Hall, Julia - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

Interviewer

Morning

0:05

-

Good morning.

0:06

Interviewer

We are very grateful

0:07

to you for participating

0:08

in the Witness to Guantanamo Project.

0:09

We invite you to speak of your experiences

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and involvement with issues concerning Guantanamo.

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We are hoping to provide you

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with an opportunity to tell your story

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in your own words, we are creating an archive

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of stories so that people in America

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and around the world will have a better understanding

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of what you and others have experienced and observed.

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Future generations must know what happened in Guantanamo

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and by telling your story you're contributing to history.

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We appreciate your willingness to speak with us.

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And if any time you want to take a break, just let us know.

0:47

And if you say something

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and you want us to remove it,

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we can remove it if you let us know.

0:53

-

Okay.

0:55

Interviewer

And I'd like to begin

0:56

by asking you your name and your hometown

0:57

and birth date and age.

1:01

-

My name is Julia Hall.

1:05

I work for Amnesty International.

1:07

I previously worked for Human Rights Watch.

1:09

I am 51 years old.

1:12

Interviewer

When were you born?

1:15

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I was born in 1963.

1:16

Interviewer

And where do you live?

1:18

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I live in Buffalo, New York,

1:20

which has been my outpost office

1:22

for almost my entire career.

1:26

So I've been very lucky to work out of my home,

1:28

but my offices have been in New York and in London.

1:31

Interviewer

Your marital status and education?

1:36

-

I'm happily married to my husband

1:39

Patrick Mahoney for 21 years.

1:41

I am a lawyer.

1:45

So graduated law school, I don't know, maybe 18 years ago,

1:46

18 or 19 years ago.

1:50

Have prior degrees in sociology,

1:52

Middle East studies, things like that so,

1:55

Interviewer

So maybe you give us a little background

2:00

as to where you began after law school

2:03

in terms of human rights work and then

2:06

up to the present and some titles along the way.

2:08

-

I went right from law school to Human Rights Watch,

2:12

they have a fellowship program for new graduates

2:14

and was happy enough to get one of those,

2:18

went to New York and spent 13 years at Human Rights Watch

2:21

starting in conflict zones,

2:26

working in Northern Ireland during the first cease fire

2:29

and then following the Northern Irish situation

2:33

right through to the peace in 1998, the Belfast Court.

2:37

So did that, went on to Bosnia, looked at sexual violence.

2:42

Post-war in Bosnia,

2:48

traveled to 17 towns and cities there in 1997,

2:50

right after the war had ended, talking to women,

2:55

went from there to do immigration

2:58

and asylum issues across Europe.

3:00

And then September 11th happened.

3:02

And it was a really stunning shift

3:07

in everything that we were doing

3:10

in the human rights movement.

3:13

We thought that the debate over torture was over.

3:15

We thought that the notion of Western governments engaged

3:20

in enforced disappearance was no more.

3:23

And so it was like a back to the future kind of thing,

3:25

where you really felt yourself punched in the stomach

3:28

by the event itself, which was so horrible.

3:33

And then by the way that the United States

3:36

and other governments responded to it

3:38

which just compounded the injustice.

3:40

And so from September 12th, 2001 to the present

3:43

I have worked almost exclusively on counter-terrorism

3:49

and national security cases,

3:52

both in north America and in Europe

3:54

Interviewer

You were still with Human Rights Watch

3:57

at the time of 9/11?

3:59

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I was.

4:01

Interviewer

And when you say torture,

4:02

we didn't know about torture on September 12th.

4:04

When did you find out about torture

4:07

and how did that inform everything you did?

4:09

How did that all unfold?

4:12

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The first cases that came to our attention

4:14

that indicated that there was something going on,

4:18

at least for me, was December 18th, 2001.

4:21

So very shortly after 9/11, when you think about it,

4:26

you think about security council resolutions.

4:28

You think about Afghanistan.

4:30

It was a pretty compressed period of time between 9/11,

4:34

and we heard of people being apprehended

4:39

in ways that were clearly extra judicial

4:42

and people were being sent back to places

4:45

where they were almost certainly going to be harmed.

4:48

Those cases were two Egyptians.

4:51

They were living in Sweden at the time,

4:54

and they had been apprehended, brought to the airport,

4:58

they were frisked ,the whole rendition thing.

5:03

You know, they'd been stripped of their clothing.

5:07

They've been put into jumpsuits.

5:09

They've been shackled, hooded,

5:10

had depositories, placed in their anuses,

5:12

And then they were handed over to US officials,

5:15

put on a plane at Bromma airport and transported to Egypt

5:20

where they were put into prison and they were tortured.

5:23

So that happened in December of 2001.

5:26

And that was the first rendition that we had heard of.

5:29

So, when 9/11 happened,

5:36

it was very clear right from the start

5:39

that there was going to be backlash.

5:42

We didn't actually know how bad it was going to be,

5:45

but we started to understand

5:47

how bad it was going to be by December.

5:50

Interviewer

How did you hear

5:52

about that incident in December 18th?

5:53

-

Amnesty International actually issued urgent actions

5:55

on behalf of these men.

5:59

Their section in Stockholm was on top of these cases.

6:02

The one guy's name was Ahmed Giza

6:06

and the other guy's name was Muhammad Al-Zari.

6:08

And so Amnesty started,

6:11

because it's got so many offices all over the world

6:14

and it's a movement,

6:16

looking, these cases started to come up on their radar.

6:18

So Amnesty issued urgent action the day it happened,

6:22

Interviewer

And you knew the US was involved?

6:26

-

We knew that those men

6:30

had been handed over to the us

6:32

to some agency of the United States government

6:36

and taken to Egypt.

6:40

We knew that, we didn't understand the rendition program

6:41

at that point.

6:45

We had no idea at that point

6:46

that the US was going to be secretly

6:49

detaining people on European soil.

6:51

Now, what was going

6:53

on in other places, you know, Afghanistan,

6:54

I can really only speak to the rendition program

6:58

as it pertains to European locations

7:01

and to the complicity of European governments

7:05

and Sweden was completely complicit.

7:08

They've acknowledged their complicity.

7:10

They've apologized to the two men.

7:12

They've rescinded those original expulsion order.

7:14

They've offered them compensation.

7:17

They've brought one of the men

7:19

from Egypt back to Sweden,

7:21

Ahmed Giza is now in Sweden.

7:23

So, the Swedish scenario, the situation in Sweden

7:26

was really kind of an A to Z kind of thing, right?

7:32

Giza only went back to Sweden.

7:37

I believe it was last year, but this started in 2001.

7:38

So it was 13 years of,

7:43

from the time that it happened

7:47

through a series of accountability processes.

7:48

I mean, he took his case to the United Nations,

7:50

to the United Nations committee against torture.

7:53

And they ruled in his favor against Sweden.

7:55

So there was accountability for Sweden

7:58

but absolutely no accountability to date

8:01

for anything that the United States government has done

8:03

in terms of these operations.

8:06

Interviewer

What happened to the second man

8:08

who was taken to there?

8:09

-

He is still there.

8:12

He decided for various reasons to stay in Egypt,

8:14

of course, Ahmed Giza's entire family was in Sweden.

8:17

The Swedish government really tried to make amends,

8:20

what we would call an, in human rights law,

8:23

to give effective redress to the family.

8:26

They offered off Ahmed Giza's wife asylum

8:29

and his five children.

8:32

So naturally when he got out of prison in Egypt

8:33

he wanted to be with them.

8:36

They had asylum.

8:38

So they were well situated in Sweden

8:39

and to the Swedish government's credit,

8:41

they brought him back home.

8:44

Interviewer

What was the next incident you heard

8:47

right after that?

8:49

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I would have to say in my memory

8:54

it was the 2003 kidnapping of Abu Omar in Italy.

8:56

He was under surveillance by what was SISMI,

9:03

which is the FBI of Italy,

9:08

for having connections, you know,

9:13

he was suspected of having connections.

9:16

Of course, now, what that means is so unclear,

9:18

connections with whom, connected to do what?

9:23

It was so unclear, but he was under surveillance

9:25

by the Italian intelligence apparatus.

9:28

That apparatus began cooperating with the CIA.

9:35

They hatched a plan to basically kidnap him

9:40

and he was kidnapped.

9:43

And then he was rendered back to Egypt

9:45

where he also was subjected to torture.

9:47

And again, Amnesty International was very critical,

9:50

even though I wasn't working for them at the time,

9:54

in following these cases.

9:56

So that was the next one that I can think of

9:58

that was quite an affair.

10:01

And since then, you'll note

10:03

that the Abu Omar case has been written about

10:04

in nonfiction form, there've been articles, documentaries.

10:08

It's been one of the most dissected rendition cases

10:12

in the history of the program,

10:16

and to the Italian prosecutor's credit,

10:18

Armando Spataro, he actually gathered evidence

10:24

on this kidnapping.

10:28

He gathered cell phone records.

10:29

He gathered receipts from hotels.

10:34

He gathered car rental receipts, and he built a body

10:36

of evidence that led to the prosecution of 26 US nationals.

10:38

And I don't know, half a dozen Italians.

10:44

And they were very, very successful prosecutions.

10:47

Of course, they happened in, in absentia,

10:50

which is a big problem under international law,

10:53

but it was definitely a process

10:56

whereby you can see how these cases can be investigated.

10:58

Evidence can be gathered despite the stonewalling

11:03

of both the Italian government and the US government,

11:07

how they can be effectively investigated

11:09

and people can be held to account

11:12

and brought to justice for the violations

11:14

that they perpetrated against these people.

