In a surprising verdict issued late Sunday afternoon, a military commission jury sentenced Omar Khadr to 40 years in confinement. Given that Khadr has already served eight years at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that's a 48-year sentence for a child soldier. Khadr is also the only fighter charged by the U.S. government with murder on the battlefield since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was only 15 years old when, according to his guilty plea, in July 2002 he threw a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
In testimony Tuesday afternoon that literally had my jaw dropping, a forensic psychiatrist called by the U.S. government testified that Omar Khadr, the Canadian who Monday pled guilty to a slew of terrorist acts including murder, is too dangerous to be released because he is sincerely religious and became even more devout at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
This morning I sat in a U.S. military commissions courtroom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and watched the first child soldier charged by a Western nation since World War II plead guilty to crimes he was never even accused of. If the guilty plea of Omar Khadr this morning was a face-saving effort by the U.S. government, it was a sad day for the rule of law in the United States.
Omar Khadr is the 24-year-old Canadian who's spent a third of his life in U.S. custody without trial after being accused of helping his father's al Qaeda associates build improvised explosive devices when he was just 15. He was taken to Afghanistan from Canada by his father at the age of nine. The lone survivor of a 2002 U.S. assault on an Afghan compound, Khadr was accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
But as he entered his guilty plea this morning -- after the government agreed he'd serve just one more year at Guantanamo Bay, and an as-yet-unspecified number of years in Canada -- it was clear that prosecutors had taken the opportunity to throw the kitchen-sink-full of charges at him - including far more crimes than he'd even been charged with. Most importantly, Khadr pled guilty to the murder of two Afghan soldiers who accompanied U.S. forces in the 2002 assault on the compound. The government has never presented any evidence whatsoever that Khadr was responsible for that.
That Khadr pled to this and the range of other charges that the government first unveiled today (details will not be available until the military commissions publicly release the stipulation signed by Khadr tomorrow) is hardly surprising. Ever since Judge Patrick Parrish ruled that Khadr's statements made to interrogators after he was threatened with gang-rape, coerced and possibly tortured were admissible, his defense was sure to be challenging. Although the government did not appear to have any forensic or eyewitness testimony to support its murder charge, government interrogators planned to testify that Khadr had willingly told them that he threw the grenade that killed Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer. Whether he said that because it was true, or because he was a scared and wounded 15-year-old expecting a quick release for telling his interrogators what they wanted to hear, we'll never know. (Khadr was shot multiple times and severely wounded in the firefight, which left him blind in one eye; he still has shrapnel in the other.)
Khadr's sentencing hearing begins tomorrow. Although the plea agreement contains a recommended sentence (news reports have said it's 8 years total) that deal will remain secret until the military commission sworn to act as a jury in this case issues its own sentence based on live testimony. The government will present witnesses to describe the effects of improvised explosive devices, and the testimony of Sergeant Speer's widow about her loss. Khadr's lawyers will put forth psychological and psychiatric experts to talk about the impacts of torture on him and likely about the ability of a 15-year-old youth to appreciate the wrongfulness of his acts, particularly when they were directed by the adults around him.
As the trial of a former Guantanamo detainee proceeded peacefully in a New York courtroom today, U.S. military prosecutors in Cuba were reportedly scrambling to get Omar Khadr, the alleged child soldier on trial for war crimes at Gitmo, to plead guilty to murder. Plea negotiations are reportedly ongoing and his trial, set to resume Monday, has been postponed for a week.
In New York, the government is finally presenting its evidence against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first former Gitmo prisoner to be transferred to the U.S. for trial.
On Thursday morning, an FBI agent testified about the exhaustive investigation done at the crime scene after the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania -- just the sort of complex investigation that FBI agents are trained to do. Having arrived in Tanzania within 24 hours of the bombing, FBI agents secured the crime scene and analyzed and preserved 661 pieces of evidence. Some of that led to the discovery of pieces of the white Nissan truck that had been turned into a bomb, and to its string of former owners.
Unfortunately for the government, though, a broker for the sale of the truck on Thursday afternoon proceeded to contradict everything he'd told the FBI 12 years ago.
