Report from Guantanamo #3

by Rhona Mahony. Barbara Olshansky, a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, spoke at Stanford on May 29 to describe her work on behalf of people who have been imprisoned as suspects in the "War on Terror." She did not hide her passion under a formal suit or polite legal terms. She wore her black, tightly frizzy hair long. Her red, Cat Woman eyeglasses had sparkley sequins. At times her eyes teared up, at others her voice cracked. Her colleague on the speakers’ panel, Marc Falkoff, described her as a force of nature. Yes! A ball of fire!

That night, Olshansky didn’t want to talk about Guantanamo. We know about Guantanamo. The domestic fuss, the international scandal, and the dismay of allied governments have worn down the Bush Administration. Now everyone, even President Bush, wants to close it. Olshansky was worried about the other prisons, places less famous and places completely secret, where a still unknown number of people are locked up without being charged, without access to a lawyer, and without trial.

Prisons Less Famous, with Worse Conditions

Less famous prisons may hold as many as 1000 men. On a recent trip to Afghanistan, Olshansky heard estimates that roughly 630 men are locked inside wire mesh pens at Bagram Air Force base , under the control of the U.S. military. It was the London office of Amnesty International that learned, in September of 2005, that the U.S. was sending people captured around the world to Bagram. It was also transferring prisoners from Guantanamo to Bagram. Olshansky said that the U.S. is building a new 40-acre prison facility there, which could hold about 1200 people. She said that U.S. interrogators at Bagram purposely deprive men of sleep for days before questioning them, that some prisoners have suffered frostbite, and that some have been beaten to death.

Another less famous prison is Policharki Prison, east of Kabul. The United States built its new Block D to house people seized by U.S. authorities, many transferred from Bagram Air Force base. Block D’s commanders, guards, and staff are American. The U.S. military, however, insists that the prisoners there are in the custody of the Afghan government. It says that prisoners there cannot challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Some prisoners at Bagram who had filed habeas corpus petitions in federal court were abruptly moved to Policharski’s Block D. About 300 men are now imprisoned there.

Secret Prisons, Conditions Unknown

Secret prisons hold an unknown number of people. Olshansky said that she had learned about two detention facilities, one in Morocco, the other in Ethiopia. Of course, The Associated Press , the Guardian newspaper (London), and many others have reported the CIA’s use of foreign prisons and even U.S. naval ships to detain and interrogate people. Olshansy asked, if we don’t even know where those people are locked up, how can we insist that they are treated decently, are allowed to meet with the International Red Cross, are given access to lawyers, and are either expeditiously charged and tried or released?

Action

"There are too many ways to count," said Olshansky. She suggested teaching basic civil liberties to children, writing letters to newspapers, getting town and city governments to pass resolutions, meeting with Congressional representatives, insisting that every profession stick to high ethical standards, and demonstrating. After a question from the audience (me), she said that she admired Cory Doctorow’s book about the "War on Terror" for young people, Little Brother . She said, "Buy copies of it for school libraries!"

The next Administration will have to decide how to handle the hundreds of imprisoned men, women, and children bequeathed to it by the Bush Administration. During the Presidential campaign, we can insist that the candidates take a stand on in favor of the ghost prisoners and against the American gulag archipelago.

A note on Olshansky’s career: In 2004, she worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) . In Rasul v. Bush , she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Guantanamo prisoners had the legal right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court. The Justices ruled in favor of the prisoners, 6-3. That ruling made possible the large effort that followed by lawyers and activists to dig out and question the evidence against the prisoners and to challenge the U.S. military’s physical mistreatment of them. It was a dramatic victory. It helped make Olshansky famous among U.S. lawyers.