Pardiss Kebriaei of the Center for Constitutional Rights gave a very interesting speech yesterday about her work defending Guantanamo Bay detainees as part of the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative.
Here's a videotape of the speech. The first speaker is Lars Wildhagen of the Freundeskreis (Alumni Association) of the Law Faculty, then comes Sven van Teeffelen of the University Group of Amnesty International (who's a theoretical physicist!), and then I give a potted introduction to habeas corpus. While swaying back and forth annoyingly. That's probably because I usually walk around a lot during my normal lectures, but didn't have room to do that this time. After that, Ms. Kebriaei discusses the legal situation of the 220 remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay (I hope the embed works):
As she makes clear, one of the principal goals of her trip is to try to convince European governments to take in Guantanamo detainees. Dozens of detainees who have been cleared for release, but who remain incarerated at Guantanamo because they can't be sent back to their home countries, and no "safe third country" can be found which is willing to take them in. Most of the detainees would be happy to relocate to Europe.
She acknowledges that the Bush Administration created this problem, and that European governments therefore don't feel any particular sense of responsibility for solving it. She's also aware that the recent grandstanding by Republican Members of the U.S. Congress on the issue of relocating Guantanamo inmates to the U.S. mainland (and the Democrats' pusillanimous response to that grandstanding) is unhelpful. Why, indeed, should European governments agree to take in detainees that American politicians denounce as dangerous?
Kebriaei, by the way, disagrees with that characterization. Many of the detainees were seized by farmers and peasants in return for dollar-denominated bounties which were huge by the standards of rural Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is credible evidence against some detainees, but almost all of the rest protest their innocence, and the evidence against them is often speculative or the product of torture. She points out that about 500 people have been released from Guantanamo so far, and that the vast majority of them have simply begun rebuilding their lives. She urges Europeans to see the issue in terms of people who have been locked in a high-security prison for years, subjected to isolation custody and other forms of abuse, and who have never been convicted of any crime. The U.S. is ready and willing to relocate them right now, but is just waiting for a suitable third-country destination to declare its willingness to house them. I found it a pretty convincing case.
After her evening speech, we all went out and had a pint or two at a local Kneipe. Ms. Kebriaei had lots of fascinating stories about her work. Like most of the lawyers who represent Guantanamo detainees, she had to obtain a security clearance, which was a 3-month-long invasive process. As a result, there are aspects of the cases she's working on which she not only can't discuss with us, but which she can't even discuss with her own clients. This makes representing them extremely difficult. In 2003 and 2004, it was difficult to find enough pro bono lawyers willing to take on the cases of Guantanamo detainees, but in the meantime, it's become much easier -- in fact, it's almost fashionable these days for a big law firm to represent a Guantanamo detainee. Nevertheless, she can't see how Obama is going to be able to keep his promise of closing Guantanamo in one year. The court proceeding against the remaining detainees are just moving much too slowly. If anything's going to solve the problem, it will likely be a large-scale political settlement.
In any event, it was a thought-provoking speech, and elicited rapt interest from the audience, who had plenty of questions.
that was a very interesting and informative talk. i especially enjoyed seeing you speaking, andrew, and though i am not at all engaged in juridical matters i found your introduction very lucid and understandable.
(just one question: were you practicing dance moves behind the podium? i think i spotted a hint of cha-cha-cha...)
Posted by: hannes | July 08, 2009 at 01:46 AM