Some of the problems in the Ghailani trial are predictable, given that the government imprisoned Ghailani for six years without trial after capturing him in Pakistan in 2004. Because he was interrogated using "enhanced interrogation techniques" and possibly torture in a CIA black site, none of the evidence obtained there is reliable or admissible. And because the government still didn't put him on trial for four years after transferring him to Guantanamo, witnesses may now have a hard time remembering what they told the FBI when it investigated the bombings more than a decade ago. The investigation led to the conviction of four other men in 2001. All are serving life in prison.
What will happen in Ghailani's case remains unclear. As I pointed out earlier, the defense isn't contesting many of the facts the government is now presenting. Yesterday, for example, we heard a whole day of testimony from victims of the bombing -- horrifying stories of being buried under the rubble and finding severed limbs of colleagues and loved ones. Ghailani's lawyers aren't disputing that any of that happened, and conducted hardly any witness cross-examination.
But when it comes to proving that the diminutive Ghailani (friends called him Foupi, meaning "the little one" in Swahili), actually intended to participate in the bombing plot, that's where the government may have a harder time. Though we've already heard testimony that Ghailani, who was around 22 at the time, was at least with one of the people who purchased the truck, the government has yet to present any direct evidence that Ghailani knew what it was being used for. The prosecution's case will likely depend on arguing that Ghailani should have known, based on the circumstances. Given that the trial is expected to last for up to four months, the government will have plenty of opportunity to present its evidence.
Meanwhile, back at Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr, the "child soldier" on trial for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier, is reportedly considering pleading guilty and serving one more year at Gitmo, then returning to Canada to serve more time there. Whether he'll agree to plead guilty to crimes that don't really exist remains to be seen. (As I've explained before, none of the crimes he's charged with are actually war crimes that belong in a military commission.)
In addition to the legal flaws in the government's case, there's the problem that the military appears to have no forensic evidence demonstrating that Khadr actually committed the crimes he's accused of. That's in part because, unlike the FBI, military investigators don't carefully gather and preserve evidence at a crime scene, making a subsequent prosecution much more difficult. For all these reasons -- in addition to Khadr's likely anger and bewilderment at having been imprisoned by the U.S. for a third of his life without trial -- the 24-year-old Canadian may now have less incentive to cooperate.
Even if Khadr does plead guilty, the legitimacy of that conviction, and of the entire military commissions process, will remain in doubt.
The first trial of a former Guantanamo detainee in a U.S. federal court began in New York City this week. With jury selection completed, opening arguments will begin Monday for Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.
I went to the jury questioning and it was just another day at court, with a second terrorism trial happening next door. Outside the courthouse, there were no protests or demonstrations along the lines of what was staged by groups like Liz Cheney's Keep America Safe last December after the Obama administration announced it would try the September 11 co-conspirators in a New York federal court. In fact, Cheney and Co. were bizarrely quiet about this trial.
Human Rights First staff interviewed New Yorkers on the street in front of the courthouse while proceedings began. The overwhelming response was nonchalance, or confidence. Far from the nightmare scenarios predicted by those who oppose civilian trials for the 9/11 defendants. Watch the video released yesterday:
If you didn't already know the trial was going on, you'd never know that anything was different at all in the Southern District of New York courthouse and in the immediate vicinity. Sure, security was tight, but it always is. Observers had to pass through the usual metal detectors and check in their cell phones. It was business as usual.
In fact, although most New Yorkers don't realize it, there are now two major terrorism trials going on in the downtown Manhattan courthouse. In addition to Ghailani's, there's the case of four men charged with planting what they thought were bombs outside two Bronx synagogues, and planning to fire missiles at military planes. That trial, which hinges on the role of a government informant, has been going on for five weeks now without any safety incidents.
As this trial gets underway, you have to wonder what all the fuss was about. Civilian courts have convicted 400 terrorists since 9/11. Military commissions, 4. The trial itself has caused no disruption in lower Manhattan and is running smoothly.
I will be headed to Guantánamo later this month to witness the military commissions trial of Omar Khadr. Instead of taking the subway to the proceedings, I'll be flown down and escorted by U.S. government officials to a facility that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and an additional $125 million every year to maintain. This doesn't seem to add up.
When Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was first transferred to New York from Guantanamo Bay last year, House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio called it "the first step in the Democrats' plan to import terrorists into America."
