Uyghurs really weren't supposed

12:50

to be in Guantanamo, that these were people

12:53

who had been captured by mistake

12:56

and maybe shouldn't be there,

12:58

not that anybody should have been there

13:00

but that there had been acknowledgement

13:01

these men shouldn't be there.

13:04

We had, in the back of our minds, okay, well, wait a second.

13:06

They're the worst of the worst but maybe they're not,

13:09

maybe they're cleared.

13:14

It really didn't matter for us at Kramer Levin.

13:17

Kramer Levin was committed to taking these cases,

13:20

not withstanding who the men were,

13:22

not withstanding what the allegations were,

13:24

as a matter of principle and that principle was at its core

13:27

that everybody is entitled to the best representation,

13:31

which of course, was our firm

13:34

and that nobody should be held outside the law.

13:36

That was a principle that was fensive to me,

13:39

to my colleagues at Kramer Levin, to CCR

13:44

and really to the bar, generally,

13:47

not to say that it wasn't controversial.

13:51

Back in 2005, taking on the representation of any detainee

13:53

was something that was scrutinized and CCR to its credit

13:58

had done this at a time when it was very unpopular,

14:04

when nobody at Guantanamo was thought of as anything

14:08

but the worst of the worst.

14:12

By 2005, some of that still sort of lingered,

14:13

although the image, I think had began to soften somewhat

14:16

but nonetheless, it was something that had to be approved

14:19

by the executive committee of the firm

14:21

which was not an easy thing to accomplish

14:23

but ultimately it didn't matter.

14:26

Kramer Levin was committed to doing this,

14:27

they were committed to putting the full resources

14:29

of the firm behind this and to their credit, they did it

14:31

and they did it and they continued it long after I left,

14:34

long after my wife left

14:37

and really, until Kramer Levin's last client

14:40

was released to, I'm sorry to El Salvador in,

14:43

I think it was 2012 and really,

14:52

continued to provide representation and assistance

14:55

to a lot of our clients even after they were transferred.

14:58

The firm was full on.

15:04

They were in, they were committed and to their credit.

15:05

Interviewer

What were your impressions when you arrived?

15:11

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Well, Guantanamo, it's completely surreal.

15:15

I mean, by the time I finally went,

15:21

there was something that was known about Guantanamo,

15:23

something about the environment that was known,

15:27

allegations of torture and abuse had started to come out

15:30

more and more by the time I went there

15:36

and it was still a surreal experience.

15:40

I mean, I had spent time as a child in the military.

15:41

My father had been an army officer

15:48

for some years in Germany.

15:50

He served in the army in Germany.

15:55

He was a doctor, they'd been drafted for Vietnam,

15:56

sent to Germany so my brother and sister were born there.

15:59

I grew up on an army base and so I had some familiarity

16:03

with the military and I wasn't sort of intimidated,

16:06

it wasn't sort of an unknown world to me.

16:08

I think a member of my family had served

16:12

in every major war that this country had fought,

16:15

including the Civil War, First World War,

16:18

the Second World War, Vietnam so it wasn't an unknown world

16:20

but that's not to say that Guantanamo

16:26

wasn't an unknown world.

16:28

It was this completely surreal environment.

16:29

I mean, for one thing to go to Guantanamo,

16:31

you have to take a commercial flight, a regular airline.

16:36

You fly to Fort Lauderdale

16:40

and then you switch terminals

16:42

and you go to this tiny little charter plane

16:43

and you get on this plane that's got 10 seats,

16:47

at the time it had 10 seats, no bathroom,

16:50

held together literally,

16:54

I mean, literally by duct tape in some cases

16:55

and you fly three hours down around the tip of Cuba

17:00

and you literally fly and you land on this runway

17:05

that's right off the water,

17:10

you kinda fly in over the guard towers.

17:12

You get off the plane and you're met there by soldiers

17:16

with guns, machine guns and shotguns

17:21

and they have the canine dogs

17:25

so it was an intimidating environment.

17:29

On top of being completely surreal, it was intimidating

17:34

and it was designed to be that way.

17:38

The message was conveyed very clearly

17:44

that lawyers were not welcome there.

17:46

The Supreme of the United States may have said

17:48

that we were entitled as a matter of law to be there

17:50

but that's not to say that the military was accepting of us.

17:53

They weren't and that's something

17:55

that sort of manifested itself in many ways over many years.

17:57

Now when you fly into Guantanamo, it's sort of routine

18:04

and you're lucky if anybody shows up at the airport

18:06

to meet you but at the time it was quite intimidating

18:08

and add to that the physical environment.

18:13

I mean, here you are in the Caribbean

18:15

and you fly in over the Caribbean sea and you land

18:18

and you get out and it's 90 degrees outside, 90% humidity.

18:25

It weighs on you and you can cut the air with a knife and...

18:31

Interviewer

When you went to the detention center,

18:41

what did you observe the first time if you recall?

18:43

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Sure, well, everything we did at the time was,

18:46

we had no sort of flexibility or freedom.

18:50

Everything we did, we had minders, we had sailors

18:53

or soldiers whose role was to escort us everywhere.

18:57

By escort us, I mean basically guard us.

19:02

Everywhere we traveled, we traveled as a group.

19:05

They were with us.

19:07

The only time that we weren't under the thumb

19:08

was when we walked into the meeting room with a client.

19:15

My first meetings were in a camp called Echo,

19:19

which was basically a tiny little village of huts,

19:23

single cell huts that are smaller than this room

19:28

that we're in now and these sort of ramshackled, wooden huts

19:33

and a guard opens the door and you walk in

19:39

and there's your client sitting there chained to the floor,

19:43

ankle chained to the floor.

19:48

He doesn't know what to expect,

19:50

you don't know what to expect

19:51

and you sit down at the table and there you are.

19:54

Nobody knows what to expect.

20:03

The real challenge is to build rapport,

20:06

to forget about trying to learn anything about these guys

20:08

in the first meeting, they wanna know who you are.

20:14

They've been through so much, they've been tortured,

20:17

they've been abused, they've been interrogated

20:19

and so the real challenge was to establish

20:23

any kind of rapport with these men

20:30

and really what that required was it required

20:34

a lot of talking.

20:40

By talking, I mean me talking to them, explaining who I am,

20:42

where I'm from, what my background is, why I'm doing this

20:47

and it was always a question that these guys wanted to know,

20:50

"Why are you here helping me?

20:52

You're American, why are you here helping me

20:54

after everything I've been through

20:56

at the hands of the Americans?"

20:58

With Uyghurs, it was a little bit different

21:00

because the Uyghurs were very pro U.S and ironically,

21:01

when the Uyghurs were captured in Pakistan,

21:08

they thought that they had been saved

21:13

when they were turned over to the U.S.

21:15

They thought that they had been saved

21:16

because they were like, "The U.S has us.

21:18

They'll sort everything out, we're gonna be fine."

21:22

Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the case for them

21:29

and it was a great sort of disappointment for them.

21:31

That lingers in many respects to this day

21:36

even though the Uyghurs have all been released

21:38

but we spent a lot of time just talking to these guys.

21:42

Ahmed Adil was literally the first detainee

21:51

that I ever met at Guantanamo

21:55

and I remember just talking to him for maybe an hour

21:56

or two hours, I think before you even said anything

22:02

other than hello.

22:04

We relied very heavily on our interpreters to,

22:08

especially the Uyghurs interpreters

22:14

'cause it's such a small Uyghurs community

22:15

outside of East Turkestan, which is part of Western China.

22:17

There's such a small community outside of that area

22:21

that we really had to rely heavily on the interpreters,

22:24

the Uyghurs interpreters to help us

22:30

to sort of facilitate the relationship.

22:33

Trust is built over a long period of time

22:39

and so we spent a lot of time, we were there for a week

22:41

the very first time I went and we met

22:45

with three of the Uyghurs.

22:46

Interviewer

Did you get any resis...

22:50

Johnny

I'm sorry, I need to pause for just a second.

22:52

Interviewer

Did you get any resistance that you recall

22:56

during that first week from the military

22:58

while you were down there?

23:01

I mean, like you said, you felt they didn't want you there

23:02

but did they show it and demonstrate it in certain ways?

23:05

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I'm trying to remember back then.

23:13

The military at that time was not terribly welcoming of us,

23:17

not to say that they did anything

23:26

to obstruct us specifically but I remember an issue came up

23:28

with respect to the Uyghurs in the very first trip

23:34

and that was one of the very first things that we learned,

23:36

I would say within the first half an hour

23:41

of meeting with the very first client

23:43

was that the three Uyghurs,

23:46

the clients that we were there to see that week

23:47

had been determined by the U.S government

23:50

not to be enemy combatants.

23:53

These are people who went through

23:54

the Combatant Status Review Tribunal process

23:56

and were one of about maybe a dozen who,

23:59

out of all 800 or so men

24:03

who have ever been held at Guantanamo,

24:05

they were three of about a dozen who the military itself

24:08

decided were not enemy combatants.

24:12

That is, they were not connected in any way to Al-Qaeda

24:14

or the Taliban or any associated force.

24:19

They had been cleared and they were living at the time

24:21

in a camp called Camp Iguana, which is where the children

24:25

at Guantanamo had been held initially

24:30

and these are sort of what you think of as more traditional

24:34

prisoner of war barracks, kind of like Hogan's Heroes

24:39

where you have sort of an assortment of wooden buildings

24:41

and a garden that the prisoners had planted.

24:45

They lived there in Camp Iguana

24:49

and it became an issue right away

24:52

because first of all, nobody had told us

24:55

that these men have been determined

24:59

not to be enemy combatants.

25:02

This is information that had been affirmatively concealed

25:04

by the military and by the government

25:08

and concealed from the courts, in fact, for a long time

25:11

and so it raised a lot of issues,

25:17

it raised a lot of immediate issues,

25:21

one, which is the fact that our client had to be shackled.

25:22

We were there for a week and our client was shackled

25:25

the whole time, which was a major problem.

25:31

The other issue was that we were not allowed

25:38

to meet with our clients at Camp Iguana

25:40

and that was a major issue as well

25:43

because for one thing, some other counsel had,

25:48

for a very short period of time been able to meet

25:53

with their clients in Iguana.

25:54

Given that our clients were not enemy combatants,

25:58

we demanded the same right that was rejected.

26:00

More to the point, in order to get from their camp

26:05

down to where we were meeting with them,

26:08

they had to go through a very kind of invasive,

26:09

sort of abusive physical process of shackling

26:13

and blindfolding and all the rest

26:16

to which they objected understandably.

26:18

We said...

26:22

(Jonathan coughs)

Excuse me, wait a minute, these are not enemy combatants.

26:24

You have absolutely no reason to do this

26:26

but someone somewhere in the military chain of command

26:30

decided, no this isn't gonna happen and that's that.

26:35

Well, ultimately we were not able to meet with the men

26:40

that first week at Camp Iguana

26:42

but we were able to arrange for them to be unshackled.

26:45

That was sort of a mild success

26:49

but it's just sort of an illustration

26:50

of some of the problems we've had

26:52

that range from the petty and inconvenient

26:55

to the very serious issues that we've had with the military

26:58

over time, whether that's intentional interference

27:03

or part of the crushing bureaucracy of Guantanamo

27:06

and the military more generally, I don't know.

27:14

Interviewer

How did you find out

27:18

that they were not enemy combatants

27:19

if it was concealed?

27:21

-

They told us because the military had told them.

27:24

The military had just not told us

27:27

nor had they told the courts or anybody else.

27:28

Interviewer

So when you heard that information,

27:30

how did you respond to that?

27:33

-

Well, as I mentioned before

27:36

we had some sense that the Uyghurs

27:39

were sort of viewed differently, you might put it

27:41

from some of the other men who were held there

27:48

just by virtue of their culture and their background

27:52

but obviously, we were furious and quite upset

27:56

that these men had been determined

28:01

not to be enemy combatants years earlier

28:05

after Rasul was decided and another case

28:12

called Hamdi v. Rumsfeld when the CSRTs were set up.

28:14

It had been like two years earlier

28:17

and yet they were still detained at Guantanamo.

