Bourdon, William - Interview master file

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Interviewer	Good Afternoon.	0:05
-	Good afternoon.	0:06
Interviewer	We are very grateful	0:08
	to you for participating	0:08
	in the Witness to Guantanamo project.	0:10
	I invite you to speak of your experiences	0:12
	and involvement with former detainees	0:15
	from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.	0:18
	We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity	0:21
	to tell your story in your own words.	0:23
	We are creating an archive of stories	0:25
	so that people in America	0:27
	and around the world will have a better understanding	0:29
	of what Guantanamo Bay was about.	0:32
	If you want to take a break, let us know.	0:37
	And if there's something you say	0:40
	that you realize you shouldn't have said,	0:41
	we can remove it	0:42
	if you let us know.	0:43
-	Okay, fine.
Interviewer	Okay, we'd like to begin	0:45
	by asking you your name,	0:46
	and a little bit about your background.	0:47
	The date of birth and where you went to school	0:51
	and the kind of work you did.	0:54
	Just as for history, 50 years from now, people-	0:57
-	Okay, so I'm William Bourdon,	0:59
	date of birth, 14 August, 1956.	1:02
	I have three kids, triplets,	1:09
	22 years old.	1:13
	I studied in Paris.	1:18
	I start by being graduate of Political Sciences Institute.	1:21
	My parents dreamed that I could become a high civil servant.	1:29
	But they wish it so much that I refuse.	1:36
	And then I continue study law,	1:40
	and I became a lawyer 37 years ago.	1:44
	Quite quickly I set my own independent law firm	1:51
	after practicing in a very prominent	1:57
	and well-known criminal law firm	2:01
	and then corporate business law firm,	2:04
	because I wanted to see how lawyers	2:07
	have to deal with money issues.	2:09
	And of course,	2:13
	part of my job has been dedicated	2:14
	to international criminal law,	2:15
	international criminal justice, human rights.	2:20
	Until 2000, I multiplied	2:26
	monitoring missions	2:31
	in various parts of the world as general secretary	2:34
	of the International Federation of Human Rights.	2:37
	I launch here in Paris	2:42
	the first proceeding based on universal jurisdiction,	2:43
	tried to catch the arbitrators from Serbia,	2:46
	from Nigeria, from Rwanda,	2:50
	and I set a new NGO named SHERPA	2:58
	dedicated to the victims of economical crime.	2:59
	Oh, I wrote a couple of books.	3:05
Interviewer	And how did you get involved in Guantanamo?	3:10
	How did that happen?	3:13
-	It's my friends Jacque Dupree	3:15
	who very tragically died recently	3:18
	after a very cruel	3:22
	lung disease.	3:26
	Got in touch with me and say,	3:28
	"Look, I've been in touch with the families	3:30
	and we don't know each other	3:34
	but you could bring your legal expertise	3:35
	in international public and criminal law,	3:40
	to help me extradite guys from Guantanamo	3:46
	and contemplate various legal initiatives	3:48
	So we did the job.	3:52
Interviewer	When is that?	3:55
-	In 2001, beginning of 2002	3:57
Interviewer	Did you know anything about Guantanamo?	3:59
-	Of course, as citizen, as human rights lawyers.	4:00
	Of course, at that time	4:04
	everybody participate with various meetings, legal studies	4:06
	and the way in which Bush Administration	4:12
	intended to	4:17
	pass by all the international treaty, blah, blah, blah.	4:21
	So I was familiar with the situation.	4:25
	So I got in touch with a family.	4:28
	We used French government to help us.	4:30
	We provoke various meetings with civil servant	4:34
	was supposed to have visited a client in Guantanamo bay.	4:38
	And in 2002 had the idea to lodge a criminal complaint	4:43
	for illegal confinement.	4:49
	It was a very, very long battle.	4:50
	Prosecutors at time	4:54
	did not conceive the idea	4:58
	that French judge	4:59
	could ask	5:04
	to US agent to be accountable	5:05
	for what they did in Guantanamo.	5:08
	But at the end, despite this very shy	5:11
	and archaic conception of a old obligation	5:13
	our Supreme court called a session	5:19
	for January, 2005,	5:21