11:17

Interviewer

So what were you thinking?

11:22

You personally, and then also the people

11:23

you worked with, in terms of all of sudden

11:25

discovering that the US was complicit in torture?

11:28

You said that you had never thought you'd see that again.

11:31

How did Human Rights Watch

11:36

and then later on Amnesty react to that?

11:39

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Well, look, we weren't naive,

11:44

we didn't think the US government never,

11:47

whether it was intelligence operations,

11:50

military operations, or even in Brooklyn MDC,

11:53

that they never tortured people.

11:56

But the reality was is that it wasn't a policy,

11:59

it wasn't a formal way of approaching a problem, right?

12:02

I mean, things happened.

12:07

We understood that, we would call them to the carpet

12:09

for torture practices, let's say,

12:12

whether it was a police department

12:14

or substandard conditions in detention centers

12:16

or prisons that amounted to torture and ill treatment.

12:20

So I don't want to give the impression

12:23

that the United States government was completely clean

12:25

on September 10th, 2001

12:27

and then only became dirty afterwards.

12:29

But the unique thing about the operations after 2001

12:33

is that they were authorized

12:39

at the very highest levels through a series

12:41

of memos that somehow tried to justify the use of torture

12:45

and ill treatment in pursuit of people

12:50

that they suspected of having links

12:52

to the terrorists who brought down the trade centers.

12:54

And that's a completely different ball game then.

12:58

When you have the president of the United States

13:02

all of his kind of kitchen cabinet

13:06

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,

13:09

you know the cast of characters and then the lawyers,

13:11

then the lawyers, through a series of memos

13:16

helping to justify these practices,

13:18

talking about them as enhanced interrogation techniques,

13:22

euphemisms for torture and ill treatment,

13:25

was stunning, frankly.

13:27

And I don't think that there is a person

13:30

who can honestly say that, oh ,we would have,

13:33

of course we would have expected that no, it was stunning.

13:37

And it was, from a lawyer's point of view,

13:40

a regression in rights protection

13:44

and the rule of law that we still live with today.

13:47

Interviewer

Did you go to the media

13:50

and how did the media respond when you saw these incidents?

13:52

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You know, it was the Europeans who began, European experts

13:59

in international governmental organizations.

14:05

So let me explain what those are.

14:07

So the council of Europe

14:08

and the European Parliament, who began to say

14:10

we really need to investigate Europe's complicity

14:13

in these practices.

14:16

And they started to do that investigation in 2005.

14:17

It was December 5th, 2005

14:21

that Condoleezza Rice was going to Europe.

14:24

And she was at some airport in the US,

14:28

I wish I could remember which one now,

14:31

but she was still in the US,

14:32

and she admitted that the US government

14:33

had a rendition program.

14:36

She chastised the Europeans

14:38

for being naive about the fact

14:42

that this rendition program was necessary,

14:46

it had saved lives.

14:50

I mean, she really was like the schoolmarm on the Europeans.

14:52

You don't understand how serious this is.

14:56

This rendition program is absolutely necessary.

14:58

We can't get these people any other way.

15:00

And we are helping to save European and American lives

15:02

by transporting people illegally across borders,

15:06

holding them in secret detention

15:10

and interrogating them in by using coercive

15:12

and violent means that is actually helping Europe.

15:15

So that was the message.

15:20

Well, the European intergovernmental organizations

15:21

saw how harmful this was,

15:23

and they decided to do their own investigation.

15:26

So Senator Dick Marty

15:28

a Swiss Senator began an investigation 2005, 2006,

15:30

released reports in 2006 and 2007 on the constellation

15:34

of European governments who had been complicit

15:40

with the US in rendition in secret detention.

15:44

The European Parliament did the same thing.

15:47

When those reports came out

15:50

the European governments were so categorically insulted

15:52

by the idea that they would have done such a thing.

15:58

And they pushed back hard and poor Dick Marty.

16:01

At that time, poor Dick Marty.

16:05

His reputation was at stake.

16:08

The European Parliament's reputation was at stake

16:11

with their own report, which they released in 2007.

16:13

So the media at that time

16:16

I really felt very strongly that the media was of two minds.

16:21

The first was they love a juicy story,

16:28

and this is as juicy as it gets,

16:31

US government, rendition, secrets, detention,

16:32

torture, disappearance, you know,

16:35

basically that happened in the 1970s and 80s

16:38

in Central and South America, right?

16:40

So they loved that aspect of it.

16:43

And they played that up to a certain point,

16:45

but they also were somewhat complicit

16:47

in the government response saying, where's your evidence?

16:52

Where's your hard evidence?

16:56

Where's the smoking gun?

16:58

Where's the body, where's the secret center?

16:59

To Human Rights Watch's credit, in 2005,

17:04

Human Rights Watch actually released

17:06

the names of countries, Poland and Romania,

17:08

where two of the centers have been held.

17:11

And they had been situated.

17:13

The Washington Post, in a shameful act of deference

17:14

to the administration had decided

17:20

not to publicize the names.

17:22

They wrote a story

17:25

that there were secret detention centers in Europe,

17:26

but at the behest of the administration,

17:29

decided not to publish the locations.

17:31

So there were highs for the media,

17:35

there were lows for the media,

17:37

and it really, there still are highs and lows for the media.

17:39

You know, sometimes the media is our friend in pursuit

17:43

of justice for victims of human rights violations

17:46

and sometimes they're complicit.

17:49

I would have to say that there are some journalists

17:51

who deserve credit for helping to expose this Jane Meyer

17:54

from a New Yorker, Scott Shane

17:58

I'm sure I'm forgetting others.

18:03

There have been some really, Michelle Shepherd up in Canada,

18:05

without a doubt, and some of the European press,

18:08

but on the US side of things, even to this date,

18:13

when we know so much about these operations,

18:17

when the European Court of Human Rights, two weeks ago,

18:20

issued two judgments, finding Poland complicit

18:24

with the CIA in torture and enforced disappearance.

18:27

We still have journalists in the United States

18:31

who refuse to use the word torture

18:33

when describing these practices,

18:35

who refuse to talk about the issue

18:37

of accountability in terms of criminal prosecution.

18:39

So, you know, I'm of a mixed,

18:42

I have very mixed feelings about the media on these issues.

18:46

There are some real heroes, Carol Rosenberg,

18:50

who writes in the Miami Herald,

18:52

has done heroic work on Guantanamo.

18:54

Interviewer

So during those early,

18:58

by the way what title did you have

19:00

with Human Rights Watch after 9/11?

19:02

-

I was senior legal counsel

19:07

in the terrorism and counter terrorism program.

19:09

Interviewer

And when did you just,

19:12

when did you switch over to work for Amnesty?

19:14

-

In 2009.

19:17

Interviewer

Okay, well, going back to the early years,

19:18

did you find this work very different

19:24

from the work you had done in the previous

19:26

10 or 15 years when you worked in Ireland and in Bosnia?

19:28

-

The work in Ireland was informative

19:33

in terms of the post 9/11 era.

19:37

I mean, what we were doing in Ireland was looking at,

19:41

you know, the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries,

19:44

were labeled as terrorist groups.

19:49

The techniques that the British government used

19:51

against the Irish had been called torture or ill treatment.

19:54

We had a whole national security overlay in terms

19:59

of all the work that we did in Northern Ireland.

20:02

So that work was instructive.

20:04

And one of the questions I repeatedly ask

20:06

in the various fora within which I speak

20:09

or where I'm writing

20:12

is why we don't draw more from the Northern Irish experience

20:13

in terms of understanding the post 9/11 period.

20:19

There's so many parallels between the two.

20:23

I think that people think that the Irish experience

20:26

is a small experience.

20:28

It's a little thing, but you know, people who were labeled

20:30

as terrorists in the north, you know, they trained in Libya

20:34

they were hooked up

20:38

with international terrorist organizations.

20:39

It was an international phenomenon that played itself out

20:43

at a micro cosmic level,

20:46

but it has lessons that we really haven't learned from.

20:48

Remind me of the question again?

20:57

Interviewer

Your background in Ireland and Bosnia,

21:00

how that informed and how you understood

21:02

what was happening post 9/11

21:05

and whether it was very different

21:09

and you perceptions based on your background.

21:12

-

Well I definitely think that the post 9/11 period

21:15

did cause a paradigm shift for us in a lot of ways.

21:19

Everywhere we go now, we see the opportunity effect

21:25

of invoking national security,

21:29

right across the globe, you know

21:33

where their people are assessed suspects,

21:36

where there's militancy.

21:40

We see the invocation of national security

21:41

in order to deviate from the rule of law,

21:44

in order to deviate from protecting people's human rights

21:47

right across the globe.

21:50

And I don't think

21:52

that we had that kind of global phenomenon pre 9/11.

21:53

We had it in certain places.

22:00

We had it rear its ugly head every now and then,

22:02

but now every place that I work in

22:04

uses, in a very discretionary way,

22:11

national security as an excuse to target people,

22:14

minorities, to target and suppress free expression.

22:20

And so I do think that what we really have post 9/11

22:27

is a whole new world

22:32

in terms of the invocation of national security

22:33

to justify oppressive practices.

22:35

Interviewer

So early on,

22:39

did you know much about Guantanamo?

22:43

Was that part of what you worked on

22:45

and did you ever, what did you hear about Guantanamo?

22:47

-

Well, we knew from the minute it was open,

22:52

I mean it was public when it was opened.

