best on trial joke more commentary on that story online right now at r t dot com. check out the op ed section in the meantime. thanks for joining us. we are ah ah, ah ah

ah. 2 reporting on and investigating the lawless u. s. military prison at guantanamo bay. cuba is an important endeavor thanks to a number of whistleblowers. we know what has happened at guantanamo, and we have a feel for the war crimes and crimes against humanity that have taken place. there, but what the human rights community, and indeed the public in general really need is a historian to lay out all the details for future generations and to make sure that revisionists don't try to change the truth of that history. i'm john kerry. aku welcome to the whistle blowers ah we're all aware of whistleblowers who have served at the u. s. military prison at

guantanamo, thanks to people like joseph hickman and brandon neely, we know of some of the atrocities that have taken place there in the name of us security policy. thanks to the attorneys representing guantanamo detainees. we know about the utter lack of due process, about torture and degrading an inhumane treatment that continues to take place there. but much of what we knew in the earlier part of guantanamo was, existence was fragmentary. our next guest changed all that using his background as a researcher and an investigative journalist, he sought to document what happened to every single prisoner who passed through guantanamo, as well as those who will likely spend the rest of their lives there. and beyond that, he has cultivated sources outside of guantanamo, that of allowed him to report on us covert action operations and capture and render people around the world who in the end have never been charged with a crime. andy worthington joins us today. andy is

a british historian, author investigative journalist and filmmaker, he's the author of the book, the one ton of files, the stories of the 774 detainees in america's illegal prison. he's also published a myriad of articles about one ton of mo, and he's the director of the documentary film outside the law stories from guantanamo, and the welcome to the show. it's great to have you. thank you, joe. i'm thinking, providing me. it's our pleasure, eddie. let's start with how you got involved in guantanamo and in human rights. you already had of sterling reputation as the author of 2 fascinating historical nonfiction books, one on modern celebrations at the stonehenge archaeological site, and the other on a confrontation between police and new. a celebrants. at stonehenge on june, 1st 1985. i remember that i was actually living in the u. k at the time. how did you know? it was a lot of fun kind of a strange event. how did you make that transition to guantanamo and to human rights?

and when did that happen for you? well, you know, a very civil liberties in human rights are very closely connected. i'm sure i've always been interested in the oppression of and adults. so i think you know, the grand panama was kind of a classic case. really, you know, and if you look at grand panama history, the 1st lawyer, it became involved when michael ran the senate right to human rights lawyer. and then to death penalty. lawyers who were immediately on the story of guantanamo because they represented people who were particularly treated as big tomorrow. so you know, several that human rights issue. they're always been important to me that most story i think was probably more pulling through lots of non americans from the beginning. but i was to people in the us who were encouraged to be in this

this the state of vengeance towards the people who had them who caused the 911 attacks. whereas around the world, people were looking at the end of furniture when the people in the orange jumpsuits with them the ears covered kneeling in the gravel and shouted out, my god, david, open, you know, that was, that was shocking for people around the world and britain the right wing daily newspaper ran and ran a headline of torture when, when the prism opened. but it took me when it took most people time to be able to really delve into the grand panama story because of the secrecy. and in fact, i started looking in to try to find out who was at the prison in the fall of 2005. and that was when a couple of speculative list of been put together and posed. and by the case, prisoners in the u. k. but nobody really knew who was there because the u. s.

government hadn't told the world who they were and that didn't happen until the spring of 2006 by law. freedom of information law suits and were required to tell the world who they were holding their as well as to release thousands of pages of documentation supposedly about who these people were. and that's what i began analyzing. and he turned to no one else attempted to construct a coherent narrative. so ready in the process of researching and writing my book, my panama, i kind of became the custodian of the men stories that lots of people have written about one time over the years. but nobody has done as thoroughly and deliberately, as you have, what made you write a record of every person who's been true? guantanamo, what was your ultimate goal in taking on that job, which is a huge task?

