273guantanamo Adv

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Guantnamo: still a part of Americas

conscience, a decade on

Ed Pilkington

11 January, 2012

The photograph was one of the most poignantimages of the aftermath of 9/11. Twenty men

dressed in lurid orange jumpsuits eyes obscuredbehind blackened goggles, hands and legs

shackled kneel behind chainlink fences as USsoldiers stand over them. It was taken four months

to the day after the terrorist attacks, and seemedto sum up the mood of American vengeance.You may have brought down the twin towers, the

image seemed to say, but look what weve done to

your leaders.

Ten years on, little of that early bravado remains.

The primitive cells where those rst 20 detaineeswere held on 11 January 2002 have been

transformed into a multi-million-dollar complex withsatellite TV and air conditioning.

Despite President Obamas promise to close the

camp, it still stands. The numbers, pulled togetherby the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),speak for themselves. Of 779 detainees imprisonedat Guantnamo over the past decade, only six havebeen convicted. Thats one less than the number of

military prosecutors who resigned over the systemsunfairness. Some 600 have been released, mostunder President Bush, raising the question of whythey were there in the rst place.

The ACLUs Hina Shamsi said: Guantnamo hasbeen a catastrophic failure on every front: legally,

ethically and in terms of our security. There are171 captives left in the camp, and, of those, 89have been cleared for release but are still stuck

there in limbo. That comes at an annual cost to

the US taxpayer of $800,000 per captive. With17 soldiers guarding each inmate, Guantnamo

isnt cheap. A further 46 unidentied men weredesignated under last years inter-agency review

as being too dangerous to transfer but notfeasible for prosecution there isnt sufcientevidence to put them on trial, but nor will theybe released.

We must restore the standards of due processand the core constitutional values that made this

country great. That statement could have beenmade by any one of the many Guantnamo critics

still campaigning for its closure. In fact, the wordswere spoken by Obama on 22 January 2009, theday after his inauguration, as he signed an order

to close the camp within one year. So, whatwent wrong?

Pardiss Kebriaei of the Centre for ConstitutionalRights, who has acted as defence lawyer for

four detainees, believes the rot set in at the very

moment of the signing. At that point, she said,

Obama could have told the American people thetruth about Guantnamo detainees: that mostof them are low-level operatives who are a farcry from the worst of the worst, as they weredescribed when the rst 20 arrived exactly adecade ago.

In fact, according to the US governments owndata, 92% of the men who have been brought to

Guantnamo never fought for al-Qaida at all. Three

of the four men Kebriaei represented have beenreleased, one of whom held the rank of assistant

cook. This was a young man who was 17 when hewas taken into custody. He was not remotely likethe dangerous terrorists who would chew through

the pipes of a plane to bring it down, in DonaldRumsfelds famous phrase, Kebriaei said.

That rst moment has set a pattern of missedopportunities. The Obama administration stalledon sending Muslim ethnic Uighurs to asylum inmainland US, even though they were consideredharmless back in 2005; ve Uighurs are stilltrapped in Guantnamo to this day. Then theadministration bottled on its plans to send Khalid

Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants,accused of having masterminded 9/11, to federal

trial in New York. The ve will now be dealt withunder Guantnamos revived military commissions.

The U-turns have allowed the Republicans inCongress to erect looming hurdles in the pathof closure. In early 2011, Congress barred the

Pentagon from spending any of its budget ontransferring detainees out of Guantnamo. Then,

on 31 December, Congress introduced, for the rsttime into US law, the right to indenite detentionwithout charge. In both these cases, Obamaexpressed his dismay about the new laws, held hisnose, and signed on the dotted line.