22:54

Karen Greenberg has written this book called

22:59

"The First hundred Days of Guantanamo"

23:01

where she makes the argument that there were possibilities

23:03

for a more just approach

23:08

to those detainees.

23:13

But it became clear very, very quickly that

23:14

that was not going to be the case.

23:18

That Guantanamo was really going to be a legal black hole.

23:20

And no matter what the administration said about, you know,

23:24

this safeguard or that safeguard or whatever, I mean

23:27

Guantanamo's just been a stain right from the beginning.

23:30

So yeah, we've been following Guantanamo

23:34

since the very, very beginning.

23:36

Since it first opened

23:37

Interviewer

You personally,

23:39

were you following Guantanamo,

23:39

or were you following more the rendition cases or both?

23:40

-

I followed both.

23:44

You have to remember that many of the people

23:47

who were victims of rendition ended up at Guantanamo.

23:49

So there are links between

23:52

these post 9/11 operations in Europe,

23:55

in West Africa, in the Middle East and North Africa

23:58

and people who are currently in Guantanamo Bay.

24:03

Some of those people were held in secret detention

24:06

in Europe, in Thailand and Morocco,

24:08

it's been reported

24:12

that some people were held in Uzbekistan,

24:13

we've never been able to verify that.

24:14

So I guess the way that I look at my work was

24:17

as making these links, you know,

24:21

between and among all of these different operations,

24:24

but Guantanamo really became more real for me

24:30

when I actually went down

24:35

to observe the first military commission.

24:37

And I wrote an article after that,

24:40

that no matter what you read in the press,

24:42

doesn't matter, Western, Eastern, Asian press,

24:45

it doesn't matter.

24:48

You really have to go to Guantanamo to really

24:49

understand the physical geography, the psychic geography

24:50

and the disorientation that comes from a system

24:55

that is completely different

24:59

from what you learn is the rule of law in law school.

25:01

And so that is, it was in 2007,

25:06

I think I went down for Salim Hamdan's trial.

25:09

-

Could you tell us?

25:12

-

It might've been 2008.

Interviewer

Could you tell us about that experience?

25:13

-

Well, I didn't wanna go.

25:17

I wasn't in the queue to go to Guantanamo,

25:19

but I was fairly low enough on the totem pole

25:23

that going to Guantanamo in July

25:26

was gonna be my in my basket of things to do.

25:29

And so I went down at a time

25:32

when you could just catch a commercial flight,

25:35

I flew to Florida and then I took Air Sunshine,

25:37

or something like, that to Guantanamo,

25:40

I had to have clearance,

25:43

but now people who go to Guantanamo

25:44

have to go on military transport planes through DC.

25:46

And I was there at a time

25:49

when things were much looser, so to speak.

25:51

And so I flew down and was met at the airport

25:55

by a charming bunch of young military guys

25:59

and on a little boat.

26:04

And they ferried me across the bay,

26:05

over to my tent.

26:08

I was the first class of people at Guantanamo Bay

26:10

who were not privileged to stay

26:13

in the combined bachelor's quarters.

26:16

I got a notice about a week before I was to leave

26:18

that we were going to be housed in tents,

26:21

which if they thought was going to be disincentive

26:23

for the NGO, they were very, very wrong.

26:26

So anyway, I went down, I was one of four observers.

26:31

I was the only woman observer

26:34

from an NGO for this first military commissions trial.

26:36

I was there for eight days

26:39

with ACLU, Amnesty International, myself,

26:40

and I can't remember the other organization,

26:46

but in any event, we observed the trial for eight days.

26:49

And I've written about my impressions

26:53

of that first military commissions trial.

26:55

You know, a trial where the judge

26:58

acknowledges openly in court

26:59

that this person was subject to coercion.

27:01

And yet these very liberal rules for the admissibility

27:04

of evidence permitted his coerced testimony

27:08

to be entered into evidence.

27:11

So a first year law student knows

27:12

that this is not on, right?

27:14

So there was very little confidence

27:17

that this trial could actually produce justice.

27:20

And the key thing for a lot of us was,

27:24

people always say, "You defend terrorists.

27:28

You want justice for terrorists."

27:32

But the key thing is that

27:35

if the US government is making the argument

27:37

that they are actually prosecuting people who were linked

27:39

in some way to 9/11 in these unsafe, unfair trials,

27:42

then the 9/11 victims, they don't get justice either.

27:46

So on either side of it, nobody got justice.

27:51

Hamdan was a small fry.

27:55

He was convicted in an unsafe conviction.

27:57

He served a certain amount of time

28:02

and then he was released.

28:04

The judge gave him time served,

28:06

he'd been in Guantanamo for five years

28:07

and then they sent him back to Yemen,

28:09

where I understand he's doing fairly well.

28:11

Interviewer

So are you telling us

28:15

that you were surprised in your observations

28:17

when you went to Guantanamo,

28:20

you had different expectations

28:21

than what you actually observed?

28:22

-

No, I'm not saying I had different expectations

28:25

from what I observed.

28:27

I'm saying that given the rules that we understood existed

28:29

and governed the military commissions

28:32

all of our worst fears were realized.

28:34

No, I didn't have high expectations at all.

28:38

You don't take people to an offshore prison,

28:39

set up a separate court outside the federal system

28:42

with rules of evidence that so clearly deviate

28:45

from what you find in the federal system

28:49

and have high expectations.

28:52

No, we had low expectations

28:54

and they were, they were realized

28:56

Interviewer

Did you ever go back

29:02

to Guantanamo after that?

29:03

-

I did not.

29:04

I have actively sought not to be

29:05

traveling back and forth

29:09

-

Why is that?

-

To Guantanamo Bay.

29:10

I think that once for me was enough.

29:12

And I also find that what Guantanamo Bay

29:16

has done to people who routinely go, you know,

29:19

there's people who basically

29:22

cycle in and cycle out all the time,

29:23

is it causes a hardening, a sarcasm,

29:26

a real sense that there's no hope.

29:32

And I don't think that you can really be

29:36

as effective as you want to be

29:39

in doing human rights work if you're that hardened.

29:42

And so my decision was to try to do the work

29:45

where I thought that I could do the most good

29:49

and maintain a sense of hope.

29:53

And I know how that sounds,

29:55

but I would never hire anyone to do human rights work

29:57

who didn't have a hope that they could have impact.

30:00

Why would I hire someone who is hard and sarcastic, cynic,

30:02

why would I do that?

30:05

So why would I want to become that myself?

30:06

And so switched up a little to the resettlement issue,

30:10

which seemed much more positive to me, much more hopeful,

30:16

and to actually helping to reveal more

30:20

and more about the rendition in secret detention programs.

30:23

Those seem to be the places where the energy,

30:26

my psychic energy, felt better spent.

30:29

Interviewer

So that takes us right to

30:32

could you tell us about some of the resettlement cases?

30:35

Let's start with the one in Ireland.

30:37

-

Yeah, well, I got an email in 2007.

30:40

I'd worked on a European court case years ago,

30:45

where a bunch of Uzbeks were going to be sent

30:50

from Turkey to Uzbekistan .

30:54

And it was so clearly the wrong thing

30:56

for the Turkish government to do.

30:58

Uzbekistan is a place where torture is systematic,

31:00

where people with a religious profile

31:03

are routinely targeted.

31:06

They're apprehended.

31:08

They're tried on trumped up charges,

31:10

they're tortured in detention.

31:12

They have long prison sentences

31:13

in the most horrible prison system.

31:15

So I'd worked on that case.

31:18

So Guantanamo Bay council,

31:21

named Michael Mone,

31:25

sent Human Rights Watch an email.

31:26

I think it was in 2007, and the email got booted around.

31:28

It was like, can you help me make the case

31:32

that my Uzbek detainee in Guantanamo Bay

31:35

should not be repatriated Uzbekistan.

31:39

So eventually it came to me,

31:42

based on this work I had done on this European court case.

31:44

So I called Mike Mone, up and I said,

31:48

"So what's the deal?"

31:50

And he said, "I have this Uzbekistani guy

31:52

and there's another Uzbek, and there's a rumor

31:55

that they might be sent back to Uzbekistan."

31:59

And I said, "Well, that can't be the case.

32:02

The US doesn't send people to Uzbekistan.

32:03

Ordinary asylum seekers who come

32:06

to the United States from Uzbekistan,

32:08

they don't get sent back.

32:10

So this began what was a long-term partnership

32:12

between me and Mike Mone

32:16

to A, prove that they couldn't be sent back to Uzbekistan,

32:19

and then B, which was the only logical next step,

32:24

where could they be sent?

32:28

Which meant you gotta find a place for them.

32:29

So it was easy enough to say

32:33

they shouldn't be sent back to Uzbekistan,

32:35

in 2003, the UN special rapporteur in torture

32:37

had definitively, written a report

32:40

that torture in Uzbekistan was systematic.

32:45

So that wasn't the real problem.

32:47

The real problem is who the hell

32:49

is going to take two Uzbek Guantanamo Bay detainees?

32:52

Who's going to do that?

32:57

So, we started to search around.

32:58

So I was asking anybody that I could find

33:03

who was good on Uzbekistan?

33:06

Who's good on humanitarian issues?

33:07

Who would actually take the leap of faith?

33:09

And we went through a whole range of countries

33:13

and I was in Brussels in, I think late 2007

33:15

early 2008, in my office in Brussels.

33:19

And I went to the director there,

33:21

Lotte Leicht, who's still there.

33:23

And I said, "Lotte, we have these two Uzbeks in Guantanamo

33:25

and we need to get them out.

33:29

What country would take them?"

