coming up on our t.v. today is the six month mark for the guantanamo bay hunger strike even with growing calls for the detention camps closure its future remains unclear we have extensive coverage of the hunger strike in the calls to close the facility up ahead. and it's tuesday august sixth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sachs and you're watching artie's special coverage of the hunger strike at guantanamo bay. so what exactly are we talking about when it comes to guantanamo well let's take

a look at the numbers the prison is now in its twelfth year of operation in that time seven hundred seventy nine men have been detained there including more than twenty children according to u.s. government data ninety two percent of these inmates were never affiliated with al qaeda and eighty six percent of them were captured not by u.s. soldiers but instead thanks to bounty offers now of those seven hundred seventy nine prisoners five hundred thirty two were eventually released by the bush administration another seventy two by the obama administration nine individuals have died at gitmo including seven from apparent suicides and that's more than the number of detainees who've actually been convicted of any crime. so that leaves one hundred sixty six prisoners still there of those eighty six have been cleared for release but are still waiting and forty six have been deemed too dangerous to be released but the government doesn't have enough evidence to prosecute them in a trial and each year it's costing two point seven million dollars. per prisoner to

operate making it the most expensive prison in the world. obama ran for president on a promise to close down the prison excuse me closed down the prison a promise he soon realized he wasn't fit to keep water out of all bets easy to close down guantanamo are legitimate is where do so when we've got. that is open when we suspend habeas corpus those kinds of things erode our moral claims that we are acting they have broader universal principles i've said repeatedly that i intend to close guantanamo and i will follow through on that person executive order that we are signing. by the authority vested in me as presently. president by the constitution and laws of the united states of america probably close the detention facility at guantanamo i knew when i ordered guantanamo closed that it would be difficult and complex it was always our intent to transfer detainees to other

countries only under conditions that provide assurances that our security is being protected it is not a surprise to me that we've got problems in guantanamo which is why. when i was campaigning in two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight. and when i was elected in two thousand and eight i said we need to close guantanamo now congress. determined that they would not let us close my badge addresses and let me visit find out how the voice of that woman. is worth paying attention to. obviously obviously. obviously i do not agree. with much of what she said. now despite all of that everything you heard there good mo is still open and yes congress has made the job a lot more difficult for the president by slipping in legislative roadblocks prevent detainees from being transferred out of the prison but still the president

has options on the table to close the facility unilaterally in particular he has a national security waiver which allows the pentagon to transfer any detainee out of gitmo as long as it's in the national security interests of the nation and the president has routinely said keeping them open harms our national security still though nothing but as a result of the now six month hunger strike there has been some actual movement in the direction of closing the facility artie's liz wahl reports on what this hunger strike has managed to accomplish. it began and february dozens of detainees taking part in a hunger strike they refused food to protest indefinite detention and harsh treatment now as days and then months go by their health continues to deteriorate eventually military doctors resort to force feeding the detainees to keep them alive a practice that has since been condemned by members of congress and military

physicians the plain truth is a force feeding violates medical ethics and international legal obligations and nothing claimed in the name of defending our country can justify cruel inhuman and degrading treatment of another man or woman the protest reached its peak in early july one hundred six detainees were on hunger strike forty six of them being force fed it's a problem congress could no longer ignore on july twenty fourth the senate judiciary committee held the first hearing dedicated to shutting the base down since two thousand and nine every day it remains open guantanamo prison weakens our alliances inspires our enemies and calls into question our commitment to human rights countries or champion the rule of law and human rights do not walk away prisoners. without charge or trial the obama administration has made little progress in achieving his goal of shutting the base down the promise he's made since his first

presidential run and once again in may he declared his dedication to close the controversial prison did most become a symbol of around the world for an america that flouts the rule of law since that speech there has been some signs that the administration is serious the white house announced it would transfer two detainees from guantanamo bay back to algeria another sign a new state department envoy was appointed tasked with overseeing the transfer of prisoners and a meeting at the. my house president obama and the president of yemen agreed to work together in sending guantanamo bay detainees cleared for transfer back to their home country this visit i think reinforces the strong partnership cooperation let's go to in the united states and the government of the other a critical partnership since most of the detainees act entente i'm obey are from yemen but even with these moves there still doubt the prison will close any time

