As one Washington diplomat oversees the closing of Guantanamo Bay — one prisoner at a time — reporter Michelle Shephard tracks his progress
How to empty Guantanamo
By Michelle Shephard
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/734972--how-to-empty-guantanamo
WASHINGTON–He is known as the "Guantanamo czar," a regal title that belies the daily drudgery required for emptying the world's most notorious prison.
Sure, since U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Daniel Fried as his special envoy, the former ambassador has racked up the frequent flyer points, lunching in Palau one weekend and dining in Bermuda a few days later.
But Fried is more travelling salesman than dashing diplomat. His job peddling Guatanamo prisoners is especially hard when the pitch goes something like, "Please give these detainees homes even if we're not willing to do the same."
Daniel Fried, Dan to friends, may just have Washington's toughest job.
And, yes, his last name is pronounced freed.
"I don't think he sleeps," says Boston lawyer Sabin Willett, whose Guantanamo clients' were resettled in Bermuda due to Fried's deal making. "He flies around the world to try to solve this insoluble problem."
Fried's task is to find homes for the dozens of prisoners the Pentagon has cleared for release, but who come from Syria, Libya, Algeria, Uzbekistan, China or other countries where there's a likelihood they would be killed or tortured if returned. His job got more complicated when Congress decided in May that none of these men could set foot on U.S. soil.
Yet Fried has managed to settle 20 detainees in countries such as Spain, Portugal and Ireland, in addition to tropical locales including Bermuda and the Pacific island nation of Palau. Negotiations are ongoing with nearly a dozen other countries, and last week an Algerian detainee arrived in France, two Tunisians went to Italy (where they're expected to face prosecution), and Hungary welcomed a Palestinian.
This may not seem like much progress for six months of work, until you consider that under the six years of the Bush administration only eight detainees were given refuge in countries where they had no ties. They all went to Albania.
When Obama moved into the White House, Guantanamo's population was 242. Today there are 211; expectations are that the number could drop to 200 by the end of the year.
The remaining prisoners fall roughly into five groups. Some, like self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be criminally tried in a U.S. federal court. So far only six of these prisoners have been named, but prosecutors are preparing cases against dozens more.
Others, like Canadian Omar Khadr, will go before a military commission to face war crimes charges.
A third category of detainees – comprising those Obama said "cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people" – will most likely be brought to the U.S. and held under what the administration calls the "law of war" detention policy, which civil rights groups say amounts to indefinite detention.
Other prisoners will be repatriated and either freed or prosecuted in their home countries. This includes many of the Yemeni detainees, who remain a vexing problem for the U.S., wary of returning these men to a country battling an insurgency and local Al Qaeda fighters.
The last group of about 40 prisoners is Fried's responsibility.
When he's in town – which is not often – Fried works out of a modest, sixth-floor U.S. State Department office with his team of four. Tony Ricci, a retired U.S. Army colonel who was previously posted in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, serves as Fried's deputy. Lawyer Mike Williams handles the European file and tracks the status of each detainee. Karen Sasahara, a veteran foreign affairs officer, is responsible for Middle Eastern countries and recently travelled to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Brock Johnson came to the group from Obama's campaign and has helped shepherd deals with less conventional allies such as Palau.
But ultimately it is Fried who's the dealmaker, the one who shakes hands with the presidents and prime ministers. And it's hard to find anyone who thinks he's not the man for the job.
"He is a gifted and principled diplomat," says Tom Malinowski, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch and a friend of Fried since they met under the Clinton administration.
"He has focused much more on getting the job done than on protecting his own career. One of the sayings he likes to quote is, `It's often better to ask forgiveness than ask permission.'
"I think he's broken some diplomatic china."
At 57, Fried still looks the marathon runner he was until a leg injury left him with a limp. Everything about his demeanour exudes energy – how he rarely reclines but instead sits on the edge of his seat, or how in preparation for a handshake he first pulls his bent arm behind him before thrusting it forward with such gusto you're sure you've met before.
But despite this exuberance, Fried has to be careful what he says publicly these days, lest he jeopardize any negotiations. He rarely meets with journalists and as a condition of the interviews with the Star, State Department officials were permitted to vet his direct quotes.
Fried laughs when asked about his "poor Dan" status around town. He doesn't agree with the label. He has worked tough jobs before, and it was no secret that under the Bush administration, for which he served as assistant secretary of state for European Affairs (previously he was ambassador to Poland), he disagreed with some of his government's detention policies.
"I like what I'm doing because it's advancing justice in the world," he says, leaning forward with gold specs in hand. "It's advancing national security actually."
Not everyone seems to think so, as the debate among U.S. legislators has shifted over the year from how-do-we-close-Gitmo to questions about whether it should be closed at all.
Obama conceded last month that he would not meet his Jan. 22 deadline to shut the prison, but hopes to close it some time next year.
Not everyone shares his optimism.
JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT on the day of Obama's inauguration, word spread at Guantanamo that the prison would close. Journalists on the U.S. base scrambled out of their tents in the khaki compound known as Camp Justice when it was discovered that The Washington Post had obtained Obama's draft executive order. Some were still in their pajamas as they banged out stories and called newsrooms from the nearby media hangar.
There had been widespread speculation that closing Gitmo would be one of the president's first acts, but few believed it would the first order of business.
Obama made the closing official two days later, on Jan. 22, along with banning the use of harsh CIA interrogation techniques, including the near-drowning tactic of waterboarding.
The announcement was praised internationally and set the stage for Obama's visits to Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, where he thundered in his Cairo speech that the "interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart."
"It was a very important building block for the Obama administration," says Sarah Mendelson, the author of a report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies on how to close Guantanamo.
"Guantanamo came to symbolize a lot of very controversial counterterrorism policies in the Bush administration ... . The Obama campaign, and then the administration, staked a lot on turning the page on those counterterrorism policies."
But Obama's presidential honeymoon would soon give way to Washington's spring of discontent.
By May, it was clear Obama's task forces reviewing the Guantanamo files were already weeks behind schedule.
Ken Gude, the well-connected associate director at the Center for American Progress who released a report last month entitled "Getting Back on Track to Close Guantanamo," says the teams were "surprised when they discovered the state of the case file system.
"They spent a period of weeks and probably months at the beginning just organizing the case file system into something coherent and something that could be relied upon to make accurate recommendations about prosecution, transfer or release."
As his teams struggled, Obama was also losing ground publicly.
While he re-emphasized the importance of closing Guantanamo during his seminal National Archives speech in May, mentioning the prison 28 times and calling it a "misguided experiment" that set back the U.S.'s "moral authority," less than a mile away, former vice-president Dick Cheney was stealing the spotlight with his own speech.
Cheney argued that Obama's national security policies were putting American lives at risk, igniting his Republican base.
"Obama's is the speech of a young senator who was once a part-time law professor – platitudinous and preachy, vague and pseudo-thoughtful in an abstract kind of way," wrote Weekly Standard editor William Kristol.
"Cheney's is the speech of a grown-up, of a chief executive, of a statesman. He's sober, realistic and concrete, stands up for his country and its public officials."
Mendelson blames the administration for not adequately fighting back and reclaiming the public debate about closing Guantanamo, and for ultimately failing to "sell this to the American public."
"For people who work on this very closely, we knew it was going to be a mess and very complicated," she says.
Meanwhile, for the public, debate was shifting to whether shutting Guantanamo was worth it.
ON JUNE 11, THE GULFSTREAM jet landed in the dark on Guantanamo's short airstrip, a ferry ride across the bay from the prison camps. It was close to 3 a.m. and, despite the executive jet's comfort, no one aboard had slept. The passengers walked down the steps and into the glare of floodlights – U.S. lawyers Willett and Susan Baker Manning, Fried, Ricci, White House lawyer Greg Craig and Bermuda Home Affairs Minister Lt. Col. David Burch.
About 20 minutes later, a bus pulled up on the tarmac and was swarmed by soldiers. Four Uighur detainees were let off one by one.
The Uighurs had been in U.S. custody since their 2002 capture in Afghanistan. Muslim separatists from China, the Uighur prisoners had argued they were captured by mistake as they fled persecution in China – they regarded the U.S. as an ally, not a foe. After seven years, the Pentagon agreed with them, or at the very least decided they no longer posed a danger if released.
But Fried had difficulty finding a country to take them after the U.S. refused. Few wanted to risk the ire of China by offering refuge. Until Bermuda stepped up, the prospects were limited.
What was most amazing about the Bermuda deal was the speed and secrecy of the negotiations. There had been concern furor would erupt in the U.K. if it was known that Bermuda, a British colony, was taking detainees. (The fear was likely well-founded since Britain did later react angrily to not having been informed of the deal.)
In just four weeks, what started as a casual offer of help from Bermuda's prime minister during a White House visit gave way to intense negotiations among Bermudian ministers, Fried and Craig. They hammered out the details in a flurry of meetings, deciding what the U.S. would spend for settlement expenses, finding housing and job prospects in Bermuda, and even locating the Gulfstream at the last minute when it was discovered an American pilot scheduled to make the Guantanamo flight did not have the proper paperwork to land at the base at night.
Willett recalled one high-level meeting with Burch and Bermuda's Premier, Dr. Ewart Brown, when Fried asked that the Bermudians monitor the Uighurs weekly, to "check on their status."
"I remember Premier Brown saying, `Their status? Do you mean whether they've married or not?'" Willett says. "Everybody laughed."
" 'Ambassador Fried, this is Bermuda,'" Willett recalls Burch interjecting. "`There's no one I need to meet with every week in Bermuda.'"
One potential obstacle was getting permission from the Uighurs – not an easy task, as communication to the offshore base is limited and prisoners tend to be suspicious.
