Out of Gitmo/Forever Prison

>> NARRATOR: Tonight on Frontline, two special reports about the controversial prison at Guantanamo Bay.

First, President Trump has vowed no more detainees will be released from Gitmo.

>> Gitmo, we're keeping that open.

And we're going to load it up with bad dudes.

>> NARRATOR: NPR correspondent Arun Rath follows the complicated story of one of the last detainees to be released.

>> RATH: Do you think there was a misunderstanding about the terms of your release?

>> NARRATOR: And later, a collaboration with Retro Report, drawing on rare footage, a forgotten story about Guantanamo's past.

>> It felt like you were in prison.

I mean, that's what it was to us.

It was being in a prison.

>> NARRATOR: How the U.S. naval base became a detention center for Haitian refugees and the legal battle that set the stage for today.

>> This is essentially Guantanamo, episode one.

>> NARRATOR: Tonight, two stories about Guantanamo-- its past and present.

>> RATH: I've been covering the prison at Guantanamo Bay throughout the Obama years.

>> President Obama rushing to empty Guantanamo Bay just days before leaving office.

>> RATH: I returned just before Obama left office as he and Donald Trump fought over the future of this place and the men detained here.

>> TRUMP: He's allowing people to get out that are terrible people.

>> OBAMA: Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison.

>> TRUMP: Gitmo, we're keeping that open, and we're going to load it up with bad dudes.

>> RATH: Gitmo still houses notorious terrorists like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Tell us where we are.

>> We're standing right now in front of Camp VI, and that's where the majority of the general-population detainees are housed.

Just don't get any guard faces in the back.

>> RATH: This time I was here to report on Obama's final push to empty out the prison.

In his last year, he released 52 detainees.

Nearly half of them had been held without charges and were once considered too dangerous to let go.

But military and intelligence officials finally deemed the men safe to set free.

(door buzzes) I wanted to know more about these decisions and what happened to the detainees once they got out.

>> This gate would literally be the last gate that they walk through before they get on their transportation to leave Guantanamo Bay.

>> 15 detainees just released to the United Arab Emirates.

>> RATH: The detainees had been scattered around the globe, taken in under secret deals.

>> ...bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, is now free after being held for 14 years.

>> RATH: None of the officials involved in these deals will discuss the details, but most of the detainees were sent to Arab countries.

>> The Obama administration quietly took ten terror suspects from the prison at Guantanamo Bay and transferred them to the Middle Eastern country of Oman.

>> RATH: Some were sent to rehab centers in places like Oman.

>> The U.S. released four Yemeni men with some relatives waiting.

>> RATH: Others were reunited with their families in Saudi Arabia.

Every transfer was reviewed and approved by the Department of Defense.

>> Hi, how are you?

>> RATH: Chuck Hagel personally signed off on more than 40 detainees during his years as secretary of defense.

In terms of the facts about former detainees, what should Americans make of their danger, their status?

>> There's always the danger, of course, because this is an imperfect process, but every one of those detainees I signed off on, it was based on the best, absolute best information, intelligence, and knowledge and certification that we could, that we could come up with.

And one of the final questions that I had to certify was, in your opinion, have you done everything to minimize the possibility that a detainee would ever again do any harm to an American or any of our allies?

>> RATH: What did that mean in, in practice, in figuring that out?

>> I always took the approach that I wanted to be damn sure, and I wanted assurance from my security people that, in fact, they had seen physically where these people were going to be, who was going to monitor them, how often they're monitoring, and on the other side, we say to the host countries that are going to accept them, "We want these people to get back into society where they are productive citizens."

That means education, that means rehabilitation.

Of course, I mean, that's clearly in our interests.

It's in the interests of the detainee.

>> RATH: Few of the ex-detainees have been heard from since their release.

Their lawyers say that the ones sent to Arab countries seem to be adjusting, but I've heard others are having problems, a handful of men who were taken to non-Arab countries with little support.

One of them, among the last to leave Gitmo, is willing to talk: Mansoor al Dayfi, prisoner number 441, from Yemen.

He was never charged, but for most of his 14 years at Gitmo, he was considered too dangerous to release.

In 2015, a review board convened by President Obama determined he was no longer a threat.

Yemeni detainees are barred from going home because of political instability there.

So last summer, he and another detainee were transferred to Serbia.

Mansoor's pro bono lawyer in New York says he's unhappy in Serbia, and wants to live in an Arab country.

Was he given any choice in where he was going to go?

