The Truth-Free Zone

The child and the kangaroo court - The internment of Omar Khadr

I am in Guantánamo Bay.  I walk a mile down the road to meet the seven o’clock ferry, to cross to the Base where I meet my clients. As the ferry approaches the landing, tinny music pierces through the drone of the engine.  Each morning for a week it has been Jimmy Buffett belting out Margaritaville.  I remember a Buffett concert in college where he went on to song called Let’s all get drunk and screw.  I fantasize about this, but the military never progresses that far.  Inexorably, it’s the same song over and over in Guantánamo.

The base motto is everywhere:  “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.”  The military escort meets us at the dock, and we drive to McDonalds.  Outside, a soldier smartly salutes his superior, “Honor Bound, sir!”  The officer salutes his reply, “To Defend Freedom, soldier!”  The first time I saw this I laughed, thinking the joke was for my benefit.  The senior officer gave me a sour look.  It’s mandatory.  It’s the motto.

Freedom is a relative term.  Iguanas are free enough, and if you run one over it’s a $10,000 fine, since the U.S. environmental laws apply here.  But 500 prisoners are four years into their lost freedom. If you feel the need to hit a prisoner, it’s called ‘mild non-injurious contact.’ That’s an approved interrogation technique.  For prisoners, this is a law-free zone.  Two years ago, we argued in the Supreme Court that it would be a huge step forward if they gave our clients the same rights as the animals.

We turn down “Recreation Road”, running alongside the Guantánamo Golf Course to the prison camp.

Meetings between lawyer and client are now held in Camp V.   It’s not easy to establish trust with a prisoner.  When we finally won in the Supreme Court, and prisoners got limited legal rights, the military interrogators started posing as lawyers, saying, “We’re here to help you.”  Then they told the prisoners that the lawyers were all Jews, “your enemies from Israel.”  The soldiers have also been told that lawyers are “the enemy,” a threat to the mission.  A guard takes his hat off and puts it on the table.  In case he forgets, he has written inside the rim: Al Qaeda are Pussies.

Today, I get to meet with Omar Khadr, the Canadian juvenile held here.  In addition to being short on law, Guantánamo is a truth-free zone. Two years ago, the military told BBC Radio 4 that there were no juveniles on the Base.  Omar was only 15 when they seized him.  To date, we have identified more than forty kids who have been in Guantanamo.  Why do they lie about these things, when they know we will catch them at it?

Omar is the youngest person left in Guantanamo.  It perplexes me that the Canadians have shown no interest in his fate.  He faces a tribunal that Lord Johann Steyn called a kangaroo court.  Three American military prosecutors, hand-picked for the task, resigned rather than take part in it, saying that the process was rigged to convict, a show trial.   Even Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned the process, and demanded the return of the British citizens.  Why the deafening silence from the Canadian government?  Is it possible for a government to be more craven than Blair?

Worst case scenario, the Americans say that they attacked the house where Omar was, and he threw a grenade.  Omar has consistently denied he did this.  But I can see the scars on his chest that prove the American soldiers shot him several times, trying to kill him.

Sadly, war consists of firing bullets and throwing grenades. When the Americans invaded Afghanistan, what did they expect?  What would have happened at Nuremburg if we’d decided not to try Reichsmarshall Herman Goering and the leaders of the Nazi Party, but put a 15 year-old kid in the dock for throwing a grenade instead?

President Bush’s team have said the prisoners in Guantanamo are the “worst of the worst.”  Omar is one of nine people chosen for a tribunal out of 500, so that makes him the worst of the worst of the worst.  That is nonsense.  Where are the real al Qaida leaders, at least the ones America has managed to find?  They’re in some secret prison in Morocco.  The Bush Administration doesn’t want to try them, as then the world would learn all about the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were used on them.  (That’s Donald Rumsfeld’s euphemism for torture.)  Instead, we’ll try Omar and rig the tribunal to make sure we get a result.

Omar is still a kid, still confused.  I warm to him.  He obviously does not understand how the Americans chose him out of the 500 people here.  One of the things we discuss is torture.  I have a checklist of the different abuses used by the U.S. military.  Every now and then, I get a flash of perspective:  When I went to law school in New York over twenty years ago, did I ever think I’d be asking kids about torture inflicted on them by my own government?

I can’t tell you what Omar said to me.  I am censored.  If one of my clients tells me he has been tortured, I have to get permission to reveal this, or spend up to forty years in prison.  The Government commits the crime, but I do the time.

At five o’clock I have to leave.  The escort drives me back to the Navy Exchange for some shopping. You can buy the souvenir T-shirts:  one says “Behavior Modification Instructor” for when you get the urge to beat up a prisoner.  I buy the kids’ version for my six-year-old nephew James: “Future Behavior Modification Instructor”.

One of the military defense lawyers has developed his own response when a soldier confronts him with “Honor Bound, sir!”  He returns the salute with some irony, and replies, “To defend the U.S. Constitution.” 

Guantánamo needs to undergo a few radical changes.  We might begin with the motto.