"If you're a Uighur and you've never heard of Bermuda, or you may have heard of it and know nothing about it, all you know is that it's another island," Willett says.
But as he patiently described Bermuda over the phone, one of his clients, Abdullah Abdulqadir, interrupted.
"He says, `Sabin. How long do we have for this call?'" Willett recounts. "I say, `An hour.' He says, `We've only got 10 minutes left. I want it known that I want to accept this deal... I get it. I get it. I want to tell you before the clock runs out.'"
Two weeks, later they boarded the jet to freedom.
Willett described the mood onboard as "giddy." The Uighurs sat with their lawyers and translator at the back, drinking Cokes and eating sandwiches as they looked at the picture books Willett had brought. They insisted Fried join them, worried he wasn't eating.
Willett vividly recalls Abdulqadir telling him he was just 22.
"You're not 22," Willett responded. "How old are you really?"
"I was 22 when I got to Gitmo," Abdulqadir answered. "My life is starting over again now. I'm 22."
Their arrival at Bermuda's Hamilton Airport was postcard perfect, with dolphins frolicking in the ocean as they flew low in the early morning light. No one could believe a throng of cameras didn't greet them.
Bermuda's newest residents had two hours of peace until the island's premier held a news conference announcing the deal. Fried was already on his way home to Washington as journalists descended on the island.
Four down, dozens to go.
ON A STILL November morning in Guantanamo's Camp 4, the nightly soundtrack of clanking doors and sudden bursts of static voices from guard radios was broken by a lone melodic voice. The call to prayer started softly, then grew louder until the sound was overtaken by the chirping of a flock of birds.
The prisoners emerged from their cells greeting one another with handshakes or hugs, some touching their chests and nodding. Camp 4 is where the most cooperative prisoners – in military parlance, the "highly compliant detainees" – reside.
Toronto-born Khadr is among them, and in these hours before dawn, when a Star reporter was allowed in a guard tower to witness the camp come to life, Khadr walked with his prayer beads clasped behind him, circling the prison track slightly stooped, mimicking the gait of prisoners three times his age.
This is Guantanamo today, and as Washington struggles to figure out how to close it, it's business as usual for the detainees and those who guard them.
Perhaps the only difference these days is the weekly visits by foreign delegates looking to interview the prisoners Fried has suggested their countries accept.
Camp commander Adm. Tom Copeman says his officers don't get involved in the politics of resettlement, wryly adding, "We're not military-match dot com." But the emptying of the prison, one deal at a time, does become his concern if detainees are agitated by the uncertainty of their fate. There are security precautions planned for next month, as base commanders fear prisoners may revolt in late January to mark Obama's first closing date.
Copeman told the Star that to try to avoid disappointing detainees, they aren't informed about transfers until a deal is "rock solid."
Fried does not come to Guantanamo often, but he did meet the Uighur detainees destined for Palau earlier this year. Sitting at Camp Iguana, the prison on a rocky outcrop overlooking the ocean where detainees who have been cleared by the U.S. courts reside, Fried talked to the Uighurs through a fence.
They had many questions about the deal, starting with, "Where's Palau?" Then they asked for a written invitation – something Fried later arranged with the island's government.
"He looked them right in the eye and told them," Copeman says of Fried. "I thought it was great... He was very straightforward with us and the detainees."
WHILE NO DEAL has been easy for Fried, the final few cases will likely pose the most problems – and could derail closing the prison.
Fried will not talk publicly about specific countries, but it's likely the U.S. administration is still hoping Canada will be among those to lend a hand, despite the Canadian government's initial chilly reception.
Fried travelled to Ottawa in the spring to attend a high-level inter-agency meeting to discuss the possibility and, by most reports, was optimistic when he left.
But shortly after his visit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office issued a press release stating Canada would not accept any prisoners. The apparent snub was the first time Fried and his team learned of Canada's position, according to a U.S. administration official with knowledge of the talks. "It was puzzling," the official said.
In Canada, however, there was little opposition to Harper's decision, as many Canadians balked at having to accept prisoners the U.S. was unwilling to take. "I cannot blame anyone in Canada who asks that obvious question," says Human Rights Watch's Malinowski.
"But at the same time there's a humanitarian imperative here to find a place for these guys," he argues. "If U.S. politicians are being pigheaded and stupid, that's no excuse for Canadian, French, German, Swedish politicians to be equally pigheaded and stupid for the sake of consistency."
Coinciding with Obama's announcement that the January deadline would be missed, Washington was rocked by the surprise resignation of White House senior attorney Greg Craig – a strong advocate of shuttering Gitmo – amid speculation that he was being pushed out. Phillip Carter, the deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, handed in his papers the same day, although the reasons for his departure remain unclear.
Does any of this make Fried's job more difficult?
If it does, he won't say.
"No country has backed out and said, `Let's slow down the process,'" he observes about the missed deadline and resignations.
Emails to Fried were returned last week with an automatic "out of office" message, directing immediate inquiries to his deputy. Fried was on the road again.
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