Shocking revelations
Editor’s note: This article was
published in the German magazine Online Spiegel on January 19, 2012. In this version, some
of the photographs that were made available with the article have been inserted
into the body of the article. The original can be seen at:
A Contribution by Seema
Saifee
The prison camp at Guantánamo in Cuba was
set up by the US in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York
and Washington D.C. President George W. Bush designated prisoners taken in the
war on terror as "unlawful enemy combatants." They were held in
Guantánamo for years with no recourse to legal assistance
Getty Images
Ahmad Tourson spent eight years in Guantánamo as an innocent man. Then, in 2009, he was shipped off to the tiny island nation of Palau. His new situation, though, is untenable -- but the US government seems unwilling to do anything about it.
On her sixth birthday, Muslima had one wish:
to see her dada. On that day, Ahmad Tourson, her father, was trying to
sleep. But slumber was a luxury in the windowless metal box to which he was
consigned for 22 hours a day, sometimes 24. On Muslima's sixth birthday, Ahmad
was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He had been there for her last five
birthdays as well.
Not long after her birthday, though, it looked as though Muslima's
wish would come true after all. In June 2008, sunlight shone on the steel vault
to which Ahmad was confined. Over six years of courtroom battles and cruel
conditions of confinement later, the hundreds of men the US executive claimed
the power to hold indefinitely won the right to petition for a writ of habeas
corpus to challenge the lawfulness of their detention. Ahmad's case was to
be heard by a US federal judge
.
In consequence, the US government withdrew
any pretense that Ahmad was an "enemy combatant," admitting it had no
basis to hold the man and his 16 Uighur countrymen, all from China. With the
case thus abandoned, remedy was the sole question remaining. The Uighurs sought
their only possible remedy: freedom in the United States.
On the day of the hearing, US District
Judge Ricardo Urbina decried assertions by then-President George W. Bush's top
lawyers that executive discretion was almighty. He invited the president's
lawyers -- several times -- to explain what the security risk would be to the
nation should the Uighurs be freed in the US. "You've had seven years to
study this issue," the judge admonished. The US government could not
produce one single example.
At Liberty's Doorstep
Judge
Urbina concluded that the detention of the Uighurs was illegal. Understanding
that the men could not be returned to their native China, which may have
tortured, or even executed, the members of the minority ethnic group, and that
diplomatic efforts to lobby (and re-lobby) nearly 100 countries for their
humanitarian resettlement had failed, Judge Urbina ordered the 17 men freed to
the United States. Release was mandated within 72 hours.
The prospect of freedom, once outside his
reach, was now within Ahmad's grasp. The Uighurs, whose young faces had
developed wrinkles from years of indefinite detention, imagined boarding a
plane to freedom. A contingent of US marshals flew to Guantánamo to escort the
men to their new home. Ahmad was at liberty's doorstep.
But 42 hours before Ahmad's scheduled
release, the US government won an emergency stay to shelve the Uighurs' release
until the case could be reviewed by a higher court. On appeal, the D.C. Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled that US federal courts exercising habeas
jurisdiction were impotent to release men at Guantánamo whose confinement was
admittedly unlawful. The Great Writ was defiled. Liberty, said the D.C.
Circuit, had no guardian.
Ahmad embarked on his eighth year of
indefinite detention because US judges concluded they did not have the power to
end it. And two presidents agreed. In Guantánamo's Orwellian land of
doublespeak, Ahmad was not detained, said Bush; the U.S. military was
"harboring" him (inside a chain-link fence surrounded by barbed wire)
because he "chose" not to return to China (a country whose government
would have put a bullet in his head), and the president would honor this choice
out of executive grace (as the US claimed it had no legal obligation not to refoule
him to a country that tortures), until a safe nation granted him refuge (so
long as that nation's president did not reside on Pennsylvania Avenue). And,
once he entered office, President Barack Obama spun the same tale.
****************************************
Here, Ahmad (left) is seen with other Uighurs who were resettled
to Palau in 2009. Their resettlement to Palau was originally intended to be
only temporary. But so far, no third country has come forward to offer them a
permanent home.
****************************************
Not a Durable Refuge
In the summer of 2009, the US State Department
negotiated Ahmad's resettlement with the Republic of Palau, an isolated,
impoverished island in the middle of the South Pacific. After multiple years of
shopping Ahmad to foreign sovereigns, the US found a remote island, the only
nation, it said, to offer him refuge. (Any nation that previously considered
granting Ahmad asylum quickly reneged when Chinese diplomats threatened
cessation of economic ties. Palau, however, is one of a small contingent of
countries that maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.)
The US and Palauan governments acknowledged
that the remote island was not durable as a long-term refuge. Ahmad's
relocation there, they said, was intended as a way station, a means to leave
Guantánamo, a temporary solution until another country offered him sustainable
resettlement. Ahmad thus accepted his only opportunity to leave Guantánamo,
with the hope, one day, of finding a permanent refuge.