well, you know, there's a, there's a point of kind of statistical analysis that you can do with the grand panama, to establish as the whole local dave, that very few of the people who recall the was that there was at guantanamo, were actually in the west. the west and, you know, and they, they managed to get a lot of media interests which, you know, is i believe. and i, you know, my research that the same thing, very few, very few percent of the people that have been held at one time of 779 men held by the us military for when the prison opened nearly 21 years ago. you know, a few percent of those who are accused of having any significant involvement without kite or the talent. but statistics is one thing. another thing is, is who all these people and actually you know, what i found in my and that was based all the documentation that was made publicly

available by the transcripts of basically these mickey mouse tribunals that they'd held at one time attempt basically as a way of insulting the supreme court africa simply hold, granted the prisoners have this corpus rights. they held these combatants status, review tribunal, montana where they went a lot of legal representation where they threw a whole lot of allegations that people with no, you know, not saying where the, where these allegations came from, very vague. so many of them and then the men had to try and you know, i'm, i'm for these. and what happened was that you could, i could see through looking at the transcripts, quite often translated from arabic. even with all the obstacles that were in the way the personalities are some of these people. and actually, you know, one of the crucial things that the us government did glance at him from the

beginning was to be humanized. the man help. that's what i say to the people. better was the worst. don't bother thinking about who they were looking at. you can sleep at night. and actually, these are all individuals, even if some of them are a small number of these people, maybe what you would like to call the bad guys. they have stories, but you know, my sympathies lay in particular with the many, many hundreds of people. how clearly were not terrorist actual you know, what my research indicated was that a large number of people were rounded up by mistake, quite often through intelligence failures and sometimes because the u. s. was paying bank payments to the allies. but also, you know, many of the hundreds of men, halligan's animal, were soldiers. they had, you know, many of them come from the gulf or other countries to help the taliban

to establish a p. o is landing state by fighting an ancient muslim civil war against the northern alliance before 9 am. and these are the people who are all branded as terrorists. but again, these are people who have their own individualized, their own individual stories. and so i've, over the years, you know, try and tried to tell the stories of the people how these are human being. and i hope i've been able to do it medication. i'm very interested also to know what kind of pushback you faced as you were doing this work. certainly the american government couldn't have liked what you were researching or that you were talking to former guantanamo detainees. we know from other whistleblowers that the u. s. government is not friendly to freedom of information, act requests related to guantanamo. so what was the american government's reaction? like, did the government try to stop you or to impede your, your research, your writing, your filmmaking? and what about the british?

it's interesting, actually. i mean, the only the only time i go say the sign that they were paying any attention really was when there was a story about 2 more italians being released. i'm going back years and years now. the ab reported that various other media outlets picked up on it and, and i reported that as well. and it turned out that it was completely untrue. and then somebody who worked in publicity went animal, sent me emails attacking me for not being a proper journalist. and which i thought exchange about all the ways in which the pentagon have the linebacker and sent them over the years. and, you know, and that was the end of that story. but it made me aware that they were paying attention and certainly some people somewhere when needles, by what i was doing. the thing with guantanamo is that you can argue with how i have piece together. what looks like

a credible narrative about the people who held it. but i have used information that was made publicly available by the authorities for so much effect. so it's an interpretation. so, you know, in that sense, i haven't crossed the line where what i was getting was information that they didn't want to be available. what i've done is that i've analyzed it and given the taishan of their own information that they may not like. we are speaking with author, journalist and filmmaker, andy worthington, about the u. s. military prison at one time of a cuba. we're going to take a short break and come right back. so stay tuned. ah. 2 2 ah ah

ah ah luis counter russian state total narrative type as i'm phoning most. i'm skiing with eclipse in 55 with. okay, so my niece, madeline speaking with will ban in the european union. the kremlin. yup. machine. the state aunt rush up to

date and split our t spoke neck. even our video agency, roughly all band to on youtube with me just hi, i'm rick sanchez and i'm here to plead with you. whatever you do. do not watch my new show seriously. why? watch something that's so different. my list of opinions that you won't get anywhere else. look of it please. if you have the state department, the c, i a weapons makers, multi $1000000000.00 corporations. choose your fax for you. go ahead. i change and whatever you do, don't want my show stay main street because i'm probably gonna make you uncomfortable. my show is called direct impact, but again,

you probably don't want to watch it because it might just change the way thing. oh, welcome back to the whistleblowers. i'm john kerry. aku we're speaking with british author, journalist and filmmaker, andy worthington about the u. s. military prison at guantanamo. andy, welcome back. thanks again for being with us now. so nice via i wanted to talk about the kinds of people who have been held at guantanamo and who have undergone, in some cases unspeakable torture. i've developed a friendship with mohammed would sly, he known as the more italian and the subject of the award winning film of the same name mohammed like so many other people. hundreds of them held at guantanamo was never guilty of any crime, but he was held there for well over a decade. he was one of the lucky ones. he was released, he wrote

