April 14, 2013, TD Blog Interview with Cori Crider
Cori Crider is a Legal Director at Reprieve, a non-profit legal NGO based in London. Reprieve has represented dozens of men detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with just over a dozen left. On April 5, 2013 I had the privilege of interviewing Ms. Crider by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Ms. Crider.
The Talking Dog: Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001, and to the extent you can answer, please tell me where your GTMO-detained client or clients were?
Cori Crider:On September 11th, I was a college student at the University of Texas. I saw coverage of the second plane on television. That afternoon my friends and I all went to a student vigil on the main mall of the campus of the University.
What feels like very shortly afterwards, I remember seeing the photos of men on stretchers in orange jump suits -- and feeling instantly like we had tossed all our principles out the window.
It's a mundane story, but it tells you something about how long the war on terror has been going on: I had time to finish university, complete law school, become a lawyer, come here to Reprieve on a fellowship, and represent these men for over six years. Now I run the counter-terrorism team at Reprieve. In that time, these clients haven't moved. I've watched them age. They've watched me age.
The Talking Dog: Please identify your present and former GTMO-detained client or clients by name, nationality, and current whereabouts. To the extent you can, please tell me something about each of your clients, such as their age, family status, personality, circumstances of their capture, or anything else you believe of relevance.
Cori Crider: Reprieve was counsel in over sixty cases over the years, so I'll spare your readers the full list and offer a sample.
Our free men include Sami al Hajj, the al-Jazeera cameraman from Sudan (hunger striker for over a year when DOD turned him loose); Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident (rendered to Morocco for torture by the CIA, first man to go home under Obama); Mohammed el Gharani, Saudi-born Chadian (taken to Gitmo age 14, ordered released by Judge Richard Leon); and Ismail Mohamoud Mohamed, a Somali professor (one of the very last taken to Gitmo - he arrived in mid-2007, and we had him out by the end of 2009).
Clients who are still there today: Shaker Aamer, ISN 239, UK resident; Nabil Hadjarab, ISN 238, French resident; Younous Chekkouri, ISN 197, Moroccan; Samir Mukbel, ISN 43, Yemeni; Abu Wa'el Dhiab, ISN 722, Syrian. All of these people, as of my last unclassified information, are taking part in the hunger strike. At least some of them are being force fed through a tube in their nose; some have been hospitalised because of medical complications from their strike (Samir Mukbel, for example). (Our work has expanded to include folks in Bagram, families rendered to Libya, and people at the sharp end of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, but that's a conversation for another day.)
I'd like to focus on two detainees, consecutive ISNs 238 and 239, the last French and British residents at Guantanamo (Nabil Hadjarab and Shaker Aamer, respectively). Nabil's passport is Algerian, but he is the son and grandson of French colonial veterans - his grandfather fought for the French in WWI, and his father in the Algerian war. All his surviving family are French citizens. So far this has cut no ice with the French authorities, who refuse to have him.
Shaker, meanwhile, has had several UK Foreign Secretaries claim they are 'doing everything they can' to get him back. He has a British wife and four British children. Recently over 100,000 people signed a petition calling on Her Majesty's Government to get him out of Gitmo and back to Britain - and I presume at the ensuing Parliamentary debate Hague will say he's done what he can and the US won't budge. It does rather raise the eyebrow, this suggestion that American's closest ally can't pull a cleared man out of jail. Nobody suggests Britain is not a 'safe' place to release prisoners to. There have been no problems with any of the men released here so far. I tend to think Hague and his predecessors have been either feckless or indifferent.
Anyway, Shaker and Nabil's cases are linked: both of them arrived at Bagram at the same time, in the first convoy of prisoners to be taken there. It was a hellish place at the time - so hellish that they're both now witnesses in a Scotland Yard investigation into British officials who interrogated them, and others, in Bagram in January 2002. By the way, both men were in Kabul on 11 Sept. 2001, although I don't think they knew one another. Both men were cleared under Bush and again by Obama's inter-agency task force.
The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of their habeas litigation, be it "habeas petition pending,"petition denied and appeal pending" or whatever else is applicable, and to the extent applicable, if you can identify who the judge or judges involved are and if there is any published decision or decisions of note.
Cori Crider: Both Shaker's and Nabil's cases are pending before Judge Rosemary Collyer. Shaker's is in discovery; Nabil's is stayed. Most attorneys involved in these cases would tell you meaningful habeas review is dead. It's not the trial judges' fault, mind. They diligently weighed the evidence, such as there was, and in the great majority of cases rejected the government's position. The D.C. Circuit, however, believes these folks never ought to have had a hearing in the first place. It responded by moving the goalposts each chance it got. These days trial judges looking over a government interrogation report have been directed to assume that the agent recorded the interrogation accurately. Would you want to play that kind of a rigged game?