>> No, not really.

It was pretty much presented as Guantanamo or Serbia.

>> RATH: And what kind of rehabilitation has been provided for him in Serbia so far?

>> From Serbia, as far as I can tell, nothing.

And nothing from the U.S. government.

If we are going to take someone, after holding them for 14 or 15 years, and not let them go home and not let them go to the country they want to go to, not let them go to a place where they feel they themselves will be able to build a life, but force them to another place, then, I think, we have a responsibility to help them adjust to that and make it work.

>> RATH: She says Mansoor has gone on a hunger strike protesting his situation.

You have represented other Guantanamo detainees.

In terms of Mansoor's resettlement and re-integrating, is Mansoor a unique case?

>> I do not think he's the only one who's had a difficult time.

I think a lot of the other men who have been sent to, say, Eastern Europe, which is a very unfamiliar culture for them and unfamiliar languages have had a very hard time adjusting.

People who were sent to countries like Oman, which are very familiar to them, which are a familiar language, which does have a formal rehabilitation program to help them make that adjustment, those people seem to be doing pretty well.

And if we want to make sure that these people are never going to be a threat to the U.S., the best way to do that is to make sure that they have a life that they are happy with.

That's not going to happen if you put them some place where they're totally isolated and they don't see any prospect for a future.

>> RATH: As I set off to meet Mansoor in Belgrade, Serbia, here's what I knew about him: He'd spent time in an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before being captured when he was in his early 20s.

Much of his case file remains classified, but leaked documents show that at first, the U.S. government claimed he was an Al Qaeda commander.

His final review, however, came to a very different conclusion.

At worst, it says, he was a low-level fighter, possibly not even a member of Al Qaeda at all.

Mansoor was known to exaggerate and change his story.

In 2006, he claimed he was a committed jihadi and praised the 9/11 attacks.

But by 2015, he claimed he wanted a college education and was a fan of Taylor Swift.

Still, Serbia seemed a surprising place to send a man once labeled a Muslim terrorist.

>> Every Muslim house burned, every Muslim killed or run off.

>> RATH: In the 1990s, Serbian troops slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslim men, women, and children.

>> The Serbs call it "ethnic cleansing" and brag about their efficiency.

>> RATH: NATO bombed Belgrade to stop years of carnage.

When the detainees arrived here last July, it made headlines.

Some questioned if they were dangerous.

The Serbian prime minister insisted they weren't.

The other detainee has refused to talk at all, and Mansoor has kept a low profile, avoiding publicity while his lawyer has been telling officials about his unhappiness and his hunger strike.

Now he wants to go public in hopes of being moved.

The Serbian government agreed to keep Mansoor for two years.

He can't leave the country.

They give him a small stipend and an apartment.

That's where we found him.

>> Hey.

>> RATH: Mansoor.

>> Okay, good morning.

>> RATH: Good morning.

>> Welcome.

>> RATH: How are you feeling right now?

>> I feel I'm lost, honestly, because I'm nowhere.

I end up in Guantanamo 20 years old.

I am still 20 in my... Mentally, I'm 20 years old.

The way I'm thinking, the way I'm talking.

But, physically, I am 36.

Because when you stay in jail, I mean, your mind and your intellectual, everything is stay at the same.

And, the worst thing in Guantanamo, like what I have experienced, you don't know...

I didn't know why I was there.

And for how long are you going to punish me?

Until when?

What's my, what's my crime?

I wish if I had done something wrong, then, yeah, I deserve that.

But nothing?

It's just, keep people indefinite for no reason.

It's not right at all.

>> RATH: Mansoor's detention may have been prolonged by what he told a review board in 2006.

After nearly five years at Gitmo, he declared himself an enemy of the United States.

>> I regret that now.

I was mad, I was young, I was crazy.

Of course.

Imagine you are in a place where you're, like, well, totally disconnected to the world outside-- to your family, to lawyers, to anyone.

They were extracting the worst of us to show the world, "This is bad people."

>> RATH: Mansoor learned English at Gitmo-- mostly from the guards, he says-- and he wanted to study at an English-language university here, but was rejected.

He says it's because of his background, but the university told me he failed his entrance exam.

He rarely leaves the house, especially now that he's on a hunger strike.

>> My weight is like, uh, slimming down very, very fast.

I started in, uh... 154 pound.

Now I am, uh, 136.

Like, almost 18 pound I have lost in 23 days.