More than a year later, Ghailani remains the only detainee from Guantanamo Bay to be brought to the United States. He's scheduled to go on trial starting this week in lower Manhattan. Jury selection begins Monday.
Ghailani is a Tanzanian accused of helping to bomb two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people. Like the September 11, 2001 attacks, those bombings have been attributed to Osama bin Laden.
In hundreds of legal charges filed with the federal court in New York, Ghailani is accused of having scouted out the American embassy in Tanzania before it was bombed, assembled bomb materials and escorted the suicide bomber to the site. After the bombings, prosecutors say he fled to Afghanistan and rose up the ranks of al Qaeda, forging documents for the group and working as a cook and a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
When he was captured in Pakistan in 2004, U.S. authorities deemed Ghailani a "high-value" detainee and sent him to a secret CIA prison for interrogation, where Ghailani claims he was tortured. Indeed, a variety of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, were authorized for use by CIA interrogators on high-value detainees.
Ghailani was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Last year, more than ten years after the embassy bombings, he was transferred to the New York prison. The same prison has safely held such notorious criminals as John Gotti and the blind terror leader Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman.
Critics of Ghailani's transfer warned that his prosecution could be derailed by his abuse in prison and the long delay in bringing him to trial. But the federal judge hearing the case, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, has denied the defense lawyers' requests to dismiss the trial on those grounds.
Last week, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani insisted that it would be safer to try Ghailani in a military commission in Guantanamo Bay than in New York City.
Ghailani has already appeared in court for pretrial hearings, however, without incident. New York City police have said that while they will provide some extra security for the trial, the proceedings will not require any of the elaborate and costly measures that New York City officials had warned would be necessary for a trial of the 9/11 plotters. After receiving complaints from local business groups about the potential disruption that trial might cause, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced that he would take a range of extraordinary security measures, including a flood of uniformed police officers, checkpoints and thousands of interlocking metal barriers. Mayor Bloomberg estimated the cost at $200 million a year, and the Obama administration soon backed away from the plan.
Despite the huge costs and inconvenience predicted for the 9-11 plotters' trial, no such estimates have been made for the trials of any of those accused of carrying out al Qaeda's U.S. embassy bombing attacks.
Four other men have already been tried and convicted in the same New York courthouse for their roles in the U.S. embassy attacks. All were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
On Tuesday, the Obama administration is scheduled to begin its first trial of a prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay. Omar Khadr was only 15 when he was captured in a firefight in 2002 with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Now 23, he'll finally have his day in court. Only instead of an experienced federal court with a long history of trying terror suspects, Khadr will be tried in a military commission, created just last year. In the eight years since President George W. Bush created the first military commissions at Guantanamo, they have convicted only four terrorists - only two in contested trials. Regular federal courts in the United States, by contrast, have convicted more than 400 in the same time period.
Khadr was only nine when his father, an alleged Al Qaeda financier, dragged him from Canada to Afghanistan and put him to work helping his Al Qaeda-connected friends. Khadr has said that he never had a choice. And a Canadian intelligence agency reported, based on interrogations of Khadr in 2003, that Khadr viewed Al Qaeda "through the eyes of a child" who didn't understand that his father's activities were linked to terrorism.
What's more, based on what's been presented in pretrial hearings so far, there appears to be little or no evidence, other than "confessions" extracted under highly suspicious circumstances, that Khadr actually committed the most serious crime he's accused of: throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
Even if he did, Khadr shouldn't be tried in a military commission.
Under international law, a child captured in combat is supposed to be treated as a victim rather than a warrior, offered rehabilitation in custody and eventually repatriated home. Khadr, who has relatives in Canada, was offered neither option.
In addition, the crime of murdering a U.S. soldier isn't actually a war crime. In war, it's not a crime to target the other side's soldiers. But because Khadr was a civilian, rather than a member of a regular foreign army, throwing a grenade is a criminal act that could be prosecuted in a regular criminal court. Although the military commission rules characterize his crime as one that falls within the commissions' jurisdiction, the legal authority of the commission to prosecute conduct that was declared a war crime after the act was committed, or ex-post facto, remains legally questionable.
Khadr's lawyer has also questioned the legality of the military commissions as a whole, filing an appeal just this week with the Supreme Court arguing that the commissions are unconstitutional because they target only "aliens"--people who are not U.S. citizens. Though the courts have so far punted on this issue, it's clear that even if Khadr is convicted, he'll have several strong grounds for appeal.
