The United States (US) military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been one of the most visible symbols of the ‘War on Terror’ since September 11, 2001. Following the Bush Administration’s engagement in Afghanistan, the naval outpost on Cuba’s southern point was designated as a detention centre for the rising number of captives captured by US soldiers in the conflict zone. Since the first prisoners arrived on Cuban land on January 11, 2002, it is believed that around 800 people from at least 40 different countries have been brought to and imprisoned in detention facilities at ‘Gitmo’ with no legal rights and under extreme conditions (Lohne, 2021, p.195).
This paper will examine the case study of Guantanamo Bay in the context of the War on Terror after the attacks of September 2001. This paper will argue that the Bush Administration made use of strategies to legitimise the state crimes committed in the base of Guantanamo Bay. This article will explain how by designating new terminology for prisoners of war and creating a remote securitization of Islam, the White House circumvented the national courts, as well as International Law and the Geneva Conventions. This paper will explore how the Bush Administration established “exceptional sovereignty” over Guantanamo Bay and managed to bypass any criminal court. This paper will illustrate its main argument, by exploring theories of academics through the lenses of state crimes.
Finally, this paper will examine the consequences of the case on a national and international level, as well as the current situation of the base.
The detention camp of Guantanamo Bay was established in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic extremist militant network al-Qaeda. Its main purpose was to detain individuals suspect of committing terrorist acts and relocate enemy prisoners from Afghanistan so that the military could concentrate on their operation.
As the Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld (2002) stated ‘the primary intention was to hold extremely dangerous people, interrogate them in an ideal environment and prosecute them for war crimes’.
However, research has proven that the situation behind the walls of the base represented a different reality. Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were exempt from judicial rights. They were not provided with lawyers or hearings, their true identities were kept hidden and the officials were not allowed to talk to prisoners about their personal lives (Cole, 2016, pp.157). The captives remained isolated from the rest of the world and held uncommunicated under brutal conditions and torture by the officials.
According to article 13 (1949, p.97) of the Third Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war must be treated humanely and any illegal act by the Detaining Power – including intimidation, physical mutilation, medical scientific experiments, or any act – that may endanger the mental health or cause death of the prisoner, are prohibited.
Nonetheless, in February 2002 George Bush – appealing to the War on Terror as a justification – claimed that the Geneva Conventions would not apply to al Qaeda suspects captured in Afghanistan (Bush 2002). Bush referred to Al-Qaeda suspects as ‘unlawful enemy combatants’, rather than ‘war prisoners’, thus playing a legal strategy to legitimise the use of ‘exceptional practices’ towards detainees. As a result, the US officials in Afghanistan perceived the message that they should treat detainees more brutally than the conventional standards permitted (Human Rights Watch 2005, pp.9).
Hundreds of prisoners from Afghanistan were brought to the Guantanamo Bay base on the assumption that U.S. courts nor the international law could not reach them there. Trials were carried out through military commissions rather than ordinary civilian courts (Malinowski, 2008, pp.149). Detainees could not see the evidence against them since it was classified.
The CIA was authorized to capture suspects of terrorism anywhere in the world (Malinowski, 2008, pp.149). Therefore, citizens from anywhere in the world could be considered suspects and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay or other detention camps with no judicial right to counteract their charges. Any similarity or suspected connection to Al-Qaeda or terrorism could lead to interrogations and subsequent imprisonment.
For example, interrogators at Guantanamo Bay considered the Casio F-91W wristwatch as evidence of Al Qaeda involvement. Reports stated: ” The watch was known to have been handed to students at al-Qaida bomb-making training courses in Afghanistan in which students received instruction in the preparation of timing devices using the Casio watch. (Ball, 2011).
Furthermore, the Bush Administration authorized the CIA to carry out interrogation techniques against detainees, that the US has historically viewed as torture (Malinowski, 2008, pp.149). According to a 2013 investigation by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP), officials and health professionals collaborating with the military and intelligence services “planned and engaged in violent, inhumane, and cruel treatment and torture of captives” (Boseley, 2013).
The Bush Administration justified the use of these mechanisms, arguing that it would produce exceptionally useful intelligence in order to save lives (Malinowski, 2008, 151). In this way, the US officials could justify the designation of the prisoners as enemy combatants.
However, as Lewis (2004) discusses, torture might have been used to obtain false statements by detainees, who, after brutal falsely admit their guilt. Blakeley (2007, p.375) argues that the use of brutal methods against detainees was in reality, a tool for the states and the political elites to suppress political dissent and preserve their hegemony and interests.
According to Blackeley (2007, p.374), the use of torture may be understood in the framework of three different models that can overlap, according to the functions the state aims to achieve: security, stability and legitimacy.
First, the security model is supported by both authoritarian regimes and liberal states, pursuing the function of obtaining intelligence to defeat security threats (Blackeley 2007, p.377).