'Habeas' is now a rubber stamp for the government.
These days, I view the Gitmo portion of my job as the same as it was before Boumediene - investigation and advocacy in the court of public opinion.
The Talking Dog: Can you please tell me the last time you visited your client or clients at Guantanamo, and can you describe the circumstances of your visit. If you could, can you contrast that visit with what you found at earlier visits, including the condition of your client(s), the restrictions on you as counsel and on your clients during your visit, the condition in which you found your clients, and anything else you believe relevant.
Cori Crider: I have not been down since last January; I am going again in a couple of weeks. Most of my recent information I know from calls, and while perhaps things are not as they were in 2003, 2004, the picture our clients paint is alarming. ERF teams strapping prisoners to hospital beds to be force-fed; the camp seizing my Syrian client's wheelchair to punish him for striking; prisoners dropping from low blood sugar on the blocks every day and being taken away on a gurney. It's plainly getting worse.
And you can see why. After eleven years of indefinite detention, over half of that time "cleared for transfer" in the case of many of my clients, the desperation is palpable. It gets harder and harder to lift a man's spirits and enroll him in his defense as the years wear on. The disappointment in President Obama is palpable too. Remember, I first met some clients back when they were in their early 20's, and now they are in their 30's and look older still. Some of them, like Younus, read Obama's books and sincerely believed things would be different.
Instead, you have the White House press office referring people to DOD for queries on the hunger strike. Obama has totally abdicated responsibility for these men. But they refuse to be forgotten.
The Talking Dog: Can you tell me if your client or clients is or are participating in the present hunger strike, and whether they have participated in prior hunger strikes? Is there anything of relevance viz a viz detainees' grievances, or the military's treatment of the prisoners, or anything else of relevance that you can tell me about that situation, including, if possible, the current condition of your clients, as far as you know?
Cori Crider: I mentioned who I know is striking above, but there's lots more to say about the effects it has on people. Shaker has already lost thirty pounds, and he was not a heavy man when I first saw him. (He's lost so much weight he hardly resembles the photo everyone uses in the British papers of him with his kids!) We heard Nabil had been hospitalised. It's all very worrying.
The reasons are as others have said: an abusive 'search' of the Qur'an set it off; indefinite detention keeps it going.
God knows how they'll look when I visit them in May. I used to see Binyam and Sami when they were striking, skin and bones. But I haven't seen most of these men in that state and it will be hard to watch. This strike has united the prisoners, however they tended in the past to respond to their predicament. Nabil was always a "go-along" kind of guy, for example; he has learned good English, and was much less likely to be vocally critical of his captors than, say, Shaker has been. Shaker never did like to stand by when he saw someone being mistreated, and so has taken a lot of flak over his outspokenness over the years. Both are striking now.
Much as I worry someone will be hurt, it's hard to blame them. What choice do they have? What would you do in their shoes?
The Talking Dog: Can you tell me, in light of the subject of the recent letter you signed on to directed to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, if you have had contact with your client since that time (by phone, mail, etc.), whether you believe the government's recent (increasingly repressive) actions are a pretext by the government, for example, to cut off adverse publicity from GTMO, or perhaps to intercept communications between prisoner and counsel? Why do you think the government relented toward getting the flights reinstated?
Cori Crider: The government had certainly made it harder to communicate. For example one is now meant to give 15 business days notice for a proposed call or meeting, up from 10. It strikes me as a bit odd that, on the one hand, the military has backed off some things (e.g. the flight ban) in the face of criticism, but not others. They've showed more flexibility on calls lately, I think perhaps because of a concern that things are going to go very wrong.
(Indeed, you see from the news this weekend that it has taken a very ugly turn with guards firing 'non-lethal' rounds on prisoners. That may precipitate another communications lockdown.)
I must admit that this surprised me about the Obama Administration when it came in. Some things immediately got worse-- for example, the censorship of attorney's notes. At first it was much harder to get anything past Obama's censors than under Bush. Anything about conditions, abuse, etc, tended not to be cleared. It is amazing, quite frankly, how much information has made it out about the hunger strike.
The Talking Dog: Can you comment on media coverage, in particular, of events at Guantanamo in calendar year 2013, and previously, and in particular, with respect to your own clients and representation?
Cori Crider: It depends which 'media' you mean. Living outside the U.S., my perspective on some of this differs. Global opinion was and is firmly against Guantanamo. Indeed, "Guantanamo" has become a shorthand for extra-judicial prisons in all kinds of places!