28:19

We immediately went to court on these issues

28:27

and the Uyghurs cases for better or worse

28:32

really were at a certain point consolidated

28:36

or coordinated, the legal cases.

28:40

I don't mean that officially

28:41

but we went to court to challenge the detention.

28:43

Our colleagues, Sabin Willett and Susan Baker Manning

28:49

went to court as well and they went to court

28:52

actually ahead of us because they had been down there first.

28:53

They went to court and they appeared

28:56

in front of a district court judge in Washington,

28:58

James Robertson who's now retired from the bench

29:01

who issued a decision that basically said

29:04

that detention is unlawful but there's no remedy.

29:08

In other words, he as a district judge

29:11

couldn't force the military to release them.

29:13

That went up to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals

29:16

and I remember because I was on a train,

29:20

I was on Metro North coming from Connecticut

29:25

back to New York and I received a call

29:27

from the justice department and I was informed

29:29

that my three clients who were not enemy combatants

29:34

and Sabin Willett's clients who were not enemy combatants

29:37

had been transferred to Albania.

29:40

This was on the eve, I mean, quite literally the eve

29:43

of oral argument before the DC Circuit.

29:46

The government mooted the case literally on the eve

29:50

of argument in Sabin's case in front of the DC Circuit

29:54

by transferring these men to Albania.

29:58

They did that, I think because they recognized,

30:03

the government did, that they were on thin legal grounds

30:05

with respect to the continuing detention of individuals

30:08

who are not considered by the military itself

30:11

to be enemy combatants.

30:14

Sort of interesting, I had the opportunity

30:17

sometime after that to meet Sali Berisha,

30:20

who was the president or the prime minister of Albania

30:23

who talked about how Albania had done the U.S

30:29

this great favor by taking our five clients.

30:33

He also told me at the time that Albania

30:38

would not be taking any more Uyghurs

30:45

because China had threatened, just as how he put it,

30:49

China had threatened Albania's national interests

30:52

in Kosovo over the Uyghurs but Albania had done this.

30:55

Albania has longstanding intelligence ties

31:05

to the United States but more than that,

31:11

Albania at the time, I believe if I recall correctly

31:14

was trying to gain membership either into NATO or the EU

31:16

or something like that

31:20

and it certainly appears from the outside

31:21

that there was some sort of quid pro quo

31:25

because not long after Albania took our clients,

31:26

the vice president at the time, Dick Cheney came out

31:30

and made public statements

31:34

favorable to Albanian's admission, I think it was to NATO.

31:36

Albania had done a favor for the U.S

31:44

and the U.S had done Albania a favor

31:45

but Albania suffered some consequence from China or so,

31:47

Sali Berisha said at the time.

31:53

Interviewer

Were you aware of China's pressure

31:55

on other countries at that early day

31:57

that China was pushing other countries not to take

32:00

(indistinct).

32:02

-

That was something that we learned pretty quickly

32:03

as a result of our representation.

32:07

We spent a lot of time talking to government officials

32:09

in Canada, for example because there's a large

32:13

Uyghur community in Canada, the Toronto area, specifically,

32:17

Germany, Australia and the Uyghur community in the U.S

32:22

so this is something we learned pretty quickly

32:26

and it was something that became clear

32:28

through the litigation because particularly,

32:30

some of the later cases where the government disclaimed

32:33

any desire to hold the Uyghurs but said,

32:36

we've tried every country in the world literally

32:40

and have not had success, tried every country

32:44

except for China, that is,

32:49

which would have killed these individuals.

32:51

Interviewer

What kind of threats did China have

32:54

on these other countries?

32:55

Was it trade or was it something else?

32:57

-

Well, obviously as private counsel for these men,

32:59

we're not privy to the diplomatic discussion,

33:04

certainly not between China and foreign countries

33:07

like Australia and certainly not between the U.S

33:11

and these countries but we had heard from time to time

33:14

about some of the conflicts in Canada, for example.

33:17

We had been working very hard

33:22

with the Uyghur Canadian Association

33:24

to try to get some of our clients,

33:29

who ultimately went to Palau.

33:32

We were trying to get them into Canada and I suspect

33:33

but I don't know that the U.S would have liked very much

33:38

for them to go to Canada, that didn't happen.

33:40

There was an incident at the time.

33:44

China arrested a Canadian citizen, a Uyghur Canadian citizen

33:46

named Hussein Shalil

33:51

who had been traveling in the area in, I think

33:53

Kurdistan or Kazakhstan or somewhere

33:56

in one of the so-called stans

33:58

and had been arrested and taken to China and imprisoned.

34:01

So this caused a diplomatic row between Canada and China

34:05

and I think had the ultimate effect

34:13

of preventing any sort of resettlement of our clients.

34:16

Interviewer

Do you think that was done for that reason?

34:23

-

I don't know if it was done for that reason

34:25

but I think it was a major factor in Canada's reluctance

34:26

to take our clients,

34:29

that is to draw any more negative attention.

34:30

With respect to Australia,

34:32

we had met with Australian officials here in New York

34:36

and there had been as we understood it, a commercial dispute

34:39

involving the Rio Tinto Mining Corporation

34:45

which is the largest mining corporation, I understand

34:48

in the world based in Australia.

34:49

There had been some dispute

34:53

about their involvement with mining in China

34:55

and so that was an issue.

34:58

Then with respect to Germany, we had always heard

35:00

that China had threatened Germany, which was very reliant

35:03

economically on trade with China

35:06

and so that had prevented the Germans.

35:09

There were a lot of factors that worked against the Uyghurs.

35:19

The U.S to its credit wouldn't send the Uyghurs

35:29

back to China.

35:32

We had heard a rumor in a number of places

35:32

that at one point, a Uyghur had been sent back to China.

35:38

I don't know whether that was from Guantanamo

35:42

or from Kandahar or somewhere else

35:43

but that the U.S had sent a Uyghur back

35:46

and that that person had been executed on the tarmac

35:49

in front of the U.S.

35:51

That was a rumor, we had never been able to substantiate it

35:54

but it was a rumor that had floated around.

35:58

We'd heard a number of times and--

36:02

Interviewer

You couldn't substantiate over the years?

36:06

-

It was a rumor that we kept hearing

36:08

in a variety of different places.

36:13

It was something that would come up.

36:15

Never able to substantiate it but I will say,

36:17

the U.S to its credit didn't send the Uyghurs back to China.

36:23

It was never an option.

36:27

Interviewer

Did China try to pressure the U.S

36:29

to send them back as far as you know?

36:30

-

China put tremendous pressure on the United States

36:32

and you can see this actually in connection

36:34

with the run-up to the war in Iraq

36:37

because at the time, prior to the U.S invasion of Iraq

36:40

really at the end of 2002.

36:47

Again, we're not privy to these discussions

36:51

but it sort of became clear through news accounts

36:54

and through talking to people

36:57

that the U.S was gonna go to the UN Security Council

36:58

to try to get a resolution to authorize

37:01

the invasion of Iraq and in order to do that,

37:04

the U.S needed to avoid a veto from the Chinese.

37:08

So if you piece the facts together,

37:14

there's sort of a picture that became sort of very clear

37:16

from the time, which was that in order to do that,

37:19

the U.S needed to deal with China

37:23

to try to help avoid a veto.

37:26

Richard Armitage, who was at the state department

37:30

as we understand at the time went to China

37:32

to try to deal with this and the upshot was

37:35

that the Chinese wanted a group

37:40

called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement to be designated

37:44

as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.

37:47

I'll just say at the outset, we, who were counsel

37:53

for the men who were held in Guantanamo were never convinced

37:56

that this organization actually ever existed,

37:59

except in the mind of the Chinese

38:00

but the allegation was that they were members

38:04

or affiliates of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement,

38:06

whether or not it actually existed, I don't know.

38:09

Nonetheless, the U.S agrees to designate

38:14

the East Turkestan Islamic Movement

38:16

as a foreign terrorist organization

38:18

and agrees to hold the men in Guantanamo as members

38:20

or suspected members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement

38:24

and the UN designates it.

38:28

This happens prior to the invasion of Iraq

38:31

and in connection with that, the U.S

38:36

let Chinese interrogators come to Guantanamo

38:38

and interrogate our clients.

38:42

This is before we ever had access to our clients

38:46

but they have told this story since many times

38:48

and were threatened by the Chinese, it was,

38:54

"You may not talk here in Guantanamo

38:57

but we'll send you back to Beijing,

38:59

where we have ways to make you talk," and they were serious.

39:02

That was crushing for the men in Guantanamo

39:07

because they had been told, "You're clear,

39:10

you're not enemy combatant.

39:13

U.S is gonna try to release you."

39:16

The interrogators had said, "The book is closed on you.

39:18

You're fine and you're not gonna go back to China."

39:21

Then lo and behold, the Chinese interrogators show up

39:24

and these men were devastated.

39:27

It was sort of like, we thought we were saved

39:29

when the U.S captured us,

39:33

I'm sorry, when the Pakistanis captured us

39:35

and turned us over to the U.S we were saved

39:37

'cause if they could have turned us over to China,

39:38

we would have been executed.

39:40

So we thought we were saved, we get brought to Guantanamo,

39:42

we get tortured and abused, you tell us we're cleared

39:44

and now you have the Chinese coming.

39:49

It was devastating for these men but that's--

39:51

Interviewer

Can you talk about families too?

39:57

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

39:59

Did the Chinese tell the Uyghurs

40:00

about their families in China?

40:02

Was there any...

40:04

-

I mean, a lot of the Uyghurs did have families in China.

40:06

Whether the Chinese threatened them or not, I don't know.

40:09

I mean, the threat was to the man.

40:13

It was, "You will be sent to Beijing

40:14

and we will make you talk,"

40:17

but the U.S to its credit didn't send them back

40:20

unlike some of the other transfers the U.S has done,

40:25

which have been really very problematic,

40:28

Algeria specifically.

40:32

Interviewer

Can you tell us about that?

40:34

-

Yeah, the U.S has transferred some individuals

40:36

back to countries where in our view,

40:44

they faced credible fears of persecution.

40:47

The one country where we've had a long standing dispute

40:52

with the U.S about transfer to torture is Algeria.

40:54

Interviewer

Why is that?

41:03

-

Because Algeria is a dictatorship, it is not a democracy

41:05

and Algeria has such a long history of conflict

41:09

arising out of the elections in 1992

41:19

and that the so-called Islamists won

41:21

and the Algerian military basically invalidated

41:28

the elections to prevent the Conservative Islamic party

41:31

from taking over.

41:38

It launched a civil war that lasted for more than a decade

41:39

and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

41:45

I mean, almost an entire generation of Algerians

41:46

was wiped out in this conflict

41:50

and so the Algerian government is very suspicious

41:52

of anyone who is even remotely accused

41:54

of being involved in terrorism.

41:57

Our clients, some of them, one of my clients in particular

42:01

was very fearful of going back to Algeria.

42:03

He had fled Algeria in the early '90s to avoid the civil war

42:06

and had lived in Canada, had lived in Vienna

42:11

and had been unable to obtain permanent refuge.

42:16

To make a long story short, throughout the course

42:20

of our representation of him, we had tried very hard

42:22

to convince the U.S not to return him to Algeria

42:24

where he feared persecution,

42:27

where his family thought he would be shot or jailed forever

42:28

and we had tried very hard to find a third country

42:32

to resettle him and we had had some great success

42:37

in doing that.

42:39

We had a number of countries that had agreed

42:40

to resettle him.

42:42

The U.S though had been unwilling to send him

42:47

to those countries and ultimately forced him back to Algeria

42:49

in December of 2013.

42:52

Interviewer

Can you tell us who that client is?

42:57

-

Sure, his name is Djamel Ameziane.

42:59

Interviewer

Do you know why the U.S would do that?

43:02

I assume you spoke to U.S and explained your perspective

43:05

that in fact, it is dangerous for him to be returned.

43:08

-

To back up, the U.S had tried to send him to Algeria

43:13

in 2008 forcibly, he didn't wanna go back.

