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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

David Frakt: This announcement is really in stark contrast to what the United States has done regarding victims of the war on terror.

Lisa Mullins: David Frakt teaches criminal law at Barry University School of Law in Orlando, Florida. He represented Gitmo detainee Mohammed Jawad, who was released last year.

Frakt: It’s just a very sharp contrast to see that Great Britain has decided to settle this, to acknowledge that there was wrongdoing, that there was suffering. Whereas here in the United States, even where we have people who clearly were innocent – there were cases of mistaken identity. There was a Canadian citizen who was rendered and tortured; and there’s no real doubt about the facts. But nevertheless we have refused to even consider compensation. And under international law, we do have an obligation to provide redress for the victims of torture and so far we are not fulfilling that.

Mullins: But what could the redress be now? I mean you’re talking about sort of a British-style agreement or settlement, or something quite different? Because the culpability is quite different.

Frakt: Right, well, it would probably require congressional legislation and authorization of funds. And I just think that there is no political will to do something like that right now.

Mullins: If we talk about, you know, in terms of setting aside money, and there’s one particular detainee who, under this British agreement, will get 1.6 million dollars – If we’re talking about financial issues, certainly there is a problem in terms of finances, both in the U.K. and here in the United States. So is that what accounts for the lack of political will? Because the game board seems pretty even there.

Frakt: Well, I just think there is a perception that the detainees who are released are not really innocent; that somehow the U.S. just couldn’t prove it. There’s still skepticism about mistreatment of detainees because the government has so successfully blocked information being released about what really went on. So

Mullins: Let me just stop you there. Why is the perception different here from in Britain, then?

Frakt: If you look at Great Britain, they’ve had a full-scale, very open inquiry into British complicity, and public hearings. And I think there’s a lot of outrage in Great Britain over what was done in Great Britain’s name, to cooperate with the United States. And many people there feel that their complicity with the U.S. made them a target, such as for the London subway bombings. While, whereas here in the United States, since we have not had a successful attack since 9/11, a lot of people are really supportive of the policies that they feel have kept them safe. Although I would argue that it simply has pushed terrorism abroad.

Mullins: Could you bring us home to your own work as having represented one of the Afghan detainees, Mohammed Jawad?

Frakt: Yes. Mohammed Jawad was declared to be not an enemy combatant, to be wrongfully held at Guantanamo, and by order of a writ of habeas corpus, from a federal judge, he was ordered released in August of 2009, after nearly seven years at Guantanamo. I no longer represent him. My job was to get him out of Guantanamo. But one of my co-counsel has retired from the military and is representing him as a civilian attorney, and has sought compensation for the nearly seven years that he spent wrongfully at Guantanamo, and for the specific acts of abuse, arguably rising to the level of torture, that he experienced, including sleep deprivation, and beatings, and so forth. And at this point there is simply no remedy available for Mohammad Jawad and others like him in the U.S. courts. So what we are doing is, after shattering people’s lives and in Mohammed’s case he spent basically his high school and college years in Guantanamo. And releasing him without any effort to rehabilitate him; without any social services; without any compensation; without so much as an apology. That does not enhance the United States’ reputation in the international community for being a fair-minded and respecting human rights.

Mullins: David Frakt teaches at Barry University School of Law in Orlando, Florida. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve JAG corps, and represented Gitmo detainee Mohammed Jawad. Thanks very much.

Frakt: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Closing Guantanamo
• Katy Clark’s Guantanamo stories

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  The Obama administration is still reviewing its options as to where to try key terrorism suspects, and that includes alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed.  Plans to try him at a federal court in New York generated a lot of opposition, and that’s kept alive the option of military trials.  Guantanamo could be the venue.  The suspects are already there, and the legal system to try them is ready to go, as The World’s Katy Clark reports.

KATY CLARK: Former President George W. Bush signed orders back in 2006 setting up military tribunals for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo.  In doing so, Mr. Bush was adapting a long established system of military commissions to a modern threat.  Still, critics charged that the commissions were a lesser form of justice than either civilian or other military courts.  President Obama seemed to agree, and shortly after taking office he suspended the military tribunals and launched a review.  Realizing, though, that the commissions might be a necessary option, President Obama signed his own version of the Military Commissions Act last fall.  Navy Captain John Murphy is Chief Prosecutor in the Military Commissions office at the Pentagon.  One of the biggest changes under President Obama, he says, is limits on the type of evidence that can now be admitted.

JOHN MURPHY:  “There can be no torture, obviously.  That was true in the previous statute as well.  But no cruel, inhumane or degrading evidence or evidence obtained in that manner can be introduced.”