>> RATH: For most of the detainees at Gitmo, refusing to eat was a common form of protest.

Mansoor says he did it many times, and at one point, was force-fed over the course of two years.

Now he's using the tactic to pressure the U.S. to get him out of Serbia.

>> What I am asking, to be sent to other country which I can start my life.

That what I want, start a family, start to finish my college education, and to live like a normal person.

That what I want in my life.

Not more-- simple dream.

>> RATH: What did you think when you heard, "Serbia"?

>> I was afraid.

Scared, afraid, to be honest with you, because the historical conflict between Serbia and Muslims in the '90s.

This is, like, "God, I'm going to that country.

"You threw me in a country which I knew nothing about, no language, no..." I mean, it is total chaos.

Serbian government told me that after two years, you are, you are leaving.

And who is going to accept ex-Guantanamo detainee after what had, had been said about us?

>> RATH: Every night, Mansoor works on a memoir about his time at Guantanamo.

He shared a draft with me.

When we left him, we planned to come back the next morning and continue our interview.

Within a few minutes, our taxi was pulled over.

(woman speaking Serbian) >> RATH: The police pull us over.

About, I think, three or four officers.

They said, "Random check."

We were with our local producer, Valerie Hopkins.

>> Now he wants to know, what do you guys do?

>> RATH: We're reporters.

(Hopkins speaking Serbian) >> RATH: This ever happen to you before?

>> RATH: The next morning, before heading to Mansoor's, he sent a text to Frontline producer James Jacoby.

>> He says, "Look, I have a problem."

And uh, he said, "I, I don't think I can talk to you today.

"Government was here.

"That is what I can say now.

"For now I don't want to run into any problem.

"Please, it's different now.

"No, please don't come.

There will be a problem for me."

>> RATH: Mansoor went silent, and so began an unexpected journey.

We went to his apartment and called him repeatedly.

>> The customer you have dialed is unavailable at the moment.

>> RATH: We spoke to his lawyer in New York, but she didn't know where he was, either.

In his texts, Mansoor said the government had come, but he didn't say who or why.

All we knew was that he had a Serbian government minder, but we didn't know where to find him.

So we sought help from a local investigative journalist who's been pursuing the government for information about Mansoor.

>> This is a letter to the government in August.

September, also.

November.

So basically I am addressing to any possible authorities that are maybe in charge for this issue.

And the government didn't even reply to my constant calls or mails.

>> RATH: What have you been able to find out about the transfers?

>> We found out that government didn't call any experts for resocialization and trauma healing of those people.

We found out that they didn't contact Islamic communities in Serbia and notify them.

And for sure their help is needed in their resocialization.

So basically the only person who has everything on this case is the prime minister.

Who is not very keen of journalists.

(Vucic speaking Serbian) >> RATH: I found out the prime minister, Aleksandar Vucic, was having a press conference.

When I arrived, I was referred to his interior minister, who's in charge of domestic security.

>> Hello, nice to meet you.

>> RATH: Likewise.

Do you think we could talk to you, for a few minutes?

>> RATH: We're doing stories about the, uh, the Guantanamo detainees that have ended up in other countries.

>> RATH: Okay.

>> RATH: I wanted to find out what he knew about Mansoor's whereabouts.

We've been interviewing one of the former detainees.

He suddenly went quiet on us.

Is there any way that we could find out through, through you?

Or... >> Well, that, they are now, uh, private citizens as anyone else, and they have right to talk or not to talk with anyone.

So we cannot force them to do that or influence them to do that.

>> RATH: He's fallen out of contact with everybody.

I mean, we're actually concerned about what's going on with him.

>> Well, I have no information that any one of them complained.

We have regular communication with them.

And I think that they're very happy with the ongoing situation.

And I would say that we are doing a very good job.

We are trying to accommodate U.S. in the way of de-radicalizing these kind of individuals while closing Guantanamo.

>> RATH: For two days, we looked all over Belgrade for Mansoor, and the U.S. embassy couldn't offer much help.

Is the State Department responsible for these guys' well-being here?

>> RATH: You don't know.

>> RATH: While waiting on word from Mansoor one night, I went into downtown Belgrade, where more than a thousand refugees from predominantly Muslim countries had set up a makeshift camp.

The Serbian government has been trying to provide relief, but it's hard to keep up.

>> RATH: You're from Afghanistan?

>> RATH: And how long have you been here now?

>> RATH: What's it like living here?

>> RATH: That night, we finally heard from Mansoor.

