There is no question that the events that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, constituted the worst criminal act to occur in the history of the United States. Thus it follows that every American would like to see the conspirators brought to justice. One would think that given the scope of the attacks and the police resources of the U.S., this would be an easy task, but the possibilities for convictions has been narrowed for two major reasons: the illegitimacy of the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay Prison, and the use of torture as an interrogation technique. The Bush Administration, for all their talk of fighting the war on terror has proved to be lame ducks even in this respect.
Already it was announced last week that one of the six prosecutions of the 9/11 cases is not being permitted to proceed for what is widely believed to be because of inhumane treatment. Mohammed al-Qahtani, dubbed the “20th hijacker,” who was planning to commit another terrorist attack on 9/12 that was similar to the ones the day before, is to return to the legal limbo of Guantanamo Bay Prison. Because there are no charges against him, he will be at Guantanamo until the end of the war on terrorism – and because terrorism will probably be around for as long as humans exist there’s no telling how long this will be -- thus the term “legal limbo.”
At the heart of the issue of the military tribunals is whether or not these alleged terrorists should be tried in the criminal justice system, and whether or not due process should be thrown out the window in the name of security. A staff attorney for the ACLU, Ben Wizner, notes that “The real problem is that there is an emerging consensus that we need to have some legal authority to detain people without a trial, and that’s wrong.”
The United States criminal justice system has handled terrorism cases in the past with successful convictions, including Richard Reid (the shoe-bomber), Zacarias Moussaoui, Jose Padilla, the African embassy-bombing cases, and the John Walker Lindh case among others. The policy of denying due process allows the detention of terrorist suspects until the end of the “global war on terrorism,” which could result in de facto indefinite detention. This policy would move the United States from one of the most progressive nations to the least in terms of rights for criminal suspects, putting us in the same field as countries that are mostly authoritarian (like Malaysia and Singapore, which also allow the total denial of due process).
More progressive nations make it impossible to hold suspects very long without pressing charges. Britain can detain suspects without following up with a trial for 28 days, while in France it is only six days. Kenneth Roth, a former federal prosecutor in New York and Washington, D.C., and Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, states in “After Guantanomo,” from the Foreign Affairs Journal, “Before discarding the U.S. criminal justice system, policy makers should keep in mind the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…” Rather than countenance so radical an exception to basic due process rights, Americans should remain confident in the strength and resilience of their criminal justice system.”
The other issue that has greatly hampered the trials of 9/11 conspirators is the use of torture, or “harsh interrogation techniques.” According to international law, the use of waterboarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation (to name a few) are torture, contrary to the Bush Administration’s assertions. The 1975 U.N. Convention on Torture defines torture as any pain or suffering, physical or mental, inflicted by public officials for various reason, including punishment, interrogation, and intimidation.
Besides torture being immoral, it doesn’t work as an interrogation technique -- which casts doubt on the information given by the alleged 9/11 conspirators. It is a widely known fact among interrogators, victims of torture and psychologists that somebody being tortured will say anything to stop the torture. Interrogators might as well ask whether one has ever ridden a unicorn to Alpha Centauri and eaten caviar with a space ninja, because the victim would say yes.
Most opponents of using humane interrogation techniques claim that sensitive information is obtained through “going over to the dark side,” as Dick Cheney put it. This idea that torturers justify their actions for the greater good ominously reminds one of an internal motto the secret police in Chile used during the brutal Pinochet regime: “We will fight in the shadows so that our children can live in the sunlight.”
A leaked interrogation log shows that Mr. Qahtani had been subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, attacks by dogs, threats against his family members, threats that he would be sent to foreign countries that condone torture, and other degrading abuse, including being forced to wear a bra and being led around on a leash and required to perform dog tricks. The head prosecutor, Susan Crawford, did not give any explanation as to why this alleged terrorist wouldn’t be prosecuted. I wonder why. It is widely believed that information compiled against Mr. Qahtani was obtained through torture, and no respectable judge would allow this case to proceed.
All this begs the question, why? Why would the country known to be the beacon of freedom and truth deny due process to criminals and use torture as an interrogation technique? William Cavanough, associate professor of heology at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota, writes in his article “Is torture losing its shock value?” In the U.S. Catholic periodical “There’s a way in which torture creates the kind of enemies we need to imagine… These [acts] create the kind of deviant sub humans that we imagine terrorists to be. Torture has a way of creating this unbridgeable gulf between ‘us’ and ‘them…’ So we say they must have done something to deserve it.”
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