CLARK: Also any statements introduced in trial now have to be voluntary, rather than merely reliable.  And when it comes to hearsay evidence, the burden is now on the party who offers it, to prove its reliability.  Captain Murphy says defendants also have greater freedom to select their own military lawyers under the revamped Military Commissions Act or MCA.

MURPHY: “I think that the new MCA that is currently in effect is an improvement over our prior law, and I believe it represents fair justice.  We’re ready to move forward, when we’re directed by our leadership to prosecute cases under that statute.”

CLARK: But not all lawyers are as enthusiastic as Captain Murphy is to see the military commissions resume.  Law Professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University has represented several Guantanamo detainees.  He says it remains unclear to him what the government means when it says no cruel, inhumane or degrading evidence or evidence obtained in that manner will be allowed.  Denbeaux wonders if that includes evidence obtained after a detainee has been deprived of sleep for several days.

MARK DENBEAUX:  “Now, I think you could argue evidence after 48 hours of being kept awake with loud noises and strobe lights isn’t reliable.  But the standard here also is – is it humane?  Are courts gonna say keeping people awake for 24 hours are inhumane?  Fourteen hours?  Eighteen hours?  The questions here can’t be solved by saying we’re not only not allowing in torture.  We’re also not allowing inhumanely obtained evidence.”

CLARK: Captain John Murphy says it’s up to the judge to determine what’s admissible, based on what Murphy describes as ‘the totality of the circumstances’.

MURPHY:  “I would also add, too, that prosecutors make their own decisions before we ever offer evidence.  And within my office, if we make a determination that a statement or other evidence is likely to be excluded under those rules, that is, that it’s cruel, inhumane, degrading or torture or not voluntarily provided, then we’re not gonna offer it.”

CLARK: Still, other legal experts interviewed for this story say that no matter what changes the Obama administration makes, the military commissions at Guantanamo are flawed beyond repair.

JOHN HUTSON:  “For me, there’s absolutely no question that the best place to try terrorists is in federal court.”

CLARK: John Hutson served as Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy from 1997 to 2000.  He’s now Dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire.

HUTSON:  “Let’s say that you came here from Mars.  And you were told that we have some really, really bad guys that we want to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.  And we’ve got two judicial systems that we have to choose between.  One of them, it successfully prosecuted 200 cases since September 11^th, ’01, and most of those guys are still in prison.  It has experienced judges and prosecutors and court personnel.  And it clearly complies with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.  That’s one system.”

CLARK: Hutson describes the other system as having tried just three cases since 9/11.  Two of the defendants pleaded guilty and are now free.  The third didn’t participate and was found guilty in absentia.

HUTSON: “Which one would you select?  To me, that’s just a no brainer.”

CLARK: Captain John Murphy of the Military Commissions Office has heard such arguments before and shrugs them off.  He maintains there’s no better law team than his to handle terrorism cases.  Captain Murphy adds that one of the reasons why the Office of Military Commissions has only held three trials at Guantanamo so far is because proceedings have been on hold there for the past year.  The Office of Military Commissions is now preparing three more cases.  Preliminary hearings at Guantanamo are expected to resume later this month.  The next trial is set to begin in July.  For The World, this is Katy Clark.

MARCO WERMAN:  The Obama administration is still reviewing its options as to where to try key terrorism suspects, and that includes alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed.  Plans to try him at a federal court in New York generated a lot of opposition, and that’s kept alive the option of military trials.  Guantanamo could be the venue.  The suspects are already there, and the legal system to try them is ready to go, as The World’s Katy Clark reports.

KATY CLARK: Former President George W. Bush signed orders back in 2006 setting up military tribunals for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo.  In doing so, Mr. Bush was adapting a long established system of military commissions to a modern threat.  Still, critics charged that the commissions were a lesser form of justice than either civilian or other military courts.  President Obama seemed to agree, and shortly after taking office he suspended the military tribunals and launched a review.  Realizing, though, that the commissions might be a necessary option, President Obama signed his own version of the Military Commissions Act last fall.  Navy Captain John Murphy is Chief Prosecutor in the Military Commissions office at the Pentagon.  One of the biggest changes under President Obama, he says, is limits on the type of evidence that can now be admitted.

JOHN MURPHY:  “There can be no torture, obviously.  That was true in the previous statute as well.  But no cruel, inhumane or degrading evidence or evidence obtained in that manner can be introduced.”

