Name: Why is the Guantánamo Bay prison still open?
Uploaded: 2022-02-28T00:15:26.000Z
Duration: 11 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

"This is a different type of enemy  then we're used to."

"And we're adjusting our thinking  to the new type of enemy."

Days after the 9/11 attacks,  President George W. Bush

In October 2001, he sent the military  to invade Afghanistan

and hunt down members of al-Qaeda and its ally, the Taliban. 

It also offered cash rewards to anyone  who would help capture a terrorist. 

So, many in Afghanistan and Pakistan took advantage of the offer

and turned hundreds of men over often with little evidence.

The US sent those men to secret prisons  called black sites.

Where they interrogated and tortured them.

But within a month, they started searching for a larger, permanent prison

Eventually settling on this old Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. 

In January 2002, the first detainees  began arriving.

One of them was Moath al-Alwi who spent the next two decades in this prison

because the US government deemed him  too dangerous to be set free.

But they never charged him with a crime. 

Hundreds of men were imprisoned in Guantánamo. 

It's a prison that's operated outside  the bounds of law. 

There are two myths about the people  who were picked up.

One is that they are all  hardened, capable terrorists. 

The other is that they were all innocent shepherds.

He worked in the US foreign service for over 40 years

The conclusion I had is that there was  kind of a bell curve.

At one low end, there were actually  hardened terrorists.

Like this man, Osama bin-Laden's  personal secretary.  

There were others that were sometimes petty criminals and drug dealers.

Not great people, but not criminal masterminds, not terrorists. 

And the top of the bell curve were people just a little more involved

At the other end were people who were swept up and shouldn't have been there at all.

Members of a mainly Muslim ethnic group who were fleeing persecution in China.

And they wound up in al-Qaeda camps and  we didn't know what to do with them

In fact, many detainees were put in Guantánamo based on little evidence. 

Yet Bush officials often described them all as terrorist. 

"I mean these are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines of the back of a C-17

By 2003, there were nearly 700  Guantánamo detainees

and virtually none of them were  charged with a crime. 

"The American flag flies again  over our embassy in Kabul."

"Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan

The Bush administration chose Guantánamo Bay  largely because of its unique location.

It was under US control, but it wasn't technically inside the US.

So, they claimed US law wouldn't apply to the detainees held here.

If they put them in a US prison,  they'd have to either charge them with a crime

In other words, under US law, prisoners  would have ways to get out.

For bad reasons, they didn't trust  the criminal justice system.

It gives too many rights to the prisoners.

There was a sense that the old rules  had to be thrown out.

The US also claimed that international law didn't apply to these detainees either.

Even though 196 countries, including the US, signed the Geneva Conventions:

a set of laws protecting prisoners of war.

But for those laws to apply,  the US would have to define the detainees

And would have to release them as soon  as the conflict ends.

We didn't want to give them those rights because we were so fearful of a new terrorist attack.

some parts of the US government  interrogated through torture.

So instead of charging them as criminals  or calling them prisoners of war

The US claimed it could hold “unlawful, enemy combatants” without charges in Guantánamo,

And the detainees couldn't challenge  it in court.

But the US could prosecute them, in a new court system, run entirely by the military.

These courts were designed to be complex, with rules that heavily favored the US government.

For example, the government  could introduce evidence

without showing it to the detainee first.

This made Guantánamo Bay prison  a “legal blackhole”.

The original sin is that we created  an institution outside

and designed to be outside the rule of law.

"And shut it down and release everybody."

"Justice for Guantánamo detainees, now a core celebra among human rights activists."

World leaders, allied governments, and  US politicians began calling for the closure

Plus, Bush officials recognized that it was actually hurting the war on terror.

There were all these terrorist videos  about how evil the Americans were

and we have to fight back because they imprison people without any legal basis.

Eventually, the Supreme Court stepped in.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why is the Guantánamo Bay prison still open?

eventually

process

evidence

term