a best selling book. his experience was made into a movie and he was re settled finally in the netherlands. but what about other innocent people? how have their lives been impacted by their kidnappings and incarceration at guantanamo? well i think, you know, it's, it's difficult to know in so many cases because, you know, most of the people at guantanamo have been read, been sent back to their home countries. and then it becomes a matter of what kind of home governments they have. and clearly, you know, i would say that, you know, people who are returned to western european countries have generally fed quite well not, not necessarily in terms of a certain amount of harassment and surveillance, but in terms of being able to go on with their lives and having access to them to support that is not available to people in so many other countries. so much of it is down to the kind of governments that people have. i don't,

i don't generally think that it's been very good from a human rights point to be to been a savvy citizen in guantanamo, for example, and being sent back right aside here a bit. i think that's been a lot harassment to former prisoners. i think one of them, the more difficult aspect of this story is people who, for one reason or another couldn't be sent back to their home countries. this is primarily enroll geminus because there's a bam in post by congress on releasing any em. and he's back to their home country because of the war and the security situation. and for these prisoners, 3rd countries had to be found that were paid to resettle. and again, in some cases, this has been successful, i would say in western european countries, in particular, there was a resettlement program under obama, where people were sent to oman, which i think it's been very successful because it was in the country. and they've been able to rebuild their lives. there are other cases where it is when shockingly

wrong. the most extreme example is that, you know, 2 dozen men were sent to the united arab emirates where they were promised rehabilitation. and then being had to rebuild their lives and their fact ended up in prison to try really. and the 2nd stance is at least as bad as guantanamo. and that was never adequately result. most of this is taking place on to trump. so there was literally no one in the u. s. government dealing with content issues like this. but the yemen, they were all forcibly repatriated, c, m. and in the end some of them subsequently disappeared. i'm not sure if they are still safe. that was an absolute disaster. then there have been other cases where the resettlement just has not been helpful. it has not worked well for the men who were resettling countries where for example,

the governments may not have been sympathetic. a toll where there is little or no movement presence and. ready what i find particularly shocking, john, is that all of these arrangements were made between the united states government and these host nations. a secret and be not something that is, that conforms to any recognizable standards of rights and of human rights. arbitrary, secret decisions taken by the us about the status of these people. and i think they really fundamentally haven't escaped from the situation that is always applied to them since they request the central antenna, which is the, you know, the united states determined at the beginning that they were holding people without any rights whatsoever as human beings. and i think that something that needs to be resolved when we hopefully get the position where, where one day,

one of most close that needs to be accountability and redress for the situation that these people have been putting. i think you're exactly right we, we don't know thanks to the freedom of information act, for example that, that bradley burke and felt the u. b. s. whistleblower was arrested in exchange for the government of switzerland agreeing to take 2 weaker detainees from guantanamo for example. we only know that things to wiki leaks. so i think you're exactly right that we really don't know much of what the, what the u. s. government has negotiated with other governments. it's still secret . what do you eventually? i'm sorry, go read. just quite fun to mental that they, that they literally don't have any rights. literally, they are there at the whim of the united states government, all the house government, coal, so jurisdiction, making go to, to clarify what their rights you know,

and you see everywhere else around the world as well. john, when, when governments either under the pressure of the us government or from their own governments, come on the any kind of suspicion they can be harassed, they can be arbitrarily detain. i mean, most bank, for example, the british citizen, how does the possible take him off him was imprisoned for a while. and then you know, when it came to putting in my trial, they may be didn't have any charges. that's what i meant to be given as possible. back on what basis. monday was the grand panama with ad charge trial it. thank. so tonight we're going to get to that in a minute. i have a personal connection as a bag that i'm excited to talk to you about. first i want to ask you, what do you see eventually happening to those few dozen prisoners who are still at one cono my. my own personal position is that they have a constitutional right to face their accusers in