That said, Gitmo fell off the media radar for a while here in Britain and in Europe just as in the United States. Some people do still ask me, "didn't Obama close the place?" Ordering the prison closed - while it failed - knocked the issue out of the news, mostly, for years. But that's starting to change.
The hunger strike has reignited interest in the issue worldwide; Shaker in the UK, Nabil in France, the general issue on al Jazeera, al-Arabiya, and so on. And I don't think it's about to go away. The administration ignores this story at their peril.
The Talking Dog: We have reached the point where more men have died at Guantanamo (and invariably under suspicious circumstances) than have been "convicted" under the controversial "military commissions," and a number of those "convicted" have actually been released, while the majority held are actually "cleared for release." President Obama has been handily reelected, notwithstanding the utter failure of his "close Guantanamo within one year" promise and evident decision to continue the logical arc of policies he inherited from the Bush/Cheney Administration. Further, Justice Stevens has retired, replaced with Obama's own former solicitor general, who might or might not continue recusing herself from any Guantanamo related litigation. And so, in light of all that, do you have any predictions for Guantanamo, "preventive detention" and related issues for, say, the remainder of Barack Obama's Presidency?
Cori Crider: Guantánamo will not be closed by the end of the Obama Administration. The "national security" policies of the Obama Administration have sought to ensure that it cannot be outflanked from the right. Later - in five, ten, fifteen years - the pendulum on Gitmo will swing again - perhaps it is doing so now - but it will take time. Because of the strike we may see a trickle of releases - hey, you have to live in hope to do this work - but overall, the Administration seems to have calculated that its domestic priorities are paramount, and that doing the right thing on Gitmo carries only political cost.
That's shortsighted, of course. Consider his legacy. As things stand we won't remember Obama as 'the President who closed Gitmo'. We'll remember 'the drone President', the 'President who kept Gitmo open' after decrying it for years.
The Talking Dog: At over eleven and a half years since 9-11, with OBL dead, GTMO open over 11 years, the "high value detainees" commission trials dragging on, the war in Afghanistan (perhaps) over at the end of next year, do you see any way of getting the American public engaged in these issues, or any possible "public relations" angle that might help alleviate the seeming decision to simply close GTMO by having all of its occupants die there?
Cori Crider: The hunger strike. It reminds the government that these men are not going to go gently into that good night.
Our task as advocates is to make our clients 'real' to Americans, not an empty vessel, 'the detainee', into which everyone can pour their individual prejudices.
Nor is America the only relevant audience. Most Americans have no idea who Binyam Mohamed or Sami al Hajj are, but in the UK and across the Arab world respectively, they're household names. That is why they are home today.
The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how your Guantanamo representation has effected you personally, be it professionally, emotionally, spiritually, or any other way you'd like to answer? In your case, as you've done this for your entire legal career, I suppose you'd have to do something else...
Cori Crider: I'd love nothing more than for the 'war on terror' to end, so I could retire to bake pastries or something.
But of course it changes you. Before I started this work I'm not sure I'd ever met a Muslim. Certainly I didn't enroll out of any particular connection to their plight. I just disagreed with Bush policy and wanted to stop what was happening.
But then you spend time with them and everything changes. Now I think much more about what we should do for Younus or Nabil, say, than I do against anyone else.
I also probably stopped believing in 'law' as a force for social change. That isn't to say it can't help - Rasul got us in to the prison, without which there are no personal stories to tell. But it's plain to me someone looking only to the judiciary to drive these issues forward tends to lose, lose, lose. Here's a statistic I always tell new staff: of over 50 clients Reprieve has seen go home from Gitmo, only one was ordered released by a court. As for the rest, it was facts - and the political implications of those facts - that got them out.
That's not to say the law will never respond; only that it tends not to get too far ahead of the prevailing social view on controversial issues. So in the UK, where the social response to torture has been totally different, we've had considerably better luck with litigation. We're also ahead of the US on accountability for torture, where we have senior police investigating MI5/6 and senior political officials for their role in Bagram (and in the kidnap of two Libyan families we represent). So over here, there is a real prospect we'll see some people held legally to account for their role in the US torture program.
Obviously, matters are quite different in the U.S., where torturers have book and film deals. But give it time.
The Talking Dog: Is there anything else that you believe I should have asked but didn't, or that the public needs to know concerning these issues?
Cori Crider: The Obama mantra that "Congress has made it impossible to close Guantanamo" is false. The NDAA, as onerous as it is, permits the transfer of detainees in some circumstances if the Administration has the gumption and commitment to do it.
The Talking Dog: I join all of my readers in thanking Ms. Crider for that informative interview.
Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Michael Mone, Matt O'Hara, Carlos Warner, Matthew Melewski, Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg, Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.