CLARK: Also any statements introduced in trial now have to be voluntary, rather than merely reliable.  And when it comes to hearsay evidence, the burden is now on the party who offers it, to prove its reliability.  Captain Murphy says defendants also have greater freedom to select their own military lawyers under the revamped Military Commissions Act or MCA.

MURPHY: “I think that the new MCA that is currently in effect is an improvement over our prior law, and I believe it represents fair justice.  We’re ready to move forward, when we’re directed by our leadership to prosecute cases under that statute.”

CLARK: But not all lawyers are as enthusiastic as Captain Murphy is to see the military commissions resume.  Law Professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University has represented several Guantanamo detainees.  He says it remains unclear to him what the government means when it says no cruel, inhumane or degrading evidence or evidence obtained in that manner will be allowed.  Denbeaux wonders if that includes evidence obtained after a detainee has been deprived of sleep for several days.

MARK DENBEAUX:  “Now, I think you could argue evidence after 48 hours of being kept awake with loud noises and strobe lights isn’t reliable.  But the standard here also is – is it humane?  Are courts gonna say keeping people awake for 24 hours are inhumane?  Fourteen hours?  Eighteen hours?  The questions here can’t be solved by saying we’re not only not allowing in torture.  We’re also not allowing inhumanely obtained evidence.”

CLARK: Captain John Murphy says it’s up to the judge to determine what’s admissible, based on what Murphy describes as ‘the totality of the circumstances’.

MURPHY:  “I would also add, too, that prosecutors make their own decisions before we ever offer evidence.  And within my office, if we make a determination that a statement or other evidence is likely to be excluded under those rules, that is, that it’s cruel, inhumane, degrading or torture or not voluntarily provided, then we’re not gonna offer it.”

CLARK: Still, other legal experts interviewed for this story say that no matter what changes the Obama administration makes, the military commissions at Guantanamo are flawed beyond repair.

JOHN HUTSON:  “For me, there’s absolutely no question that the best place to try terrorists is in federal court.”

CLARK: John Hutson served as Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy from 1997 to 2000.  He’s now Dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire.

HUTSON:  “Let’s say that you came here from Mars.  And you were told that we have some really, really bad guys that we want to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.  And we’ve got two judicial systems that we have to choose between.  One of them, it successfully prosecuted 200 cases since September 11^th, ’01, and most of those guys are still in prison.  It has experienced judges and prosecutors and court personnel.  And it clearly complies with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.  That’s one system.”

CLARK: Hutson describes the other system as having tried just three cases since 9/11.  Two of the defendants pleaded guilty and are now free.  The third didn’t participate and was found guilty in absentia.

HUTSON: “Which one would you select?  To me, that’s just a no brainer.”

CLARK: Captain John Murphy of the Military Commissions Office has heard such arguments before and shrugs them off.  He maintains there’s no better law team than his to handle terrorism cases.  Captain Murphy adds that one of the reasons why the Office of Military Commissions has only held three trials at Guantanamo so far is because proceedings have been on hold there for the past year.  The Office of Military Commissions is now preparing three more cases.  Preliminary hearings at Guantanamo are expected to resume later this month.  The next trial is set to begin in July.  For The World, this is Katy Clark.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Katy’s update from Guantanamo (Jan 6)
• Katy’s previous Guantanamo coverage on The World
• FAQ on closing Guantanamo

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

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.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Katy’s previous Guantanamo coverage on The World
• FAQ on closing Guantanamo

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The would-be bomber on the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit reportedly got his explosives and training in Yemen. That’s focused a lot of attention on the country. Yesterday the Obama Administration announced it’s suspending the repatriation of several detainees from Yemen currently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The reason given is the deteriorating security situation in their home country.  The World’s Katy Clark is in Guantanamo.  Katy, just how many detainees will be affected by this decision?

KATY CLARK: Well, it’s tough to say. I mean, they won’t go into details about specifics. I was under the impression that fewer than 200 detainees are being held here. A good half of those were to be released to Yemen. Now, I’ve heard various numbers that maybe it was 75, maybe it was as many of 91, but they are in a holding pattern right now. So that’s a good size of the population still being held here.

WERMAN: Have you had a chance to speak with any of the detainees?

CLARK: No, that’s never an option here. They are kept very much for their own privacy reasons away from reporters whenever reporters come here.  So basically what I know about what’s going on with them is what I am told from the guards, from the people in charge of the mission here. And we’ve asked whether or not the current situation has people frustrated. People were getting ready to get on an airplane to go home or to go to Yemen anyway, or to go to somewhere else, and that that’s all been put on hold. But the guards say right now that they haven’t seen any overt frustration on the part of the detainees. Maybe it’s just, you know, that they’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting and this is just waiting some more.