He was at the one place we didn't expect: our hotel.

>> (sighs) >> RATH: He told us that the morning we were supposed to continue our interview, several Serbian men barged into his apartment and told him to stop talking to us.

>> They were serious, very serious.

And they tried to push the door.

They pushed the door, and one of them, like, uh, pushed me.

I pushed him back.

And I couldn't resist because I'm on hunger strike.

They took me to the ground.

(inhales) I really felt humiliated.

I hit my head on the wall here.

They went, I think there were more than three.

They checked the apartment.

They took my phone.

I mean...

They told me basically, just, "If you want to stay here, "you have to keep your mouth shut.

"You are lying, you are playing games.

"If you don't stay in this place, we're going to take you someplace where you don't like."

That's it.

>> RATH: Considering his past, it wasn't surprising the Serbians would keep tabs on him.

And it was hard to tell how badly he was being treated.

We pointed out that at Gitmo, he was known to exaggerate.

>> I swear by my God, I didn't need to make it up.

>> I understand.

>> If you judge me by this, sorry, I have to go.

In Guantanamo, when they put you under pressure, under very bad circumstances, like 72 hours under very cold air conditioning and you are tied to the ground and someone came and poured cold water, whatever, tell him what he want.

"Just, okay, get out of my skin ."

Why I should even lie about Serbia?

I'm living here.

Why should I create problems for myself with Serbian government?

>> RATH: It was late, and Mansoor wanted to talk to his lawyer in New York about staying overnight at the hotel.

>> Honestly, last night I couldn't sleep.

I have nightmares all night.

Even today, like...

I put a lot of stuff behind the door and I think I'm going to keep doing this all the time.

Okay, I will stay here tonight.

>> Let me talk to her about that.

>> Okay, James want to talk to you.

>> Beth, let me take your credit card number.

Unless you want to call the hotel directly and, and book the room for Mansoor.

>> I have nowhere to go to.

Like, I have think, thought about to hide among the refugees.

But, uh, it's not a good idea.

>> What name, uh, do you want to use, Mansoor, for tonight?

>> Tell her use 441-- tell her.

>> He wants to use 441.

(laughing) >> RATH: The next day, we went to see if any of Mansoor's neighbors had heard a disturbance.

I was with Valerie, our local producer.

(door slams) >> RATH: Okay.

>> RATH: No one had heard a thing.

But one neighbor said he thought the secret police were renting Mansoor's apartment.

(dog sneezes) >> RATH: Back inside, Mansoor said he was worried the Serbs would return.

>> I'm very afraid of these people.

I'm afraid if they see you guys coming back, they'll look at it as a challenge.

>> RATH: Do you think, Mansoor, there was a misunderstanding about the terms of, of your release?

That this is more of the way that things are?

You have certain restrictions that are, that are placed upon you that were not... >> Look, they haven't... >> When I was in Guantanamo, they haven't told me nothing about Serbia.

They told me it would be good there.

So you know what?

I will try to forget Guantanamo, start education, learning English, studying, blah, blah, blah.

This is bull-(bleep).

I try to be reasonable.

I try to be nice.

I'm trying to be quiet.

Because if I get angry, I'm crazy.

You know what's been crazy?

Guantanamo teach us how to be crazy-crazy, (bleep) crazy.

I'm not making threats here.

But this is how they push me to the corner.

I'm trying to get my message to (bleep) Serbia and the (bleep) U.S., uh, embassy about, U.S. government about my problems here.

But who cares?

I mean, I'm just a piece of (bleep) there just dying.

What matters?

>> RATH: Later that day, we called the interior minister's office for comment about Mansoor's situation.

>> Hello.

>> RATH: Hi, Nemanja?

I reached his assistant.

We've been interviewing one of the former detainees here and he's made some allegations regarding how things are in Serbia and, and his treatment.

It doesn't scan with what we've heard on the interview and what we heard at the press conference on, on Sunday.

So it was some things we really needed to give, wanted to give the minister a chance to, to respond to.

>> RATH: He's had some interactions, I guess, with some, some people from the government that apparently, um...

Didn't go pleasantly.

>> RATH: Okay.

>> RATH: Okay.

Nemanja, thanks very much.

We kept trying, but the government never would agree to an interview or respond to questions about Mansoor and his allegations.

The next day, our last in Serbia, I reread Mansoor's memoir.

The first line says, "If you have a problem in the camps "and you want your problem to be solved, you must cause another problem, or many problems."

