6/9/09

Today Ahmed Ghailani, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was brought to the United States to stand trial in the US court system.  Ghailani is facing charges for his role in the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed over 224 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani’s transfer from military custody to the Justice Department marks an important point in the process of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center.  Despite fear-mongering from the right, the American justice system has proven that it is more than capable of trying and holding dangerous terrorists.  The federal system has housed and continues to house some of the most dangerous terrorists, including Ghailani’s cohorts in the East Africa embassy bombings. Last week in Cairo, President Obama reaffirmed his intension to close the facility; and opinion polls in the Muslim world show that closing Guantanamo Bay would greatly improve people’s opinions of the United States.  But closing Guantanamo is not simply about restoring the image of America in the world’s eyes. It will make us safer and advance America’s security interests. The facility at Guantanamo, along with Abu Ghraib and the Bush administration’s use of torture have served as tremendous recruiting tools for Al Qaeda. To put it simply, closing Guantanamo hurts Al Qaeda. Conservatives that oppose bringing Ghailani to justice seem to lack faith in the American justice system and seem oblivious to the dangers to our security caused by keeping Guantanamo open. It is about time that Ghailani was brought to justice.

Guantanamo Bay detainee brought to US soil and finally forced to account for his crimes and – despite conservative rhetoric – world does not end.  In 2001, Ahmed Ghailani was indicted by the US for the murder of 224 people in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. Others who were charged with him have been tried and convicted and remain in prison – all on US soil. Yet the Bush Administration held Ghailani outside the justice system for more than five years. As the front page of the New York Post exclaimed today, it’s “Time for Justice.” Yet those on the right seem to have little faith in the American system of justice and have been saying for months that it would be extremely dangerous to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to American soil and try them under the rule of law. House Minority Leader John Boehner said today that "This is the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America.” Sen. Inhofe, reflecting what has become the consensus view among Senate Republicans, wrote in the Washington Times that bringing Guantanamo detainees onto American soil “would place America and its citizens at risk.” And Bill Kristol has dismissed closing Guantanamo as “entirely symbolic.” Yet just today, the first Guantanamo Bay detainee has been brought to the U.S. and the world has not ended. The New York Times reports, “U.S. authorities have brought the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to the United States, flying him into New York to face trial for bombing U.S. embassies, the Justice Department said Tuesday. The department said Ahmed Ghailani arrived in the early morning hours Tuesday. U.S. Marshals took custody of Ghailani from his military jailers and brought him to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Ghailani is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court later Tuesday. ‘With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people,’ Attorney General Eric Holder said in a press release. ‘The Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case.’” Secretary Gates, a career intelligence and defense official, has also dispelled this fear mongering from conservatives: “We've never had an escape from a supermax prison, and that's where these guys will go; and if not one of the existing ones, we'll create a new one.” He added that conservative counterarguments were historically baseless, saying “This started 20 years ago when I was at CIA, and we captured a Hezbollah terrorist who had been involved in killing an American sailor on an aircraft that had been taken hostage in Beirut. We brought him to the United States, put him on trial and put him in prison.” [James Inhofe, 5/27/09. LA Times, 6/9/09. NY Post, 6/9/09. FOX News, 5/11/09. NY Times, 6/9/09. National Journal, 1/31/09. Secretary Gates, 5/22/09. Politico, 6/09/09]

The federal prison system safely holds or has held for extended periods of time a large number of convicted terrorists: including other perpetrators of the East Africa Embassy bombings, the perpetrator of the first World Trade Center attacks, 9/11 conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui, the Shoe Bomber, and Timothy McVeigh.

• Ramzi Yousef. The mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings was convicted and sentenced in 1998 by the Federal District Court in Manhattan and is being held at ADX Florence, the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. [NY Times, 1/9/98. NY Times, 4/5/03]

• Zacharias Moussaoui. Convicted of conspiring to kill Americans for his role in the 9/11 attacks, Moussaoui is currently serving a life sentence at ADX Florence. [NY Times, 5/3/06. NY Times, 5/14/06. NY Times, 5/5/06]

• East African embassy bombing perpetrators. Wahid el-Hage, Mohammed Sadiq Odeh, Mohammed Rashed al-Owhali, and Khalfan Khamis Mohammed are all serving in ADX Florence. [NY Times, 12/25/01]

• Richard C. Reid.  The so-called “Shoe Bomber,” Reid was convicted for trying to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic with explosives in his shoe.  He is currently serving a life sentence at ADX Florence. [NY Times, 1/31/03. NY Times,  5/14/06]

• Timothy McVeigh. Convicted of killing 168 people by blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, McVeigh was held in ADX Florence until his execution on June 11, 2001. [NY Times, 6/11/01]

• Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. The only person known to be held as an enemy combatant in the continental United States, al-Marri spent six years in the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina and is now being held in the Federal Correctional Institution in Illinois. [Associated Press Via Fox News, 5/1/09.  NY Times, 4/30/09]

• Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. Responsible for plotting a series of bombings and assassinations, Omar Abdel-Rahman is currently serving a life sentence at Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina.