WERMAN: How do the detainees know what’s going on? Do they have access to newspapers or radio?

CLARK: They do and that’s actually one of the changes that I’ve been seeing since my previous trips here. They have access to three newspapers in different languages. They have access to satellite television. Some of the detainees could watch television 20 hours a day if they wanted to so they could be following the news. They also get news bulletins posted in their recreation areas, but it seems to be that the newspapers and the satellite TVs, they’re really keeping them plugged in.

WERMAN: If they are in this limbo state for right now, is there any sense of what will happen to these detainees instead of repatriation to Yemen?

CLARK: No, nobody seems to know and every time you ask that question here, people say, “Our job is just to make sure things run smoothly here. Any of those types of decisions are happening in Washington and we’re just waiting word on that.”

WERMAN: The World’s Katy Clark speaking with us from the U.S. Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Thank you very much, Katy.

CLARK: My pleasure, Marco.

WERMAN: By the way, when Katy Clark says prisoners are not allowed to give interviews for privacy reasons, this is in fact in accordance with the policies of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Geneva Conventions prohibit prisoners of war being paraded or subject to public humiliation. There’s no outright ban on media interviews, but according to the ICRC, it’s better to discourage interviews since it’s impossible to tell if a prisoner is being forced to say things.

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• BBC coverage
• Central Intelligence Agency

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Twenty-three Americans were sentenced to prison today in Italy. All but one of them work for the CIA and all were convicted of kidnapping. The case involves the abduction of an Egyptian-born Muslim cleric who was snatched off a street in Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt for interrogation. The cleric says he was tortured there. Though the Americans received prison terms they’re not likely to do any time. John Radsan served as a CIA’s assistant general counsel from 2002 to 2004. He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. Now the case relates to the seizure and then extraordinary rendition of a Muslim cleric. Tell us who this man was – this cleric – and where is he now?

JOHN RADSAN: Based on the public record we believe that he was recruiting people to go and fight in Iraq against American forces. That he was a radical preacher in Milan. He’s of Egyptian origin. And he was stirring up people to fight against Americans and against western interests around the world. He’s not in prison right now. At the end of his rendition he was released and as I understand he’s in Egypt at this time.

WERMAN: And when he was extraordinarily rendered how actively do you think the US government actually participated in that?

RADSAN: From the public record it seems clear that the US was involved in his snatch in Italy. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. And that he was transferred. One of the questions was whether the Italian government knew about this. Was this a unilateral operation or was it a bilateral operation in Italy. I think it stands to reason that the CIA would not do something that is completely unilateral in Italy. That would make it very dangerous for the CIA officers. It would complicate the intelligence relationship between the CIA and the various Italian services. It would be bad at a political level. Of course if the CIA notifies its counterparts in Italy, they’re taking it on some sort of faith that the Italian authorities will in turn notify the political leaders in Italy. And it’s one of the questions we had in the trial and we still don’t know the level of Italian involvement and we don’t know the level of American involvement. But I don’t think any of these defendants has said that this did not take place – that the abduction did not take place. The defendants say that this was an authorized operation by the United States government.

WERMAN: And at the time what was the legal opinion relating to these kinds of operations in 2003? You were assistant general counsel for the CIA at the time.

RADSAN: I was assistant general counsel. I didn’t advice on this program. But I can speculate what the advice was. We comply with American law. We have to make sure that we comply with the American constitution, with the various statutes that apply to the CIA. When we do espionage in covert action we accept, as an unfortunate consequence, that in many situations we’re going to be violating international law and we may in many situations be violating the laws of other countries.

WERMAN: And for these 23 individual Americans who were sentenced today, are they going to have to be careful where they travel now? I mean would they want to avoid going on vacation in Italy for example?

RADSAN: That’s for sure. They’re not going to be going to Italy. They’ll also have to be careful about other countries that they go to. They’ll probably get legal advice. If they don’t they should to figure out what sort of extradition arrangements may exist between France and Italy, Singapore and Italy. I suspect that most of these people will be limiting their travel to within the United States. They’re not going to take the risk. We have examples of other people that have fallen in the international target. Henry Kissinger was careful about his travel because of various allegations. So these defendants will be in a similar category.

WERMAN: So what next? Will the US try to appeal this in any way?