>> The idea of the book, to let the reader live the life of the detainees.

>> RATH: During our time here, Mansoor would say very little about his past, but before leaving, I pressed him again about it, and what he'd written about how Gitmo changed him.

I have in my head, I think, the first line of your book, which I won't get it precisely word for word.

"In the camps, if you have a problem," uh, "and you want to solve it..." >> If you have problem, you have to create other problems.

You have to protest.

You have to start behave crazy.

You have to kick the doors.

"Why people behave like this?

That's crazy."

They're not crazy.

This is the way how people behave.

This is the way how actually the place make these people behave.

I mean, we were like animals in cages.

Literally.

Just animals who can behave like humans.

That way we were treated.

I mean, I was wondering always what they want.

What they want from us?

>> RATH: How did you first get picked up by the Americans?

>> Okay, we don't want to go there.

I was sold like anyone else.

>> RATH: You were sold.

>> Sold by Afghans to, uh, to C.I.A.

And from there, was...

I don't want to mention about Afghanistan.

>> RATH: While he wouldn't say more, according to his case file, Mansoor was turned over to the U.S. by an Afghan warlord who was reported to be on the C.I.A.

payroll.

Why don't you want to talk about that?

>> Okay, let us say wrong time, wrong place.

I need to write it and put my past in my separate book and separate story.

You will see it one day, I promise you.

>> RATH: You write about Guantanamo, having difficulty being in a place where you don't trust anybody and no one trusts you.

And you talk about the situation here in Serbia, where there are people who, you know, say that you're a liar or, like, say that you're, you know, might be making things up.

>> I mean, first of all...

The governments here or every government, they get a picture from United States government that, the stereotype.

"Those people are liars."

They put in, "They are psychologically ill, blah, blah, blah."

And I was shocked and surprised, and everyone repeat the same thing.

And I'm afraid that you'll get affected with the, with the disease here-- liar, liar, liar.

I don't want to talk to you more to appear a liar, a liar here.

(sighs) Finish.

>> RATH: We went back to the U.S. leaving Mansoor much as we had found him: bitter, isolated, determined to carry on with his hunger strike.

Mansoor's lawyer said she'd made no headway getting anyone at the State Department to reconsider his placement.

So on the 40th day of Mansoor's hunger strike, I went to see the person who had struck the deal to send him to Serbia, Ambassador Lee Wolosky, the special envoy for Guantanamo closure under President Obama.

>> Arun?

Hello!

Lee Wolosky.

>> RATH: Nice to meet you.

Wolosky was pressed for time.

There were 20 detainees he was still trying to find countries for in the remaining weeks of the Obama administration.

I asked him about Mansoor's troubles in Serbia and his hunger strike.

>> RATH: We spent some time with a former detainee who has been resettled in, in Serbia.

He was sent there last July.

He seemed like he is in a very desperate situation, and he's gotten to the point that he's gone on a hunger strike to protest that.

>> Well, I'm not, I'm not aware that he's on a hunger strike.

This is, this is, this is the first I've heard that he's on a hunger strike.

>> RATH: His lawyer said that they had informed the U.S. government about, about the hunger strike.

>> Well, hunger strikes are not the right way to proceed in addressing grievances.

The right way to do things there is to try to make the resettlement work.

We can't force people to make good life choices.

We can only encourage them to do it and to create an environment where that's possible.

I think we've done that here, and I think the Serbian government has also done it.

>> RATH: Is there any additional responsibility from the U.S. government to the detainees after they've been released and resettled?

>> We don't make apologies for having detained people lawfully.

However, we also try to create an environment where individuals can move forward with their lives.

The Serbian government has created an environment where, if he decides to learn the language and take advantage of the opportunities, uh, that are being offered to him, we are still confident that it can be a successful resettlement.

>> RATH: But on the State Department's own website, it talks about xenophobic violence being, being a problem in, in Serbia.

>> We've seen no indication, in this case, uh, that that is a factor at all.

None of the resettlements that we do are easy.

They require work on the part of the individual that's been, um, transferred and put in a completely alien environment.

I'm not minimizing that.

What I am saying, though, is that sometimes life isn't perfect, and you have to, you know, make a decision about where you find yourself in life.

I do have to be in a meeting to make sure that we're able to get more people out of Guantanamo.

>> RATH: Weeks later, I'd heard that Mansoor started eating again when his mother in Yemen threatened to start her own hunger strike if he didn't stop his.