43:17

They tried to send him in 2008

43:21

and we were able to get an injunction

43:23

from the federal court to prevent the transfer

43:25

on the basis that this man would face credible fears

43:27

of persecution.

43:34

It was more likely they're not gonna be persecuted.

43:36

Interviewer

Can you explain why you're using that term,

43:39

where that term comes from?

43:43

-

Which term?

43:44

Interviewer

The credible fears of prosecution.

43:45

-

There is an obligation under international law.

43:47

It's called the non-refoulement obligation

43:49

where basically what it means is you can't transfer someone

43:51

to torture.

43:54

If they've suffered past persecution, in other words,

43:56

if they've been tortured or if they've been persecuted

43:59

based on something like their ethnicity or their religion

44:02

or something like this, you can't transfer them

44:08

or if they would face a credible fear,

44:10

if they have credible threats of persecution in the future,

44:14

you can't, under international law,

44:18

under the convention against torture,

44:20

the U.S cannot send them to that country.

44:24

The principal is credible fear of persecution.

44:29

The way the U.S interprets that,

44:32

first of all, they don't interpret it

44:34

as a legal requirement.

44:35

They apply non-refoulement as a matter of policy

44:36

or as a matter of grace,

44:39

which is a violation of international law

44:42

but the standard they use is,

44:46

is it more likely than not that you'll face persecution?

44:49

If there's a 51% chance that you will not face persecution

44:53

but a 49% chance that you will face persecution,

44:58

they'll think that that's okay.

45:01

They'll transfer somebody under that standard.

45:04

That's not the standard under international law.

45:07

Under international law, it's, do you have a credible fear

45:09

of persecution?

45:12

The U.S has a different standard

45:16

and so what the U.S does to mitigate the risk,

45:17

that's the 49% chance that someone's gonna be tortured

45:21

or jailed, they'll go and they'll get

45:25

what's called a diplomatic assurance,

45:27

which is basically a bilateral agreement.

45:28

It's a piece of paper between the U.S

45:31

and the foreign government, in this case Algeria

45:33

in which a country like Algeria will make representations

45:38

that they will not persecute,

45:43

they will not torture this individual.

45:45

Now, of course, the problem with the diplomatic assurance

45:46

is that it's a piece of paper,

45:48

it's basically worth nothing more than the paper

45:50

it's written on.

45:54

It's not enforceable as a practical matter,

45:55

even if it is enforceable as a matter of international law.

45:58

There's been a longstanding dispute about Algeria.

46:04

It's really the one country, I would say

46:07

with respect to all of Guantanamo,

46:11

it's the one country where we counsel for the detainees

46:12

and the detainees themselves have had a serious

46:17

sort of fundamental disagreement with the United States

46:19

about whether it's safe to transfer people

46:21

to this country against their will

46:23

but other issues have arisen with respect to Libya

46:26

prior to the Arab Spring, Tunisia prior to the Arab Spring

46:33

and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan

46:37

but really the one area there has been major disagreement

46:45

has been Algeria and that continues.

46:48

The U.S has transferred several Algerians in the last year

46:56

to Algeria against their will

46:59

and these men were put into secret detention,

47:00

they were jailed, sort of incommunicado detention

47:04

by the security services.

47:07

To the credit of the Algerians, they were not persecuted,

47:09

they were not tortured in secret detention

47:13

but they were held in secret detention and they're now under

47:16

what's basically judicial investigation.

47:19

They're being investigated by a magistrate judge

47:23

who will decide whether at some point in the future

47:25

they will face criminal trials for some unspecified offense.

47:28

Our concern is that those trials will be basically

47:32

political theater, that these trials could be used

47:39

to persecute these men in the sense that

47:42

they could be found to be guilty of some unknown offense

47:46

based on no evidence and end up in jail

47:49

for a long period of time.

47:52

That's happened to one of the Algerians who was sent back

47:53

in 2010, a man named Abdul Aziz Naji.

47:55

He was convicted of membership in a terrorist organization

48:00

outside of Algeria based on no evidence in a trial

48:05

that lasted maybe an hour or two.

48:09

Interviewer

After he was returned?

48:11

-

After he was returned from Guantanamo against his will.

48:12

It really was retribution, I think

48:15

by the Algerians for having embarrassed them.

48:18

This is someone who spoke out against his transfer,

48:21

didn't wanna go back.

48:24

He was very public about the fact that he feared persecution

48:25

and was punished for it.

48:28

Interviewer

What happened when he--

48:32

-

He's in jail in Algeria, he's still in prison in Algeria.

48:33

Interviewer

Does he have a sentence?

48:38

Do you know when he might be released?

48:39

-

He was sentenced, I don't remember how long it was.

48:41

It was for several years of imprisonment

48:43

and he had a very difficult time in prison in Algeria.

48:45

At one point was, he suffers from diabetes

48:53

and was having a very difficult time medically

48:57

as a result of that.

49:05

He's an amputee, which for reasons

49:08

that I don't really fully understand,

49:11

there's often a relationship between amputation

49:13

and diabetes and so he's at a terrible time.

49:17

Interviewer

So when you tell the U.S,

49:24

look, Algeria has proven that in fact,

49:25

they do persecute people you send back,

49:28

how does the U.S respond to that?

49:31

-

Well, the U.S is always willing to receive information

49:34

from us but they don't consult with us

49:37

about their diplomatic discussions,

49:39

those are sort of outside of our purview.

49:42

The situation has changed over time.

49:49

When President Obama...

49:51

Well, initially we were able to get a court order

49:52

preventing, barring the United States

49:55

from transferring our client to Algeria, that was in 2008.

49:57

The law subsequently changed in the DC Circuit

50:02

and there was a decision that basically held

50:04

that detainees don't have a right,

50:08

even to prior notice of a transfer, certainly not the right

50:11

to contest the transfer that the U.S has deemed safe.

50:14

So we lost the ability to go to court

50:19

to try to stop a transfer

50:22

but when President Obama came into office in 2009,

50:23

to the credit of the state department at the time

50:29

and specifically to Ambassador Daniel Fried,

50:30

he didn't try to send the Algerians back.

50:33

He was willing to sort of put them aside as it were.

50:36

I mean, he did, I should back up and say,

50:40

he wasn't willing to transfer my client against his will.

50:42

He did transfer two men back.

50:46

He transferred Abdul Aziz Naji

50:47

and another detainee named Farhi.

50:49

They were transferred back forcibly.

50:54

In the case of Naji, it didn't go well

50:58

and so I should say subsequent to that,

51:00

Ambassador Fried didn't try to force back my client,

51:03

Mr. Ameziane or some of the others who didn't wanna go back

51:07

but that changed when Clifford Sloan

51:10

became the Special Envoy.

51:15

His first transfers were transfers to Algeria

51:18

and the first two were voluntary

51:23

but then there were a series of transfers

51:24

including my client that were involuntary.

51:27

Interviewer

How do you explain that?

51:31

-

I find it very hard to understand

51:37

because I've never heard a convincing reason

51:38

why it became necessary to forcibly transfer my client,

51:40

Mr. Ameziane back to Algeria.

51:45

Luxembourg had offered to take him at least twice in 2010

51:48

and subsequently other countries had expressed interest

51:53

in him.

51:57

I had spent a lot of time in Europe.

51:58

Mr. Ameziane had European Council.

52:00

We spent a lot of time trying

52:02

to generate resettlement opportunities for him

52:03

and we'd been very successful.

52:05

I mean, this is an individual who the U.S government

52:07

had said in court filings

52:09

that there was no military reason to detain.

52:13

I mean, back in 2008, they said

52:15

there's no military rationale for his detention,

52:16

his detention is not an issue, he'll be released.

52:19

It's just a question of where he goes.

52:23

They said this so that was very attractive

52:25

to potential resettlement countries.

52:27

He also speaks English, French, Arabic fluently,

52:30

some German and so he was a very attractive candidate.

52:34

He'd lived in Vienna, he actually had been

52:37

a very well known chef at a restaurant in Vienna

52:40

and then he lived in Montreal for several years

52:44

so we had been very successful.

52:49

Luxembourg had agreed to take him.

52:52

My understanding is that the Austrian government

52:54

was considering him actively

52:56

as recently as the time that he was transferred.

53:00

Why the United States didn't take advantage

53:04

of this opportunity?

53:06

I, for the life of me will never understand.

53:07

We'd also had some success in Latin America,

53:13

trying to generate interest among Latin American countries

53:16

in resettling him and again, the United States

53:19

was unwilling to send him there

53:23

for reasons that remain unknown.

53:26

They ruined his life in the sense

53:29

that they subjected him to the possibility of persecution.

53:34

I mean, thankfully that hasn't happened

53:38

but he faces this trial.

53:39

Basically, they left him utterly destitute in Algeria

53:42

with no services, no support, no money.

53:48

I mean, they literally dropped him off in his prison uniform

53:50

and left him to the Algerian security services.

53:58

He left Guantanamo the way he arrived,

54:01

which was in a cargo plane, blindfolded, gagged and bound.

54:04

Literally, I'm telling you strapped to the floor

54:10

of a cargo plane.

54:12

That's the way the guy arrived in Guantanamo,

54:13

that's the way the guy left Guantanamo 12 years later.

54:15

\Someone who, again, five years ago,

54:19

the government said there was no military need to detain,

54:21

so that's how they treat him.

54:23

I've never heard a convincing reason

54:32

why they treated him like this.

54:33

All I can surmise or gas is that there was some kind

54:36

of greater interest at stake,

54:40

some greater foreign policy or diplomatic interest at stake.

54:43

Maybe the United States has a drone base in Southern Algeria

54:48

that they wanna use to strike at Boko Haram in Nigeria

54:53

or they wanna use to strike Molly, I don't know.

54:56

Maybe they view the Algerian government

55:00

as the one stable government in North Africa.

55:02

I mean, if you look at Libya or Egypt,

55:05

it's not an area of the world that is viewed

55:09

as terribly stable by the United States.

55:13

I may reject that perception but I think the U.S perception

55:15

is the one that matters, unfortunately,

55:19

the only one that matters.

55:21

So they left him in Algeria

55:23

and sort of the postscript to this for him is that

55:25

at the time he was, Mr. Ameziane had been in Afghanistan

55:32

for a very short period of time.

55:37

He lived in Vienna, was unable to stay.

55:39

He went to Canada, he arrived in Canada at the airport

55:42

in Toronto put his hands up and said,

55:46

"I'm here, I need asylum,"

55:48

and went through the political asylum process.

55:51

He was unsuccessful in his effort to try to stay there,

55:53

so rather than remain in Canada illegally,

55:57

which is what probably a number of people, including myself

56:01

would have done in his circumstance.

56:05

He said, no, I have to leave and he fled, he panicked.

56:06

He didn't wanna go back to Algeria,

56:10

he thought he would be killed.

56:11

The war was still going on there

56:12

and so he fled and he went to Afghanistan.

56:16

He was in Afghanistan for only a few months

56:19

and the war starts.

56:23

No involvement in the war, no interest in the war.

56:24

He literally was there trying to figure out what

56:27

he was gonna do 'cause it's someone

56:29

who had left Algeria legally,

56:31

he had tried to live in Vienna legally.

56:33

They wouldn't let him stay,

56:35

they wouldn't renew his work visa.

56:36

Went to Canada, tried to stay, was unable to do that.

56:39

So it's literally someone who tried to play by the rules

56:41

and had been unsuccessful and so ends up in Afghanistan

56:45

literally trying to live off of savings

56:51

that he had accumulated working and try to figure out

56:54

what he was gonna do.

57:00

You say, well, why, Afghanistan?

57:01

Why would you go to Afghanistan?

57:04

2020 hindsight is perfect but he was single, he's Muslim,

57:09

he had the means of self support

57:18

in a country like Afghanistan at the time

57:21

and most importantly, no one there was gonna ask him

57:23

for his papers, no one there was gonna question

57:26

whether he was there with a proper passport or a visa

57:29

and it was breathing room to allow him to try to figure out

57:32

what he was gonna do with his life.

57:36

Well, unfortunately the worst starts.