RADSAN: I think the lawyers that are representing these people, they will appeal. At the end even if these convictions stand I don’t think we’re going to have American officers serving sentences there. In that sense the sentences are symbolic. I think it’s possible the Italians will ask for the extradition but I think it’s next to impossible that the Americans will extradite CIA officers – these are people that were serving their country – back to Italy to serve prison sentences. There’s an irony in this case. And that is that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, was one of our important colleagues in counterterrorism and continues to be. He might have been coordinating with other parts of the American government beyond the CIA but he is the one that has been leading the charge and getting over these hurdles to bring this case. So in that sense it’s one part of the counterterrorism community indicting and convicting another part of the international counterterrorism community.

WERMAN: That’s interesting. I mean briefly, if these sentences are symbolic as you say, what do you think is the one-line message from them?

RADSAN: The CIA got in trouble for arguably violating Italian law and the CIA lives in a murky world of having to violate the laws of other countries to do espionage and conduct covert action.

WERMAN: Well John Radsan, former assistant general counsel for the CIA. Thanks very much.

RADSAN: Thank you.

WERMAN: And the State Department said today it’s disappointed by the Italian court’s decision.

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• Law professor Mark Denbeaux on archiving Guantanamo cases
• Katy Clark’s Guantanamo coverage (2002-2009)

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MARCO WERMAN: Guantanamo’s detainee population is now down to 223. In the past few years, several hundred men have already been released.  A few more have been cleared for release, and are expected to be sent overseas soon for resettlement.  For some former detainees, life after Guantanamo is a huge challenge.  The World’s Katy Clark reports.

KATY CLARK: It was quite a sight.  Four former detainees frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean off the Coast of Bermuda this past summer.  It gave the impression that life post-detention might be pretty sweet, but that’s not necessarily the norm.  Take the case of Sami Al-Haj, who was on assignment as a cameraman with Al-Jazeera when he was captured in Pakistan in late 2001.  He was held for more than six years as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo.  During his detention he says he was beaten and sexually assaulted.  Then May 2008, Al-Haj was released and returned to his native Sudan.  He was never charged with a crime.  Yet Al-Haj told Iranian-based Press T.V. that more than a year after his release he remains “A misfit” at home.

AL-HAJ: Still, my son doesn’t deal with me as a normal father, and even my wife and our close family like sister, brother, and even our friend is keeping away from me because they doesn’t want to want to put themselves in trouble and I lost many friends.

CLARK: What Al-Haj is experiencing is part of what Eric Stover calls the Guantanamo Stigma, something that haunts some of the more than 500 freed detainees.   Stover is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.  He spent last year interviewing 62 men once held at Guantanamo.  He says many of them said they were ostracized by their own families and communities after their release.

ERIC STOVER: We heard of cases in many countries where former detainees were trying to find work but unable to do so.  You know, they were away, and a three or four years hole in resume, and if they said they were in US custody, they often didn’t get the jobs they were seeking.  We found that in fact six of the 62 former detainees only six had actually found meaningful employment.

CLARK: Without jobs and the proper support networks, Stover says there’s little to stop these men from turning or in some cases returning to Jihad against the United States.  Joshua Colangelo-Bryan is a New York based attorney who represented six detainees.   All of them are now free.  He would like to see the United States and other governments do more to keep these guys on track.

JOSHUA COLANGELO-BRYAN: It certainly is in the interest of all reasonable people to have the Guantanamo detainees who were released integrate themselves back into their societies.  Where home countries have the capacity to provide support, be it psychological or material, they certainly should.

CLARK: The State Department has the job of facilitating transfers of released detainees to their home countries or to third countries, but it won’t say whether it does any more than that to help these men readjust.  Often the mental wounds former Guantanamo detainees carry with them re-open after their release.  Berkeley’s Eric Stover says one man now living in the Middle East whom he tried to interview, went into hiding during the week they were scheduled to talk.  Stover describes him as “the worst case scenario” of any of the former detainees he met.

STOVER: The family said that he had left the house without shoes and that this was happening quite often.  He just was completely disoriented and was in clear need of psychiatric care.

MOAZZEM BEGG:  Where is the welfare for the people who have been tortured? Where is the support system for people who have endured cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment?

CLARK: This is Moazzem Begg speaking at the launch of the Guantanamo Justice Center in London.  Begg and other former detainees created the center to help men like themselves who’ve been left traumatized by their experiences at Guantanamo. It’s not the kind of organization that will win plaudits in Washington, but its goals may just coincide with Washington’s so long as those goals focus on former detainees moving past their time in captivity and living peaceful lives.   For The World this is Katy Clark.

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Human rights advocates in EUROPE are calling for countries there to look into their own role in CIA prisoner abuse. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush administration. The World’s Gerry Hadden has the story.

