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Shortly after taking office, President Obama issued an executive order to shut down the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year. The White House has now acknowledged it won’t make that January deadline. The World’s Katy Clark has reported several times from the detention facility on Cuba, she just returned from her most recent reporting trip. Jeb Sharp gets a debrief.
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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World. When Barack Obama became president he promised to shut down the US prison at Guantanamo Bay within one year. He’s going to miss the deadline. In fact the closure of Guantanamo has become even more difficult since Christmas day. That’s when a man who studied in Yemen allegedly attempted to blow up a US airliner. The White House then suspended the repatriation of Yemeni prisoners from Guantanamo. Those Yemenis account for about half the prison’s population. In a moment we’ll speak with a top Yemeni diplomat about the terror threat from his country. But first we turn to the world’s Katy Clark for an update on Guantanamo. She’s just returned from her third trip to the facility since August 2002. So Katy I guess the question is what’s new there?
KATY CLARK: Well you get the sense that it’s no longer this high risk interrogation operation but more of a babysitting operation right now.
SHARP: How so?
CLARK: Well I mean maybe that’s exaggerating things a little bit but one of the starkest examples of that was in our tour of Camp 5 which is one of the maximum security prisons that have been built there over time. One of the cell blocks that they walk us down on our tour used to have an interrogation room in the first room of that cell block and now it’s a TV lounge with a refrigerator and detainees goes in there one at a time. And although they still have a shackle around one of their legs they can watch movies and get drinks out of the fridge and sit on this cushy couch. I mean it was weird to see that.
SHARP: Any other sort of really striking changes or developments?
CLARK: Well they take art classes now. They take language classes now. And that sort of underscores the sense that it’s not such a dangerous place anymore. The people being held there maybe are not so dangerous as they used to be. And one of the things that does seem to be different down there as well as the effort that is being made to have the guards and the detainees get along a little better than they have in the past. One of the individuals that I met down there is a fellow, a US military contractor, who was introduced simply as Zack – we didn’t get his real name or his full name.
SHARP: You mean it was withheld.
CLARK: Yeah the name was withheld for security reasons. And he is a Muslim-American who is employed as a cultural advisor at Guantanamo. He’s been there since September 2006. He’s only recently started talking to reporters. And his job he says is to work to teach and educate everybody who interacts with detainees about the detainees’ culture and religion. And it was really interesting the way he described his job. I want to play a bit of an interview that I did with him there. And it starts with how he says he helps newly arrived guards.
ZACK: I show them you know. They pray five times a day. This is how it’s performed you know so if you’re knocking on the cell door and you see the person doing all the movements you know that’s done do not knock the door. Wait until that one person is done praying because you know he’s not going to answer you. All these little things you know I was able to teach you know and you know we have new people all the time here you know so I’m always continuing to teach everyone who works on the blocks about all these things.
CLARK: How do they detainees here view what you do? It seems as if they might look at you as the enemy.
ZACK: It’s not an easy job. It’s a difficult job because some they call me you know traitor, some they call me enemy of guard you know. Some you know because I was able to learn you know which group of detainees want to talk to me. Which one want to sit down man to man and do business you know.
CLARK: You talk about some of the games that were played early on. For instance … .
ZACK: Some of the games that were played you know it’s happened to me you know when I first came here you know. One detainee says a guard stepped on the Koran and urinated on it. I said okay.
CLARK: A story that was reported.
ZACK: A story that was reported. And he said come on down and see it with your own eyes. So I go down there you know. And I say to the detainee where is it? And my eye contact with the detainee says where is the footprint? The boot prints? You know boot prints are not easy to remove you know because once they go it’s not the [INDISCERNIBLE]. I dusted it off. I said okay then where is the urine. Smell it. I’m smelling you know. I’m not smelling it. But I’m not arguing also because my job is to listen and take in whatever I’m hearing and not argue. And I was saying where is the urine. He said look at it. So here is the book. Here’s the edge of the book. And it was exactly half a circle. You give me one human being that can urinate that uniformly. See you’re laughing. I did not laugh for the detainee or nothing. I said here is another copy but I went to another detainee who was more religious leader you know and I said guys this is what this person did so quit it.
CLARK: What kind of response did you get? I mean where they like kids who were caught in a lie?
ZACK: Yes, yes, yes. You know it’s something you know nobody’s going to admit you know. I mean another … . I mean just their ideology and their thinking you know just makes them believe you know. Like another example they’ll say as well it says in the Koran kill Americans. I looked at the kid – not kid you know just a guy – anybody younger than me is kid you know. You know and I said you know, okay no problem and just [INDISCERNIBLE] to somebody else, I said, can you show me where it says that? Maybe you know all these years I have not been able to find it you know. No he means this and he means that. So there’s always that game and manipulation and using religion as a weapon.
CLARK: That’s Zack, the US Defense Department’s cultural advisor down at Guantanamo Bay.
SHARP: He sounds like an interesting character. What was his background before he went to Guantanamo?
CLARK: He is Muslim-American. He said he’s of Jordanian descent and he had worked for the US military in Iraq back in 2003 as an interpreter and he sees this as just a continuation of this work. And it was interesting because I asked him if he had any concerns at some point in the job that he has had interacting very closely with the detainees, if he fears for his safety at some point when these men are released from Guantanamo if they might seek him out, which has been a common fear of the guards there. Some would describe it as a paranoia even. And he said if it happens it happens. I can’t really do anything about it. But I’m not going to let them kill me easily.
SHARP: Katy thank you.
CLARK: You’re welcome.
SHARP: The World’s Katy Clark just back from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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