57:37

He flees across the border in Turkmenistan

57:39

and just like the Uyghurs and just like hundreds

57:43

of other men who end up at Guantanamo,

57:46

he was welcomed by the Pakistanis and then betrayed,

57:49

sold to the U.S for money so he ends up in Guantanamo.

57:54

Well, the postscript is this.

57:57

At the time that he was captured, he had his life savings

58:00

which was approximately 700 British pounds,

58:06

his entire life savings.

58:10

It was taken from him when he goes to Guantanamo,

58:13

he spends the next 12 years in Guantanamo.

58:16

When he was released,

58:20

he was left utterly destitute literally.

58:21

He was dropped off by the United States,

58:24

kicked off the airplane into the arms

58:27

of the security services and left in his prison uniform

58:29

with nothing else.

58:34

So when he gets out of secret detention

58:36

after about five or six days, they take him

58:38

to his parent's, sorry to his brother's house.

58:41

His father had died when he was in Guantanamo.

58:44

They take him to one of his brother's homes

58:46

where his mother is living and his brother's six children

58:48

and that's where he was.

58:50

He was very ill when he came out of secret detention.

58:55

I think part of it was post-traumatic stress.

59:02

I think part of it was sort of viral or bacterial,

59:05

he'd been in the antiseptic environment in Guantanamo

59:09

for 12 years and he ends up in secret detention

59:13

in an Algerian jail.

59:16

He became very ill physically

59:18

and had a really difficult time.

59:20

He was not able to get out of bed for a period

59:22

of a few weeks and on top of this, his family was worried

59:24

the Algerian security services were just gonna come

59:31

and take him in the middle of the night.

59:32

I mean, it was a horrible situation.

59:34

They weren't sure he was gonna survive.

59:36

It was terrible, he had no medical care, nothing.

59:37

So we went to the United States government, I did

59:40

and I said to my counterpart at the Department of Justice

59:42

and I said, "Hey, can you do me a favor?

59:44

He had this money,

59:48

there's no allegation of any connection between him...

59:51

There's no connection between the money

59:57

and any allegation against him.

1:00:00

This is the guy you said five years ago,

1:00:00

there was no military need to detain.

1:00:02

Can you get him his money?

1:00:04

He needs it, the guy doesn't have clothes,

1:00:05

he can't buy food.

1:00:07

He's required to check in with the Algerian authorities

1:00:08

monthly and he has to beg for bus fare."

1:00:12

So I asked for his money back and they say,

1:00:15

no, he can't have it 'cause every detainee

1:00:17

who is held at Guantanamo is Al Qaeda

1:00:20

and Al Qaeda uses money to finance terrorist activities.

1:00:23

This is what they said in a court document.

1:00:27

I'd give it to you.

1:00:30

It's a publicly available court document.

1:00:31

Some defense department official writes a declaration

1:00:33

that says we have a policy of not returning money

1:00:35

to any detainee, whether a Uyghur, whether Mr. Ameziane,

1:00:40

my Algerian client, nobody gets their money back

1:00:46

because Al-Qaeda uses money to launch terrorist attacks

1:00:49

and we don't want these men to re-engage.

1:00:55

I don't know what to say to that other than

1:01:05

it's where we began with this notion that all these men

1:01:09

are the worst of the worst.

1:01:13

So we're litigating to try to get

1:01:14

my client's 700 pounds back,

1:01:16

not so he can do anything nefarious with it

1:01:20

but so he can go buy food, he can go buy clothes,

1:01:23

so he can buy a computer so he can Skype with us

1:01:26

so we can communicate with him.

1:01:28

I mean, it's terrible, it's been terrible for him

1:01:30

but his story is not that uncommon.

1:01:35

Interviewer

So would you say that Obama's policy

1:01:37

is continuing Bush's policy in what you just described,

1:01:40

Obama could act differently?

1:01:45

Do you say that this is a policy that has come

1:01:47

from the Obama administration in not giving the money back?

1:01:50

-

I think to be fair, I'll say two things.

1:01:53

One, I think President Obama really does

1:01:55

want to close Guantanamo.

1:01:58

I think he's serious about it,

1:01:59

I think it is a priority for him.

1:02:00

I just think he's had tremendous difficulty doing that.

1:02:02

Most of that is his own fault

1:02:05

for reasons that I can't explain

1:02:09

and the second thing I'll say

1:02:12

is there are meaningful differences

1:02:14

between the Bush administration

1:02:15

and the Obama administration.

1:02:17

President Obama has been a great disappointment to us

1:02:19

in many ways with regard to his Guantanamo policy

1:02:23

by and large due to the fact he's failed to close Guantanamo

1:02:28

and not taken advantage of opportunities to do so.

1:02:31

My Algerian, his offer to go to Luxembourg several years ago

1:02:34

is a perfect example

1:02:38

but there are really meaningful differences.

1:02:40

I don't wanna conflate the Bush administration

1:02:41

and the Obama administration but with respect to this issue

1:02:44

of detainee property, what you have

1:02:47

as a defense department official, who was saying

1:02:54

that people who were held in Guantanamo present a risk

1:02:59

because they were held in Guantanamo

1:03:03

and that's entirely circular.

1:03:05

It's not unlike the Bush administration officials

1:03:07

who said these men are all the worst of the worst

1:03:11

and of course, everyone who's been held here

1:03:13

is a dangerous terrorist.

1:03:15

I mean, in that sense it is the same.

1:03:18

The language might be different but the point is the same

1:03:21

and it's terrible.

1:03:24

I mean, it has real practical consequences for these men.

1:03:31

Even after you get out of Guantanamo,

1:03:36

you continue to suffer from your prior detention.

1:03:38

You suffer the stigma, you suffer the physical consequences.

1:03:40

I mean, Djamel Ameziane was in Guantanamo for 12 years

1:03:45

and he's in his late 40s

1:03:51

and you get out of Guantanamo and you have nothing

1:03:53

except literally the prison uniform

1:03:56

that you wore the day you left

1:03:58

when they strapped you into the cargo plane to fly you home

1:04:01

to a country where you fear persecution.

1:04:05

There's no support structure for these men.

1:04:08

I mean, there's nothing for them and it's been very hard.

1:04:10

Interviewer

Should there be

1:04:17

a support structure for them?

1:04:18

Should the U.S be required to help them

1:04:19

when they release them?

1:04:22

-

Absolutely, I mean, we, who are the counsel for these men

1:04:23

do try to provide some measure of support ourselves

1:04:28

and other organizations, other NGOs, including the ICRC

1:04:32

try to help but Guantanamo is an American prison

1:04:37

and everything that happens there is the responsibility

1:04:42

of the United States government, whether it's intentional,

1:04:48

whether it's accidental, whether it's neglect

1:04:50

and the U.S bears responsibility for these men.

1:04:53

One of the great challenges that these men face

1:04:58

coming out of Guantanamo is it's very difficult

1:05:01

to slowly rebuild your life

1:05:07

after being through an experience like that.

1:05:11

You would think that the United States would wanna provide

1:05:17

some measure of support or some structure for that

1:05:20

to try to facilitate that.

1:05:25

It's in the U.S long-term strategic interest to do that

1:05:26

to make sure that these people are okay,

1:05:29

to make sure that they're not so utterly destitute

1:05:32

that they make bad choices or that they forever are upset

1:05:37

with the United States.

1:05:47

You want them to move on with their lives

1:05:47

and to make the most of what's left of their lives

1:05:49

after this horrible experience

1:05:53

but that's not the way the United States sees it.

1:05:55

As best I can tell when it comes to Algeria, for example

1:05:59

what the United States is interested in

1:06:02

is keeping these men under their thumb.

1:06:05

That is, to ensure that the Algerians monitor them

1:06:09

to make sure that there are security structures in place

1:06:21

and in the case of Algeria, to do things to these men

1:06:26

that Luxembourg or Chile or other democratic nations

1:06:30

wouldn't necessarily do in terms

1:06:36

of restricting their ability to travel

1:06:38

or putting them through trials and so on

1:06:39

but there isn't a concurrent or parallel effort

1:06:44

to provide a support structure for these men.

1:06:49

The U.S doesn't seemingly undertake any effort

1:06:54

to try to arrange for life services for these men.

1:06:58

They, I think sort of punt to the Red Cross

1:07:05

or to the home country.

1:07:09

Interviewer

When you've had that kinda conversation

1:07:11

with the state department, do they respond to that?

1:07:13

-

We are able to relay our concerns to the state department

1:07:19

but the state department doesn't involve us

1:07:22

in their diplomatic discussions.

1:07:25

Particularly at this point,

1:07:30

they are sort of a closed door to us in terms of this.

1:07:32

They're certainly willing to hear our concerns

1:07:36

but in the case of Mr. Ameziane, for example

1:07:39

they're apparently unwilling or unable to convince

1:07:41

their counterparts at the defense department

1:07:47

to give our clients money back.

1:07:49

That's a simple thing that would go a long way

1:07:53

toward helping this person.

1:07:55

After everything that they've done to him,

1:07:59

you'd think that that's the least they could do.

1:08:00

Holding this guy for 12 years, including five years

1:08:03

after the military says, there's no need to detain him,

1:08:07

not transferring to Luxembourg

1:08:10

or any of these other countries that would take him.

1:08:12

You'd think the least they would do is ensure

1:08:13

that he has some measure of support and it hasn't happened.

1:08:15

It's grotesque in a way.

1:08:20

Interviewer

I know that one of your clients,

1:08:24

although not for all that long was al-Qahtani.

1:08:27

Could you tell us about some of the meetings you've had

1:08:30

with him and what you think might happen in his future?

1:08:33

-

Well, I have been involved in the al-Qahtani case

1:08:37

for some time.

1:08:41

My role was relatively minor, certainly met with him

1:08:42

in Guantanamo but my involvement has been relatively minor.

1:08:45

That's to say I'm not his lead counsel.

1:08:53

I met with al-Qahtani in, I think it was 2008

1:09:04

when the United States announced charges in the 9/11 case.

1:09:07

He was originally charged in connection with that case,

1:09:12

which is a death penalty case

1:09:15

and I was in the airport in Fort Lauderdale

1:09:18

getting ready to fly down to Guantanamo

1:09:23

to meet with other clients when I saw on the news,

1:09:25

I think it was CNN that the government had announced charges

1:09:29

and that he had been included in those charges.

1:09:32

So I scrambled to try to see him

1:09:36

and was initially told, no, you can't see him.

1:09:43

Well, of course, given that he had just been charged

1:09:47

with capital offenses, we made an issue of it in the press

1:09:54

and eventually the military relented.

1:09:58

Interviewer

What was the reasoning

1:10:00

for you not being able to see him?

1:10:01

-

I think it was 'cause we didn't have

1:10:03

a previously scheduled visit with him.

1:10:04

We had not arranged in advance to see him,

1:10:06

not withstanding the fact

1:10:09

that he just been charged in a death penalty case.

1:10:10

So we made an issue of it in the press and they relented

1:10:12

and we were able to see him and I was able to tell him.

1:10:16

Interviewer

How did he respond?

1:10:21

-

Not well, as you can imagine.

1:10:22

A lot of confusion, a lot of concern, obviously.

1:10:25

There were other incidents like that.

1:10:31

There was one incident where I had arranged to meet

1:10:34

with Mr. Qahtani's military commission defense lawyer,

1:10:37

Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Broyles.

1:10:44

We had arranged to meet at Guantanamo

1:10:47

'cause we were both there.

1:10:49

At the same time, we had agreed to meet, talk about the case

1:10:50

and I asked my escort to drop me off

1:10:55

so I could meet Colonel Broyles

1:11:00

and that apparently got reported up the chain of command.

1:11:03

I was then told that, not only I not allowed

1:11:09

to see Lieutenant Colonel Broyles

1:11:13

but that I was going to be escorted

1:11:17

to the other side of the base,

1:11:19

where I was to remain in my hotel room until the next day

1:11:20

and that these escorts had been ordered

1:11:26

to ensure that I was brought over

1:11:29

to the outer side of the base and kept there.

1:11:32

This is how the military responds.