33:31

So we sat for, I don't know how long.

33:33

And then she said, "You know,

33:35

the Irish have been really good on Uzbekistan."

33:36

They've spoken out,

33:39

there'd been a massacre in Uzbekistan and Andijan in 2005,

33:41

the EU had imposed sanctions,

33:45

then they became very lax with the sanctions.

33:48

And in 2007, we were in despair that the EU

33:51

was not keeping up with the pressure on Uzbekistan,

33:53

but Ireland had maintained its position and been good.

33:56

So we said, Ireland, that seems so bizarre.

33:59

It's just seems really bizarre.

34:02

And of course I knew Ireland well

34:05

from the years that I had worked there,

34:06

so started to feel people out.

34:09

And as it turns out,

34:13

one of the Uzbeks there had learned English.

34:15

He was a sheep herder in Uzbekistan.

34:19

So we started to make these fairly bizarre,

34:21

and sometimes, dare I say, comical arguments

34:24

about why Ireland would be really, really good.

34:29

And then we started to reach out to the Irish government,

34:31

to MPs, to various people.

34:34

And that was a brick wall.

34:35

It was just a brick wall.

34:38

So Mone and I are on the phone the one day.

34:40

And he's despairing because his client is getting depressed.

34:44

He's got children he wants to see,

34:47

he's clearly not of interest

34:50

to the United States government.

34:51

They can't send him home.

34:53

They won't let them in the mainland

34:54

of the US what are we going to do?

34:55

So I said, you know, I said, let's go to Ireland.

34:57

Just get on a plane.

35:02

You get on a plane, I'll get on a plane,

35:03

and we'll go, and we'll bring the documents

35:05

showing why this would be a good fit.

35:08

We'll talk to as many people as we can.

35:12

We'll we'll see what we can do.

35:14

And so we did, I mean we got,

35:16

to Human Rights Watch's credit.

35:17

I said, "I really want to go to Ireland to see

35:18

if we can get this guy from Guantanamo to Ireland."

35:21

And they said, "Sure, go ahead."

35:23

And Mone had good means

35:25

and good connections in the Irish American community.

35:27

And so we went over and that began a year

35:30

of direct advocacy, but I'll never forget the guy we met

35:33

in the Americas division

35:37

of the foreign affairs department in Ireland.

35:38

And he looked at us

35:42

like we had come from Mars, he just looked at us,

35:44

and he said in, the most gentle way,

35:48

"Why would you ever think that Ireland

35:52

would take two Uzbekistani Guantanamo Bay detainees?

35:56

And it was a really good question.

36:02

It wasn't a bad question, right?

36:03

But then we just started to talk to everybody, everybody.

36:06

Now that first trip was very interesting because the Irish,

36:10

anybody in Ireland we talked to said

36:13

the US has never even asked us.

36:15

Here you guys come,

36:17

but of course, this is a bilateral political issue.

36:19

And you're asking us to take them,

36:23

but the US has never asked us.

36:25

We get out of, I can't remember what meeting it was.

36:28

Maybe it was interior.

36:30

And I got on the phone, I got on the phone.

36:32

And I said to various people who I knew at the time

36:36

the Irish think that you've never even asked.

36:40

Interviewer

To various people in the US government?

36:43

-

In the US government

36:44

and said "The Irish think that you've never even asked."

36:46

"No we've asked everyone, they're mistaken."

36:50

And I said, "Well, if you've asked everyone,

36:53

you've asked them so secretly

36:55

that even the people who could help you

36:59

now don't know that.

37:00

And maybe you should actually ask again."

37:02

So it was this combination of events,

37:06

us being on the ground,

37:08

the Irish actually being seized of the question,

37:10

the US being seized with the idea

37:13

that the Irish might be open

37:15

that led over the course of a year,

37:16

to eventually the Irish saying yes,

37:20

but there are many people responsible for that.

37:25

I mean, the Irish section of Amnesty International

37:27

was absolutely critical in helping to affect this,

37:30

especially in terms of the integration issue.

37:33

You know, how do you take someone who was, you know

37:36

kidnapped by mercenaries, handed over the US government,

37:39

sent to Guantanamo Bay,

37:42

whose family came from Uzbekistan too

37:43

and is currently in Iran?

37:45

How do you bring all those pieces together

37:47

to a coherent whole where a family can live peacefully

37:50

and safely in Ireland?

37:53

And the Irish section of Amnesty International

37:55

was absolutely brilliant in helping to make that happen.

37:57

There were advocates in other organizations

38:03

who helped to make it happen,

38:05

but I'd say the key person who made it happen was Mike Mone.

38:07

Interviewer

So, when you called up American officials,

38:11

can you tell us who you called up?

38:14

-

I can't tell you who I called up.

38:15

I can tell you that we were able,

38:17

by a stroke of luck, I mean,

38:21

it's not often that you just call a cell phone number

38:23

and you get somebody.

38:26

That's why I think there was a little bit

38:27

of serendipity involved in this whole case.

38:28

We haven't seen anything like this since,

38:31

where the lawyer actually says,

38:35

I think this is the best place for my client.

38:38

And I'm going to really make this happen.

38:39

There's various reasons

38:42

why it can't happen that way anymore,

38:44

but it was just by a stroke of luck

38:46

that the right person picked up the phone

38:48

and was able then to take that information to others

38:51

and started a chain where there was an open communication

38:56

between the US government and the Irish government.

38:59

And I will say one other thing.

39:06

9/11 was very damaging for the NGO community,

39:10

for the human rights community,

39:14

vis-a-vis its relations with the US government.

39:16

There was so much that was happening

39:19

that was detrimental to the whole human rights project

39:22

that was coming from Washington.

39:28

And I do think to some extent, as the years went by

39:31

that people realized that, people in DC realize that.

39:34

And I also think that this gesture

39:36

of actually taking the information that we gave them

39:41

and running with it was part of an attempt to repair things,

39:43

I mean, we were credible, we were engaged,

39:49

and, I really want to think that

39:53

they didn't want to sideline us

39:57

to the extent that we had been sidelined

39:59

in the first six years after 9/11 happened.

40:01

Interviewer

Was this still the Bush administration

40:05

when you said not sidelined?

40:07

-

It still was, because it was 2007, was it 2007?

40:09

Or Obama had just been elected.

40:14

But I want to say that it was still while,

40:17

I did not speak with him

40:20

and have never spoken with Clint Williamson,

40:22

who was the ambassador at large for war crimes at the time,

40:24

but it was during the time that he was in post

40:27

looking for places for people that we were

40:31

able to communicate this information to the government.

40:34

Interviewer

And did you get any sense

40:37

from the European countries

40:39

as to why they would accept these detainees,

40:41

if the US wouldn't accept them themselves,

40:45

wouldn't allow them to be settled in the US?

40:47

-

Every country had a different reason, right?

40:51

So some countries,

40:54

even though the Guantanamo Bay detainees

40:57

were not nationals of their country,

40:59

they had some kind of a link.

41:01

They had lived in the country,

41:03

they had family in the country,

41:04

they spoke the language.

41:07

So I think for France

41:09

that was an issue when they took a detainee.

41:11

For others, it was very political, very, very political.

41:15

When we were doing the advocacy in Ireland,

41:19

a key point, advocacy point for us,

41:22

was the fact that Ireland had not cooperated

41:25

with the US government in the war in Iraq.

41:27

And they had abstained.

41:31

And the idea was, how do you now make a gesture

41:33

to the US government

41:36

that could renew the relationship in a meaningful way?

41:40

And of course at that point, we were, you know,

41:46

we didn't know who was going to be elected,

41:48

whether it was going to be Obama or McCain,

41:50

but both of them had called for the closure of Guantanamo.

41:53

So you could wield that, so to speak,

41:56

in your advocacy and say,

41:59

look, you've been somewhat divorced from the US government

42:01

because of how fraught your relationships

42:04

have been with them over Iraq all these years.

42:06

Maybe this is a way to extend your hand, make a gesture

42:08

to the new administration, no matter who it is.

42:13

Although at that, you know, at some point

42:15

we really did feel that Obama was in lead

42:17

and start things off on the right foot.

42:21

We don't, we will never know

42:24

whether this was an appealing argument

42:26

to the Irish government

42:29

because the minute we ended our meetings with them,

42:30

we didn't know much else.

42:34

We never knew about the meetings that the Irish government

42:36

had among themselves or with the US administration.

42:40

All we knew was that at some point there was confirmation

42:43

that Michael Mone's client, Oybek Jabbarov

42:47

and his compatriot Sharuk were going to Ireland.

42:52

And we didn't even know when.

42:57

And then Mone called me one day.

42:59

And he said, "I can now confirm that they've landed."

43:01

Which was stunning, I mean, I knew what's going to happen,

43:06

I just didn't know when.

43:08

And so it was just a really, you know,

43:09

it was a really interesting, gratifying,

43:13

positive thing that was Guantanamo related,

43:16

but that, as opposed to hardening you, you know,

43:20

really gave you some idea

43:24

that you could really have some kind of an impact.

43:25

Interviewer

Well, did that inspire you as to think,

43:28

well, if it worked with one country,

43:30

maybe it would work with other countries?

43:31

-

It did, it did inspire us in that way.

43:33

And there were a series of resettlements

43:36

and the Amnesty sections and the lawyers

43:38

help to affect a lot of them.

43:41

There weren't, as many as we had hoped,

43:45

there are still people in Guantanamo Bay

43:48

who should have been resettled in the mid 2000s,

43:50

who remain in Guantanamo Bay.

