Amy Davidson Sorkin
When President Joe Biden spoke, last month, about the need to end “forever wars,” he said, “I’m now the fourth American President to preside over war in Afghanistan—two Democrats and two Republicans. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth President.” But Biden is still presiding over a remnant of the war on terror, which might be called the forever trial. This is the prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—the alleged mastermind of the attacks of September 11, 2001—and four other defendants, which reconvened at Guantánamo Bay last week for the first time since the pandemic began, and which has, for years, been a spectacular exercise in futility. K.S.M., as he’s known, and his co-defendants were apprehended more than eighteen years ago; the current proceedings against them formally opened in 2012, and have been stuck in pretrial hearings ever since. Jury selection is not yet in sight, let alone a verdict. The judge, Colonel Matthew McCall, is, depending on how you count, the fourth, seventh, or ninth to preside.
The problems began with George W. Bush’s decision, in January, 2002, to send purported terrorism suspects to Guantánamo. Some were tortured at the base; some were tortured in other locations, such as the C.I.A.’s “black sites.” Close to eight hundred people passed through the prison. Their paths there were disparate. Some were associated with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. Others were detained based on flimsy or false evidence, in some cases as a result of local feuds. Twenty-two were migrant Uyghurs; several were children under the age of sixteen. The inhumane carelessness with which all the prisoners were treated was visible to the world, and it damaged America’s reputation. Successive Administrations attempted to rationalize the legal disorder of those years by setting up quasi-judicial procedures that ultimately crippled attempts to apply due process and render justice.
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