	rule a decision principle issue, which it	5:23
	was said there are a French victims,	5:26
	international public law make accountable	5:29
	old foreign publications.	5:34
	Visa is a French judge.	5:39
	So this route	5:41
	to opening of investigation	5:46
	which has been followed by many judge	5:50
	because it was the duration of the proceedings.	5:52
	There were of course, substitution	5:56
	of (indistinct).	5:57
	For the moment.	6:01
	We are not exactly in a situation of blockage.	6:02
	But the blockage essentially come	6:05
	from the obstinate refusal	6:10
	of US administration.	6:13
	Bush, Obama Administration,	6:16
	to execute the letter of rogatory	6:18
	issued by the French judge.	6:24
	I think most of the country accept to cooperate	6:29
	but US do not cooperate	6:31
	when there is a risk	6:33
	if the corporation could increase the risk	6:37
	of accountability of one of their public agent.	6:40
	So this is a philosophy of US administration	6:45
	since many many years,	6:52
	and not only is it to not cooperate, but do not	6:54
	could be a minimum of courtesy answer	7:00
	to French authorities.	7:04
	So no possibility	7:08
	for the judge to question	7:08
	witnesses or suspect in US.	7:13
	So we asked to the judge two years ago	7:16
	to send a subpoena to General Miller.	7:21
	And we foster our request by providing	7:25
	our very clear and convincing legal opinion coming	7:29
	from prominent US law teachers, juries, et cetera.	7:34
	So it was extremely convincing.	7:39
	Nobody could doubt	7:42
	of the	7:42
	crucial essential	7:46
	role of General Miller.	7:47
	And he was so efficient that he was promoted	7:49
	to Abu Ghraib.	7:52
	So it's shows it did the job very well.	7:55
	And, but the judge, was it a guy judge?	7:59
	How could I say?	8:05
	She has not modern conception	8:07
	of what are now the obligation and the duty of a judge.	8:10
	The duty of a judge is	8:17
	of your international crime is obviously to consider	8:18
	as it was considered basically by Supreme Court, 2005	8:25
	that there are no more legal obstacles to	8:29
	prosecute foreign civil	8:33
	or military agent.	8:36
	That's all, full stop, but she told me	8:42
	"Mr Bourdon, it's not my conception.	8:47
	I know that I'm in minority, but it's not my conception."	8:48
	And I say to her, "You're not on the minority	8:52
	but you're absolutely marginal."	8:55
	So we win before the court two years ago	8:58
	order to the judge	9:01
	to send the supreme to Miller,	9:03
	which of course did not come.	9:06
	So the next battle will be	9:09
	to take from the court	9:13
	to issue an order to the judge,	9:17
	to proceed to the interview of prominent witnesses.	9:21
	These witnesses attended a press conference here in Paris	9:26
	a couple of months ago	9:30
	supported by various European human rights organization.	9:34
	You know, I think was there,	9:38
	but the judge refused to interview	9:45
	this prominent witnesses.	9:48
	Some of them are eye witnesses.	9:51
	We want to participate to disclose of the truth.	9:55
	Second goal could be	10:01
	to convince a court	10:05
	to order to the judge to issue an international warrant	10:07
	against Miller.	10:10
	This would be difficult, not impossible but difficult	10:13
	because some of the judges say,	10:18
	"I cannot do anything	10:20
	as long as the US administration did not cooperate".	10:22
	And of course, if you say,	10:27
	if it's your stand	10:30
	it means that you accept to be the stage of the cynicism	10:30
	of a certain parts, which is of course not admissible.	10:34
	And of course we would.	10:38
	So in turn with the help	10:41
	of our friends in Berlin	10:45
	Issah Shar, a friend.	10:50
	Andrez Schuller from Caltech our very good friend.	10:52
	We seem to ask to the,	10:58
	to the judge and then to the court to set a	11:04
	Supreme not only to be liable to other	11:07
	more graduate, more prominent	11:13
	individually, in channel of common responsibility	11:16
	Of course.	11:22
	Why not?	11:22
	One day try to obtain from the court to send a subpoena	11:23
	to Bush.	11:28
	He has no more immunity.	11:30
	So this is (indistinct) jurisprudence.	11:33
	So why not?	11:37