Then, when I was home on a Saturday afternoon, he called.

He said he'd discovered hidden cameras in his apartment and started ripping them out.

>> RATH: Yeah.

Yeah, hold it up a little higher.

>> RATH: I used my iPad to record our video call.

>> RATH: Yeah.

>> RATH: I imagine probably, you know, whoever has the cameras is going to probably come by at some point.

>> RATH: A few minutes later, a group of men came in.

Mansoor turned the camera on them and kept talking to me.

>> RATH: So what is going to happen right now?

>> RATH: Okay.

>> RATH: At that point, more men came in.

>> RATH: Mansoor's video cut out, but the audio kept going as the men explained why they were there.

>> RATH: Mansoor told me they took his phone and laptop and when he got them back, he says, all of his data had been wiped clean.

I called Serbian officials again for comment, but they wouldn't respond.

I returned to Guantanamo just before President Trump took office.

There are still 41 detainees being held.

Five of them are accused of planning the 9/11 terror attacks.

Their trial is expected to take place here in the coming years.

Around the base, there are signs of a long future ahead.

What's going on here in terms of the construction?

>> Currently here on the Alpha block will be exam, exam rooms for the detainee medical center.

>> RATH: How far away is this from being finished?

>> Sometime in 2017.

>> RATH: The commander of the detention center says they're prepared.

There's some construction going on here.

Is that an indication that this facility will be around for a while?

>> We're preparing for, uh, whatever the possibility may be.

Going forward with that, it provides us a capacity and ability to provide better medical care, uh, to the detainee population.

It helps us out also if there's an aging population if we're here, you know, five, ten, 15 years down the road, as well, because we have to look for all possibilities for that.

>> RATH: If the new commander-in-chief, who said that he wants to keep the facility open and to start sending new detainees here, how would you be able to adjust?

>> We have, you know, multiple, you know, plans in place.

The first thing we'd probably do would be looking at, you know, not intermingling new detainees coming in, so we'd have to figure out the best way to... to do that based upon the number of detainees we'd get.

>> RATH: Outside, as I took another tour of the camp, something unusual happened.

A detainee yelled out to me from the rec yard.

I leave go home!

>> RATH: You leave go home?

>> RATH: Where is home?

>> RATH: Communication between detainees and journalists is usually forbidden.

They made us stop filming.

But I was able to continue talking to him off-camera for several minutes.

He said he was detainee number 242, that he'd had four reviews, but is being held indefinitely without charges.

He said he's worried he'll be here forever.

Later, I texted Mansoor about the exchange.

I texted him that a detainee tried to talk with me.

Prisoner number 242.

Mansoor says, "This is my best friend."

He said, "I think he is hunger strike, "his name is Khaled, Yemeni.

Hasn't been cleared yet."

Mansoor said they want him to admit he was wrong.

"They are crazy."

But he says, "Sorry, can't talk about this issue anymore, "it brings only pain and I haven't figured out what to do."

Today, there are 26 detainees like the one who called out to me, being held here indefinitely without charges.

And there are five men who had been cleared for release, like Mansoor, but didn't get out of Guantanamo before Donald Trump took office.

>> NARRATOR: Coming up next.

In a special collaboration with Retro Report, Arun Rath continues the reporting: how a U.S. naval base became a controversial prison.

>> These people had not even been charged with a crime.

>> A whole bunch of them just started grabbing the barbed wire so hard that blood was coming out of their hands.

>> NARRATOR: From Haitian refugees in the 1990s to the post-9/11 detainees, the little-known history of Gitmo.

"Forever Prison" starts right now.

>> RATH: Over the years I've been reporting on Guantanamo, I've seen the prison camp evolve.

Once crammed full of suspected terrorists in orange jumpsuits, parts of the camp are now empty.

Just right here by the side of the road, this is where the detainees were kept in cages, essentially.

Gitmo is a symbol of the post-9/11 war on terror, but on my trips here, I began to hear a rarely told history of how it was first used to hold people outside the reach of U.S. law.

It began a decade before 9/11, in the wake of a bloody coup in September of 1991, just across the water, in nearby Haiti.

>> A military coup is underway... >> ... when the Haitian military overthrew elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide... >> ...reports that soldiers have killed up to 150 people this week.

>> I was 14, my dad was in hiding, so every time they come knocking on the door looking for my dad, it was like, we don't know where he's at.

I've seen people being burned alive, and people being beheaded just for your political belief.