• Muhammad Salameh. Convicted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Salameh is serving a life sentence in ADX Florence. [Library of Congress, 9/99. NY Times, 3/5/94]

Obama’s Cairo speech highlights urgency of closing Guantanamo.  President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to close Guantanamo, as he laid out a sweeping agenda for remaking relations between the U.S. and Muslims around the world based on the principles of “of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”  It will be critical for the U.S. to follow its rhetoric with action, particularly in the case of Guantanamo Bay – a black spot on America’s image among Muslims.  According to a January Gallup Poll, residents of the predominantly Muslim Middle East and North Africa region say closing Guantanamo “would improve their opinions of the United States significantly.”  In Saudi Arabia, 56% of respondents replied that closing Guantanamo would improve their view of the U.S.  In Tunisia, which has had historically strong relations with the U.S., the only issue polling higher than Guantanamo was withdrawal from Iraq.  Reactions to Obama’s speech also testify to this expectation.  The Wall Street Journal reported: “Abdi Rahaman Ibrahim, who is 45 and unemployed, learned about the speech today and made sure he was at a café in time to watch... But now, he and others want action... They also expect the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to be closed, as Mr. Obama has ordered, and fair trials held for the detainees. ‘That place is not good at all for the human being,’ he said.” [President Obama, 6/04/09. Shibley Telhami, 6/04/09. Gallup, 1/27/09. Wall Street Journal, 6/4/09]

Closing Guantanamo Bay is vital to our national security.  A bipartisan panel of former Secretaries of State made up of Secretaries Kissinger, Albright, Powell, Baker, and Christopher all agreed that closing Guantanamo Bay is vital for repairing the damage it has caused to America’s image. As James Baker, Secretary of State for George H.W. Bush, said: “Close Guantanamo. We were on a panel together several months ago, and we all agreed, one of the best things that could happen would be to close Guantanamo, which is a very serious blot upon our reputation.” In a 2007 letter to his troops in Iraq, General Petraeus wrote that the torture, promulgated at Guantanamo, makes America lose the “moral high ground” and strengthens our enemies: “This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we—not our enemies—occupy the moral high ground... Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary.” In fact, Guantanamo has not just damaged America’s image – it has also directly cost American lives.  A retired Air Force major who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander – the interrogator who used legal means to locate the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - says that these programs are responsible for thousands of Americans’ deaths, “I listened time and time again to foreign fighters, and Sunni Iraqis, state that the number one reason they had decided to pick up arms and join Al Qaeda was the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the authorized torture and abuse at Guantanamo Bay... The number-one reason foreign fighters gave for coming to Iraq to fight is the torture and abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.” [BBC, 1/23/07. Harper’s Magazine, 12/18/08. CNN, 9/20/08. David Petraeus, 5/11/07]

What We’re Reading

The first Guantanamo detainee to be brought to the U.S. arrived in New York for trial.

The U.S. protested the sentencing of two journalists captured by North Korea.  The Obama administration may send an envoy to North Korea to negotiate their release.  South Korea imposed financial sanctions on North Korean companies.

The CIA urged a federal judge to keep Bush-era documents related to detainee interrogations secret.

U.S. officials found that troops committed errors when fighting Taliban forces early last month, resulting in Afghan civilian casualties.

Saad Hariri, whose coalition won the Lebanese elections and who is expected to be the next prime minister, faces a dilemma over what to do with Hezbollah.

The Pakistani army turned its attention to Waziristan in the fight against Taliban entrenchment.  Pakistan sent support to a civilian militia fighting Taliban forces.

Huge campaign rallies supporting President Mahmoud Ahmadinjad and challenger Mir Hussein Moussavi snarled traffic for hours in Tehran.  Time Magazine looks at how the obstacles to marriage in Iran might damage President Ahmadinejad’s re-election chances.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko failed to create a coalition to undercut President Viktor Yushchenko.

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell met with Israeli diplomats as he begins a new push for Middle East peace.

The New York Times explores how the global financial crisis exposed cracks in the European Union.

China defended new requirements for screening software in all computers sold in China.

Shell agrees to pays a $15.5 million [£9.7m] settlement to families of executed activists in Nigeria, signaling complicity between Shell and the actions of Nigeria’s former military dictator.

Commentary of the Day

Gideon Rachman reacts to the European parliamentary elections.

Eugene Robinson ponders whether President Obama in fact underestimated the impact of his unique personal story.

A group of Russian intellectuals argue that the Obama administration’s Russia policy should take an entirely new approach and should seek to understand the Russian people, not just their government.