So why is the government bringing this case in a military commission?
Perhaps the government hopes that Khadr's statements, which he claims were extracted by various kinds of torture and abuse, will be allowed into court as evidence. Although Khadr's lawyer hasn't yet had the opportunity to present all the evidence of his client's treatment at Bagram and at Guantanamo Bay, what's come out at pretrial hearings so far is that when Khadr was captured by U.S. soldiers in July 2002, the teenager had been shot twice in the back, blinded in one eye and had a face peppered with shrapnel. Interrogators at the Bagram air base took to calling him "Buckshot Bob." But that didn't stop them from interrogating him while he was still recovering from life-threatening wounds and strapped to a hospital gurney. Using what the military calls a "fear up" technique, an interrogator testified, Khadr was told a story about another prison just like him who refused to cooperate - and who then was gang-raped and killed in an American prison.
Official documents also reveal that at Guantanamo, Khadr was subjected to the military's "frequent flyer" program -- meaning he was moved every three hours for weeks at a time to keep him from sleeping prior to interrogations.
So just how reliable are the statements he made, either at Bagram or at Guantanamo?
Now, after eight years at Gitmo, Khadr insists he's not guilty. He has also at times said he'd boycott his own trial because he thinks the whole military commission process is a sham.
It's easy to understand why. Now 23, Khadr, has been interviewed by dozens of interrogators, each time led to believe that his cooperation would spare him from violence and lead to his release. He told interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear, but that release never happened. If Khadr had been imprisoned in the United States, he would have been tried and either convicted or released long ago. But instead, Khadr has been held without trial on a secluded prison camp in Cuba for nearly a decade with little opportunity to defend himself.
Human Rights First has been observing the military commission hearings since their inception in 2002. Repeatedly, our observers have been astounded by the injustices, inefficiency and wholesale fiasco that many of the inexperienced and legally questionable commissions' proceedings produce.
That's partly because the commissions are so new - created by a law passed in 2009. The first military commission system, created by the Bush administration, was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006. As a result, there's is almost no legal precedent to guide commission judges. The Military Commissions Manual, meanwhile, was only issued in late April - on the eve of Khadr's first pretrial hearing. The resulting confusion offers yet more opportunity for Khadr and anyone else convicted in a military commission to challenge their convictions on a broad range of legal grounds. Decisions on the prisoners' fate will be delayed that much longer.
There's another reason that this whole military commission system leaves me scratching my head: the extravagant expense involved. Keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and military commission system open for fewer than 180 detainees costs taxpayers a lot of money. Construction and renovations to the camp have cost about $500 million so far; operating costs are another $150 million every year. The Washington Post recently estimated the bill, much of which has been paid to KBR and Halliburton, has so far exceeded $2 billion. Just the cost of flying dozens of journalists and observers like myself, plus all the lawyers involved, to and from Guantanamo to attend each of these hearings so the government can claim that they're "public" is astronomical. Meanwhile, federal courts and secure prisons in the United States are readily available and already paid for. And the government doesn't have to cover anyone's costs to get there.
I'm in Guantanamo Bay this week to observe the end of Khadr's pretrial hearings and the beginning of his trial in a military commission. But I doubt I'll gain any better understanding of why the Obama administration chose to try him there.
Update: Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, Omar Khadr's military defense lawyer, just gave a quick news conference in the sweltering airplane hangar here at the Gitmo base. (Only prosecutors are allowed to use the indoor air-conditioned rooms for press conferences.) "This case will echo in the future," Jackson said, noting that it will set a sad precedent for the United States' right to try a child soldier as a full-fledged war criminal.
It will also create a lasting legacy for the Obama administration."Forever the Obama administration will be remembered as starting the military commissions with a case of a child soldier," Jackson said.
Somehow that doesn't seem like the sort of legacy Obama had in mind when he vowed to close the Gitmo prison down on his first day in office.
As the government continues to pursue the case of Omar Khadr, it's becoming clear why the administration chose to try this case in a military commission rather than a regular civilian federal court: a civilian federal court judge would likely throw the case out.