	We think about it.	11:38
Interviewer	Are you surprised	11:39
	that the US was so resistant?	11:41
-	No, I can not be surprised	11:44
	because the endurance in this attitude	11:45
	in all criminal cases, which could involve one	11:51
	of their agent	11:54
	that's a dogma,	11:57
	that's all.	12:01
Interviewer	Could you go back a little bit	12:03
	and how you got to represent	12:04
	the man you help get them out	12:06
	of Guantanamo when you took over, who did you represent?	12:09
-	Mourad Benchellali.	12:11
	Nizar Sassi	12:14
Interviewer	(indistinct)	12:17
-	No.	12:19
Interviewer	Brahim	12:20
-	No, we represent a guy, I don't remember his name.	12:23
	He was a poor little (indistinct) seller.	12:27
	We receive him when he was extradited	12:34
	from Guantanamo bay and he was not prosecuted	12:36
	by the auditorium judge here	12:40
	the French Secret Services release him.	12:44
	So the very moving dinner with him just arrived from us.	12:46
	And then he disappear.	12:51
	I think he flew back in Great Britain	12:52
	knowing Pakistan don't have any use for him.	12:57
	But I want to insist,	13:02
	I want to come back on the proceeding pending	13:04
	still pending presenting his base	13:06
	and the crime of illegal confinement	13:08
	and torture, and bad treatments	13:12
	because we provide to the judge	13:16
	with a lot of translation documents,	13:22
	many legal expertise, medical expertise	13:26
	not medical expertise of our client,	13:29
	but which are in the center	13:31
	of a new,	13:34
	this new idea	13:36
	of blanc, white tortures.	13:38
	I used to say,	13:40
	you can be tortured without any visible damages	13:41
	and it was accepted by the prosecutor.	13:47
	So, so this year, next year will be years	13:53
	of new frontier that is to send	13:57
	to try to get indictment of one of these guys.	13:58
	Yeah.	14:00
Interviewer	You talked	14:01
	about psychological torture.	14:02
-	Yeah, there was some expertise, medical expertise	14:05
	which were provoked	14:09
	by the anti-terrorist judge.	14:13
	So judge indicted Nizar, Mourad	14:15
	for conspiracy with the goal of capital terrorist act	14:18
	which was absolutely foul.	14:23
	And the conclusion of this,	14:27
	these two medical expertise are very clear,	14:28
	they endure endless psychological damages.	14:32
	Oh, you can imagine another conclusion,	14:38
	It's impossible.	14:41
Interviewer	When Obama became president	14:43
	you think he was going to close Guantanamo?	14:44
-	I was interviewed with that exact time	14:47
	and I said various French radio and to (indistinct)	14:51
	learning	14:54
	that he was awarded a Peace Nobel Prize,	14:55
	but perhaps it was a little premature,	15:01
	he wasn't able to close down.	15:06
	Guantanamo Bay	15:08
	but it was his willingness.	15:11
	I like very much Obama.	15:14
	I think he's a great, great man with ambiguities	15:17
	with contradiction, but he's a great great man.	15:19
	Republican plays so nasty cynical demagogic roles.	15:24
	I think it was a main obstacle.	15:30
Interviewer	Would you like to bring him	15:32
	in as a witness, Obama in your lawsuit?	15:34
-	No, I don't.	15:38
	There were no reasons to envisage that	15:39
	my philosophy	15:42
	my professional philosophy is not to be cool	15:44
	is to be efficient.	15:46
Interviewer	And when you took those cases, did you think	15:53
	that you'd have a chance to get them out?	15:56
-	I'm not the liberator of the guy.	16:02
	It's not me does a release	16:07
	but I do think that in huge French Administration	16:09
	to your US Administration to put an end	16:13
	to the detention, of course	16:14
	we participate to a power relation	16:15
	which facilitates the decision finally taken to	16:20
	to put them in the plane.	16:25
	Cause that was a deal between both countries.	16:29
	I'm not aware of the, of all the background of the deal.	16:33
Interviewer	Were you surprised they were put	16:43
	in prison when they came back to France?	16:44
-	I was surprised that not, I was surprised	16:47
	because I do think there's a disparity	16:49
	in obstinately repeated every bit	16:52
	since many years it's a fight was empty	16:55