Second Blackeley (2007, p.381) introduces the stability model, endorsed by authoritarian regimes and often supported by external liberal elites, with the objective of instilling terror in the populace and deterring resistance
Third, the legitimacy model intends to legitimise the right of using torture by creating identities (Blackeley 2007, pp.377). Following Blackeley´s (2007) argument, this paper argues that the illegal practices carried out by the Bush Administration at both a national and international level may be understood in the context of the security and legitimacy models.
According to Blakeley’s (2007, p.377) security model, torture is justified to increase security against threats. The Bush Administration argued that torture would be carried out with the sole purpose of preventing a catastrophe, as an exception not a rule, and therefore far away from a state of tyranny. What Luban (2007, pp.252) refers to as ‘liberal ideology of torture’.
Luban (2007, p.252) agrees that the liberal ideology combines all these notions in a mesmerising metaphor: the ticking time bomb scenario. If terrorists do not talk or provide useful information about imminent threats or activities of other terrorists, civilians will be in danger when the ‘ticking bomb’ goes off (Blackeley 2007, p.377).
The Schlesinger Report on Abu Ghraib (2005, p.974) – US prison in Iraq where US officials made use of torture towards detained prisoners – states that “[f]or the U.S., most cases for permitting harsh treatment of detainees on moral grounds begin with variants of the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario.”
The ticking bomb metaphor cheats its way around moral difficulties also in Guantanamo Bay. It stipulated that terrorist are likely to be organising new attacks and while the bomb is there, ticking away, officials have the responsibility to prevent it by any means. George W. Bush made use of the ‘ticking-bomb’ scenario and euphemisms like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, in his efforts to redefine torture and achieve certain level of legitimacy to carry out practices involving torture.
Eroukhmanoff (2015, p.1) considers these linguistic strategies as part of the remote securitisation of Islam by the White House.
In the context of the War on Terror, the rhetoric of Islamic Terrorism in use by the Bush Administration portrays the image of the Muslim communities as the ‘threatening Other’ and thus securitised in western societies (Mamdani, 2002, p.766). The discursive strategies by the political elite – for example the Department of Homelands and Security (DHS) or the everyday intervention by the police contributes to the remote securitization of Islam
This remote securitization creates a ‘remote Other’, an ontological distant being that is unconnected to the self. A separation that places radicalised Muslims or terrorists against ‘us’, un thus, reaffirming their own identity (Eroukhmanoff 2015, p.9). Therefore, a separation is placed between securitisers and securitees that are not only distant but above them. It is as if “they” (radicalised Muslims) could be observable, defined and analysed for what they “really” are (Eroukhmanoff, 2015, p.6) It therefore removes the security practitioners from a reality of destruction, where exceptional methods including torture are legitimised.
Since 2001 in New York, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) increased their surveillance of American Muslims, monitoring their everyday life (Shamas and Arastu, 2012, p.4). In spite of the apparent illegality of those actions, the NYPD stated that communities with a large population of ethnic Muslims serve as ‘fertile ground’ for the seeds of extremism or radicalisation (Silber and Bhatt 2007, 22). In this way, the authorities create a dehumanised identity that is separated from them, legitimising their power over them.
The authorities who make use of unlawful and immoral practices are thus perceived as selfless public workers, heroic, willing to go to extremes just because the situation is urgent and so many innocent lives weigh on the conscience of the suffering servants. (Luban, 2007, p.253). This modus operandi legitimised the brutality of the authorities and the exceptional methods that included torture in Guantanamo Bay
As Eroukhmanoff (2015, p.13) security practitioners advance counter-terrorism strategies using a rationalist paradigm, or, as March and Olsen (March and Olsen 1998, p.949) put it, the “logic of foreseeable consequences.”
According to (March and Olsen 1998, 949-950) ‘based on ratinal choice theory, a consequential framework sees the universe as a collection of rational agents negotiating their preferences and interests, with individual acts completely “explained” by finding consequential causes’
Therefore, the government must identify the indicators and behaviours of radicalised Muslim in order to prevent any terrorist attack. This is what March and Olsen (1998, 949) consider as ‘logic of expected consequences’.
The use of the Rational Theory as an explanation of the radicalisation of Islam terrorists, suggested a ‘common pattern of action’ regarding indoctrination and radicalisation of Muslims. If someone is the last ‘stages’ of the process of radicalisation, it would be predictable that they could commit a terrorist act Eroukhmanoff (2015, p.14). In other words, someone suspected of only sharing beliefs or ideas related with terrorism – what Neumann (2013) called ‘cognitive radicalisation’ – could be imprisoned in order to prevent ‘potential’ behaviours or acts – what Neumann (2013) considers ‘cognitive radicalisation’.
