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[birds chirping]
[waves calmly crashing]
[pensive music playing]
[Bush] The United States of America makes
the following demands:
close immediately every terrorist training camp
in Afghanistan and hand over every terrorist
and every person in their support structure.
[applause]
[reporter] First strike against terrorism
as a missile barrage lands on Afghanistan.
[Bush] If anybody harbors a terrorist, they are a terrorist.
If they fund a terrorist, they are terrorists.
Battle is now joined on many fronts.
[crowd applauding]
The American flag flies again over our embassy in Kabul.
The terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan,
now occupy cells in Guantanamo Bay.
[applause]
[Yvonne] My third year in law school,
I was interviewing with some of the large firms.
They always ask you, "Where do you see yourself
15 years from now?"
And you can't say, "I don't see myself working for you,"
which I wanted to say.
Some great costume you got there.
Yeah. [laughs]
[Yvonne] No matter how much money,
I didn't feel I would be happy in a large law firm.
And so, I started looking for alternative ways
to practice law and came across the JAG Corps.
Many of my classmates thought I had failed out of law school
'cause they couldn't understand
why anyone would go through three years of law school
and then go into the military and practice law.
Any opinions I state are my opinions.
They do not represent the United States government,
United States Air Force, Department of Defense
or any government agency.
[Bush] And terrorist leaders who urge followers
to sacrifice their lives while running for their own.
[Yvonne] I had done at least 12 to 15 years
of being in the JAG program before Guantanamo Bay.
[indistinct chatter]
What I knew about Guantanamo Bay was very little.
I knew we had individuals that we were holding
from the war on terror
that we had picked up from the battlefield.
That we have a group who claim the status of Taliban.
The smaller number are Al-Qaeda.
We have a group who we have not determined
what their status is.
All that we can say with certainty
is that none of these people are on our side.
Remember, these are the ones in Guantanamo Bay are killers.
Uh, they're, uh, they don't share the same values we share.
[Yvonne] What I had heard in the media
that they were the worst of the worst terrorists locked up
and that we're gonna give them full and fair trials.
I-- I have absolute faith in the men and women
of our armed forces who, when called upon to participate
in these commissions,
will do their utmost to ensure a very fair,
forthright, honest trial.
I just figured by this time, who we had at Guantanamo Bay,
since you have taken 'em from Afghanistan and Pakistan
and brought 'em over here.
You have the CIA involved, the FBI involved,
that we had to have the bad guys.
[phone ringing]
I remember receiving a call from the Chief Defense Counsel,
asking me about being involved with Guantanamo Bay.
I hesitated a little about volunteering.
I knew that the trials that they would have
at Guantanamo Bay would be very historic trials.
General Hemingway, I really want to move forward
as quickly as you can with prosecution.
Let the public know that we're fighting
and winning this war
and the type of people we're dealing with.
Long prison terms, maybe even death in accordance with law--
[Yvonne] I got involved in Guantanamo
because I raised my hand and said,
"No, I'll-- If you want me to volunteer, I'll do so."
[Graham] These guys are not prisoners of war.
They are people who have engaged in warfare
without meeting the preconditions of a warrior.
[Yvonne] The case was Binyam Mohamed's case.
Binyam's case was up as one of the first ten individuals
to be tried by military commission.
And at that time, there was concern
that his case would probably be a death penalty case.
When I got assigned to the case,
Clive Stafford Smith was representing Binyam as his--
Binyam's defense attorney.
Clive was a well-known capital habeas attorney.
And honestly, I think what we're about to do
is utterly barbaric.
Yvonne was quite open about who she was.
She said that she was
a relatively fundamental Christian
and she voted Republican,
something that I've never done, I will say.
I had a lot of questions for him
because I knew that he had met Binyam.
Clive sent me the charge sheet
and some other information about Binyam's case.
Clive was telling me about he was tortured
and all this stuff.
I thought he was exaggerating.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
What else is he gonna say?
I didn't take a lot of credibility to it.
But, I was reading the allegations and like,
"This doesn't even make sense."
These charges don't make sense.
There is no war crime in here.
This whole case right now doesn't make sense.
And I remember emailing him back saying,
"Clive, I think you left off some of the documents.
Where are the rest of the documents?
Because this can't be all of it."
So that was my first clue, like,
something's not quite right.
But I still wasn't putting it all together.
[Cori] So Yvonne was Binyam's military Defense Council.
So, Yvonne was defending him in this commissions process
and Clive and myself, we were civilian lawyers.
So, Clive and Yvonne cooperated on parallel tracks.
[Clive] I was a bit worried
that we weren't gonna get along. [laughs]
[Pam] Yvonne was the oldest.
Back then, whatever Yvonne did, "Oh, we wanna do that."
So she did softball, we did softball.
She did field hockey, we did field hockey.
She did basketball, we did basketball.
Growing up, we were in the suburbs of Philadelphia,
the mixed neighborhood.
Four kids, single parent.
And if you crossed over
a certain part of the neighborhood,
you knew you were gonna get chased.
You knew you were gonna get called all kinds of names.
In our neighborhood, there was a swim club
that we couldn't attend because we were Black.
Two separate worlds.
Yvonne always knew she wanted to be a lawyer.
The State of Georgia versus Lester Mathews.
Benjamin Matlock for the bench, Your Honor.
[Pam] Yvonne was always watching lawyer shows
like Matlockand Perry Mason.
Yeah, would you change your testimony about me?
[Pam] I think it was in high school,
I remember her coming home saying the teacher told her
she should be a gym teacher, not a lawyer.