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JEB SHARP: Human rights advocates in Europe are pressing for some action. They’re hoping the Obama Administration’s investigations into alleged CIA prisoner abuses will move Europe to do some self-examination of its own. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush Administration. But so far no one’s been held accountable. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN: Europe has been through all of this before. In 2007 Dick Marty, a Swiss member of the Council of Europe, led an investigation into Europe’s role in America’s fight against terrorism. His findings? Several EU states let the US use their airports to move terrorism suspects around the globe. Some helped the CIA abduct targets. And some countries likely hosted secret CIA prisons. But most European governments simply ignored Marty’s report. The question is whether that will change now that the Obama Administration has released an internal CIA report on the agency’s interrogations and with the Justice Department investigating. There’s been some movement in Europe this week. Lithuania says it will investigate reports that it, like Poland and Romania, may have hosted a secret prison during the Bush era. Guilietto Chiesa is a member of the European Parliament from Italy. He says Europe can no longer remain quiet.

GUILIETTO CHIESA: The question now is to have the list of the people who have been detained in Lithuania. And probably there there have been torture, illegal interrogation, and very serious violation of human rights there. That means there are political and penal responsibilities.

HADDEN: Lithuanian denies it hosted a CIA prison and says it’s only investigating to clear its name. Gabriele Betchkaypeeteh is an editor at the Lithuanian daily paper Lietuvos Rytas. She says there’s no way her country could have hosted such a prison without word getting out.

GABRIELE BETCHKAYPEETEH: Technically it’s very difficult to have that prison in a country which has 3.5 million people and the place mentioned of the possible prison is quite small and we believe that local residents probably would have noticed any secret activities.

HADDEN: Romania also denies it hosted a prison. Same with Poland. Although that country says it’s investigating. Reed Brody, with Human Rights Watch in Brussels, says he was hoping that the CIA’s internal report on prisoner abuse would shed some light on this but he says it hasn’t.

REED BRODY: There were 23 pages of information in the CIA report on detention sites that were completely redacted. And obviously the CIA or whoever was involved here was afraid that if information about those sites were disclosed it could lead to further criminal investigations and prosecutions.

HADDEN: There’s also new pressure this week on some European governments to come clean on secret rendition flights. Amnesty International in Ireland says Shannon International Airport was used to move suspects. It’s calling for the Irish government to look into it. Reed Brody says if Europe doesn’t own up to its own role in the US-led war on terrorism it will lose credibility. And worse, quipped someone at the council of Europe today, Europe this person said has been criticizing the States for years on this but not only did Europe aid the effort it may now fall behind the US in investigating it. For The World I’m Gerry Hadden.

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Scientists in Canada whose research in surviving cold water is aimed saving lives have learned that the CIA used their work to develop an interrogation technique. The World’s Carol Hills has details.

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KATY CLARK:  Canada has a scientific feather in its cap. That cold northern country boasts several world-renowned experts in surviving cold temperatures.  Their groundbreaking research has improved the odds of survival for people like sailors, fishermen and those who happen to drive off of bridges into frigid water.  So it came as some surprise to one of those experts that his research has been used by the CIA to develop an interrogation technique.  The World’s Carol Hills reports.

CAROL HILLS: The report released this week by the Justice Department showed that in 2003, CIA officers began using a technique called ‘water dousing’. Not to be confused with water-boarding which is essentially controlled drowning, water dousing involves laying a detainee on a plastic sheet and pouring cold water over him for 10 to 15 minutes.  According to the report, an interrogator believed this was an effective technique, and sent a cable back to CIA headquarters requesting guidelines.  The return cable explained that a detainee, quote, “must be placed on a towel or sheet, may not be placed naked on the bare cement floor, and the air temperature must exceed 65 degrees,” if the detainee isn’t dried off immediately.  Gordon Geezbrecht is a thermophysiology professor at the University of Manitoba.  Yesterday he received an email from a colleague about how the report showed that the CIA had consulted Geezbrecht’s published research in developing the idea of water dousing

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: That was yesterday and today I’ve got a copy of this Red Cross, international Red Cross report, that actually interviews former detainees who actually report that some of these techniques were used on them.  So it became, it moved from theoretical to actual.

CAROL HILLS: His reaction:

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: It is a bit disturbing, for sure.

CAROL HILLS: Geezbrecht knows what it’s like to be immersed in cold water; he’s rendered himself hypothermic more than 40 times in his career.  His most famous immersion was on the David Letterman show in 2004, when he was plunged into a vat of ice water for 15 minutes.  Since then he’s been known as Dr. Popsicle.