1:11:36

When they charge someone with a capital offense,

1:11:38

this is the way they--

1:11:40

Interviewer

What was the logic to move you

1:11:41

to the other side--

1:11:42

-

Well, again, we made an issue of it in the media

1:11:43

and they ultimately relented.

1:11:45

It's hard to explain, it's seemingly nonsensical.

1:11:53

There's no good reason and it's really, for the military

1:11:58

a self-inflicted wound when they do something like this

1:12:00

'cause we'd go out, we tell the New York Times

1:12:03

or we tell Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald

1:12:05

and they write about it and you laugh

1:12:08

but it doesn't make any sense.

1:12:12

It makes 'em look terrible.

1:12:16

Why does it happen?

1:12:21

It's hard to say.

1:12:22

I mean, the military is a bureaucracy

1:12:23

and I think oftentimes, it goes back to what I said

1:12:27

at the outset about not being welcome at Guantanamo.

1:12:36

We have a legal right to be there

1:12:41

but that doesn't mean necessarily we're welcome.

1:12:42

There have been times where it's felt like

1:12:46

the military authorities at Guantanamo have been trying

1:12:48

to actively undermine our representation.

1:12:50

Interviewer

How so?

1:12:54

-

Well, this is one minor example

1:12:55

that always used to come up.

1:12:56

We would go to a meeting in the morning

1:13:00

and we'd be getting ready to go into the camps

1:13:02

and the escorts say, "We're really sorry

1:13:04

but your client's refuse to meet with you."

1:13:07

"Wait, what are you talking about,

1:13:10

our client's refuse to meet with us?"

1:13:11

"He's refused to meet with you, he doesn't wanna see you."

1:13:12

So we were able to write a note and we could send it in

1:13:16

saying, "Hey, we're here to see you.

1:13:20

Can you come out and meet us,"

1:13:21

and oftentimes they would then come out.

1:13:22

Now, granted that would kill half of your day.

1:13:25

It would wipe out half your potential meeting time

1:13:28

but eventually they might come out in the afternoon

1:13:31

and they would say invariably, "Well, they didn't tell me

1:13:34

I had a lawyer meeting.

1:13:37

When the guard came this morning,

1:13:39

he said I had a reservation,"

1:13:41

and reservation means interrogation

1:13:43

or they'd say, "The interrogator wants to see you."

1:13:45

So that was an active undermining

1:13:47

of attorney-client relationship and happened frequently.

1:13:50

The other things that happen, the rules change all the time.

1:13:58

One of the most frustrating things to deal with

1:14:01

in Guantanamo really, I mean, it seems rather petty

1:14:03

but is that the rules change all the time.

1:14:05

Everything from whether you can take food into a meeting,

1:14:08

whether you need to have your notes cleared in advance,

1:14:11

your outline that you wanna talk to your client about,

1:14:15

whether you can take one pen versus two pens.

1:14:16

Literally, these are the things that we deal with every day

1:14:21

and then they make these,

1:14:25

what I think are serious misjudgments about things

1:14:28

like letting you see your client

1:14:30

who's just been charged in a capital case

1:14:31

but I think it's hard to know whether it's intentional

1:14:35

or whether it's just part of the military bureaucracy

1:14:37

such that someone along the chain of command says, no.

1:14:40

It's easier to say no than it is to say yes.

1:14:44

When I say I wanna meet with my Uyghurs client

1:14:47

at Camp Iguana, it's easier for them to say no

1:14:50

than to say yes or I'd like to do this

1:14:54

or I'd like to do that, it's easier to just to say no.

1:14:58

So if someone in the chain of command says no, that's it.

1:15:00

I mean, this is the military, that's it.

1:15:04

There's nothing a guard is gonna do, no means no.

1:15:07

When an officer says no, the guard is not gonna let you in

1:15:10

and I think there's a lot of that,

1:15:13

it's just sort of a lot of bureaucracy.

1:15:17

There's a lot of turnover in the military.

1:15:19

I think it's every six to nine months or every year or two,

1:15:21

there's a new set of guards, there's a new set of staff,

1:15:26

judge advocates who are the military lawyers down there,

1:15:29

there's a new admiral or a new general

1:15:33

who's in charge periodically and every time that happens,

1:15:34

the rules change and the military personnel

1:15:38

who are brought to Guantanamo are still trained to think

1:15:44

that these people are the worst of the worst.

1:15:47

That is, they're still trained to operate

1:15:48

under the assumption that every person who is there

1:15:51

is your enemy and would like to kill you

1:15:54

if given the opportunity

1:15:55

and they train that way as sort of a baseline

1:15:57

because it doesn't leave any, by not allowing for any doubt,

1:16:01

I don't know, it's a baseline that is,

1:16:13

I'm not articulating it well

1:16:16

but it's the baseline they operate under

1:16:17

so that they can have the least sophisticated 19-year-old

1:16:19

army private dealing with the most dangerous

1:16:25

Al-Qaeda suspect.

1:16:32

They operate under that dynamic

1:16:34

so that there's no discretion, so there's no ambiguity,

1:16:38

so there's no danger but it makes no sense.

1:16:40

99% of the time, it just doesn't make any sense.

1:16:45

Again, you add to that the layer of bureaucracy

1:16:50

to get anything approved or anything changed is difficult.

1:16:52

Interviewer

I wanna ask a couple of people but

1:16:59

(indistinct) to you, I mean, there's some lawyers

1:17:01

that just feel that, and have told us on camera

1:17:03

that after as many years working as you have,

1:17:07

they feel they made no difference.

1:17:10

-

I can't speak to the experience of other people

1:17:15

but I don't think that that's correct.

1:17:16

-

For you?

1:17:17

-

For me.

We haven't won all of our legal cases

1:17:20

and there've been a number of disappointments.

1:17:22

The courts in Washington have been a great disappointment

1:17:29

for us, President Obama himself

1:17:32

and his administrations have been a real disappointment

1:17:35

for us but we have had great success.

1:17:38

I mean, the real success from the litigation was in 2004,

1:17:41

going to the Supreme Court of the United States

1:17:47

and winning the right of detainees to go to court,

1:17:48

the right of detainees to challenge their detention

1:17:52

and equally important, the right of lawyers

1:17:55

to go to the base and to meet the people,

1:17:58

to learn who were there, to hear their stories

1:18:01

and to then be able to go out

1:18:04

and tell the stories publicly has had a tremendous effect.

1:18:05

They're more than 600 men have been released,

1:18:10

a lot of them through litigation

1:18:14

or through the threat of litigation

1:18:16

and so it's been a success

1:18:18

and it's been a success even for the men who remain,

1:18:20

I'd like to think in the sense

1:18:24

that we can bring them a little bit of hope

1:18:25

or maybe a bit of family news

1:18:27

or maybe something good to eat

1:18:31

to make their day just slightly better

1:18:38

than it might otherwise be.

1:18:40

That's a success, it's a small one but it's a success

1:18:41

and the fight goes on.

1:18:46

The history of Guantanamo is not written yet.

1:18:48

The cases aren't over, we continue to litigate

1:18:50

and so there's a lot more to be done.

1:18:52

Interviewer

So there's a few cases along those lines,

1:18:58

one that concerns the Uyghurs in Washington, DC

1:19:02

but I'd like to just (indistinct) ask you

1:19:04

since you've represented Majid Khan

1:19:06

if you can tell us a little bit about...

1:19:09

When Gita spoke to us, she said she was quite surprised

1:19:12

when she first saw him with you.

1:19:15

He looked so different.

1:19:17

Is that your impression or what--

1:19:18

-

Yeah, so Majid Khan is an interesting man.

1:19:21

There's not a whole lot I can say about his case

1:19:30

because he's a so-called high-value detainee.

1:19:32

Majid Khan grew up in the United States.

1:19:40

He grew up in Baltimore and for a variety of reasons,

1:19:42

ended up in Pakistan, was captured in March of 2003

1:19:47

and disappeared.

1:19:54

I mean, poof, disappeared until he showed up in Guantanamo

1:19:55

in September, 2006.

1:20:01

President Bush announced at the time,

1:20:07

he and several others who arrived at Guantanamo with him

1:20:09

at the same time had been in secret CIA detention.

1:20:14

So Gita and I, working with Majid's family in the U.S

1:20:20

and in Pakistan represented him.

1:20:28

We filed a case for him in 2006

1:20:32

and we spent a good year trying to litigate,

1:20:35

to get access to him

1:20:38

and we were successful in gaining access to him in,

1:20:40

I think it was September of 2007.

1:20:45

We went to Guantanamo,

1:20:47

I think we spent two weeks there with him

1:20:48

and because we had spent so much time with his family

1:20:51

and learned so much about him,

1:20:54

we had a certain expectation about his personality,

1:20:55

what he would look like, how he would act

1:20:59

and it was quite shocking to see him for the first time

1:21:03

because when we went in to meet him for the first time,

1:21:06

just like any other case, the door opens

1:21:13

and you walk into this room

1:21:16

and there is this person who you've never met before

1:21:19

and he didn't look like the person we were expecting.

1:21:23

He was this scrawny, tiny kid

1:21:29

and we had been expecting someone sort of bigger.

1:21:37

I wouldn't say he was emaciated but he was unwell.

1:21:49

It became clear immediately

1:22:04

that he had been tortured very badly

1:22:07

and suffered serious consequences,

1:22:10

physical and psychological.

1:22:17

So we went to court, Gita and I did

1:22:21

as soon as we got back to the U.S went to court

1:22:26

to try to do a lot of things immediately,

1:22:30

make sure that the court ordered preservation

1:22:39

of all of the evidence of his torture

1:22:42

and to deal with a number of other issues related to him,

1:22:44

which I won't go into.

1:22:51

I would say for a few years after that,

1:23:01

most of our work with him was to try to...

1:23:04

I mean, he was a mess, to try to help put him back together

1:23:09

and that's what we did, that's what Gita and I did.

1:23:15

Interviewer

Did you bring psychologists

1:23:18

down there to help, are you allowed to?

1:23:20

-

We never were able to get anyone to go down to see him

1:23:23

other than us, his counsel and paralegals

1:23:28

and if you think that going to see a regular detainee

1:23:35

was a complicated process

1:23:38

and involved everything from red tape

1:23:40

to overt, hostile intimidation,

1:23:48

visiting a so-called high-value detainee

1:23:53

was just a whole other world, a whole other level

1:23:55

of intimidation and complication.

1:23:57

So we were on our own, Gita and I were on our own really,

1:24:03

other than our paralegal at the time

1:24:06

and really had to take care of him ourselves

1:24:10

and tried to do that and spend a lot of time

1:24:13

working with him trying to help him.

1:24:16

I think we did as good a job as can be expected

1:24:22

given that we're not doctors, we're not psychologists,

1:24:26

we're not psychiatrists, we're lawyers.

1:24:29

Our job is to help him and all of our other clients

1:24:31

with legal issues but in a situation like that,

1:24:35

you don't have a choice and so you do what you can,

1:24:37

do the best job that you can

1:24:40

and I think we were successful in that.

1:24:41

Eventually, Majid made a decision that he wanted to get out

1:24:55

of Guantanamo and not only that,

1:25:00

really wanted to make amends for the things that he had done

1:25:05

and sort of to atone for the things that he had done

1:25:12

and what that meant was that we undertook an effort

1:25:18

for him to try to work out some kind of a deal for him.

1:25:24

They would allow him to do that, to take responsibility,

1:25:30

embrace and accept and account for what he had done

1:25:35

but also at the same time to ensure that he had some hope

1:25:38

of a future or a life outside of Guantanamo at some point.

1:25:44

So we undertook efforts to try to start negotiations

1:25:51

with the U.S, with the justice department

1:26:02

to try to resolve his case,

1:26:05

to try to resolve his situation in whatever way we could.

1:26:06

I said this at a press conference two years ago

1:26:14

in Guantanamo but nobody would talk to us.

1:26:17

Interviewer

When you tried to offer--

1:26:20

-

We tried to even engage in conversations

1:26:22

with the government about his case.

1:26:24

Nobody would talk to us initially.

1:26:27

We tried to talk to our counterparts

1:26:36

at the department of justice in his habeas case.

