Some random notes from Guantanamo Bay, set down here from paper notebooks for those interested in some ‘inside baseball’ stuff about what it’s like to report on the U.S. Military Commissions being held here but also for my own future use should I be down here again. Pardon the length, but I'm emptying the notebook here.
The day before Omar Khadr’s pre-trial hearing in front of Col. Patrick Parrish, we get a lengthy briefing on the dos and don’ts for reporters here. The rules are formidable, restrictive and unwavering.
“Please try to embrace the uniqueness of GITMO,” Navy Lt.-Col. Trent Thompson says with a wry smile at the conclusion of his presentation on how we ought to comport ourselves in the courtroom – “Please maintain a poker face” – and what we are allowed to film with our cameras – not much.
Courtroom Number One is housed inside what appears to be the building (left) that first saw life, in the middle of the last century it appears, as the air traffic control tower for the old airport on this base. That airport’s runway is now filled with quonset tents laid neatly row upon row from one end of the runway to the other, six beds to a tent. The hangar is falling apart but one room in it has been modernized and is our air-conditioned media filing centre complete with a big-screen TV that has a closed-circuit connection to Courtroom Number One and to Courtroom Number Two.
Courtroom Number Two – I can’t put pictures of these places up on the blog because we are forbidden to take pictures of almost every building here – is laid out as part of a complex on the tarmac in front of the hanger. There are four or five one-storey steel pre-fab buildings in a compound surrounded by an eight-foot high chain-link fence. The fence is topped with concertina wire and concertina wire, with its razor-sharp barbs, also girdles the fence halfway up all the way around.
On Monday morning, precisly at 0815, we leave on foot from the media centre to enter this compound where we are checked and screened by U.S. military security. We have been told that we cannot enter the courtroom with any electronic device. No BlackBerry. No iPhone. Certainly no tape recorders and cameras. Just pen and a notebook. We leave this security checkpoint and pile in a golfcart for the short, minute-long, ride up the embanknet to the old air traffic control tower – which the military allows you to photograph but only from certain angles. We enter the building at its southern entrance and here, again, we repeat our passage through the metal detector. The journalists here this week assemble in an anteroom outside the double-doors of Courtroom Number One.
Up until this point, most of our military handlers – and there is one wherever we go – are identified with their name in black, block letters stitched on their right breast pocket of their uniform. BLACK. BRADSHEAR. CAMPBELL. Here in the courtroom, however, the military personnel seek to protect their identify and only a number is stitched on to the uniform where their name is. A U.S. Coast Guard officer – I believe his rank may be a senior petty officer – who bears the identifier 0812 again reads us the rules about the court. You must act “as an observer only,” 0812 tells us.
0812 opens the door to a guard who is simply known as Guard Number 3. He is a young, serious man in army fatigues whose broad shoulders project strength and power. He’s the muscle here, should that be required. Guard Number 3 asks our name and directs us to our assigned seat. I am pointed towards seat number 28. At 0845, I sit down, open my notebook and, before I know it I have filled eight 24 cm by 18 cm pages before the judge enters the courtroom at 0935. Here are those notes:
It’s a relatively small courtroom, as courtrooms go, just big enough to fit in all the participants and no bigger. The walls are a pale cream colour. The carpeted floor is a deep burgundy. The desks for lawyers and the judge are built also of wood that is a deep burgundy. The accused and his counsel and the prosecution sit in burgundy leather chairs. We are seated in chairs made of black vinyl or leather. They are quite comfortable. The press gallery occupies one corner of the rectangular room. There are 17 seats for the press and 11 today are filled. When there are more journalists present than there are seats available, a daily lottery is held and the lottery losers watch the proceedings via closed-circuit television. Jane from Reuters has elected to stay behind and, thus, will be able to file immediately from the media centre should some big news happen. The rest of us will have to wait for the first break. Leave the court and you can’t come back in until the first break.
There are also 27 seats for other observers. These will be filled by only a small handful today. A law professor from American University in Washington is here. Two human rights campaigners sit beside him. A woman who later identifies herself only as “no one important, just a wife” is there. Down front, an “observer” from the Canadian government is seated. A military escort is seated next to all three of these groups.
Khadr, when he arrives, will be seated about three metres away from me, separated only by a half-metre high wooden railing, also made of deep burgundy wood.
I count six cameras in the courtroom. Two 26-inch flat-screen Samsung televisions hang from the ceiling, one in front of us and the other in front of the gallery at the other end of the room. Three of the four ceiling fans twirl circulating the chilled air.
There are four thick columns in this room, two of which will obstruct our view of the witness box if anyone is in there today.
The courtoom is a nearly square rectangle with the judge in the corner closest to us on a raised dais. There are three exits. Between our corner and the judge’s corner is the double-door exit we used to come in the courtroom. Opposite that door is another double-door exit where Khadr will come into the room. On the same wall as that door is another single door. The courtroom has a relaively low ceiling.
The desks used by the lawyers have computers and LCD screens on them.
It’s the first courtoom I’ve ever been in, incidentally, that has no clock on the wall. There are no windows.
At 0855, Lt. Col Jon Jackson of the U.S. Army enters the courtroom. Jackson, we will later learn, is from Arkansas. He is the “detailed” military counsel for Khadr, that is to say, he is the court-appointed lawyer and, though Khadr later this morning will try to fire him, the judge will order that Jackson ride shotgun for Khadr through these proceedings for the foreseeable future.
