Legal Commentary

Former Powell Aide's Declaration : Bush and Cheney Sent Innocents to Guantanamo

By Jeralyn

Update: I've uploaded the Complaint here.

The Times of London has obtained a sworn declaration of Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell when Powell was Secretary of State for the Bush Administration, stating that Bush and Cheney knowingly sent innocent detainees to Guantanamo, for political reasons. He says they knew the majority of the detainees were innocent, but they sent them anyway as a means of garnering support for the war in Iraq and war on terror.

The declaration was submitted to the court in a lawsuit filed yesterday by former Sudanese detainee Adel Hassan Hamad, who alleges he was tortured. Hamad is seeking monetary damages from the U.S. and filed his lawsuit in federal district court in Seattle, because Robert Gates, one of the defendants, resides there. It is the first time a former official in the Bush Administration has made such a claim claim.

The Times reports Colin Powell backs Wilkerson's declaration. [More...]

Referring to Mr Cheney, Colonel Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the US Army, asserted: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent ... If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.”

He alleged that for Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld “innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks”.

Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld, Colonel Wilkerson said, deemed the incarceration of innocent men acceptable if some genuine militants were captured, leading to a better intelligence picture of Iraq at a time when the Bush Administration was desperate to find a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, “thus justifying the Administration’s plans for war with that country”.

Wilkerson says Powell told him Bush also knew and approved:

He added: “I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 09, 2010 (boomark / email).