43:53

So yes, it gave people hope

43:58

that there could be further resettlement

44:01

and there was to an extent,

44:03

but not to the extent that we had hoped.

44:04

And that's where we're at right now.

44:07

Interviewer

Are you saying that both

44:11

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty,

44:13

and this is important for history,

44:15

was somewhat instrumental in getting

44:17

some of these resettlements to be effective, to happen?

44:19

-

I would say among many other actors, yes.

44:23

That the NGOs, the international NGOs did have an impact

44:27

and did help to facilitate,

44:30

without a doubt, I would say that.

44:32

I wouldn't say that the NGOs were the key actor

44:35

but the big NGOs are advocacy machines,

44:42

there's a lot of resources behind them.

44:46

They can keep an issue alive.

44:48

They can keep a government seized of things

44:50

in ways that one habeas council in Guantanamo Bay cannot.

44:53

So I think it was a perfect, the perfect storm,

44:57

council who wanted their guys out,

45:01

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch were the advocacy machines

45:03

to kind of go after the governments

45:06

and court friendly MPs and keep the issue alive.

45:08

And the European press was very good on this issue.

45:13

Very, very good on this issue.

45:17

Interviewer

Couldn't Human Rights Watch and Amnesty

45:19

go to the US government

45:21

or the officials they had contact with

45:22

and encourage them to make agreements

45:24

with other nations who didn't,

45:28

and did they have that kind of impact?

45:31

-

I think they did.

45:33

I mean, that's certainly what happened with Ireland.

45:34

Interviewer

I know, but beyond Ireland.

45:36

-

I think that what ended up happening

45:38

was that when we could see a good fit

45:42

between a detainee who was either cleared for release

45:46

or who wasn't formally cleared for release

45:50

but we knew it was not of interest to the US government.

45:52

We could talk to both governments,

45:55

the government, you know, government in France,

45:59

in the Czech Republic, in Germany,

46:01

wherever it was and say, maybe this is a good link.

46:04

Amnesty International's formal policy

46:08

is not to name a particular detainee.

46:10

But to say, if you have the capacity and are willing

46:13

you should take someone from Guantanamo.

46:17

Now, this was very much enhanced by a European Parliament,

46:20

by a decision in the EU to work together

46:26

to help resolve the Guantanamo Bay crisis

46:30

by encouraging EU member states to take detainees.

46:33

And we were very active in helping to get

46:37

that language in a text and formalized

46:39

so that there was a European approach to resettlement.

46:45

And again, it worked to some effect,

46:50

but like I said, there are still people at Guantanamo Bay

46:53

who shouldn't been resettled and haven't been.

46:56

Interviewer

Because?

46:59

-

Because.

47:03

Nobody wants them really, you know, nobody wants them.

47:09

The reports out of Guantanamo

47:15

aren't necessarily good at the moment,

47:16

in terms of their, their mental capacity,

47:18

their health condition, there's the whole narrative

47:21

about former Guantanamo Bay detainees

47:25

going back into the fray.

47:29

So the idea is that the US government

47:31

requests that any resettlement host country

47:33

has to do certain things to ensure that that won't happen.

47:38

I mean, it's very, very complex

47:41

the reasons why people don't want these detainees.

47:43

And I don't think that the US government helps

47:48

by not having taken any detainees itself.

47:53

I mean, you can see the deep, deep hypocrisy

47:58

in this situation that the US government goes

48:01

to all these other governments and says

48:04

take what we have damaged.

48:06

Take these damaged people and we'll give you money.

48:10

We'll give you this kind of support.

48:15

But in addition to taking them, integrating them,

48:17

bringing their families, giving them social

48:20

and psychological care for their wellbeing

48:22

you need to surveil them so that they don't run off

48:25

to Syria, or they don't run off to Iraq

48:28

or they don't go here or there, or go to Yemen,

48:33

or do whatever it is that is going to

48:35

put them back in the fray.

48:38

I mean, who would want that?

48:39

Interviewer

Well then,

48:43

I usually save this question for later,

48:44

but I'm going to ask it now, then,

48:45

is Guantanamo ever gonna close?

48:49

-

I am certain that at some point in the future

48:54

the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay will close.

48:59

Sure, I don't think that there will be any appetite

49:03

for putting more people in Guantanamo Bay,

49:08

although we do have certain partisan politicians

49:10

who call every time another person, suspected terrorist,

49:16

is apprehended or whatever for them to be in,

49:19

you know, sent to Guantanamo Bay.

49:23

I don't think that that will happen.

49:24

I do fear, have very big fears

49:27

that there will be people who will die in Guantanamo.

49:30

That the way Guantanamo will close is when the last detainee

49:32

from the 9/11 batch dies.

49:37

And so that could be years and years and years.

49:40

The US has given itself permission to indefinitely

49:44

detain people in this unending, infinite war on terror.

49:46

So they've drummed up a legal rationale

49:52

for holding these people until the end of hostilities.

49:56

And when you think about,

50:00

if you look at the world right now,

50:01

and the proliferation of terrorism,

50:04

terrorist groups across the globe, either real or perceived,

50:07

then you can see that the war on terror,,

50:13

which is a fiction under international law

50:16

and humanitarian law could go on forever.

50:18

Interviewer

And I wanna go back

50:23

and you're also saying that

50:24

because these men have been damaged,

50:25

they become less and less appealing

50:29

for any country to invest the time and resources in them,

50:31

which will make it that much more difficult

50:36

to ever resettle them?

50:38

-

Absolutely, I mean, why do you think,

50:39

I mean, it makes perfect sense

50:41

for the host countries to send delegations

50:42

to interview these guys.

50:45

Of course, they're considering six people.

50:46

They're gonna take two.

50:50

They want to go and they want to see what is the right fit,

50:51

who is most mentally intact, physically intact.

50:55

So as not to draw on the resources of the host government,

50:58

of course there are deals between the US

51:02

and these governments as well.

51:03

But as the years go by, getting a completely intact person

51:06

who can just kind of magically integrate

51:13

into a very sophisticated Western European

51:16

or Central American society,

51:19

it becomes a harder and harder thing to imagine.

51:22

Interviewer

Could you stay upbeat in spite of all that?

51:28

-

Well, the game isn't over until it's over.

51:30

I mean, we have six people

51:33

who potentially could go to Uruguay,

51:34

you know, as the years pass,

51:37

it could be that people will perceive

51:41

some of the detainees as harmless,

51:43

specifically because of the abuse that they've suffered,

51:47

and the way that they now have been pacified or neutralized.

51:50

I don't know.

51:55

I feel very uncomfortable even using language like that,

51:55

but I'm not ready to throw the towel in on resettlement

51:58

because there is a significant enough number

52:01

of people who have, who need to leave there

52:05

and need to be resettled

52:09

and should have been resettled long ago.

52:10

And that not withstanding my absolute opposition

52:13

to anyone being in Guantanamo.

52:15

And the policy, our policies,

52:18

that the military commission system should be dismantled.

52:21

The detention facilities should be closed.

52:25

Anybody who should be tried

52:27

should be moved onto the mainland

52:28

and tried in a federal court,

52:30

but the group that has been cleared for release

52:35

and has been clear for so many years, clearly, clearly

52:37

clearly they should be resettled immediately.

52:40

Interviewer

Do you think the US government is giving,

52:44

can you tell us again your title with Amnesty?

52:48

'Cause you're now working with Amnesty.

52:51

-

I'm Amnesty International's expert

52:52

on counter terrorism and human rights.

52:54

Interviewer

So with that position,

52:56

do you think the US government

52:58

actually cares enough to try to resettle these people?

52:59

Do you think they're actively making it try to work even?

53:04

-

Well, I think the Uruguay situation is an example,

53:10

a current enough example of the way that these,

53:13

the project of resettlement is continuing,

53:17

of course Mujica himself is quite unique.

53:21

You know, he has said, we will take these people

53:25

because they have been victims of human rights violations.

53:28

That is not the narrative in Europe.

53:33

So he's quite unique.

53:37

We'll really have to see,

53:38

we'll really have to see as things go on,

53:42

but I think that there are more possibilities

53:44

for resettlement.

53:47

Interviewer

And you were involved in the resettlement

53:52

of a few other people as Syrian and Uighurs.

53:56

Do you want to tell us a little bit about those?

54:01

Are they different narrative in the one

54:03

-

The Uighur case is one of the most interesting cases,

54:07

I think, you know, one of the first batches

54:09

of people to be resettled where the Uighurs,

54:13

they were sent to Albania,

54:16

there were five of them who were sent to Albania.

54:17

And when nobody knew this was going to happen,

54:19

I mean the lawyer knew the night before,

54:21

all of a sudden they're not in Guantanamo,

54:23

they're in Albania.

54:25

Now, really, it doesn't take much to understand

54:26

that we Uighurs and Albania are not a great mix.

54:31

Albania is one of the poorest.

54:33

It is probably the poorest country in Europe.

54:34

It is nominally Muslim, you know,

54:38

but not in a way

54:42

that Muslim Uighurs from, you know,

54:45

a separatist province in China,

54:49

would easily be able to adapt to,

54:51

or you wouldn't think they would be.

54:54

And so when the Uighurs went to Albania, the idea was,

54:56

you know, how can we help the Albanian government

54:59

effectively integrate them?

55:02

What would they need to do?

55:03

And so there was a lot of back and forth, you know,

55:06

with the Albanians and the US,

55:08

we would say to the US, the guys need this,

55:10

you need to talk to the Albanians about this,

55:13

but then it became clear that some of the Albanians

55:16

or some of the Uighurs who were in Albania

55:19

had links with other countries.