NEWS LESSONS / Guantnamo: still a part of Americas conscience / AdvancedPH

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WEBSITE Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2012

Guantnamo: still a part of Americas conscience

Level 3 Advanced

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The US authorities have tried to lessen theinternational damage by suggesting Guantnamo

is now a state-of-the-art facility with soccer eldsand education classes. But most of the remaining

detainees are set to embark on a peaceful protestof sit-ins and hunger strikes designed to show

that, from their vantage point, the camp remainsa hellhole. Shaker Aamer, the last remainingBritish resident in Guantnamo, who will mark his

tenth anniversary there in February, said through

his lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, that the aim was tosend out a powerful message to the world that

Guantnamo remains unacceptable.

Certainly conditions have improved from thedarkest days when detainees were subjected toenforced interrogations torture to extractintelligence. But for Colonel Morris Davis, who

resigned as Chief Prosecutor of the Guantnamomilitary commissions in October 2007 in protest atthe use of evidence obtained through torture, the

damage lives on. Guantnamo is a stain on ourreputation, he said. The only way we can end thatchapter is to close it.

Guardian News & Media 2012

First published in The Guardian, 11/01/12

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Level 3 Advanced


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Choose the best answer according to the text.

1. How many prisoners remain in Guantnamo at the time of writing?

a. 779

b. 171

c. 89

2. What did President Obama promise to do one day after his inauguration?

a. put all the detainees at Guantnamo on trial

b. close Guantnamo

c. introduce indenite detention without trial

3. What have the Republicans done in Congress?

a. They have tried to prevent the closure of Guantnamo.

b. They have called for the closure of Guantnamo.

c. They have suggested that Guantnamo be expanded.

4. Why did Colonel Davis resign from the Guantnamo Military Commissions?

a. because he was frustrated at the slowness of the judicial procedures

b. because the system was unfair

c. because of the use of evidence obtained through torture

Comprehension check3

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Complete the expressions from the text using these words. Check your answers in the text.

Complete the sentences using the correct form of the word in brackets at the end of each sentence.

What should happen to the people currently detained in Guantnamo? Justify your argument.


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Complete the expression5

Word-building6

Discussion7


Level 3 Advanced

1. sign on the ____________________________ line

2. hold your ____________________________

3. a ____________________________ on someones reputation

4. core ____________________________ values

5. indenite ____________________________ without charge

6. send out a powerful ____________________________ to the world

1. There are still 171 __________________________ left in Guantnamo. [DETAIN]

2. Most of them are low-level __________________________. [OPERATE]

3. The inmates believe that Guantnamo remains __________________________. [ACCEPT]

4. Seven military prosecutors resigned over the systems __________________________. [FAIR]

5. Some people believe that Guantnamo has been a __________________________ failure. [CATASTROPHE]

Find the word4

Find the following words and phrases in the text.

1. a two-word expression meaning in a situation where you are not certain and where you have to wait to nd out

what will happen next(para 4)

2. a two-word noun phrase meaning the correct way of dealing with a legal trial that makes sure peoples rights

are protected(para 5)

3. a four-word expression meaning the bad situation started(para 6)

4. a four-word expression meaning very different from something(para 6)

5. a verb meaning to not do something because you do not feel brave enough (para 8)

6. a four-word adjectival expression meaning using the newest and most advanced ideas and features (para 10)

7. a two-word expression meaning the particular ideas or beliefs that inuence the way you think about things

(para 10)

message detention dotted constitutional nose stain


5/5NEWS LESSONS / Guantnamo: still a part of Americas conscience / Advanced

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Level 3 Advanced

KEY

1 Key words

1. poignant

2. lurid

3. shackled

4. vengeance

5. bravado

6. detainee

7. feasible

8. inauguration

9. stall

10. hellhole

2 What do you know?

1. T

2. T

3. F

4. F5. T

6. T

3 Comprehension check

1. b

2. b

3. a

4. c

4 Find the word

1. in limbo

2. due process

3. the rot set in

4. a far cry from

5. bottle

6. state-of-the-art

7. vantage point

5 Complete the expression

1. dotted

2. nose

3. stain

4. constitutional

5. detention

6. message

6 Word-building

1. detainees

2. operatives

3. unacceptable

4. unfairness

5. catastrophic

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