soon it remains a sensitive subject with many unanswered questions i have a hard time seeing how it how it is responsible to shut down our detention facilities and send these individuals home where they almost surely would be released and almost surely would return to threaten and kill more americans in the hunger strike has died down during the holy month of ramadan but dozens are still refusing food and while the fate of the prisoners remains uncertain a hunger strike at the very least has washington talking in washington liz wahl r.t. now the latest news coming out of guantanamo concerns invasive or what some are calling abusive searches of prisoners before they leave camp to make a phone call to their family or meet with their lawyer the regular the regularity sees me of these sorts of searches is new having only appeared around the time of the start of the hunger strike and they're having

a profound effect as detainees are now refusing meetings with their lawyers just say so they don't have to go through these intrusive searches and lawyers argue that this is the intended purpose of the searches to control the flow of information out of the prison as well as the detainees access to legal counsel reporter jason leopold filed a motion in federal court to have the procedures and rationale for these searches released but according to a brief filed by the department of justice last week releasing such information could put the prison at risk of an attack from al qaeda the brief reads quote release of the operational security and force protection information in the declaration would better enable our enemies to attack the detention facilities at guantanamo or undermine security at the facility. yes the department of justice is concerned that al qaeda may attack guantanamo and this is the point when all the trappings of our war on terror began devouring each other whatever the reason it's

important to remember that with the force feeding and now these searches the conditions for prisoners at guantanamo are not getting any better in fact they're getting worse earlier we spoke with parties a senior staff attorney at the center for constitutional rights who represents several detainees we asked her how all of this is affecting her clients. i was at guantanamo the first week of june and i met with three men that we represent all yemeni two of them have been cleared they're among the group of eighty six who have been cleared by the obama administration to leave and they were cleared in two thousand and nine. none of them have been charged. they were all participating in the hunger strike one of them was actually a long time a long term hunger striker and he's being force fed so he's going through the process that we've heard much about and that has been widely condemned by the united nations by the red cross by the american medical association by the world

medical association by everyone which entails being strapped into a chair have a tube force up your nose down into your stomach and have liquid formula pumped in for an hour he goes through that at least once a day. their condition was they were struggling when i saw them they were almost five months into their strike they had lost a significant amount of weight i had seen them in april and i was i was shocked at how much how much more weight they had lost and the physical changes that i had seen between april and june so they were struggling but when i saw them they were still very much resolved to continue their strike to continue as they told me until they saw actual transfers happen i have not been able to speak with them or meet with them since then because of searches that have been happening at guantanamo

because of conditions at the base the searches and tailor. incredibly invasive physical searches that happen four times every time the men are moved from their cells to a meeting room with an attorney or to a phone call with an attorney or even to a phone call with a family member they go through what has been described as. as a physical assault a sexual assault and that is absolutely i think consistent with what i've heard one of the men i met with told me and what it was like being moved to our meeting room and he was it took him half an hour just to calm down he was so agitated and so so upset and he went through that again four times on the way back as a result of those searches we had scheduled a phone call with him two days after i met with him and he turned that phone call down because he couldn't go through with it we then got a letter from him a month later this month in july actually telling us to cancel a trip that we had planned in august to see him because he couldn't bear to go

through those searches that was part of the senior attorney for the center for constitutional rights. give a horror stories on isolated to just the detainees james he was a muslim chaplain a good movie served there for less than a year in two thousand and two and his experience as a kid no had a profound effect on him and he's since written a book about his ordeal titled for god and country james joined me earlier to tell his story. well i served in guantanamo as the muslim chaplain assigned to the detention camp. and basically after objecting to the the horrible conditions the enormous amount of abuse that was going on there then i was railroaded and accused of being a terrorist myself and that landed me in prison by the u.s. military which sort of stuff did you see at guantanamo. well i was very much aware of the qur'an being desecrated that was