55:21

And Adil,

55:24

the one who you interviewed in Sweden was one of them.

55:26

So he was in Albania.

55:30

I knew his lawyer very well,

55:31

Steven Willic,

55:35

and we started to think about ways that we could get him

55:36

to his sister in Sweden,

55:41

understanding that he was not supposed

55:42

to ever leave Albania.

55:45

So we hooked up with a brilliant Swedish lawyer

55:48

named Sten De Geer who was an asylum and immigration lawyer

55:51

and full disclosure, old and dear friend of mine.

55:56

And we started to kind of say,

55:59

how could, what could we do to get him to his sister?

56:01

So Stan emailed me one day and he said

56:06

why don't we invite him to human rights days,

56:09

which is every other year, the Swedish government funds,

56:12

and everybody goes to these days of seminars

56:16

and musical performances all about human rights,

56:20

typically Scandinavian, right?

56:23

And he said, well, why don't we invite him to speak

56:25

as a former Guantanamo Bay detainee?

56:28

And I said, they'll never let him come.

56:31

Interviewer

Who's they?

56:34

-

The Swedish government will never let him come.

56:35

So Sten De Geer, following to the letter of the law,

56:40

issuing an invitation letter to Adil,

56:46

talking to the Swedish government

56:51

about him coming, et cetera.

56:52

Actually gets the guy invited.

56:53

And so he gets the invitation.

56:58

So Say-bin gets on a plane and I get on a plane

57:00

and we all go to Stockholm

57:02

and we're waiting for him to come,

57:04

because the minute he comes, Sten will be at the airport.

57:08

And he's an asylum lawyer.

57:12

And Adil ask for asylum,

57:14

the minute he steps foot on Swedish soil.

57:16

Interviewer

But he hasn't got

57:18

an Albanian passport, right?

57:19

-

He doesn't, he doesn't, he has traveled documents though.

57:21

And he had permission to leave.

57:25

So we're at the airport waiting for him to come.

57:29

And of course, there's the Uighur community

57:32

with their banner.

57:33

Everyone's waiting and waiting.

57:35

And the flight comes in and people start to come off

57:37

and come off and he's not there, and he's not there,

57:40

and he's not there.

57:42

So we start calling around, where is he,

57:44

where is he, where is he?

57:47

Well, he was stopped in Vienna.

57:48

I think it was Vienna.

57:50

And we're like, well, when is he coming?

57:52

When can he come, can he come?

57:53

So we're at the airport trying to figure all this out.

57:55

And the media is there.

57:57

And it's a little bit of a circus

57:59

because this expectation had not been met.

58:00

And I have to tell you, I was absolutely heartbroken.

58:03

I was heartbroken.

58:07

I had no hope that he was going to get to Sweden.

58:09

I really didn't.

58:12

Then Sten gets information or Say-bin gets information

58:15

that they are gonna actually put them on the next plan,

58:17

but the next plane doesn't come in for hours.

58:19

So we leave the airport and we go, and I don't know,

58:22

we went and had dinner and did all this stuff.

58:24

And then they say, yes, he's coming in,

58:27

but we can't confirm that he's on the plane.

58:30

So I looked at Sten and I said, I'm not going.

58:34

I can't go.

58:37

You know, so...

58:40

So I didn't go,

59:05

because I was really afraid that he wouldn't come.

59:06

But then Sten called me and he said, he's here, he's here.

59:09

And he said, oh, everyone's hugging and kissing.

59:11

And everyone's happy.

59:13

So it was a really lovely thing because he got there

59:14

and he saw his sister

59:18

and then he filed for asylum.

59:20

And, you know, he was denied.

59:24

And then he was granted.

59:25

And so there's this very happy ending for him in one way

59:26

because he was reunited

59:30

with his family and he's living in Sweden

59:31

which is really a better place to be than Albania.

59:34

But there's an downside to all of this.

59:38

And that is that his first wife

59:42

and child who were in still in China,

59:44

they couldn't come and be reunited with him.

59:50

The Chinese government wouldn't permit that.

59:52

And so his life was effectively wrecked.

59:54

And then he was able then to rebuilt it in Sweden,

59:58

which was a lovely thing.

1:00:01

But there is damage in the wake of all of this

1:00:03

a lot of damage.

1:00:07

Do you mind if I get a Kleenex.

1:00:09

Interviewer

No, let's take a break.

1:00:11

-

Thank you.

1:00:12

Interviewer

Okay, rolling.

1:00:15

So I just wanted to ask you,

1:00:16

you said the detainees in Albania have travel documents.

1:00:19

So why couldn't the other four travel to other countries?

1:00:22

Because if Albania is such a poor country,

1:00:27

not really good for them.

1:00:29

-

What I meant when I said that he had traveled documents

1:00:32

is that he had gotten an official invitation

1:00:34

from the Swedish government,

1:00:36

and then gotten permission to travel.

1:00:38

So the stars were in alignment

1:00:41

with respect to him specifically.

1:00:44

And like I said, we never really thought

1:00:46

that any of this would end up happening

1:00:50

and, you know, it did to great effect.

1:00:53

Interviewer

And you also helped,

1:00:58

you said, a Syrian detainee.

1:00:59

Do you have a story that goes with that?

1:01:01

-

This is something that, I mean,

1:01:03

there are Syrians remaining at Guantanamo Bay,

1:01:04

that's kind of an ongoing issue.

1:01:06

There was a letter that was written recently

1:01:09

by a number of habeas council

1:01:13

that encourage the US government

1:01:18

to follow through with Uruguayan resettlements.

1:01:20

That's a public letter

1:01:23

and I've been helping, it's Mike Mulligan,

1:01:24

my old partner in crime.

1:01:27

His client is a Syrian Guantanamo Bay detainee.

1:01:30

And we tried to be honest,

1:01:35

we tried to do exactly the same thing with him

1:01:38

that we did on the Irish front

1:01:41

and to no great effect unfortunately,

1:01:44

the appetite for that kind of, you know,

1:01:48

let's get on a plane, is that time has passed.

1:01:50

And so I think from council's point of view

1:01:56

it really is now up to the US government

1:02:01

to effect the transfers of the people that they can.

1:02:04

And so he's in the he's in the Uruguayan bunch,

1:02:06

but we looked into several other countries,

1:02:09

Denmark, New Zealand, Germany, you know,

1:02:12

there were numerous places that we thought

1:02:17

might be a good fit for this particular person,

1:02:20

Belgium, and nobody was biting.

1:02:24

Interviewer

Why has the time passed?

1:02:30

-

I think that the idea of making a gesture

1:02:39

to the United States government is no longer

1:02:42

a good advocacy tack.

1:02:45

I think there's been a lot of disappointment

1:02:47

in Obama over the fact that Guantanamo was not yet closed.

1:02:50

And that while he might say, you know,

1:02:55

Congress is obstructing my ability to do this or that,

1:02:57

that he is not prioritized and effectively advocated himself

1:03:00

with the right people to get Guantanamo Bay closed.

1:03:05

There was so much hope when Obama came into office

1:03:09

that he would be able to close Guantanamo.

1:03:14

And in the meantime, what has the administration done?

1:03:16

They've expanded the drone program.

1:03:21

They've been deeply involved in the NSA scandal.

1:03:24

They have vilified, Snowden

1:03:28

and other whistleblowers who have sought to reveal the truth

1:03:31

about government surveillance

1:03:37

and other operations that are allegedly

1:03:40

in the name of the American people's safety.

1:03:42

So I think there is a little,

1:03:45

the shine is off the idea that you want to help,

1:03:47

this particular administration may not be so strong anymore.

1:03:52

That impulse.

1:03:57

There's fatigue in general with all of it.

1:03:59

There's just fatigue in general with all of it.

1:04:02

And in the meantime the United States government

1:04:05

has carved out a niche for itself

1:04:07

to indefinitely detain people,

1:04:09

which is such a clear violation

1:04:11

of international human rights law that,

1:04:13

you know, the USs friends on these issues

1:04:20

are getting tired, I think.

1:04:25

Interviewer

Do you think that also is possibly why

1:04:31

the men who should have gone to Uruguay still haven't gone,

1:04:35

or that maybe they're fatigued too,

1:04:39

they've changed their mind?

1:04:42

-

No. I mean, I don't have any intelligence.

1:04:44

I have an opinion about this and my opinion is

1:04:46

that it's very difficult for a government to take

1:04:50

in six detainees in the middle of an election season.

1:04:53

And there is an election season.

1:04:57

There's a whole campaigning season going on in Uruguay.

1:04:59

Uruguay is a very poor country.

1:05:02

There are forces that have absolutely nothing to do

1:05:05

with those particular guys

1:05:08

and their profiles that are putting pressure

1:05:11

on the project to resettle them there.

1:05:16

That's my current take on it.

1:05:19

I don't know whether that's true or not.

1:05:22

I don't know whether they've become

1:05:24

gun shy about taking them.

1:05:26

My feeling is, is that we've seen this happen before.

1:05:28

We've had government officials say to us

1:05:31

wait until the elections are over.

1:05:34

This is not a popular issue.

1:05:37

It's not the right time.

1:05:38

And that is my feeling

1:05:41

about what's going on in Uruguay at the moment.

1:05:43

Interviewer

And when elections were over

1:05:46

in other situations did the governments

1:05:48

then take the, in?

1:05:49

-

Yeah.

1:05:50

-

They did?