1:26:38

We just didn't get anywhere and then in,

1:26:44

it was 2009 or 2010, I don't remember, it was 2009.

1:26:55

I'm trying to remember what it was.

1:27:05

We were asked, the center, CCR was asked by Judge Kaplan

1:27:09

in the Southern District of New York,

1:27:13

we were invited to file an Amicus brief

1:27:15

in the case of Ahmed Golani,

1:27:19

who was also a high-value detainee at Guantanamo

1:27:20

who had been brought from Guantanamo into New York,

1:27:24

had been indicted and was being put on trial

1:27:28

in connection with the embassy bombings in Kenya

1:27:31

and Tanzania in 1998, he was being put on trial.

1:27:36

Judge Kaplan who was presiding over that case,

1:27:39

invited CCR to submit an Amicus brief

1:27:41

on speedy trial issues

1:27:44

'cause Golani had been indicted after the embassy bombing

1:27:46

but when he was captured,

1:27:51

he'd been put into CIA detention in Guantanamo

1:27:52

and so there were speedy trial issues.

1:27:54

So we were invited to opine

1:27:55

on potential speedy trial issues, which we did

1:27:57

and in connection with that, we engaged Jenner and Block,

1:28:00

which is a big national law firm, very prestigious.

1:28:06

We engaged them to work with CCR to submit this Amicus brief

1:28:11

in the Golani case.

1:28:16

We worked with a lawyer named Andrew Weissmann

1:28:18

who I had encountered from my time at Kramer Levin

1:28:24

when he was the head of the Enron task force

1:28:29

for the justice department.

1:28:31

I had been working on an Enron case

1:28:32

and was the prosecutor on the case

1:28:35

so I had had some connection to him previously.

1:28:38

He was in private practice in Jenner and Block by that time

1:28:45

and so he became involved and worked with us

1:28:48

on the Golani Amicus brief

1:28:52

and then became very interested in the Majid Khan case

1:28:53

and brought in his partner, Katya Jestin

1:28:56

who's also a former prosecutor

1:28:59

and they agreed to take on the representation of Majid Khan

1:29:02

with us for purpose of trying to negotiate

1:29:06

some kind of agreement.

1:29:10

They came on, these two very powerful,

1:29:11

former federal prosecutors came on board and worked with us

1:29:14

and so that was very helpful.

1:29:19

We also brought on a military commission defense lawyer

1:29:25

who was a Marine Corps officer then at the time,

1:29:28

a major now, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Harvey

1:29:32

to work with us as well and so we, as a team

1:29:37

continued our efforts to try to work out

1:29:42

some sort of arrangement for Majid Khan.

1:29:44

Again, still had a lot of difficulty trying to get people

1:29:52

to pay attention to us and we eventually linked up

1:29:56

with some prosecutors in the justice department

1:30:03

who linked us up with some prosecutors

1:30:07

in the military commission system

1:30:10

at the defense department and were able, ultimately

1:30:11

to reach an agreement, a plea agreement for Majid Khan.

1:30:14

He pled guilty and agreed to be a cooperating witness

1:30:18

and will be sentenced probably two years from now

1:30:22

but will, as a consequence of that,

1:30:29

not only be able to sort of fulfill his desire

1:30:32

and his commitment to take responsibility for what he did

1:30:39

but also to hopefully get out of Guantanamo,

1:30:41

which I think is not something that's likely to happen

1:30:45

for other high-value detainees, I'm sorry to say.

1:30:48

Majid Khan has a daughter he's never seen,

1:30:53

his wife was pregnant when he was captured.

1:30:55

He's never seen his daughter

1:30:57

and that's very much on his mind and wants to make sure

1:30:59

that he has the opportunity to do that in the future.

1:31:07

Interviewer

Why did the U.S resist you at first

1:31:12

or ignore you at first and what was in it for them

1:31:15

to reverse their opinion on that?

1:31:17

-

I mean, it's hard to say.

1:31:21

I think at first when we first engaged in outreach,

1:31:22

I think the government didn't know what to do

1:31:27

and they had no plan.

1:31:29

I mean, this was the end of the Bush administration

1:31:34

and beginning of the Obama administration,

1:31:37

they had no idea what to do.

1:31:38

We went to Congress to try to get them to help,

1:31:45

we went to a lot of people to try to get help

1:31:51

to sort of facilitate this discussion.

1:31:54

Eventually, we were connected with a prosecutor

1:31:56

in the Southern District of New York, David Raskin

1:31:58

who was the chief terrorism prosecutor there

1:32:02

who was interested

1:32:05

and who we began to have discussions with.

1:32:07

It became very clear to me that we needed

1:32:11

to have additional counsel involved in those discussions,

1:32:16

particularly someone who had been

1:32:22

a former federal prosecutor, which was when

1:32:24

Andrew Weissmann and Katya Jestin came on board

1:32:25

and that's really what launched the discussions.

1:32:30

When we ultimately were connected with David Raskin

1:32:34

and when Andrew and Katya came on board

1:32:37

and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Harvey in the Marines,

1:32:42

that's really when the discussions started to take shape.

1:32:46

We didn't know this at the time

1:32:55

but I think you've seen subsequent disclosures

1:32:56

from the attorney general that there was a desire

1:32:59

to bring the 9/11 trial here to New York.

1:33:03

So I think that played into an interest in Majid Khan,

1:33:06

I don't know this, I'm sort of surmising this

1:33:12

and there's an interest in his cooperation.

1:33:16

I mean, he is a cooperating witness for the government

1:33:19

so they will get the benefit of his cooperation,

1:33:22

which is substantial assistance,

1:33:27

everything he knows, nothing withheld.

1:33:30

Interviewer

Why do you think no one else

1:33:34

will have the opportunity that he had

1:33:36

in terms of plea bargaining?

1:33:38

-

Well, there may be the opportunity for plea bargaining.

1:33:40

I don't know, I shouldn't say that.

1:33:43

My point was absent a plea bargain,

1:33:45

I don't see the United States voluntarily releasing

1:33:51

any of the high-value detainees, I just don't see it.

1:33:55

Interviewer

Were you involved in the Uyghurs

1:33:59

who were gonna come to Washington, DC or Virginia

1:34:01

and then the administration backed out on that?

1:34:04

Were they your clients?

1:34:09

-

Yeah, well, in a sense, I'm trying to remember,

1:34:11

it was October, 2008 if I recall correctly

1:34:19

after the (indistinct) case was decided by the Supreme Court

1:34:21

which affirmed Rasul and the constitutional right

1:34:24

of detainees to challenge their detention,

1:34:29

that the Uyghurs all on mass went to court in Washington

1:34:32

and went in front of Judge Urbina

1:34:37

who granted their habeas petitions

1:34:40

and ordered their release into the United States.

1:34:45

He did so because the men had not been transferred

1:34:47

and he basically said that enough is enough.

1:34:52

U.S has been unable to transfer them to other countries

1:34:56

so I'm (indistinct) them released into the U.S.

1:34:58

I was at Guantanamo when that decision was issued

1:35:00

and so I took the news to the men in Camp Iguana.

1:35:07

I remember I had no Uyghur interpreter at the time.

1:35:14

I think I was visiting my Algerian client

1:35:18

but a friend of mine, Ahmed Gafur,

1:35:21

who was at the time working for Reprieve,

1:35:23

Ahmed speaks Arabic and so he said,

1:35:25

"Well, I'll go with you."

1:35:27

So the military let us go up to Iguana.

1:35:28

They took us up to Iguana and we stood outside the fence

1:35:31

and talked to all of the men.

1:35:36

They all kinda came over to the fence

1:35:38

and we were able to talk to them

1:35:39

and communicate roughly in English and in Arabic

1:35:40

'cause not all of them spoke Arabic or English

1:35:45

what had happened.

1:35:48

A lot of questions about whether this was real,

1:35:52

what was gonna happen, a lot of excitement,

1:35:56

a lot of skepticism, understandably and the U.S appealed

1:36:00

that I got a stay from the Circuit

1:36:08

and I had to go back and tell the Uyghurs about the stay.

1:36:10

I don't think they were necessarily surprised

1:36:15

but obviously, very upset and then the CCR

1:36:17

in connection with saving (indistinct) and the other counsel

1:36:21

for the Uyghurs undertook this effort to prepare

1:36:24

for the men to come to the United States

1:36:30

in the event that the circuit

1:36:31

affirmed Judge Urbina's decision

1:36:33

or if it went up to the Supreme Court.

1:36:36

So we worked very closely with our colleagues

1:36:38

to try to set this up with the Uyghur American association

1:36:41

in Washington to try to set this up.

1:36:44

It didn't happen, obviously.

1:36:50

Interviewer

Wasn't that one of the first indications

1:36:52

to you that maybe the Obama administration

1:36:54

wasn't going to be as supportive to closing Guantanamo

1:36:56

as they had said?

1:37:02

I mean, did you get that sense?

1:37:04

-

It initially was the Bush administration

1:37:10

but Obama comes into office in 2009

1:37:13

and continues to fight the case.

1:37:17

I think it was by May of 2009, there was,

1:37:23

not withstanding the litigation and the effort

1:37:27

to bring them in that way,

1:37:30

there was an effort that was undertaken

1:37:34

by the administration to maybe bring a small number

1:37:39

of the Uyghurs into the U.S,

1:37:42

those were Sabin Willett's clients,

1:37:43

this is outside the litigation and efforts were made,

1:37:45

as I understand to achieve that but around that time,

1:37:50

I think it was May or so, two things happen.

1:37:58

One, the president gave a speech at the National Archives

1:38:01

in Washington, where he affirmed his commitment

1:38:05

to closing Guantanamo but said,

1:38:09

essentially in substance that some indefinite detention

1:38:12

would continue.

1:38:19

That was a real wake up call for us because in January,

1:38:21

the president had signed executive orders

1:38:24

mandating the closure of the prison within a year,

1:38:27

seemed to back off of that a little bit

1:38:30

at his National Archive speech.

1:38:32

Then word of the Uyghur transfers leaked out.

1:38:34

Representative Frank Wolf, Northern Virginia

1:38:38

who is ironically a great Uyghur supporter,

1:38:40

a supporter of the Uyghur community in his district

1:38:43

found out and went batshit crazy.

1:38:46

President Obama didn't have the political fortitude

1:38:54

to stand up to that and to do what I think

1:38:58

he knew in his heart was right,

1:39:02

which is to bring those men here

1:39:04

which would have accomplished all kinds of good things,

1:39:07

not just for them but would have been very encouraging

1:39:10

to other countries to resettle more of these men

1:39:12

and to do it in a more rapid pace.

1:39:15

It would have had tremendous benefit.

1:39:18

It would have been a sign to the world

1:39:21

that these men were not the worst of the worst

1:39:23

but he didn't have the political fortitude to do that

1:39:25

and why that is, I don't know.

1:39:27

I don't know whether it was President Obama himself

1:39:29

or whether it was Rahm Emanuel, who was his chief of staff

1:39:31

at the time who was only single-mindedly interested

1:39:35

in healthcare reform and in potentially garnering the votes

1:39:38

of people like Frank Wolf.

1:39:42

I don't know but I know that the effort

1:39:44

to bring the men here was an effort spearheaded

1:39:47

by Greg Craig, who was a White House counsel

1:39:52

who fairly soon afterward left the administration.

1:39:55

There followed a series of other things

1:40:02

including later that year, the attempted bombing

1:40:04

of a Detroit bound airliner

1:40:08

by the so-called underwear bomber, Abdulmutallab.

1:40:10

It was a whole cascade of events after which the president

1:40:17

really turned his back on Guantanamo

1:40:21

and didn't pay much attention until last year ironically,

1:40:23

when the detainees took matters into their own hands

1:40:28

and went on a hunger strike

1:40:30

but the failure to bring the Uyghur to the U.S is really

1:40:33

the beginning of the end for President Obama's engagement

1:40:36

on the issue.

1:40:41

That was a signal to Congress that this was an opportunity

1:40:42

to hurt the president politically

1:40:50

'cause he had said he was gonna close the prison

1:40:51

within a year, he turns his back on it and Republicans,

1:40:53

his opponents in Congress filled the void.