a big story that was exposed i think initially by newsweek magazine in two thousand and five that was happening when i was there there were reports. stories from prisoners how they were maybe subjected to being put in you know what you might call this a tannic circle where interrogators attempted to force them to you know make prostration like in the form of the muslim prayer in the center of the globe and then of course there was sexual humiliation being carried out on the part of female interrogators down in guantanamo were you outspoken while you were there about what you were seeing you do you think that played a role in what eventually happened to you which was the military would after you would basically accuse you of it of the enemy is that correct. well i have no doubt that my raising concerns about the mistreatment of prisoners was the catalyst for the military coming after me in addition to my own faith being muslim as well and

that made it very easy for them to say that perhaps he's a terrorist too but my role going into the prison was to get information from the prisoners to allow the commanded to know why there were so many riots disturbances and chaos going on in the prison cell blocks and what eventually happened to you in these charges that you were facing. basically when i was investigated from top to bottom it came came out that i had basically raised concerns about mistreatment of prisoners i had complained about the abuse and torture of prisoners at guantanamo and all those charges all the accusations that were levied against me were dropped and i left the u.s. military in two thousand and five with an honorable discharge you interacted with. these prisoners on a daily basis what were they like and. this was at the very beginning this was in two thousand and one when the when the facility the first prisoner was transferred

there in two thousand and two it's been two thousand to do you think they could have possibly imagined that more than ten years later some of them would still be awesome. well when i went down there and was sent to this prison camp in late two thousand and two i didn't know what to expect but very very quickly i recognize that many of these people were like normal people who i had met in other communities even here in the united states. it really wasn't a reality that at that time in two thousand and two that there were any hardcore terrorists now there might be fifteen or so high value. terrorists that might be in one time i'm old now but at that time. those who were being. real terrorists were not held in guantanamo but were held in secret cia black sites not are you personally surprised that this prison remains open more than a decade later. i'm very surprised especially because i was. a big

supporter of president obama when he was running for the presidency back in two thousand and eight i even was a a national delegate and went to the democratic national convention in support of obama because he had a strong promise to close down guantanamo and i was very enthused when he signed that executive order his second day of office that he would close guantanamo within one year but that was back in two thousand and nine and now here we are two thousand and thirteen this prison camp is still up and running full steam ahead and doesn't seem like it's going to be close anytime soon. i don't want to draw a comparison between the struggle that guantanamo detainees experience compared to the staff at guantanamo clearly one side struggles a lot more but as someone who worked at the prison how did that experience affect you personally and how might it affect others like prison guards who work there as well. there's

a lot of stress no doubt on the prison staff the guards and those who work in one time obey long hours and there's really sometimes no way for the troops down there to to let off steam to let off that stress and and what was happening down in guantanamo what i was there in the early stages a lot of those guards would take their frustrations out on the prisoners and even fight them at times and that would cause a lot of conflict and tension throughout the entire operation where you can use to be done to close down the prison. well i think there's some good steps being taken right now we see some new wording in legislation that's being proposed which will allow for the transfer of prisoners out of guantanamo but i'm still of the opinion that president obama as the commander in chief has the authority and the a power as an executive right now to close down this prison that was james e.