-

We've seen delays.

1:05:51

Nobody's gotten sent overnight to a country.

1:05:53

You know, even in Ireland took well

1:05:57

over a year for all the pieces to be in place.

1:05:59

And I do think

1:06:03

that public opinion about Guantanamo is up and down.

1:06:04

People want to see it closed,

1:06:09

but people still by and large,

1:06:11

believe that the people who are there

1:06:13

are there for a reason.

1:06:15

So governments need to take their publics

1:06:16

into consideration, poor governments

1:06:20

or governments where their are economic issues

1:06:22

at play don't want to be seen

1:06:26

as accepting more asylum seekers

1:06:28

what they would call, you know, people who will come in

1:06:31

and drain resources that should otherwise

1:06:34

in the public mind be used on nationals of that country.

1:06:37

As the hope of Obama has faded over these years,

1:06:42

the love of the United States has faded,

1:06:46

the idea that you'll cooperate

1:06:50

with the US government in the midst of, you know,

1:06:52

drone assassinations and NSA surveillance,

1:06:55

and no closure of Guantanamo Bay.

1:06:59

I mean, you can see how any politician

1:07:03

in any country is going to say

1:07:06

how am I going to make this work?

1:07:07

How am I really going to make this work?

1:07:10

And the time has to be right.

1:07:11

The time really has to be right.

1:07:15

Interviewer

So do you still try to go to countries to,

1:07:18

like somebody comes to South America

1:07:22

and asks them if they would take someone

1:07:25

or do you feel that is now hitting a brick wall

1:07:26

in that what you did in Ireland

1:07:29

is just not replicated these days

1:07:32

-

To the extent that lawyers come to us anymore

1:07:35

and ask us for help, because Amnesty

1:07:37

is such a global movement and we have offices

1:07:41

in so many places, we absolutely will put them in touch

1:07:44

with the section in that country.

1:07:47

Our section offices know the political landscape

1:07:50

very, very well, often have,

1:07:53

are able to easily communicate with government actors

1:07:56

to see what the temperature of the room is

1:08:00

with respect to this issue.

1:08:02

So we'll link them up.

1:08:04

But the days of this kind of,

1:08:05

where there was more openness about it,

1:08:09

I think they are over unfortunately.

1:08:13

And I think the rest of these resettlements

1:08:16

will be brokered at a very high political level.

1:08:19

The lawyers will know, to a greater extent,

1:08:22

what's going on, but I don't see a huge role for us anymore.

1:08:25

Except on, as I said, at field level,

1:08:31

on ground level with our sections, helping with integration,

1:08:36

communication and things like that.

1:08:39

I mean, really, to some extent, it's a formula now, right?

1:08:41

It's a formula.

1:08:45

The US government will send somebody out.

1:08:47

It's not even an ambassador anymore.

1:08:50

It's a special representative

1:08:52

to see if there's any appetite

1:08:55

by any government to take somebody in.

1:08:57

And now after all these years, there's a formula.

1:09:00

There needs to be an integration plan.

1:09:02

There needs to be a family reunification plan.

1:09:03

There needs to be a security protocol.

1:09:06

It's all, it's a little boiler plate

1:09:09

at this point to some extent.

1:09:11

And so there's not as much of a need

1:09:13

for us to be in there, fighting that fight anymore.

1:09:16

I mean, we have a whole document that says

1:09:22

here is how you integrate a former Guantanamo detainee,

1:09:24

which didn't exist at all

1:09:27

when we were first setting out and doing this.

1:09:29

Interviewer

Just going back to 2008,

1:09:33

when Obama was elected,

1:09:35

were you one of the people who had hope?

1:09:36

-

Oh, fact, yeah, of course, absolutely.

1:09:40

Within a stroke of a pen executive orders

1:09:45

ordering the closure of Guantanamo Bay,

1:09:49

tempering, but not ending the whole issue of rendition,

1:09:55

I'm talking about, the United States is not torture

1:10:02

from this point on the United States is not torture.

1:10:07

Whether that has been born out

1:10:09

in the last eight years is another matter.

1:10:11

But on January 21st, 2009,

1:10:15

it felt like it was a whole new world.

1:10:18

I think that was incredibly naive.

1:10:23

If there was any naivety, it was there,

1:10:26

there were so many considerations.

1:10:29

So many things to think about with Obama as president

1:10:34

you know, the first African-American president,

1:10:37

switched from a Republican administration

1:10:41

to a democratic administration,

1:10:44

eight years of woeful

1:10:48

severe egregious human rights violations

1:10:50

for which there needed to be accountability,

1:10:54

how to broker that with the parties.

1:10:56

I mean, there was a lot to consider.

1:10:58

So on the one hand I'm deeply forever disappointed.

1:11:00

On the other hand, I'm also, I also really understand

1:11:05

that there were pressures brought to bear.

1:11:08

On the other hand, I do think Obama have done

1:11:11

so much more to bring the Guantanamo issue to a close.

1:11:16

I think he could have, absolutely.

1:11:19

And we may still see this before his administration is over,

1:11:21

release the Senate select committee on intelligence report

1:11:25

on the rendition and secret detention

1:11:28

operations overseas, post 9/11.

1:11:31

That is now stuck because, you know

1:11:33

Diane Feinstein has sent it back because she's unhappy

1:11:36

with redactions, which is exactly what we want to see

1:11:38

but we were a little uncomfortable with more delay.

1:11:40

A key disappointment with Obama is an implicit understanding

1:11:45

that there will be no prosecutions.

1:11:51

You know, it doesn't matter what that report says.

1:11:55

We were very disappointed

1:11:58

that there be no criminal liability for what were crimes

1:11:59

under both domestic and international law

1:12:04

by agents and officials in the United States government.

1:12:06

So we'll see.

1:12:11

I mean, if he can pull a couple of rabbits

1:12:12

out of the hat before the end of his administration

1:12:14

he can shore up his reputation a little,

1:12:16

but to date, from the national security side of things,

1:12:19

I'm deeply disappointed.

1:12:26

Interviewer

Do you think there were too many pressures

1:12:29

from other interests that stopped them?

1:12:30

-

I think it's a function of both his style,

1:12:34

his having to navigate a terrain.

1:12:37

When's the last time there has been a political terrain

1:12:42

where accountability is an issue, that has been as fraught?

1:12:45

So you have to, you do have to be pragmatic in a way

1:12:49

about what he walked into, but I also feel that

1:12:54

as savvy as they were in getting elected,

1:13:01

they weren't not nearly as savvy

1:13:04

as brokering the types of relationships

1:13:06

with the Republicans and with the CIA,

1:13:08

or just taking a stand as the executive

1:13:11

to reveal the truth about those eight years of operations,

1:13:15

I think there was, it was a pity

1:13:20

and a great lost opportunity.

1:13:22

And there are victims of these practices.

1:13:24

People who've been tortured.

1:13:28

People who've been disappeared.

1:13:30

People who've been subject to unfair trials,

1:13:33

separated from their families.

1:13:37

I mean, there's a lot of damage

1:13:39

in the wake of these operations

1:13:41

and Obama has not succeeded yet

1:13:43

in revealing the truth about them,

1:13:46

holding people accountable for them,

1:13:49

or providing victims with redress.

1:13:51

And that's the package we need.

1:13:54

Interviewer

Is Hillary Clinton

1:13:57

the person who can provide that package?

1:14:00

-

Everything that I've said about Obama,

1:14:03

we have expressed publicly as Amnesty

1:14:05

in all of our public documents.

1:14:09

So I have no compunction about repeating, you know,

1:14:11

our disappointment with him,

1:14:14

with the lack of accountability, et cetera.

1:14:16

I can't speculate about Hillary Clinton.

1:14:18

Interviewer

Did you have interactions with her

1:14:23

when she was secretary of state?

1:14:26

-

I did not, not directly with her.

1:14:27

Of course there were staff underneath her,

1:14:30

always liaising with,

1:14:32

with various levels of the state department.

1:14:33

And there were people within the state department

1:14:36

who were desperately trying to correct.

1:14:38

There were people who came from the NGO community

1:14:41

or from universities,

1:14:43

who Obama brought into his administration,

1:14:45

I think as a show of goodwill.

1:14:47

And as a affirmation that he believed in the rule of law

1:14:49

and that his administration would not torture them.

1:14:54

But they swam against the tide.

1:14:58

It was really, you know, they did not have the impact

1:15:02

that we had hoped that they would have had.

1:15:06

And that was under her, under her administration in state.

1:15:07

Interviewer

Is there something I didn't ask you

1:15:16

that you thought of before you came,

1:15:18

with, like, you're thinking now

1:15:20

that maybe like to share with us,

1:15:21

going forward or looking back?

1:15:25

-

I think one final point that most Americans don't realize,

1:15:27

and I realized that your archive,

1:15:33

your documentary will go beyond the US,

1:15:35

but it's important for an American audience

1:15:38

is the fact that while there's been very little,

1:15:40

if any accountability in the US,

1:15:42

there's been some in Europe.

1:15:44

I mentioned the Swedish cases, the Italian prosecutions,

1:15:46

in Poland, the European Court case

1:15:51

that found Poland complicit with the CIA

1:15:53

in disappearing and torturing two men

1:15:56

who are now in Guantanamo Bay.

1:15:59

But there are other places where there is accountability

1:16:01

at hand, so to speak,

1:16:05

you know, there was a secret detention center in Lithuania.

1:16:07

There is an active criminal investigation there

1:16:11

into the case of a man by the name of Mustapha AL-Hawsawi.

