Terrorists should be brought to justice, not Guantanamo

President Trump recommends that Sayfullo Saipov, the alleged truck terrorist in New York City, be sent to Guantanamo. His apparent crime is heinous, as are those of other mass murderers. Presumably, though, what qualifies him for Guantanamo is his religion and his professed support for ISIS.

Unfortunately, Guantanamo raises uncomfortable questions about what distinguishes the United States from those who cause it harm. At Guantanamo, a drama is currently unfolding in the proceedings of Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole 17 years ago. A drama with North Carolina connections: our state hosted aircraft that transported Al-Nashiri and dozens of other prisoners for the CIA to overseas locations where they were held secretly and tortured.

Al-Nashiri’s attorneys, with the approval of the military commissions’ defense chief, Brig. Gen. John Baker, have withdrawn from his case. They allege the government’s actions have compromised attorney-client confidentiality.

For his approval of the attorneys’ withdrawal, Gen. Baker has been held in contempt by a military judge, sentenced to 21 days’ confinement and fined $1,000. Al-Nashiri’s civilian defense attorneys now face contempt charges before the same military judge.

Although Gen. Baker was released from custody, the case has spawned complicated if not contradictory rulings from the Department of Defense and a federal district court judge. The Guantanamo drama reveals how the flawed military commissions do nothing to improve national security or deliver justice to the victims from the USS Cole or the accused.

At the heart of Guantanamo’s inability to deliver justice is torture. The UNC School of Law’s Human Rights Policy Lab has been preparing Al-Nashiri’s case for the hearings to be held on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 before the N.C. Commission of Inquiry on Torture. Al-Nashiri was “extraordinarily rendered” on aircraft operated by Aero Contractors and based at public airports in Johnston County and Kinston. Aboard those planes, he was taken from one CIA black site in Afghanistan to another in Thailand and later to Morocco – delivered for interrogation by torture in each of these places – and still later to Guantanamo.

The torture sessions he endured after the North Carolina plane left him in Thailand were videotaped, but those tapes were destroyed. However, court documents and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, partially released in 2014, provide a summary: He was sodomized and sleep-deprived; kept naked and kenneled like a dog; crammed into a box the size of an office safe; subjected to walling, “attention grabs” and facial slaps; waterboarded, hooded, shackled to the floor, exposed to cold temperatures, force-fed, isolated and threatened with a revved power drill while hanging shackled and nude from a cell ceiling.

Al-Nashiri’s treatment is now raw material for jihadist recruitment videos. His case also sheds an interesting light on that of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who walked off his base in Afghanistan and was recently sentenced at Fort Bragg. Bergdahl’s torture by the Taliban is eerily similar to the abuses Al-Nashiri suffered at the hands of the CIA.

A senior Department of Defense expert, giving evidence in Bergdahl’s court-martial proceedings, stated that Bergdahl had been held “in conditions that if it were a dog, you’d be thrown in jail for pet abuse.” Bergdahl was tortured. His feet and his hands were tied spread-eagle on a metal bedframe for months at a time. He was beaten and kicked. He was blindfolded and forced to live in solitary confinement in a seven-foot cube for three years.

What separates the United States from our adversaries in times of fear and conflict? We used to answer this question by pointing to the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions. Is that where we come down now?

No one has been held accountable for the mistreatment of al-Nashiri. His case is but one of dozens that communicate to the world that the United States reserves for itself the right to brutalize its captives without consequence to those responsible.

It’s up to us, the people, to send a different message: No one else should be sent to Guantanamo, where there is no justice. And we will not be debased by fear into accepting torture carried out in our names. A good start: Tune into the hearings of the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture, open to the public and live-streamed.

This story was originally published November 16, 2017 at 9:28 AM with the headline "Terrorists should be brought to justice, not Guantanamo."