	and it was not factually empty, but it was empty as far	16:59
	as there were absolutely no elements	17:04
	which could demonstrates that either	17:06
	Nizar or Mourad are there any intention	17:08
	to endorse any kind of terrorist project.	17:12
	Okay.	17:16
	It was immaturate, it was childish.	17:17
	It was a naive attitude.	17:20
	They were young.	17:24
	They never took plane.	17:26
	They were manipulated.	17:28
	I demonstrated by Mourad brother.	17:29
	They live in different, quite boring	17:34
	and not really political life.	17:38
	And they've been seduced by this, you know	17:44
	tropical fancy mysterious,	17:48
	travel.	17:53
	And when they arrive	17:55
	when Mourad was in one of the cabin, when Bernadete arrive	17:59
	he said to the judge, I thought it was Johnny Ali Deli.	18:04
	So it was Johnny of course it was a stupid idea.	18:08
	Of course it was critical idea.	18:11
	And they admitted that they made the wrong choice	18:14
	but when they understood what's going on	18:19
	they immediately wanted to go back.	18:22
	They tried to call their mother, but in France	18:26
	there is a very large conception	18:30
	of preparatory acts	18:33
	in order to commit a terrorist act.	18:38
	And many young Muslim have been in my view	18:44
	unfairly criminalized, unfairly convicted	18:49
	because they were	18:53
	at the right, not at the right moment	18:54
	not at the right place with the right guy.	18:57
	It doesn't mean	19:01
	that you are the trapeze for terrorism,	19:02
	that's out conception.	19:05
	You will observe that all the other European detainees	19:07
	when they flew back to Brittany, to Sweden, to Denmark	19:14
	not one of them has been detained.	19:22
	So it is a French exception.	19:25
Interviewer	And how do you think France is doing today?	19:28
	What do you think about France today	19:32
	in terms of dealing with the US in terrorism?	19:34
	Are you still taking cases on terrorism today?	19:39
-	Yeah my old firm involved in various terrorist cases	19:43
	we wrote collectively here	19:48
	a book published three months ago	19:50
	dedicated to all the toxic consequences	19:54
	of state of urgency.	19:58
	This afternoon at six o'clock.	20:01
	I would be with other representative of (indistinct)	20:03
	as a lawyers in the office of Emmanuel Macron,	20:07
	our new president, to try to urge him	20:10
	to renounce to incorporate, you know,	20:14
	the common law, not in common law, you know,	20:19
	in our law,	20:21
	main provision extracted from state of urgency.	20:22
	So I think that we are in a crucial moment in France.	20:27
	It's very dangerous	20:32
	for democracy to substitute to the judicial control	20:34
	the administrative control, it's against all our tradition.	20:38
	I do not underestimate the difficulty	20:43
	and the complexity of the task	20:45
	of other states targeted by this new form of terrorists.	20:48
	But from 2015,	20:54
	after the awful attack in Paris	20:58
	it has been a very brutal excessively brutal shift	21:02
	and obviously new government has difficulty	21:08
	to not to continue to endorse	21:14
	this shift.	21:20
	And of course it's difficult when when you are lied	21:21
	to public opinion.	21:25
	When we've said that state of urgency was a better shield	21:26
	against terrorist threat, which is not, obviously	21:29
	everyone has seen this last two years, it did not prevent	21:32
	awful attack in France.	21:36
	So it start and all the of Parliamentary reports	21:39
	from prominent, policeman from secret services	21:47
	discretely said, "It's not useful.	21:52
	It's not efficient, it's up."	21:55
	And there are some toxic effects	21:58
	I have no time to detail them.	22:01
	So yes, we are involved.	22:04
	It's a very complex battle because to a certain extent	22:05
	French public opinion is traumatized	22:10
	as was legitimately of course,	22:16
	US public opinion after	22:19
	World Trade Center attack traumatized,	22:20
	and then WIC	22:23
	not to be taken in a stage	22:27
	by demagogical attitude of a politician	22:31
Interviewer	In the 15 years	22:37
	since 9/11 or the 17 years, 16 years from 9/11,	22:38