1:16:14

He is currently at Guantanamo Bay.

1:16:18

There's also a European court case against Lithuania.

1:16:21

There was a secret detention center where suspects were held

1:16:24

and interrogated and tortured

1:16:28

by the CIA in Romania, in Bucharest.

1:16:30

There is a case at the European Court of Human Rights

1:16:34

in Romania at the moment.

1:16:37

the United Kingdom government,

1:16:40

which was the United States' closest ally

1:16:41

in these post 9/11 operations.

1:16:45

There's a lot of pressure in the UK

1:16:48

for an inquiry into UK complicity in this,

1:16:51

not least the use of Diego Garcia

1:16:53

as a launching pad for rendition operations

1:16:56

and possibly the holding of people off shore.

1:17:00

So I think what's a missing element of the Guantanamo story,

1:17:03

because so many of the people who were subjected

1:17:09

to these operations are currently in Guantanamo,

1:17:12

are the other places in the world

1:17:14

where there are efforts toward accountability

1:17:17

where people clearly see the need

1:17:22

to hold people accountable,

1:17:25

to have redress for victims, et cetera.

1:17:27

And that is happening in Europe.

1:17:31

And the European Parliament has issued resolutions

1:17:33

in September, 2012, September, 2013,

1:17:37

calling on all the EU member states

1:17:40

to engage in these processes to reveal the truth

1:17:42

about their own complicity.

1:17:44

So I can't help but feel

1:17:46

that while it feels very dire on the US side,

1:17:49

I'm happy enough to say that in other parts of the world

1:17:54

there is a real desire to have the truth revealed

1:17:57

about these operations.

1:18:00

And hopefully over the course of the years

1:18:02

we'll get the full picture

1:18:05

about what happened in spite of US stonewalling.

1:18:07

Interviewer

You've been instrumental

1:18:12

in these European movements,

1:18:13

my understanding is, did you initiate it?

1:18:16

Did Amnesty initiate it or did human rights initiate?

1:18:19

Can you give us a little background on that?

1:18:22

-

Actually, Amnesty's research,

1:18:24

I told you began in December, 2001

1:18:27

and it continues to date.

1:18:31

And so in all of the cases in Europe

1:18:33

I'm happy enough to say that both Amnesty's research

1:18:36

and Human Rights Watch's research

1:18:39

on rendition, secret detention has been used to bring cases

1:18:41

in domestic jurisdictions overseas

1:18:45

and to bring cases in Europe, at Strasbourg,

1:18:48

at the European Court of Human Rights,

1:18:51

for all of the rendition cases

1:18:52

at the European Court of Human Rights,

1:18:54

we have written amicus briefs.

1:18:56

What people would commonly understand is amicus briefs,

1:18:58

they're called third-party interventions

1:19:02

where we have submitted additional information,

1:19:04

legal analysis, research to bolster the cases of the people

1:19:06

who are bringing their cases in these fora.

1:19:10

And so I'm happy to say

1:19:12

that we have our fingers a little bit in,

1:19:14

in all of it in Europe, but we are not the prime movers.

1:19:17

The prime movers are the lawyers for the men

1:19:22

who actually bring the cases on their behalf.

1:19:25

So the Polish cases, for example, were brought

1:19:28

by the Open Society Justice Initiative

1:19:30

and by a London-based organization called Inter Rights,

1:19:33

with whom we work very, very closely.

1:19:36

And then we submitted an amicus brief in those cases.

1:19:38

So we own a little piece of it,

1:19:42

but there's a lot of people agitating for accountability.

1:19:43

I mean, there are people looking for any forum they can

1:19:47

to reveal the truth about these practices.

1:19:52

And that will continue, I think that will continue.

1:19:55

Interviewer

Have any of the nations

1:19:58

publicly apologized for their participation?

1:20:00

-

Yes, Sweden issued an apology to Giza and Al-Zari,

1:20:03

the Canadian government,

1:20:10

in a separate case that we haven't discussed,

1:20:11

the case of Maher Arar.

1:20:14

He was a Syrian-Canadian binational

1:20:15

who was coming home from vacation,

1:20:21

landed at JFK and wanted to go onto his home in Canada.

1:20:23

And he was apprehended,

1:20:27

accused of being a suspected terrorist.

1:20:30

He was held in Brooklyn for,

1:20:34

I think, five days, maybe a week.

1:20:35

And then he was subjected

1:20:37

to something called an expedited removal.

1:20:39

And he was sent via Jordan to Syria,

1:20:44

where he was tortured for a year,

1:20:46

with Canadian officials visiting him frequently

1:20:49

when he was in Syria,

1:20:52

he was eventually brought back to Canada

1:20:54

where he had a full public inquiry.

1:20:56

I was a expert on a panel

1:20:59

for that inquiry,

1:21:03

talking about the issue of the torture convention

1:21:04

and what the United States government

1:21:07

was obliged to do with him,

1:21:10

what the Canadian government was obliged to do.

1:21:12

So again, a tiny little piece of it,

1:21:14

at the end of the day, the inquiry found

1:21:16

that Canada was complicit with the United States government

1:21:18

in effecting his transfer to torture.

1:21:21

They apologized to him and they gave him

1:21:23

10 million Canadian dollars in compensation.

1:21:26

And then there was a very big campaign,

1:21:30

an Amnesty International campaign

1:21:32

to get the United States government

1:21:34

to apologize to Maher Arar.

1:21:36

So you can see in a lot of these cases,

1:21:38

it's not just going for the jugular,

1:21:41

and saying we want you to prosecute every last person

1:21:43

who had a finger in this rendition.

1:21:47

What Maher Arar wanted was an apology.

1:21:50

That's all he wanted and he's never gotten it.

1:21:55

At one point, he was video linked to a Senate hearing,

1:21:58

I believe, it was some sort of congressional,

1:22:03

either Senate or House, where individual senators

1:22:06

or congressmen apologized to him via the video link

1:22:12

and said we're very sorry for what happened to you,

1:22:16

but he's not permitted into the United States,

1:22:19

even though he's been completely exonerated,

1:22:21

he's not been admitted into the United States

1:22:23

and the US government refuses to apologize to him to date.

1:22:26

Interviewer

I'm guessing you're probably more positive

1:22:35

about European countries and possibly other countries

1:22:40

in the world looking into their own matters

1:22:43

than the US, do you see this going forward

1:22:47

in the next decade, we're going to have more

1:22:49

and more countries looking at it from their own behavior?

1:22:52

-

You know, it depends.

1:22:56

I mean, in some ways it's very, very good

1:22:57

that the Polish judgments came out when they did,

1:22:59

because with what's happening in Ukraine,

1:23:02

between Ukraine and Russia, the Poles feel very vulnerable,

1:23:06

and they've put their marbles with the US, right?

1:23:10

So, as I said before, the geopolitics

1:23:14

often fuel what any government is willing to do

1:23:18

on any of these issues.

1:23:22

So Poland has had a criminal investigation

1:23:24

into these renditions and secret detentions

1:23:26

that started in 2008.

1:23:28

So it was six years old.

1:23:31

And they've delayed, and delayed, and delayed,

1:23:33

and delayed, and delayed thinking,

1:23:36

we want to do the right thing.

1:23:38

I believe that there is a certain element

1:23:39

within the Polish government

1:23:42

that wants to do the right thing,

1:23:44

but it is constantly beholden

1:23:46

to the United States government for its security.

1:23:48

It feels like it is, and what the events in Ukraine

1:23:53

and with Crimea and with Russia

1:23:57

just brings all of that up again.

1:24:00

You know, in whose orb do we wanna be?

1:24:02

Poland clearly has said we wanna be in the US orb.

1:24:06

Does it in the midst of all of that

1:24:08

then have a criminal investigation that honestly

1:24:12

and truthfully reveals that the CIA

1:24:15

set up a secret detention center

1:24:17

and tortured people in it during the Bush years?

1:24:19

You know, how do you,

1:24:22

I hate when people say it's complicated,

1:24:26

but it's really complicated.

1:24:28

And the politics completely override,

1:24:29

I'm sorry to say, any desire to safeguard human rights.

1:24:33

And I think it's always been that way.

1:24:39

You know, I guess we're not naive,

1:24:42

but in the current environment,

1:24:44

it is really difficult to see how a government would ever,

1:24:47

you know, do the right thing, take the principled stand.

1:24:51

And I think if any government has tried to do it

1:24:54

I'm going to toss Poland a bone here

1:24:59

and say that the Polish government has tried.

1:25:01

I still think they should do it.

1:25:05

I think they're obliged under the law

1:25:06

to have the criminal investigation.

1:25:07

They know a lot,

1:25:09

they know people were held on their territory,

1:25:10

but I also see the political landscape

1:25:14

and we'll just have to wait and see

1:25:19

whether Poland can withstand the pressure.

1:25:22

Interviewer

Well, I guess

1:25:28

I'll ask you one more time, is there,

1:25:30

you've pretty much brought it up to date,

1:25:32

but is there something else that maybe

1:25:35

you're thinking you want to share otherwise?

1:25:37

-

No, I don't think so.

1:25:40

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

1:25:41

Interviewer

It was really eloquent,

1:25:42

it was a really wonderful presentation.

1:25:44

I need to wait 20 seconds.

1:25:46

Johnny has to do 20 seconds of room tone.

1:25:48

-

We don't say anything?

1:25:55

-

No.

1:25:56

-

Okay.

Johnny

Begin room tone.

1:25:58

Okay.

1:26:13

Hall, Julia - Interview master file

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