>> Some army and police units are working as marauders.

>> My dad could have died at any given day.

So we had to flee.

>> RATH: Marie and her father were among the more than 70,000 Haitians who took to the sea in the aftermath of the coup... >> It is a refugee flood.

>> RATH: ...hoping to get political asylum in the U.S. >> For many, leaving by boat was their only escape... >> The boat would be leaking water sometimes, so we had a bucket.

>> Officials worry that hundreds of Haitians may have died in the rough seas.

>> We ran out of food.

We ran out of water.

People was sick.

We were in a predicament, you couldn't go back.

>> The Coast Guard is now stopping Haitian sailboats around the clock.

>> RATH: U.S. officials were inundated, intercepting hundreds of boats.

>> The State Department says the Haitians don't meet standard criteria for asylum.

>> RATH: After a quick review, they rejected most of the Haitians' asylum claims.

>> ...describing them as economic, not political, refugees.

>> RATH: And sent them back to Haiti.

>> The Coast Guard was picking people up and sending them back to Haiti without asylum processing, basically.

So without giving people a chance to establish that they were fleeing political persecution.

>> The Haitian exodus has tied American refugee policy into knots.

>> RATH: But the refugees kept coming.

>> One U.S. official called it a national security crisis.

>> RATH: So they were brought to a place nearby, where normal U.S. asylum rules would not apply.

>> Nearly 1,200 Haitians are being detained at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

>> RATH: American soldiers quickly built a holding camp at the naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

>> It was massive, a massive camp, and it was fenced with razor wire, and you have the tower with the guards, and then just during the day, you just roamed the yards.

We didn't have no rights because technically we're not in the U.S.

So it felt like you were in prison.

I mean, that's what it was to us, it was being in a prison.

>> RATH: Soon, more than 12,000 people would be held here while their asylum claims were being processed-- but without access to lawyers, like they would have had if they'd made it to the U.S. >> This is essentially Guantanamo episode one.

We had foreign nationals held at Guantanamo precisely because the government believed, or took the position, that there were no legal constraints.

>> RATH: That issue caught the attention of a group of law students who were watching the story unfold.

>> I was in my last year at Yale Law School, where the students had been working on a variety of human rights litigation projects, and one of them was addressing what was happening with Haitian refugees.

And the question was whether anything more could be done.

>> What was happening on Guantanamo Bay was wrong, and we felt like we needed to do something, which was to file a lawsuit.

>> RATH: The law students brought their concerns to their professor, Harold Koh.

>> The students came to me and they said, "We'd like you to sue the U.S.

government."

The case started as a request for lawyers, and what happened with the Haitians were on Guantanamo, but they didn't have legal representation and they could be returned, potentially to their death.

So how could it be that you could be asked questions, have no right to consult a lawyer, and be returned to your death?

>> RATH: The government argued that the Haitians weren't entitled to lawyers because Guantanamo was beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. law.

>> The position of the government really was twofold.

Number one, these detainees don't even have the right to walk into court to challenge their detention.

The government's second position was, even if they can walk into court and challenge their detention, there is nothing we're doing illegal here.

>> RATH: Bob Begleiter represented the government.

At the time, he says, he believed the Haitians at Gitmo were receiving due process.

>> Due process for them meant that their asylum applications were being considered in an, in an impartial way.

That was due process.

The government would say they got it, and, ultimately, I think they all did.

>> RATH: In the spring of 1992, the two sides met in federal court for a pretrial hearing.

The judge ruled that the team from Yale could go to Guantanamo.

>> They brought me to the outskirts of the camp, and there, there were all these Haitians, including many children, surrounded by barbed wire.

And they saw me get out of the car and a whole bunch of them came up to the barbed wire and just started grabbing the barbed wire so hard that blood was coming out of their hands.

And they're shouting, "Harold!

Harold!"

And I realized they're...

I'm their lawyer, I've got to get them out.

>> RATH: As the case dragged on, the government rejected most of the refugees' asylum requests and sent them back to Haiti.

The few whose claims were seen as credible were allowed to go to the U.S. to apply for asylum.

But some of those expecting to go found out they were being held back.

>> Everybody have a T number.

I think mine is T1246.

When your number is called, they put you in a chopper and... to bring you to the States.

Every day they come with a list, they call out numbers.

Your number never called until all the camps were closed.

That's when we find out, all the remaining people were H.I.V.-positive.

And unfortunately, my dad was one of those.