former chaplain with us army author of the book for god and country thank you so much for joining us no problem thank you also walking away from gitmo a changed man was former holbrooke's you served in the prison from two thousand and three to two thousand and four and he's also the author of the book traitor which documents many of his experiences i spoke with terrier terry earlier today and asked him what sort of instructions he was given as a guard when it comes to dealing with the detainees in short we were told not to interact with them not to look at them as humans not to talk with them not to speak with them had nothing to do with them unless it was absolutely necessary important to work how do you think that the dynamic. you know led to the relation between detainees and guards i mean you're being told to not even treat these people as though they're humans or not even look at them with that so some sort of hostility there. but i can't imagine it would obviously foster

a good working environment or at least a semi a layer or drill environment many of the individuals that i served with kerry that had to do with him throughout the entire time i don't know and many of them came home from work with your inner feces on them as a result of having that tell you since converted to islam was that it all motivated by your time. absolutely the experience of being when one of those things that i saw the detainee's ability to hold resolve and conduct themselves as. civil adults and the environment like that was quite an all inspiring situation as a result of just being curious in the vigil i decided to pick up the koran and read it like many of the other cards i served with. most of us had no issue with it we saw that it was quite similar to what we already believe high second a step further and adopted the psalmist by faith based on what you know about the prison and what one needs to be done to help close it.

i think quite simply the only way that we can find clues for kuantan a mo is to explain to the average american that these men have not been charged tried or convicted out of seven hundred seventy five men and we have sent seventy eight point five percent of them home we have one hundred sixty six remaining and of a hundred sixty six remaining we've had to live in your ears to find any shred of evidence to charge try and convict them and we've not been able to do that nor we've been able to falsify the evidence i would think of america being the great nation that it is and having the wonderful legal system that it does can extend the courtesy of sending people home after ten years eleven years twelve years of captivity. david we need to have a good look in the mirror and take

a look at ourselves that was terry holbrooke's former guard on tom obey and author of the book traitor. now one of the chief architects of the guantanamo bay detention facility is now saying the prison should have never been built in the first place william would sell is the deputy assistant defense secretary for detainees affairs and in an exclusive interview with the daily mail over the weekend lead sow said it was wrong from the get go to create this nether region of law at guantanamo bed and that prisoners should have been legally designated as prisoners of war held in afghanistan until the war is over then either released or charged with a crime and taken back to the united states but that didn't happen and here we are twelve years later i was joined earlier by retired colonel morris davis former chief prosecutor at guantanamo bay and now a law professor at howard university and lieutenant colonel barry when gard defense attorney at guantanamo bed i started by asking colonel davis about william lead cell views on the prison. it was really interesting to read the article over the

weekend believed so i don't know very well but i've known him for quite a while and as you mentioned he was one of the original architects he was a judge advocate a military officer back working for the defense department when nine eleven happened so he really was there from day one planning this process that now in two thousand and thirteen he says never should have happened to begin with and he seems to be like a number of other officials that shortly before leaving office do a one eighty and try to get on the right side of history before they step out of the i think it's dick cheney i saw an interview with him and he said that they purposely chose. they could do it outside legal protections that are for the united states what are some of those rights and legal protections that they've managed to evade by creating as you go back i mean the whole rationale for choosing guantanamo was it was believed at the time which is proven wrong over and over over history was it was outside the reach of the law is the perfect place to exploit people for

intelligence and not to apply the geneva conventions which all of the military services argued we should as the lights out said we should apply the geneva conventions treat these people as p.o.w.'s and we had the john hughes and the dick cheney's and david addington who came up with this new category the unlawful enemy combatant which is a term you will find in the geneva conventions that we came up with to avoid the law and not call them p o doug lieutenant colonel barry when you are a defense attorney at guantanamo bay what exactly does that mean when when do you get called into to defend detainees how do you fit in sort of the legal system that's been built in. well back in two thousand and eight. the end of the bush administration they attempted to put many cases into the process the military commissions and when in so doing what they did is they entitled to use men defense attorneys military defense attorneys now to date there's only been about thirty cases where. the men actually have a military defense attorney so my role is to be

a zealous advocate for my clients i have a kuwaiti and an afghan and the afghanis cleared for release and the kuwaiti will be indefinitely detained forever. my job is to go down to guantanamo bay and to try to formulate a strategy to to gain their release through the judicial system unfortunately it doesn't appear as though any justice is forthcoming in guantanamo bay in any way shape or form so you say that there's been thirty cases roughly thirty cases brought here no not thirty cases brought to d.m. to the bush administration they attempted to try to put a bunch of cases into the system now the majority of those cases the charges have since been dismissed as we've seen in both of my cases that i represent the prisoners and we're thinking about seven hundred seventy nine prisoners have gone in out of this facility some are still in the facility of those vevo may try to charge thirty or so with a crime well known the i mean an eleven and a half years we've done seven completed proceeding seven the majority of those