1:40:56

They passed legislation in January of 2011

1:40:59

that restricted his ability to transfer people

1:41:01

and the president never looked back until last year.

1:41:05

Interviewer

Well, this wasn't the question

1:41:11

I was gonna ask you but even though

1:41:13

he released people last year, he's only released three

1:41:15

this spring.

1:41:17

Am I correct, since January that he freed Uyghurs

1:41:19

and maybe one or two...

1:41:24

-

He's released nobody this year,

1:41:26

the Uyghurs were released in December.

1:41:27

Interviewer

(indistinct) or can you say that

1:41:29

this is the only government willing to release people?

1:41:33

-

I mean, it's hard to say.

1:41:35

As a result of the hunger strike that started

1:41:35

really in February of 2013 was widespread,

1:41:37

the president gave a speech

1:41:44

at the National Defense University on May 23rd of last year

1:41:45

where he renewed his commitment to closing Guantanamo.

1:41:50

He lifted the self-imposed moratorium on transfers to Yemen

1:41:52

and he said, "I'm gonna appoint special envoys

1:41:56

to shepherd the close of the president."

1:42:00

He's done that, he appointed Clifford Sloan

1:42:02

to be the state department envoy

1:42:05

and he appointed Paul Lewis, who had been counsel

1:42:07

to the Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee,

1:42:09

someone I had known for many years actually

1:42:12

and had worked with.

1:42:15

He appointed them, they came into office.

1:42:18

Cliff Sloan came into office in July, I think

1:42:23

and Paul Lewis, I think was a little bit later

1:42:26

closer to October, November

1:42:29

and they undertook efforts to close the prison

1:42:33

but I think it's correct to say, have not been as open

1:42:40

or as receptive to the involvement of us,

1:42:49

of habeas counsel, of counsel for the detainees

1:42:52

and began their sort of renewed efforts to close the prison

1:42:55

with these transfers to Algeria,

1:43:00

which were highly controversial, to say the least

1:43:01

and disputed in the case of a number of the men,

1:43:06

including my client, Mr. Ameziane

1:43:08

and sort of questioned their judgment in doing that.

1:43:10

I don't know why in the world

1:43:15

they would begin renewed efforts to close Guantanamo

1:43:17

with contested transfers but that's what they've done

1:43:20

and they've been, I would say marginally successful.

1:43:24

They've transferred several Algerians,

1:43:28

some of them against their will, some of them voluntarily.

1:43:31

They've transferred, I think two Saudis, three Uyghurs.

1:43:34

If I'm not mistaken, that's it and no one since January

1:43:41

and there remain 77 men who are approved for transfer,

1:43:46

56 of them are from Yemen

1:43:49

and it's unclear what's gonna happen.

1:43:53

There are rumors of upcoming transfers to Uruguay.

1:43:57

I imagine you could see additional transfers

1:44:02

to Saudi Arabia, I don't know.

1:44:05

I just suspect but there are 20 non-Yemeni,

1:44:06

about 29 non-Yemenis who are cleared for transfer.

1:44:11

These are Tunisians, Syrians, a Palestinian, some Saudis

1:44:17

and I think four Afghanis.

1:44:23

So I suspect that those are the groups

1:44:26

that Sloan and Lewis are working on.

1:44:29

I don't know that but I suspect that's the case.

1:44:32

Nobody seems to be working on the Yemenis.

1:44:34

There are 56 cleared Yemenis who remain

1:44:36

and a full 88 of the remaining 154 or so men

1:44:42

are from Yemen.

1:44:48

So Guantanamo is not gonna close

1:44:49

unless the question of Yemen is dealt with

1:44:51

and there doesn't seem to be any momentum

1:44:54

toward dealing with the Yemenis and therefore,

1:44:56

toward closing Guantanamo.

1:45:00

There was one transfer to Yemen in June of 2010,

1:45:06

so four years ago pursuant to a court order

1:45:09

but no administration has transferred a Yemeni

1:45:14

to any country voluntarily in the last five years

1:45:20

since the end of 2009.

1:45:23

Until something changes dramatically,

1:45:30

that problem is not gonna be solved.

1:45:34

Guantanamo's gonna continue to be increasingly a prison,

1:45:35

not just for my men who are Muslim

1:45:39

but for men who are from Yemen.

1:45:41

Interviewer

It's not the question

1:45:46

that I was gonna ask you either but is Guantanamo

1:45:47

gonna still be open when Obama leaves office?

1:45:50

-

It's hard to say, I certainly hope not

1:45:55

and I think it would be great tragedy

1:45:57

if it were to remain open.

1:45:58

I think the president recognizes that because who knows

1:46:00

what's gonna happen after he leaves office.

1:46:03

I think if Guantanamo is not closed by the time

1:46:05

he leaves office and God forbid,

1:46:08

there's another terrorist attack

1:46:11

or if there's a Republican who takes the White House

1:46:13

or even if the Democrats lose the Senate

1:46:16

and therefore lose Congress entirely,

1:46:21

it may become impossible to close Guantanamo ever.

1:46:26

If President Obama can't do it, it may never happen

1:46:29

and that's of great concern.

1:46:34

Interviewer

Why?

1:46:36

-

I don't think we're ever gonna see the same interest

1:46:44

or momentum toward closing the prison.

1:46:48

I think if Obama's not able to do it,

1:46:50

I don't see anyone else putting a lot of political

1:46:58

or diplomatic capital into achieving it.

1:47:02

I just don't see it.

1:47:05

Interviewer

Is it not important?

1:47:07

Is that why there's no...

1:47:08

-

It's not that it's not important but it's become part

1:47:10

of the American landscape.

1:47:12

I mean, when you go to Guantanamo now

1:47:13

and you see these guards who are 18, 19 years old,

1:47:16

you step back and you realize they in all likelihood

1:47:20

don't remember America without Guantanamo.

1:47:24

I mean, they're too young to remember America

1:47:27

before Guantanamo existed.

1:47:30

It's been part of their history and their culture forever

1:47:32

as far as they're concerned.

1:47:35

People now either think

1:47:39

the president's already closed Guantanamo

1:47:41

or they just accept it exists

1:47:43

and that's okay with them on some level.

1:47:45

People certainly aren't demonstrating in the streets

1:47:48

to close Guantanamo

1:47:50

but whether...

1:47:54

(Jonathan clears throat)

Interviewer

It's important because you have

1:47:57

a really important perspective.

1:47:58

Why is that important to the world or to Americans

1:48:01

that it's now become part of our landscape, our culture?

1:48:06

Why is that important?

1:48:09

Why should we care about that?

1:48:10

-

Well, because you have a prison

1:48:12

that was designed to be entirely outside the law,

1:48:14

it was designed to avoid everything that we hold true

1:48:17

and dear in this country, the rule of law,

1:48:25

respect for rights and it persists.

1:48:28

In many ways, it's like other island prisons.

1:48:36

It's like Devil's Island or Robin Island.

1:48:39

It has become sort of a black mark on our history.

1:48:44

We have embraced and entrenched the practice

1:48:51

of indefinite detention potentially for life

1:48:55

as part of our heritage

1:48:59

and that's something that I never would have expected,

1:49:03

something I think a lot of people never would have expected

1:49:10

and it's something that is hopefully intolerable to people.

1:49:13

I think it's something that we will come to regret

1:49:20

for a very long time if we don't regret it already.

1:49:23

Interviewer

When you talk to people,

1:49:30

do they care like you care?

1:49:31

-

I think a lot of people are surprised

1:49:34

that Guantanamo still exists or they think

1:49:36

that everybody who is safe to release

1:49:41

has already been released.

1:49:43

They don't realize that more than half of the people

1:49:45

are approved for transfer unanimously

1:49:48

by all the government agencies,

1:49:50

they don't realize that the prison

1:49:53

is now increasingly a prison for men from Yemen

1:49:56

and out of sight, out of mind to a large degree

1:50:01

but I think when you sit and you tell people the stories

1:50:05

about the men who were there, they're surprised

1:50:09

and they're shocked and they're appalled.

1:50:12

When I tell people about Djamel Ameziane,

1:50:15

my Algerian client, when I tell people that he was there

1:50:17

for years despite the government's admission

1:50:21

that there was no need to detain him,

1:50:23

when I tell them about Luxembourg offering to take him,

1:50:25

when I tell them he's been forced back to Algeria

1:50:29

and left utterly destitute with nothing

1:50:31

but his prison uniform, people are appalled.

1:50:34

They don't know these stories,

1:50:36

they don't know that this is happening

1:50:37

and so that's one of the challenges that we face

1:50:40

to try to convey these stories

1:50:44

to tell people what's happening.

1:50:46

I think someday Guantanamo, I guess will close.

1:50:49

It may be like as, a journalist who I'm forgetting has said,

1:50:55

maybe like spanned out prison in Germany after World War II.

1:51:01

You may end up with one toothless old alleged Taliban

1:51:05

foot soldier or a shepherd for all we know roaming around

1:51:11

inside an empty prison until he dies of old age or neglect.

1:51:18

At some point, these men are gonna die or kill themselves.

1:51:23

It's inevitable, there is no other alternative

1:51:32

and that's something that U.S is gonna have to deal with

1:51:36

and it's gonna be terrible.

1:51:40

Interviewer

Well, I'm not sure that you've convi...

1:51:45

I mean, people don't seem to care.

1:51:49

You're working so hard for the (indistinct).

1:51:53

People have other issues, they'll let it go on.

1:51:57

-

I think people do care.

1:52:00

I think people care when they hear the stories

1:52:02

and when they pay attention to what's going on,

1:52:04

when they hear something about a client,

1:52:09

when they see a documentary we've done about a client,

1:52:11

they do stop and they pause and they care very much

1:52:14

and are very disturbed but unfortunately,

1:52:22

it's one of many difficult issues that we deal with.

1:52:27

I mean, the issue of solitary confinement

1:52:30

in the United States, there are tens of thousands of people

1:52:32

who are in solitary confinement in U.S prisons right now

1:52:34

in conditions that are worse

1:52:39

than the conditions at Guantanamo.

1:52:41

People care about that and they pay attention

1:52:47

when they hear the individual personal story

1:52:49

but when they hear the statistic

1:52:52

that there are 25,000 or 35,000 people

1:52:53

in solitary confinement in the United States,

1:52:56

it doesn't really mean anything, it's just a statistic.

1:52:57

So when you say that there are 154 people in Guantanamo

1:53:00

and 88 of them are from Yemen

1:53:03

and 77 people are approved for transfer,

1:53:06

it doesn't mean anything

1:53:09

until they actually hear stories about who's there.

1:53:10

That's what we spent a lot of time trying to convey stories.

1:53:14

Interviewer

To you, how does the rest of the world

1:53:20

perceive Guantanamo and do they perceive it differently

1:53:22

from the way the U.S does?

1:53:24

-

Well, I've spent a lot of time

1:53:28

working with people overseas, both colleagues,

1:53:31

co-counsel, other colleagues.

1:53:36

I've spent a lot of time talking to foreign governments

1:53:39

trying to convince them, trying to tell them these stories

1:53:41

to convince them to accept men from Guantanamo

1:53:44

and they shake their head, these officials

1:53:49

and are, I think appalled and it sort of fits

1:53:55

into a bad stereotype of the United States

1:53:59

as being completely lawless at this point

1:54:01

in conjunction with CIA black sites and rendition

1:54:05

and torture and NSA spying

1:54:09

and the proliferation of handguns in the United States.

1:54:12

It's all of a piece and it feeds negative stereotype

1:54:17

in the United States, which is tremendously unfortunate

1:54:21

and I think perhaps, in many respects unfair

1:54:24

but nonetheless, it persists.

1:54:27

In Europe for example, there was a great willingness

1:54:33

to help the Obama administration.

1:54:35

When President Obama came into office,

1:54:39

there was a concerted effort by the countries in Europe to,

1:54:40

as part of a comprehensive plan, accept a number of the men

1:54:45

from Guantanamo who couldn't safely return home

1:54:49

and France to its credit was the first country

1:54:52

to step forward and say, we will do this.