	did you see your life change dramatically?	22:42
	Have you in your work in your life	22:46
	do you see things very differently	22:47
	than you did before 9/11?	22:49
-	In my professional life, no, I'm not exposed.	22:53
	I've been the witness yes,	23:02
	of a deterioration in the way,	23:04
	our respect to the rule,	23:09
	main principle I mean principle of fair trial	23:10
	or of rule of law,	23:16
	and especially the presumption of innocence.	23:20
	State of urgency institutionalize	23:25
	the logic of some sort of suspicious attitude.	23:32
	And so, especially with attitude, replace all the duty	23:37
	of the judge to bring proof, to bring pieces of evidence.	23:42
	So it's really a new trapeze is to catch people	23:48
	to put them in jail, to control where they live	23:52
	many kind of mechanisms of control	23:58
	supported only by (indistinct).	24:04
	We do that because it could be possible	24:08
	in case of there is a possibility is	24:10
	that this is a new preventive philosophy attitude.	24:13
	I do not deny that it can be necessary sometimes	24:21
	but if first,	24:28
	if you can justify a for minimum of clear	24:31
	in this of proximities	24:35
	which could be considered as dangerous.	24:37
	And second, if all of this is discussed	24:41
	by a judicial, before judicial judge contradictory	24:45
	with an access to the lawyer,	24:50
	but not in the secret	24:52
	of Cabinet of the Domestic Affairs Minister	24:55
	or one of the agents in province.	24:58
	Okay fine.	25:04
Interviewer	Is there something you wanted to ask us?	25:07
-	No.	25:09
Interviewer	And I have one more question	25:10
	then we can end.	25:12
	And that is, did you ever talk to American politicians	25:12
	or officials when you were representing people?	25:15
-	Yes, we made a travel with Jacque Dupree	25:18
	I think it was in 2003,4,	25:23
	in Washington	25:26
	we participate	25:28
	with a strange	25:31
	war demonstration	25:36
	in Washington with Vanessa Lacrave, very extraordinary lady.	25:40
	And we met some senators.	25:46
	Yes, if I remember.	25:48
	I think it was McCain or one of his assistant.	25:52
Interviewer	So what progress in trying to represent-	25:54
-	Try to arrest them, stabilize them, and the way	25:56
	in which us administration, we refuse	25:59
	to hear the request	26:04
	from a French government to release a guy.	26:06
Interviewer	And what was the reception, you got?	26:10
-	Very nice as usual in us.	26:13
	You're always nicely welcome.	26:14
	Even if it it's to receive a door on the face	26:16
	the more the door is on your face,	26:21
	and more you're rec ivied nicely.	26:22
Interviewer	And nothing came from-	26:24
-	Nothing.	26:26
Interviewer	Were you surprised that-	26:29
-	No.	26:30
Interviewer	Okay, we, need a few,	26:33
	just a few seconds to shut down	26:36
	and thank you very much.	26:38
-	Good.	26:41
	When do you fly back?	26:44
Interviewer	Tomorrow.	26:45
Sound Guy	So we just all have to hold very quiet	26:46
	for about ten seconds.	26:48

Item Info

Title:

Bourdon, William - Interview master file

Date:

June 30, 2017

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Bourdon, William

Role:

Detainee Attorney

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
Detainee Attorney
William Bourdon, male, age 60, was the lawyer for French detainees Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, and assisted in their release back to France in 2004, represented them later when they were accused of criminal association with a terrorist organization, and filed a case in French court against the U.S. for their torture.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

France

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

0:27:01

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

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

Identifier:

0a80f6399e44181c209f722416c3e631
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r4h41s653
b3b4a83e-6235-44c2-8d21-389c9e58bb57

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Bourdon, William - Interview master file

Transcript

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