I’m an NFL football fan and I see in Jackson’s face and build a young John Madden, the former Oakland Raiders coach who became the legendary broadcaster. Like Madden, Johnson has full lips, big round cheeks, thick eyebrows and a head that tapers slightly towards the top. No idea if he ever played football but if he did, I’ll bet he played tight end, the same position, I believe Madden once played. He sits cross-legged at his table, leafing through a slim binder of material while we wait for Khadr and the judge.
Poor Jackson was on the operating table to have his gall bladder removed last week just as Khadr was trying to fire him and his other lawyers.
Here at these tribunals, the U.S. Constitution, for all intents and purposes, does not apply. Neither do many of the procedural and evidentiary rules which stem from the Constitution. Military commission judges largely get to figure out the rules of the game as they go. I’m probably overstating this a bit but critics of the whole commission process have routinely complained that rules that have to be followed by courts stateside simply don’t exist here. And that, the critics continue, means the whole system is “gamed” to favour the prosecution to be able to get convictions. Outside, before we came in, I was chatting with the American University law professor, Stephen Vladeck. Aware that Khadr would try to argue that he ought to represent himself, Vladeck talked about a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that makes this issue interesting for legal scholars, namely, that the Supreme Court has now said that while there is one test for determining if an accused is fit to stand trial, there should be a higher standard a court should use to determine if an accused is fit to conduct his or her own defence. But the Supreme Court, as it often does, did not spell out just what that higher standard ought to be. If the judge Col. Parrish really wants to make law, he might want to talk about what that standard ought to be. But Parrish has the nickname the “Rocket Docket”. The general feeling is that he would sooner speed this proceeding to its conclusion rather than make new law. Johnson will lightly touch on this issue when he addresses the court this morning but that, in Vladeck's opinion, was done so there is a market there should this case be appealed.
There are five military seals hanging on the wall opposite us. They are round and very colourful, with lots of gold and blue. One seal each is for the Department of Defence, the Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy, again for the Department of the Navy, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
It is 0914.
The clerk, young, neatly dressed in a military uniform with her hair pulled tightly back comes in and takes her place in front of the judge’s desk. Heavy footfalls can be heard either above us – it being a navy base it’s called the upper deck and we are on the lower deck – or they are out in the corridor.
At 0916, the prosecutors arrive. They are: Capt. John Murphy, U.S. Navy; Mr. Jeff Groharing, Dept. of Justice; Captain Chris Eason, U.S. Air Force; Captain Michael Grant, U.S. Air Force. They seat themselves at the government table side by side, this way: Murphy, Groharing, Grant and Eason. The two air force captains, Grant and Eason, are at the end of the table closest to the judge They are young – are they even 30? – with short blondish hair, good chins and are in the handsome dress blues of the air force. They look like captains of the football team. Prep boys. Newly minted adults. They are fidgety, coltish even, with too much energy. They rock back in their chairs, click their pens, and joke with each other. They look back at us often, as if to see whether we are watching, much the way a teenaged athlete during warmup at the basketball game will try to see if the good-looking girls are watching as they do a perfect warm-up layup. These two are on the legal team that’s going to score one for the U.S. in the war against terror by locking up a man forever who, the record will show, was a child when he committed the acts he is accused of.
Groharing is next to these two. He is young, too, but not as young – is he 40? Groharing was a Marine the last time I was here in 2008, a major. He is the lead on this file. It’s his case. Now he works soberly for the Department of Justice and while the Air Force captains josh, Groharing sits quietly studying his papers.
Murphy, his hair gray, sits in his dark blue dress uniform, his hands clasped in front of him, staring ahead. Murphy is the Chief Prosecutor, in charge of all the prosecutors at these military commissions.
They are opposed by, well, Omar Khadr who last went to a school in a Western democracy (Canada) when he was 10. Khadr will have more to say about his schooling later this morning.
Khadr did have lawyers named Barry Coburn and Kobie Flowers acting for him but he fired him them last week. So now it’s just Jackson. Dennis Edney and Nate Whitney, two lawyers from Edmonton who are doing their best to help Khadr pro bono but have no official standing at these commissions. Edney and Whitney alternate coming to Gitmo for Khadr trial events. It’s Edney’s turn this week. He arrives in court in what is the very opposite of a dress uniform. He, in fact, is the definition of rumpled. His greying black hair has been combed with his hand. He has a blue pin-striped jacket over green cotton pants. His tie is purple with a yellow plaid. His shirt is purple. He has been at this a very long time. And he seems weary.
While the prosecutors are bunched tightly together, Jackson and Edney are seated three feet apart and spend their few minutes before the judge arrives not talking to each other but reading notes.
It is 0930.
Khadr enters. A numbered anonymous guard hold him on either arm. The guards’ supervisor follows immediately behind. Khadr is seated to Edney’s left at the far left end of the defence table. The guards seat themselves directly behind Khadr.
Khadr is 23 now – he was 15 when U.S. forces caught him after a firefight in Afghanistan — and he has grown to become a substantial man. He is easily six feet, if not a bit taller; his shoulders are broad and one notices – I don’t know why, but one does – how big his hands are. His hair is short, dark black with tight black curls crawling down his neck and about his ears. His beard is full, bushy, big and black. He is wearing all white. On top is what looks like an oversize white t-shirt but is worn tunic style down to mid-thigh. He has white trouserers with the cuffs rolled up. Socks and black running shoes. There are no shackles or other restraints.
Some notes tomorrow on the actual proceedings.