1:54:55

We're France, we'll be first, we'll do this.

1:54:58

We'll show the world

1:55:00

that these men are not all the worst of the worst.

1:55:01

We will do what the U.S itself is not willing to do

1:55:04

and they did it, they took these people.

1:55:06

Most of the countries in Europe have followed suit

1:55:11

but there was a tremendous degree of frustration

1:55:15

by the end of 2009, 2010 just as we were frustrated

1:55:19

with the administration for not following through

1:55:23

on the commitment to close the prison.

1:55:26

A lot of these countries as potential resettlement

1:55:28

countries were very upset.

1:55:29

I mean, Luxembourg was in my view, apoplectic

1:55:31

at what happened with Djamel Ameziane,

1:55:36

couldn't understand it.

1:55:39

I was in Luxembourg last June,

1:55:40

they still couldn't understand why he hadn't been

1:55:43

transferred to Luxembourg.

1:55:46

Wasn't Obama committed to closing Guantanamo,

1:55:51

how could this happen?

1:55:53

It was inconceivable and very disappointing to them

1:55:55

and reflected terribly on the United States

1:55:59

and I think unfortunately, a lot of potential allies

1:56:05

of the United States when it comes to closing Guantanamo

1:56:09

sort of turn their backs, not on the men in Guantanamo

1:56:11

but on the administration.

1:56:14

Interviewer

For what reason

1:56:17

would they turn their backs--

1:56:17

-

Because it had become clear, I think that the U.S

1:56:19

wasn't serious about doing everything it could

1:56:28

to close Guantanamo and was still insisting on restrictions

1:56:29

that were unworkable in Europe,

1:56:36

restrictions on travel and things like this

1:56:38

they were unworkable in Europe.

1:56:40

Out of practical necessity, as much as we can try

1:56:45

to continue to convince these countries to take these men,

1:56:47

we turned our attention, in some ways to Latin America

1:56:50

and said, more nicely than I'll say it now but,

1:56:54

"Look, Europe has taken these people,

1:56:58

all these small islands have taken people.

1:56:59

We'd like you to take some people."

1:57:01

It was said much more delicately than that

1:57:03

but we were successful in that regard

1:57:06

in encouraging some of these countries to come forward.

1:57:11

El Salvador was the first country in Latin America

1:57:14

to take two Uyghurs.

1:57:17

Now there are rumors of Uruguay

1:57:19

and there were reports that Costa Rica is interested

1:57:21

and Chile and...

1:57:26

These are all countries that we had talked to

1:57:28

to try to convince them to take men

1:57:30

and so, it remains to be seen whether the administration

1:57:33

will follow through this time around

1:57:37

because if they don't, I don't know that these countries,

1:57:40

either Latin America or Europe are gonna come back

1:57:46

for a third time.

1:57:49

I just don't know that's gonna happen.

1:57:50

Interviewer

Are you surprised that here it is,

1:57:52

the middle of May and no one was released since January?

1:57:54

-

I think it's terrible

1:57:58

and I don't think there's any excuse.

1:57:59

For a long time, the administration blamed Congress

1:58:01

for passing transfer restrictions in January of 2011

1:58:04

that made it more difficult to transfer people

1:58:08

out of Guantanamo but not impossible, just more difficult

1:58:10

and perks on Congress for doing that

1:58:14

but there was no permanent ban on transfers.

1:58:17

So the administration could have continued

1:58:23

to transfer people but it didn't and it was more convenient,

1:58:28

I think politically to blame Congress

1:58:31

for the failure to transfer people.

1:58:33

Nonetheless, there was a big effort to get Congress

1:58:36

to change the law and the administration said,

1:58:38

if only would change the law

1:58:40

and remove the transfer restrictions,

1:58:42

we will be able to transfer people out and close Guantanamo.

1:58:44

Well, you know what?

1:58:47

Last year, those restrictions were changed,

1:58:48

those restrictions were lifted

1:58:50

and we've seen very few transfers

1:58:52

so I don't know what it's gonna take.

1:58:56

Interviewer

So I'm just about done.

1:59:03

Are you thinking you can continue your energies

1:59:05

and optimism can exist,

1:59:10

you feel that you're not burning out like some people do

1:59:14

after hitting walls again and again

1:59:18

with what you just described?

1:59:20

-

Well, there's certainly a lot more that needs to be done

1:59:23

and so the effort will continue for a long time

1:59:25

until the last person leaves Guantanamo

1:59:28

or I should say until the last person is freed

1:59:31

or given a fair trial because there is some sense

1:59:34

that the administration might try to move people here

1:59:39

to the United States, which is fraught

1:59:41

with all sorts of peril for the detainees

1:59:43

but for the administration as well potentially.

1:59:46

So we'll continue until the men are either released

1:59:49

or given fair trials.

1:59:51

In terms of me, I try to keep perspective on the work.

1:59:54

I try to maintain professional detachment and have always

1:59:59

and that's sort of consistent with the way I was trained

2:00:08

as a lawyer, not just in law school

2:00:10

or while I was clerking but that's the way I was trained

2:00:13

as a lawyer by Kramer Levin

2:00:15

and I'd like to think served me well,

2:00:19

not to say that I don't get incredibly upset and frustrated,

2:00:23

I do but I try to keep it in perspective.

2:00:27

Interviewer

Does your wife work on these cases still?

2:00:31

-

No, she doesn't.

2:00:33

She moved on from Kramer Levin and from Guantanamo

2:00:36

after Ayub was released.

2:00:41

-

Do you have kids?

2:00:46

-

I do, I have two children.

Interviewer

Do you think there'll be lawyers following--

2:00:49

(Jonathan laughs)

2:00:51

-

I don't know,

2:00:52

I think my oldest son's gonna be an architect.

2:00:53

Interviewer

Is there something I didn't ask you

2:00:56

that you wanna share with the world thinking that people

2:00:57

might watch this 50 years from now and since you know

2:01:00

so much about what's gone on these years?

2:01:04

Maybe there's something I didn't ask you

2:01:07

that you wanted to share.

2:01:10

-

Nothing that I can think of.

2:01:11

There's a lot to be said about Guantanamo still,

2:01:13

so hopefully years from now, it'll be closed and who knows?

2:01:17

Maybe it will be a monument to the men who suffered there.

2:01:21

Interviewer

Hmm, it'd be a museum, you think?

2:01:25

-

A museum.

2:01:27

-

Do you think?

-

I don't know, I hope so.

2:01:29

Guantanamo, the physical facility is deteriorating.

2:01:31

Maybe it's symbolic, maybe it's a sign

2:01:36

but the prison is falling apart.

2:01:40

It was never designed to be a permanent prison

2:01:41

and so, particularly situated where it is in the tropics,

2:01:44

it's literally falling apart so I hope that it's preserved.

2:01:51

Camp X-Ray, which was the first prison camp facility

2:01:56

at Guantanamo still exists, it's by the side of the road.

2:02:00

We often go to see it when we're in Guantanamo,

2:02:03

we drive up there to see it, it's right off the road.

2:02:07

I hope it is preserved.

2:02:10

I mean, there's some people who say

2:02:12

it needs to be plowed under.

2:02:13

I think it needs to be preserved.

2:02:14

I think people need to see it and they need to remember

2:02:15

and who knows?

2:02:18

Someday, maybe men like Djamel Ameziane

2:02:21

will be given the chance to go back there

2:02:23

and sort of make peace with it, if that's even possible,

2:02:24

maybe we'll get to go there with them.

2:02:31

Maybe the U.S government will go there with them as well.

2:02:33

I don't know but we'll see but it needs to be preserved.

2:02:38

It's part of history, a very unfortunate part of history.

2:02:41

Interviewer

You're saying that it has changed your life?

2:02:49

-

Certainly changed my career.

2:02:51

I was on track to be a partner at Kramer Levin

2:02:54

and now I work at CCR, which I wouldn't trade for anything

2:02:57

but it's certainly changed the trajectory of my career.

2:03:02

It's also changed the way that I look at the world

2:03:05

and has changed the way certainly,

2:03:10

that I look at the law, that I practice the law.

2:03:12

When I was doing my clerkship with Judge Droney,

2:03:21

I saw at the time what I think every federal judge

2:03:27

and every federal court law clerk sees which is a slow,

2:03:32

sad parade of drug defendants coming through the court

2:03:36

and it confirmed a desire that I had to be a defense lawyer,

2:03:42

to be specifically at the time, a criminal defense lawyer.

2:03:53

My judge said, "If that's what you wanna do, that's great.

2:03:56

You should go to New York.

2:04:00

You should work for Gary Naftalis," which is what I did.

2:04:01

He taught me how to litigate a case and then I came to CCR

2:04:08

and was able to do this on my own, really

2:04:14

with my CCR colleagues but I was in charge of my cases

2:04:18

which was something new for me.

2:04:22

The more I litigate these cases still to this day,

2:04:27

the more I realize that in many ways,

2:04:30

the legal justice system in our country is only available

2:04:33

in a positive way, it only benefits certain people.

2:04:38

There is no equal justice under law

2:04:42

and I don't say that facetiously

2:04:45

or in any kind of mocking way, I think it's true.

2:04:46

The law is designed to benefit certain people

2:04:49

and the men in Guantanamo were from the outset

2:04:53

pushed so far to the margins of our legal system.

2:05:00

Again, Guantanamo was created to be outside the law.

2:05:06

They were designed to be so different.

2:05:09

They were portrayed as being others, as being inhuman,

2:05:13

they were so vilified, dehumanized

2:05:19

that that opened the door to a lot of terrible things.

2:05:21

That's how torture happens.

2:05:30

You don't torture someone who you see

2:05:35

as another human being, you torture someone

2:05:37

who you see as being not human

2:05:39

and that's what happened at Guantanamo.

2:05:42

You don't hold someone indefinitely

2:05:43

potentially for life without charge

2:05:47

or if they're cleared for release

2:05:51

unless you see them as something other than a human being

2:05:54

and that is, in many ways, the legacy of Guantanamo

2:05:58

and I think about that when I practice law.

2:06:02

The legal system, the court system,

2:06:04

you may get into the courtroom

2:06:06

but you may be so outside the margins of the court,

2:06:09

the law might not benefit you,

2:06:15

it might not help you in any way.

2:06:17

It's really unfortunate but it fits a pattern.

2:06:21

It's not unique in the history of the United States.

2:06:23

We've seen this time and time again.

2:06:26

If you go back and look at history,

2:06:29

you look certainly at slavery,

2:06:30

the aftermath of slavery, Jim Crow,

2:06:33

the Civil Rights Movement.

2:06:37

You look at the way that native Americans are treated,

2:06:40

the Trail of Tears.

2:06:42

If you go back and you look at sort of the prelude

2:06:43

to the Trail of Tears, the way that native Americans

2:06:47

were described and characterized as terrorists, as savages

2:06:49

and again, pushed so far to the margins

2:06:55

that there was no protection for them.

2:06:58

They had the least access to judicial resources,

2:07:00

the least access to any kind of resources in the law

2:07:04

and it's those kinds of people

2:07:07

that the Center for Constitutional Rights represents,

2:07:11

whether it's Guantanamo detainees

2:07:14

or whether it's people like Julian Assange at WikiLeaks,

2:07:16

those are the people we represent

2:07:22

and have always represented

2:07:24

but it changes the way that I was trained as a lawyer,

2:07:26

it changes the way I look at the law

2:07:30

'cause the law is not a remedy for everybody.

2:07:31

It serves the interest and benefits the few.

2:07:36

That's my lecture for the day.

2:07:47

(chuckles)

2:07:49

Interviewer

We're gonna put that up on the internet.

2:07:50

That's a great...

2:07:52

I think we're done, if you have anything else--

2:07:54

-

No.

2:07:56

-

We need 20 seconds

of room tone that Johnny needs before--

2:07:57

-

Of what?

2:08:00

-

Room tone.

He needs to capture a quiet, setting for 20 seconds

2:08:02

before we can--

2:08:05

-

Okay.

Johnny

(indistinct) room tone.

2:08:07

Dixon, J. Wells - Interview master file

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