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: We were able to take a two or three-hour experiment and condense it into one hour on national television and tell people that yes, cold water is dangerous, but you can survive it as long as you don’t panic.

CAROL HILLS: What he’s demonstrated, on Letterman and in his experiments, is that people can survive longer than they think in cold water.  He calls it the one-ten-one principle.

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: In ice water you have one minute to get your breathing under control, so don’t panic, and you have about ten minutes of meaningful movement, so you have time to figure out what to do to get out.  But then you do have to get moving, and you have an hour or more, one hour or more before you become unconscious due to hypothermia.

CAROL HILLS: But he says he meant his advice to be used to save people, not interrogate them.  For The World, I’m Carol Hills.

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If the U.S. abused and tortured terrorist suspects, and broke the law, why shouldn’t the Obama administration expand its investigation into who was responsible? The World’s Matthew Bell looks at the implications of investigating a former president.>>>The BBC’s Kevin Connolly on President Obama’s dilemma

The possible presidential implications of the CIA interrogations probe; also, the story of a former student democracy activist in China; plus, remembering Ted Kennedy’s fight against apartheid.

If the US broke the law by abusing terrorism suspects under President Bush, should the Obama Administration expand the investigation all the way to the former president? The World’s Matthew Bell reports on the implications of investigating a former president.

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark.  This is the World.  An investigation is under way into alleged CIA abuses terrorism suspects.  We’re still a long way from finding out whether the probe will produce any indictments, but the following question is already out there.  How high up the chain of command will the investigation go?  So far President Obama has appeared reluctant to start a process that could lead to his predecessor.  Here’s more from The World’s, Matthew Bell.

MATTHEW BELL: Newly unclassified documents from the CIA show that the aggressive techniques used during the interrogations of terrorists suspects were closely monitored by officials back in Washington.  These do not appear to have been the actions of a few rogue agents acting on their own.  Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said as much.  He has repeatedly defended so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.  But President Obama disagrees.  He has banned coercive interrogations.  Back in April, the President was asked if he believes that the Bush administration sanctioned torture by green lighting the practice of water boarding which has long been considered an act of torture under international and U.S. law.  The President began his answer with a heavy sigh.  “What I’ve said and I will repeat is that water boarding violates our ideals and our values.  I do believe that it is torture.”  Boil it down and what the President was saying there was that people broke the law, but Mr. Obama went on to show how reluctant he is to open up an investigation that has the possibility of bringing criminal charges against a former president.  “I believe that water boarding was torture, and I think that the – whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.”  In other words, the President seemed to suggest mistakes are things to be forgiven, not investigated.  “There is no good reason not to launch an investigation.”  Steven Waltz of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard says President Obama’s unwillingness has everything to do with politics.  “Obama has lots of alligators to wrestle with right now, and any investigation is going to be you know, politically very charged.  But the whole reason you have a criminal justice system and that you have the rule of law is precisely to prevent politics from interfering with the process of justice.  You don’t want crimes to go uninvestigation or unprosecuted for purely political reasons because once you open that door you can drive an enormous amount of wrongdoing right through it.”  There are two conflicting impulses at work here, says political scientist Robert Gervais of Columbia University.  One is the principle that no one, not even a former president is above the law and the other, Gervais says is the idea that American leaders who made tough, on the spot decisions during wartime should not be second guessed years later.  “You want to literally shot through.  You don’t even want the public debating and discussing this.  It not only weakens our resolve if we have to face you know, terrible situations in the future, but it sort of weakens the body politic – it implicates the whole country in crimes and you don’t want that.  You want leaders who will take if you will the guilt on themselves.”  Gervais says it’s not entirely Machiavellian to believe that bad things happen during wars and there’s a danger of creating paralysis by investigating mistakes of the past.  Presidential historian Robert Dalleck says there’s another tradition in American politics that adds to the pressure on Mr. Obama to back away from investigating his predecessor.  “As soon as a president leaves office, to some degree there’s a halo over his head and the incumbent president is very reluctant to point the finger at a former president and perhaps the most striking example of that was when John Ford excused Richard Nixon’s violations of the law in the Watergate scandal.”  But there is no small amount of pressure to do more about torture allegations than just going after low-level officials.  David Cole is a professor of law at Georgetown.  “If we don’t acknowledge in some official way that what was done was wrong and illegal and not just a mistake and a policy difference, then torture becomes a policy option.”  Cole says this might be accomplished with something less than a full blown criminal investigation.  He suggests creating a 9/11 commission style panel to conduct an official enquiry and come up with recommendations for the future.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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Anchor Katy Clark speaks with John Nichols, author of an unofficial biography of former Vice President Dick Cheney, about allegations of Cheney’s role in authorizing the CIA interrogation techniques now under investigation.