As a result, cognitive radicalised subjects could be accused of behavioural terrorists with no possibility of contingency, since it is considered as inevitable.
However, Neumann (2013) makes a distinction between cognitive and behavioural radicalisation. He argues that an individual suspected of cognitive radicalisation will not necessarily lead to the individual to a behavioural radicalisation.
This paper agrees with the relational theory, that considers history as a consequence of interactions of actors, and thus, radicalisation cannot be predicted following a common pattern.
The remote securitisation of Islam, including linguistic strategies of euphemising and metaphors as well as rationalisation of the process of radicalisation, allows the legitimisation of practices committed by the state than would not be justified in other contexts.
Monaghan, M., & Prideaux, S. (2016, p.26) argue that states may often commit unlawful acts as they have the power to legitimise their actions.
As Monaghan, M., & Prideaux, S. (2016, p.47) highlight, the state is a social actor that engage in the social construction crime. As a result, the state constitutes what is a crime and what is not, leading to an ambiguous definition that allows the state to bypass the national and international law.
Therefore, surveillance of Muslims, as well as imprisonment with no judicial right and torture and brutal methods in Guantanamo Bay, may not directly be considered as illegal, despite many would consider it as state crimes.
As Matthews and Kauzlarich (2007, p.47) put it, when states violate their own laws, clearly state crimes are being committed … [However, the] question of state crime, for criminologists working within a legalistic framework, is not whether it is a real phenomenon, but rather which legal definition(s) to use
States, according to Monaghan, M., & Prideaux, S. (2016, p.25), seek to maintain their hegemony and power, maintaining a social order and social control. The needs of the state elites are often supported through institutions or corporations. Politicians may establish alliances with business organisations, media, armed forces… in order to achieve their ends.
The government of the United States resolved two important problems to keep the practices carried out in Guantanamo Bay and their prisoners away from the national and international courts and institutions.
First, as Rapley (2007, p.237) explains, placing the prisoners outside the United States hinged the access to American justice system – if the prisoners were held within the United States, they would have had certain legal rights under American laws and possibility of trial. (Rapley 2007). Furthermore, the president Bush was declared as commander in chief of with total control over them. (In constitutional terms, the executive branch took the position that the judicial branch had no part to play with regard to these enemy combatants. (Rapley, 2007, p.237)
Second, the designation of the exceptional term ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ to the detainees instead of war prisoners left a vacuum in the definition of their rights. The International law and international institutions including Red Cross wouldn’t have rights to inspect.
As Reid-Henry (2007, p.627) argues, Guantanamo Bay has been presented through the lens of ‘exceptional sovereignty’, as a legal limbo. He states that international law does not apply to the detainee camp, since the United States owns the complete authority over the base and the ultimate jurisdiction.
However, evidence through investigative journalism, reports were leaked, showing authorised mistreatment towards prisoners. Practices ranged from intimidation to prisoners being placed in animal cages, kicked, and beaten, long periods of isolation and forced fed during hunger strikes.
These practices raised both national and international concern. The US reputation was severely damaged and international institutions like Amnesty International claimed that Guantanamo Bay was a ‘Gulag of our Times’ (Norton-Taylor, 2005).
However, as Loshne (2013, p.211) suggests that more attention should be given to the effects of human rights reporting. It argues that human rights NGOs have become part of the everyday at Guantanamo Bay, and that Guantanamo Bay itself has become permanent, normalized and unaffected by the urgency that usually characterizes contexts of human rights reporting.
Since Guantanamo Bay was established in 2002, approximately 780 detainees were relocated to other centres, and 9 were confirmed to have died or committed suicide (The New York Times, 2022). Currently, 37 people are imprisoned in the military base.
In 2018, Donald Trump, the former US president, signed an executive an executive order to keep the Guantánamo Bay prison camp open (Borger, 2018).
However, President Joe Biden’s Administration announced in February 2021 that the facility will be closed in the course of the next years.
In conclusion, this paper examined the case study of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. It analysed the socio-political context after the events of September 2001 and how the base was established in order to detain war prisoners and obtain intelligence of new potential threats. The work by Eroukhmanoff (2015), Blakeley (2007), Welch (2006) and other academics, illustrated the case study with some theories that help understand with accuracy the case of Guantanamo Bay. This paper explained how the remote securitisation of Islam through euphemisms – like the designation of the term ‘enemy combatants’ to prisoners – or the use of metaphors – like the ‘bad growing seeds’ or the ‘ticking bomb’ – helped the Bush Administration to legitimise their actions. This way, this paper argues that the Bush Administration committed state crimes including torture, illegal surveillance, and judicial infractions, but through legal strategies, they succeeded in legitimise them. Finally, this paper explored the consequences of the detention camp in a national and international level as well as the current situation of the prison.
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