That hope has shriveled. Today, two years
since his release and 10 years since he was sold into US custody, Ahmad remains
in limbo in Palau. Despite his and the US State Department's assiduous efforts,
he has no reasonable prospect of future resettlement. And the remote island is
far from paradise.
**************************************
The Uighur prisoners were not the only innocent prisoners in the
Guantánamo prison camp. This is an old image of Lakhdar Boumediene -- taken
before he was arrested in Sarajevo. Born in Algeria, he held a senior position
in an aid organization operating in Bosnia. He was arrested on Oct. 19, 2001
because he had allegedly planned a bomb attack on the US Embassy. Although a
Bosnian court found him not guilty, he was kidnapped by US agents and taken to
Guantánamo
****************************************
Ahmad holds a diploma from a
technical college in China. He has experience as a management technician at an
oil refinery and as a restaurant owner. He has advanced English language
skills. But, in Palau, Ahmad cannot find work that provides a living wage. He
is excluded, under Palauan law, from access to the same job opportunities
available to Palauan citizens. What is more, he is not covered by Palau's
minimum wage law, which is, itself, a trifling $2.50 an hour. Ahmad has no path
to citizenship; under Palau's constitution, citizenship is conferred only to
individuals with native Palauan ancestry. Even if Ahmad could access gainful
employment, Palauan employers have refused to hire him. Many raise concerns
about losing customers; others call the men terrorists. With a population of
just 20,000, the entire island knows the Uighurs. The men cannot blend in; they
suffer a unique prominence they would not face in most nations.
Seeking Refuge in Kabul
The scale tips further. Ahmad is a
transtibial amputee. Prior to being sent to Guantánamo, Ahmad had been living
as a refugee in Kabul. Uighurs have been subjected to torture and arbitrary
arrest in China and Ahmad says he was lashed with electric sticks and his wife
was threatened with a forced abortion. With modest resources, he sought asylum
in neighboring countries, but most Central Asian nations had deals to deport
Uighur refugees to China.
But Afghanistan did not forcibly repatriate
Uighurs. Thus, in 2000, Ahmad along with his two-year-old son and pregnant wife
took refuge in Kabul, one year before the US and NATO began combat operations
in Afghanistan. US cargo planes dropped leaflets offering significant rewards
to locals for catching "enemies" -- and Ahmad was traded to US forces
for $5,000. He was taken to an Afghan prison where his left leg was shattered
in a bombing run. Once in Guantánamo, his leg was amputated below the knee and
Ahmad, a young man in his early 30s, was forced to use a walker.
Amputees require lifetime prosthetic care,
routinely available in many nations. But no level of prosthetic care
exists in Palau. Indeed health care is so limited that Palauan nationals must
travel overseas to obtain specialized or emergency care. But Ahmad is unable to
travel outside Palau -- even for medical care. He has no reasonable means of
procuring travel documents or permission to enter another nation. According to
orthopedists, without access to this essential prosthetic care, Ahmad will not
achieve full mobility and is unlikely to find gainful employment. Life on the
island is, and will remain, untenable.
Stranded in Palau
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Handbook, resettlement as a durable solution must be accompanied by a
meaningful prospect of local integration, which involves more than safety from refoulement.
Local integration includes the enjoyment of legal, economic, medical, and
social rights, none of which are available to Ahmad in Palau. Indeed, the
limitations of the conditions in Palau are precisely the reason the island was
not proposed as a durable solution and why relocation there was intended to be
temporary only.
Ahmad wants to forget the years he spent
without being charged at Guantánamo, but he can't. The sheer isolation of
Palau, which has no Uighur or refugee population of any kind, reminds him
hauntingly of Guantánamo. And one memory he can never forget is that of the 171
men who remain at Guantánamo, including five of his countrymen.
Ahmad's only ray of dawn during this dark
decade came in 2010, when he was reunited with his family. Muslima, who was
born after Ahmad's capture, embraced her dada for the first time shortly
before she turned nine. But the rosy-cheeked girl, whose radiant smile hardship
has not obscured, is stateless. She has been mandated as a refugee by the
UNHCR. But with no reasonable prospects of resettlement in another nation, she
may remain stranded in Palau for the rest of her life.
About Seema
Saifee
Seema Saifee is a lawyer in New York. She represents
four Uighurs who spent seven years in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay: Ahmad
Tourson, Abdulghappar Abdulrahman, Adel Noori and Abdulrazaq. No proof of their
guilt has ever been offered. Three of them were resettled in Palau in 2009 with
Abdulrazaq and four other Uighurs still being held in Guantánamo
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Rabbi
Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun
Magazine, considered to
be one of the most respected intellectual/cultural but also the most
controversial magazines in the Jewish world.