Today's hearing in the military commission case of Omar Khadr was once again fraught with confusion, complication and delay. This time the problem appeared to be the military judge's refusal to question military procedure - even when it might be causing significant harm to the defendant.
Given Senator Lindsey Graham's military background, one would think he would push hard for the trial and conviction of all terrorists. After all, U.S. federal courts have successfully tried more than 195 terrorists since the terrorist attacks of September 11. But for the past five years, Graham has instead repeatedly obstructed the effort to try and convict the 9/11 detainees.
Tonight, in his State of the Union Speech, President Obama said, "Let's reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values. Let's leave behind the fear and division, and do what it takes to defend our nation and forge a more hopeful future - for America and the world." While his administration has made progress over the past year toward realigning our national security policy with our laws and values, additional steps must be taken to reform U.S. detention policy. The following are steps the Administration should take to put last night's words into practice:
Close Guantanamo
The Obama administration continues to hold 198 men in prolonged detention without charge at Guantanamo and it will not meet the one year deadline it set for closing the detention facility. Further steps need to be taken to ensure prompt closure of Guantanamo and to bring the number of Guantánamo detainees held without charge down to zero. These steps include:
•Bring Guantánamo prisoners suspected of crimes to justice in federal civilian courts. On November 13, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department would prosecute five Guantánamo detainees suspected of conspiring to commit the 9/11 attacks in federal courts of New York. These suspects and other detainees for whom there is sufficient admissible evidence that they have committed crimes should be promptly transferred for prosecution before federal civilian courts.
•Abandon the flawed military commissions. The military commissions, revamped for the third time in 2009, continue to fail to achieve justice or provide due process and have resulted in only three convictions in over seven years. This process should be abandoned in favor of the proven federal criminal justice system that has convicted over 145 terrorism suspects since the 9/11 attacks.
•Increase efforts to repatriate & transfer Guantánamo detainees to third countries. The Obama administration must intensify efforts to repatriate detainees not suspected of crimes or otherwise cleared for release and to find homes in third countries for detainees that cannot be repatriated for fear of persecution or torture.
The Administration must work closely with Yemeni officials to address current security concerns and to minimize potential risk before reinstating transfers there. With all transfers the administration can and should take steps to mitigate risk by focusing on expanding risk assessment efforts, monitoring, and other security programs, including allotting sufficient resources to successfully reintegrate former detainees into society.
Prevent Torture and Promote Humane Treatment
•Ensure that all detention and interrogations continue be governed by a clear standard of humane treatment. Very little has been made public about the standards that will govern the High Value Interrogation Group (HIG) established pursuant to the recommendations of the Special Interagency Task Force on Lawful Interrogation. The administration must ensure that the HIG has the clear guidance it needs to conduct its interrogations effectively and humanely and must make clear that cruel and coercive interrogation techniques, such as sleep and sensory deprivation and extreme isolation, are off the table. Apart from interrogation, conditions of detention must also be humane, and in compliance with applicable provisions of the Geneva Conventions.
•Provide the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with access to all armed conflict and security detainees. Holding prisoners incommunicado increases the risk of torture and abusive detention and interrogation practices. The administration should ensure that the ICRC has prompt notice of all detentions and timely access to all prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and to all Guantanamo detainees that remain in U.S. custody, wherever that may be, including those that will face prosecution in U.S. federal courts.
•Provide all U.S. interrogators with the tools they need to fulfill their responsibilities legally and effectively. Ensure that U.S. interrogators have the education, training, and support, they need to conduct lawful and effective interrogations. This should include resources for research and professional developments as well as a review of existing interrogation protocols-such as those in Appendix M of the Army's field manual on interrogation-that have questionable utility and are particularly vulnerable to abuse.
Ensure Accountability for Past and Future Abuses
•Hold perpetrators to account for crimes of torture and prisoner abuse. Attorney General Holder announced in August that he was launching a preliminary review into the whether federal laws were violated in connection with overseas interrogations. This review needs to be expanded to examine the architects of the system of prison abuse, not only those who implemented it or engaged in conduct beyond the bounds of unlawful guidance and orders.
•Make public the results of Justice Department investigation of the role of government lawyers in authorizing torture and other abuse. In 2005 the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility began investigating the role of key lawyers from the Office of Legal Counsel in authorizing cruel interrogations. In mid-November 2009 Attorney General Holder told the Senate that the report was finally completed, in the last stages of review, and would be issued by the end of the month. It is far past time for the results of this investigation to be made public.
