‘How can Obama close Gitmo without sending detainees home?’

It will be years before all of the Gitmo detainees are released, judging by how none of the Yemeni detainees approved for transfer have been sent back to Yemen, David H. Remes, a lawyer working for Appeal for Justice, told RT.

It is a year since the American president again promised to close
the detention facility at Guantanamo. Some detainees have been
released, but many more are still being kept at the prison,
subjected to abuse. President Obama had been woefully slow at
solving the issue before his pledge last year, but now he cannot
blame Congress anymore, he has the funds and the flexibility to
send the detainees home, he simply does not have the courage,
Remes, who defends one of the Gitmo prisoners, said.

RT:Obama first pledged to close the
Guantanamo Bay prison about 5 years ago, but it is still open for
business. How has Obama's rhetoric concerning the prison camp
changed throughout this time?

David H. Remes: He's been really inactive until
last May, when he re-pledged to close Guantanamo, and since then
he has released additional detainees and set up new review boards
to approve new detainees for transfer. But he was woefully slow
beforehand, and in my estimation it was a result of the lack of
political courage.

RT:You have a client at Guantanamo. Can you
describe his current status. Is he being abused, what are the
conditions he is being held in?

DR: The conditions are not as good as they have
been at times, but they are better than they could be. The
greatest problem at the moment is the regime of genital searches
that the commander of the Joint Detention Group has instituted,
whereby if you want to go from camp to camp you are searched
extremely thoroughly if I may say. That is the main complaint. It
really bars communication with lawyers and families, because the
men are unwilling to leave their camps in order to speak or meet
with them. Beyond that it's the psychological condition of being
held in indefinite detention. The men are desperate. Now that
there is a light at the end of the tunnel, the men are pleading
to get home to their families. It has been twelve years.

RT:Guantanamo officials now have been
granted the right not to report the number of hunger strikers
inside the facility. What do you know about the situation?

DR: The jail is being run by a very strict
disciplinarian, who regards the men still as terrorists. He still
engages in force-feeding, and a federal judge has ordered the
government to stop the force-feeding of a particular detainee
because the force-feeding in his case amounted to torture. Two
other detainees joined the lawsuit on Thursday, and a couple more
will join it later. The way the prison discourages the hunger
strikes is by administering a tube feed, in a way that causes a
man pain, besides the genital search, that's another ongoing
abuse that affects about 15 detainees.

RT:Are other abuses being carried out there
now?

DR: The administration does not want its
mistreatment of detainees made public. The last hunger strike it
kept the public informed, and it suffered a great PR and
political disaster. As a result it is simply cutting out the flow
of information in the hope that people will simply not know how
badly the administration is treating the men.
‘It will be years before the release’

RT:Do the detainees have a real chance of
being released some day?

DR: That is a very difficult question to answer.
I think that many detainees will be released, but it will be
years before most, or all of them, are released. And the main
reason is that President Obama refuses to transfer detainees to
Yemen. He said that he is willing to, but he still has not
returned a Yemeni detainee to Yemen since he made his pledge last
May. He just cannot go on like this if he hopes to close
Guantanamo. Two thirds of the detainees already approved for
transfer are Yemenis. How can he close Guantanamo until he starts
sending them home?

RT:The Obama administration says it is
Congress that is forbidding the White House from transferring
detainees and spending money to do so. What is the situation
really like in your opinion?

DR: Obama did blame Congress last year when
Congress changed the law in a way that gives the president more
flexibility to transfer detainees. He cannot blame Congress
anymore. He has the funds, there is no question about that, to
send the detainees home. He has the flexibility to do that. He
simply does not yet have the courage.

RT:The US has recently advanced funding for
a new prison at Guantanamo to hold suspects of the 9\11 attacks.
What can you tell us about this new facility?

DR: The authorisation of the money is comical in
view of the fact that the Defense Department never asked for the
money, this is simply a gift from the Republican majority. The
issue is not should you house detainees in better housing, but
should you transfer them or deal with them in a right way from
the standpoint of the system of justice. It really does not
matter how indefinitely you are detained, what matters is being
indefinitely detained.

RT:Speaking about the US federal judge's
order to the government to temporally halt the force-feeding of
one prisoner. Is it a positive sign or just a separate case?

DR: It will affect other detainees who are
force-fed. This is the immediate specific impact of this order,
the general impact of the order is that the federal judge for the
first time is intervening to require the government to stop
abusing the detainees. Now maybe we will see some more activity
by federal courts to protect the men in this area. It is a
one-off case in a sense that it affects the force-feeding of this
particular individual, but it also sets a general principle that
will be applied to force-feeding of other individuals. And more
broadly it establishes a precedent for the federal courts to
intervene to prevent the government from abusing the men. I think
this is the most important aspect of that.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.