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KATY CLARK: Many of the questions surrounding the use of enhanced interrogation techniques lead back to former Vice President Dick Cheney.  John Nichols is the author of an unofficial Cheney biography.  He’s also Washington correspondent of the magazine, The Nation.  John Nichols what do you believe Cheney’s role was in authorizing or pushing these techniques?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, there’s very little doubt at this point that Vice President Cheney, when he was in office, was a passionate advocate for an aggressive approach to gathering intelligence and he himself has said that he encouraged the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which is of course the euphemism used by members of the administration, or what an awful lot of people call torture.  So, I think it would be almost comic at this point to suggest that he was anything but a driving force in initiating discussions about using enhanced interrogation.  Promoting the authorization of that enhanced interrogation by the Whitehouse and by legal counselors, and finally making sure that it was implemented, encouraging the CIA to do so.  So, I think it would be fair to say he was the central figure.

CLARK: As we hear more learn and learn more about these techniques they seem to have taken place as a result of the slow considered steps of a very vast bureaucracy.  How fair is it to say that all roads lead back to Dick Cheney?

NICHOLS: Of course we have to be careful about assuming that he hatched every plan, came up with every plot.  We don’t need to make him ino the ultimate Machiavelli.  What we do need to find out is the extent to which he was actively engaged at many, many different levels of

bureaucratic and legislative, official and unofficial in promoting the use of what most people in the world would describe as torture.

CLARK: Mr. Cheney has been pretty vocal in defending the Bush administration’s record using enhanced interrogation techniques saying that they delivered intelligence success.  How do you argue with that?

NICHOLS: Well, it’s always very, very important to look at Dick Cheney’s statements.  He is a master communicator of ideas that he wants to get across, but that are carefully plotted so that he doesn’t necessarily have to take responsibility.  And if you look at some of his recent statements about the successes of enhanced interrogation, they’re a little bit vague in the area of whether it was the enhanced interrogation that actually got the intelligence that people are talking about, and this is very, very important.  There is no question that some people on whom enhanced interrogation techniques were practiced did provide intelligence that may have been quite useful to the United States, but neither Cheney nor anyone else that I’ve seen so far, has successfully made a clear linkage between the water boarding, the enhanced interrogation, the torture, and the accessing of that information.

CLARK: Would that be some of the information that would come out in an investigation.  I mean do you think that would be more of what we would find out?

NICHOLS: Well, of course that’s what we want to find out.  And the important thing about this discussion is that we have two roles.  One, in an investigation let’s find out what the United States did.  Were lines crossed, why were they crossed, how were they crossed, what was done that was irresponsible, wrong-headed, potentially illegal?.  And then once you’ve discovered that the much more important question becomes, who made this the case.  Those who promoted those actions are the ones who need to be held to account, and yet it’s very, very silly frankly to fret about the CIA operatives at the low level.  If somebody did something that is grossly illegal, of course they should be held to account, but really what we want to know, who was telling that low level officer what to do, and again there’s an awfully lot of evidence that suggests that Dick Cheney or at least people around Dick Cheney had some role in that telling.

CLARK: Given how much Dick Cheney has really been out there speaking about things that the Bush administration did, do you get a sense that perhaps in some way he is setting himself up as the fall guy here.

NICHOLS: No, I don’t think he’s setting himself as the fall guy.  I think there’s another strategy altogether and that is to win the public relations war, i.e. to keep pushing the idea that the use of these techniques gained intelligence that protected America, to fight, if you will, above the level of the investigation so that even if an inquiry ultimately does point fingers of blame at Dick Cheney, the average American may not view him as an evil player.  They might view him as perhaps and overzealous defender of the safety and good of the nation.

CLARK: John Nichols is Washington correspondent of The Nation and author of Dick, the Man Who is President. Thanks.

NICHOLS: It’s a pleasure.

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The Obama administration is setting strict new standards for treatment of terror suspects, as the Justice Department launches a criminal probe of past interrogation tactics during the Bush administration. The publication of harsh CIA methods has raised questions about how U.S. authorities should best go about conducting interrogations of terrorism suspects. The World’s Matthew Bell reports. (photo: Associated Press)>>>Click here for BBC coverage.

Today on The World: The CIA abuse scandal sparks a revamping of interrogation tactics, early election results in Afghanistan show a close race between the top two contenders, and Tracy Kidder’s new book Strength in What Remains tells a gripping story of what happened to a man after he survived genocide in Burundi and Rwanda.