>> They have been cleared to enter the U.S., but are stuck here because of a U.S. ban on H.I.V.-infected immigrants.

>> RATH: Because of that policy, more than 200 H.I.V.-positive refugees and their families were told they could be stuck at Gitmo indefinitely-- for ten or 20 years, or even until a cure for AIDS was found.

>> It's a death trap.

They're being held there, even though they have legitimate asylum claims, but because they're sick.

And what we tried to do was emphasize how crazy it was to do this.

You know, that our government would be holding people, all of a particular race and national origin, who are all sick in a particular way, instead of treating them like the refugees they were.

>> These Haitian refugees have reached a way station on what so far has been a journey to nowhere.

>> RATH: The government insisted the refugees were not being mistreated.

But another year would go by for the Haitians at Guantanamo.

>> People were getting aggressive because of the unknown.

You know, they would throw rocks at the MPs.

They would put you, what I would call solitary confinement.

And people were having hunger strikes.

It was us against them.

>> RATH: In court, the government's attorneys were painting a different picture.

>> I was told that it wasn't perfect but it was decent, that there was good sanitation, they were provided adequate sustenance and shelter.

>> RATH: Then the team from Yale discovered new evidence.

>> We got a series of videotapes.

And one of them showed this amazing scene where the U.S. military came into the camp and suppressed an uprising among the Haitians by physically mauling them, dragging them around.

Remember, these are not criminals, these are refugees.

>> They have those white type of handcuff, where they would tighten them really tight.

A lot of people sometime would be on the floor with their hands and feet handcuffed and took away.

>> And suddenly it became clear that the benign picture that was being painted was just false.

The judge was watching this with, you know... stunned.

>> Oh, I thought it was horrible, you know.

These people had not even been charged with a crime, but they were treated worse than criminals.

>> RATH: Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr., presided over the trial.

>> How can you take a human being, take him into custody, tell a court that "I'm going to do whatever I want to do with you," and to the court, "There's nothing you can do about it."

Because it didn't happen in the territorial confines of the United States, it's in Cuba.

Our Constitution says that if you are in custody by American authorities, you have rights.

>> RATH: Judge Johnson ruled that the Haitians should be released from Gitmo, and that the laws of the United States did apply there.

Within days, all of the remaining Haitians left for the U.S. >> All this time, we thought we were alone.

We were not alone.

We had people who wanted us here.

We had people who was fighting for us.

>> We won, and the Haitians came into New York under the court order.

My co-counsel, Michael Ratner, and I were standing at LaGuardia, and we're in the terminal.

And I said to him, "You know, the law made this happen."

>> RATH: The Haitians were free, but Judge Johnson's ruling was in jeopardy.

The government continued to argue that U.S. laws should not apply at Guantanamo and threatened to appeal up to the Supreme Court, which had ruled against the Haitians in a related case, unless Koh agreed to a deal.

Getting these Haitians off of Guantanamo, it came with a price.

>> The ruling in our favor by the judge, the court order said, alien detainees on Guantanamo have constitutional rights.

And they said, "You're going to have to agree that that opinion should be taken off the books."

>> RATH: Koh felt he had no choice.

He took the deal with the government.

Judge Johnson's decision would not become legal precedent.

>> Given the situation they were presented with, they chose the wisest course.

Because better to have no precedent and live to fight another day, than to find that the court has decided against you at the highest level-- which is to say, you have almost nowhere to go.

>> RATH: Guantanamo would remain in legal limbo, leaving the door open for it to be used as a detention center outside the reach of U.S. law.

>> ...are being flown from Afghanistan to the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

>> NARRATOR: Next time on Frontline... >> They're pointing over there and they're saying that's the black flag of ISIS.

>> NARRATOR: Shia militias are helping push ISIS out of Iraq.

But at what cost?

>> Are you worried that Sunnis may turn to violence to fight back?

>> NARRATOR: On the ground, Frontline correspondent Ramita Navai investigates.

>> They're as scared of the militias as they are of ISIS.

>> NARRATOR: "Iraq Uncovered."

>> Go to pbs.org/frontline to learn more about detainees who were transferred out of Guantanamo during the Obama era.

Read extended interviews with Chuck Hagel... >> We want these people to get back into society.

>> ...and others.

>> See more of our reporting on Gitmo with our partners at NPR and WGBH News.

Connect to the Frontline community on Facebook and Twitter, then sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org/Frontline.

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org >> For more on this and other Frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline.

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