a court of law and to be judged by a jury of their peers. if they've committed a crime, then they should be tried for it and have the opportunity to defend themselves. that has never happened and it likely never will happen. in the case of, i was a beta whom i was responsible for capturing. if we're not going to charge him with a crime, then he must be released in the case of khalid shaikh mohammed. for example, if he truly was the mastermind of the $911.00 attacks, then charge him with that crime and put him on trial. how do you see all of this playing out in the end? well, you know, this again is quite a long story. the prison that is in 2008 for the 2nd time secure, would have is corpus right. that led to the only time in guantanamo history, where the little actually applied and in a number of coal herrings over 3000 that these men had their release ordered by judge rule that the u. s. government had failed to demonstrate that these people

were involved in any meaningful sense without height or tell whether not i'd groups and then the appeals court got hollowed, all these decisions. and then they started making life difficult. and eventually they, they passed a number of rulings reducing the prison as ability to successfully secure what we have. yes, rulings. and eventually, you know, came to the ruling where they said everything that the u. s. government says, must be treated as present to be accurate unless men who held without rights or misplaced somehow demonstrate the best. we should have that. but the supreme court then failed to take their culture of appeal. so the court of appeals, we wrote that have a decision that was taken by the supreme court. and since then only one prison that

had behaviors petition granted. so the little failed party biopharma came up with the administrative process. but as i was saying that missed your process or the legal way, the government can say that they are going to release someone from granted on. if they've been done, there is no legal avenue that right a or their lawyers can use to to force them to be released. what i think will happen by that, and i think the pressure will eventually be effective. is the men who have been approved for release will end up being released you know, because although it doesn't have a legal right, legal weight, it absolutely has a moral and ethical way. and i would say that the difference that we've had over the years between republican and democratic governments is that there are always people within the democratic government understand fundamentally some nation of

right and wrong when it comes to panama. the sonia issue, john, these are basically the men who have been charged crime. right. and they are of course, caught up in this terrible groundhog day of the military commissions, which simply are not fit for purpose. and the problem, of course, with that is that these member told you what the united states government should know from the beginning. the bush administration is that if you torture people, you basically inextricably separate them from the ability for adjusters to be in, in a recognizable court. what's gonna happen? i don't know. i mean, i think what's been encouraging you lately is that please dale's being under way to attend, to negotiate that way, or this with the men who are charged with the 911 attacks and various other crimes . because the united states further complicated the fact that it had told ship these people by insisting i'm having these cases be capital cases. and as you will

know, john leo, your people who are watching will know as well the, the level of defense that is required for the system or of a death penalty is much higher than if you were not. oh yes, it is. taking the death penalty off the table, trying to negotiate some kind of plea deal with these men. i mean that they're not going free. no, but to, you know, to bring in some kind of conclusion, things would be b, the way that it can end. but i don't know this going to happen. well, i'd like to thank our guest today, author, journalist, and filmmaker, andy worthington, and thanks to our viewers for joining us, today's. well, remember the words of the great american thinker howard zinn, who said imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve a problem. it does nothing for the victims of crime,

but perpetuate the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. it is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of the conditions that caused crime in the 1st place, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, and greed which are at the root of most punished crimes. while the crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers i'm john carry aku. we'll see you next time. 2 who is the aggressor today? i'm authorizing the additional strong sanctions today. russia is the country with the most sanctions imposed against it. a number that's constantly growing,

but i figure which of the problem was to call sure, as we speak on the bill in your senior, mostly mine or wish you were banding all imports of russian oil and gas new g i g with the letter from, you know, we're going to go to joe by imposing these sanctions on russia has destroyed the american economy. so there's your boomerang. with the chinese president's visit to russia is historic for a number of reasons. first to accent, the growing russia, china strategic partnership. and 2nd, to demonstrate what both countries publicly advocated the transition to a multi polar world beyond american hegemony. ah,

with business and you with americans, a lot of it is just such, not critical. and i certainly provide you with just touching sure him, his name is your factor of the different student info with you throw in the with them the problem you're still with yours are both in the study skills on bristol menu for choice for me to, to one of our parents to dakota, which, which no longer interested in the new position i pushed 2 to 3 loan. because a leash new or your course, or do school college. i don't know who you're, i know, point a dozen or is that a good story to use for us to play in finances? come on

both with headlines right now for this our not the international on his trip to russia. edit trail is foreign minister says western partners of picking states against each other and the conflict ukraine, pensions and ty, want a perfect example. let me take a test principally position on j. ukraine kicks a pretext that has set the 2nd page grade and needs people for a form to publish the screen that i can from gratian moscow site that you k is series.