•Establish a nonpartisan commission of inquiry. It is not enough to put an end to unlawful practices. To ensure avoiding their repetition, they must also be thoroughly renounced. A nonpartisan commission should be established to ensure the U.S. government learns from past mistakes and effectively prevents future abuse. Such a review is needed to identify the systematic failures that lead to widespread prisoner abuse and to evaluate the impact of those policies on U.S. national security.
•Provide victims of torture and other abuse with access to remedies. The United States government has a legal obligation to provide victims of torture and other human rights abuses with access to enforceable remedies. The administration should cease attempting to block victims of torture, lesser forms of abuse, and arbitrary detention from having their day in court through invocation of doctrines such as the state secrets privilege and immunities that violate international law.
•Promptly investigate and prosecute all instances of arbitrary detention and detainee mistreatment by military and civilian personnel, including private contractors. Changes in policy are necessary but insufficient to ensure lawful detention. Detention policies and practices must be transparent. Where violations of the law are suspected, prompt investigation must ensue and individuals reasonably suspected of violations must be held accountable.
In the case of private contractors, a mandatory code of conduct should be established to ensure compliance with the law. Authorities must ensure that legal mechanisms are in place to hold contractors and their employees accountable for abuses. Where contract personnel violate the code of conduct and the law, prompt and transparent investigations leading to civil and criminal accountability, where warranted, must follow.
One year ago today, on his 2nd full day in office, I watched with considerable happiness and pride as President Obama sat at his desk in the Oval Office, flanked by a considerable number of high-ranking military officials and signed an executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay within one year's time. The President's position was not one to consider whether to close GITMO, or to appoint a commission to consider whether to close GITMO or expressing a hope that maybe we can close GITMO.
How Atrocity Compounds and Multiplies; The Case of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr
The decision to suspend all ongoing MCA terrorism trials at Guantanamo has one slight unfortunate side-effect; the trial of accused 15 year old Canadian grenade-thrower Omar Khadr was actually starting to reveal some very interesting and important things in testimony (though of course stopping the trials was the right thing to do).
One surprising revelation was a purported link between Khadr and another Canadian who got mangled in the Bush Administration war on terrorism, the Syrian born Maher Arar. Arar, on his way back to Canada in September 2002 was detained by US authorities at JFK airport while changing flights. He was subsequently sent, not to Canada, his country of residence and citizenship, but to Syria, which was known to employ torture. The Syrians, eager to cooperate with America, tortured and interrogated Arar for a year before returning him to Canada, having found no evidence he was a terrorist. A subsequent Canadian inquiry would also clear Arar of any connection to terrorism and the Canadian government paid him $10M in compensation for Canada's role in Arar's illegal rendition to Syria. The US government did not cooperate in this Inquiry and has refused to clear Arar to the end of the Bush Administration.
In prosecution testimony on Monday, FBI Special Agent Robert Fuller claimed that during interrogations of Khadr in Afghanistan back in October 2002, Khadr claimed to know Arar, identified him by name from a photograph and claimed he had seen him in Al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan during September-October of 2001. This appeared to re-implicate Arar and vindicate at least his detention by US authorities. Then came Tuesday, and the cross-examination of Fuller.
Kudos to President Obama on the quick action to restore justice and American credibility with regards to captured terrorism suspects. In particular, his order to limit interrogators to the procedures outlined in the Army field manual was decisive in that it applies now, not in a year or after a lengthy study of the issue.
It did create, however, a task force to study whether there are times when interrogators could, uh, torture people. This doesn't mean a loophole exists now, just that a task force will consider whether or not to create one. There are several ways to read this move by Obama:
1. He wants the loophole. There are a number of reasons he might want it including a) he thinks it's necessary or b) he wants it to mollify the pro-torture crowd.
2. He doesn't want the loophole and he is agreeing to the task force as a strategy to deal with the pro-torture crowd.
3. He has no idea and that's why he wants the task force to study it.
I don't think it really matters which of these is right but on the jump I'll explain why a torture loophole is unnecessary and counterproductive and which of the above explains Obama's "task force" to study this.
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