seven have not sustained the burden and have been reversed so to date it's my understanding there's about three cases where it has sustained and the convictions have been upheld about three that's out of seven hundred seventy nine men best case scenario according to the government's own statistics if all goes right and they get the sub standard system of justice known as the military commission that's pro prosecutorial they can do up to twenty cases total colonel davis you're a former prosecutor at guantanamo what does it say that of all these people have come in and out they've had only seven convention convictions and some were overturned and of those seven five of the seven are no longer at guantanamo so one of the jokes we used to make was it get no you gotta lose to win because you actually got charged as a war criminal and convicted you right now have a five in seven chance that you're not it get were for another hundred and sixty some guys they've never been charged never convicted then have no prospect of.

going home but it was clearly again it was picked as a site that was outside the reach of the law we created this second rate system of justice has been amended again and again and again and again and each time we've told the world trust us this time we've got it right and we've managed to you know slug through seven cases in eleven years for federal courts and prosecuted hundreds over that same period of time so we need to give up this charade in either prosecute these guys in federal court or start making plans to send them home as a former prosecutor who now says that this facility should have never been opened and operate in the way that what caused you to come to that understanding well again the military the uniformed military services were never in favor of guantanamo to begin with but the political appointees told us you know we had to do it and so we tried to make the best of it and i believe when i took the job there were people appointed above me that were committed to trying to do this in a credible way may have made the comment before that you know my generation looks

back at nuremberg with kind of a romanticized view of how we did justice they are and my hope was that my grandkids may look back when they get mo and said with that same notion but over time it's become clear that even now if they have the most perfect trial ever conducted for k s m for instance no one's going to believe it's really justice. the ministration has this list of forty six individuals who've been deemed too dangerous to be i believe but they can't really be tried in court because they don't have the evidence to convict them or the evidence they do have isn't permissible in court. what do we suppose what do we do with those those guys well let me tell you one of those forty six happens to be one of my two eighty s. his name is fine as well canard he's from kuwait to wait happens to be one of the strongest allies of the united states at the end of the bush administration they said if you build a rehabilitation center where send your sons back to kuwait welterweight went ahead and built a forty million dollar rehabilitation center today there's thirteen thousand american true. and you wait so i mean i've looked at the evidence in my client's

case i've been studying this case for five years i know virtually every fact in this case and i'm here to tell you that this man will never get a trial it's double triple quadruple hearsay it's incredible statements i mean that they said that he surrendered his passport when he went to afghanistan i went to afghanistan and found his passport that's when they said oh well no they change their strategy completely and said oh that just means he's super al qaeda and not a not a trainee anymore given that like your client this is the reason why this was so one of the reasons why the facility stays open colonel davis what's more dangerous the forty six individuals who might pose a threat if they're released or they were towards a bigger threat to the united states i should say there's forty six individuals who might be released to commit crimes against the united states the future or just the prison itself remaining open indefinitely and i think it's the latter i think this charade gone on long enough that you know our justification for the end of the detainees the ones that are going to be transferred home or prosecuted in

a military commission our theory has been that under the law of war we have the right to detain the enemy for the duration of the conflict the president said we're pulling out of afghanistan by the end of two thousand and fourteen so when we pull out that whatever whether you agree with the justification or not the justification evaporates in twenty four taint so we've either got to find a way to send these guys home prosecute them i believe in federal court or we're going to create a new lied to justify their detention. status law professor at howard university and lieutenant colonel barry wain guarded guantanamo bay defense attorney and that does it for now for more of the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check our web site r t v dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at sam sachs thanks for watching.

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