There was this whole concept of kids of color,
you know, maybe your best could be a gym teacher,
or not ever aspiring anything higher than that.
But my mom would say that was never an excuse
for you not to achieve.
In our house, you had no choice but to go to college.
To go and get a full ride to Notre Dame
and to be able to do law school.
It was really a big honor for her.
And when I tell people she did Notre Dame,
they would be like, "What? Notre Dame Law School?
Are you serious?" Like, Notre Dame around the corner like,
you know, community college Notre Dame. No.
They were still sort of separated social segregation
to some degree.
But Yvonne was actually our hero in many ways.
People tried to put her in a category and she defied.
She didn't stay in that box.
♪ Christmas time ♪
[Yvonne] So, I spent Christmas day with my family
and I think on the 26th,
I was heading down to Jacksonville, Florida
to meet Clive so we could head down to Guantanamo Bay.
Because I've been told this guy is a terrorist
and he was gonna blow up Americans
and do all these nasty things.
In my own mind, psychologically, I'm thinking,
"This guy's a terrorist. This guy's the worst of the worst."
I didn't tell Clive this, but I was actually scared
to go into the cell with-- with Binyam.
[crickets chirping]
But as a Christian, how can you represent someone
you know did the crime and who's guilty?
Why would you wanna get somebody off?
After doing my six years in the military,
I started doing capital cases in Pennsylvania. Death row.
And I had really been with the worst of the worst.
I-- I've represented an individual
who had killed at least six or seven people.
We had what we called contact visits.
You would go into the meeting room
or the cell with your client.
I would read the case file beforehand.
I was like, "Oh, this person's an animal. This person's a,"
you know, you-- you-- you get very negative effects
just by reading the transcript.
When you sit down and you talk to the person,
you realize I could have a conversation with a person
who's sitting on death row
and talk about the Phillies game
or talk about the weather or talk about sports.
And you connect on a more personal level.
Everyone has this misconception
that defense attorney's role is to get people off.
My role is not to get people off.
My role is to make sure that the system works.
And in order for that system to work,
both the state and the defense have to have
competent individuals representing it.
And if the system's working correctly,
then I believe in the end of the day, you know,
if someone is guilty, they'll be convicted,
but they're gonna get a fair sentence, a fair trial.
And it's all about making sure everyone gets fairness
because anyone can get caught up in the system.
And I think most people really think
only guilty people get caught up in the system
and that-- that's not true.
[pensive music playing]
I had no problem with walking to a cell
with someone who has been sentenced to death.
However, the first day when I went to meet Binyam,
I was scared.
We were over at six.
It's one of the newer buildings that they built.
There were-- Had been complaints
about whether or not the guards could overhear
the privileged conversation between counsel and client.
[fan whirring]
And I remember big commercial fans
on the outside of the door.
It was just weird to hear this large fan sound.
It was the only mechanism that the facility had
to mask the sound.
And I remember walking in there
and sitting down with Binyam.
I wanted to size up the situation myself.
So, I spent most of that time just kind of watching Binyam.
I allowed Clive to ask the questions.
The thing I noticed immediately
that Binyam was more scared of me than I was of him.
And immediately it-- That just hit me like a ton of bricks.
You could tell in his head he thought this was a set up.
Talking with Binyam and what happened from him,
he was captured at Karachi Airport in Pakistan
and that was just the beginning of his ordeal.
[reporter] People want to know
why you were in the part of the world
where you were arrested.
Why did you go to Afghanistan in-- in the first place?
Catastrophic wars are tearing apart,
Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia.
And in Ethiopia, some four million people
are on the brink of famine once again.
[announcer] About civil war,
which has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
[Yvonne] Binyam was born in Ethiopia.
There was a change of government
and his family escaped from the Ethiopia to United Kingdom.
He was a UK resident.
His father and parents end up going back to Ethiopia
after there was another regime change,
but they left Binyam back in the UK by himself.
Binyam ended up getting into drugs,
got himself in a little bit of trouble in that way.
He was a teenager left on his own, pretty much.
He was making bad choices until he found Islam.
And that's really what rescued him from the street.
[reporter] In Afghanistan, his mission--
[Yvonne] So, this is before September 11th.
He had made a decision to do a pilgrimage.
He was in Afghanistan at the wrong time,
at the wrong place.
Because as we all know, September 2001, 9/11.
And then in October,
was when we went to war in Afghanistan.
-[gunfire] -All hell broke loose.
Once the war broke out,
it was almost impossible to get out of Afghanistan.
Binyam brought this to my attention
'cause I never thought about it before.
It's not as if you can just, you know,
go down to the airport and-- and-- and, you know,
book a flight and go home.
You're in a third world country to begin with.
Now, you're in a country that's at war with the US.
Bombs are dropping everywhere. Everything's closed.
Anyone trying to get outta Afghanistan
had to go through Pakistan
and that's where he eventually made his way through.
April 10th, 2002, he got stopped at the Karachi Airport.
He was trying to go back home to the UK.
He was caught with a forged passport,
arrested and from there,
he entered into a nightmare world
that I wouldn't wish on anybody.
[pensive music playing]
According to Binyam,
he was moved around a couple times, held in local prisons.
Within about a week or two,
some Americans came in who he identified as the FBI
and started to participate in some of the interrogation.
Binyam kept asking for a lawyer. He wasn't telling him anything.
He said, "Hey, look, I want a lawyer.
I don't know anything."
But another week or two later, MI5 came in.
MI5 is like the CIA for the UK government.
And he was trying to tell him
that he was being mistreated by the Pakistanis.
And he was happy when he saw MI5
because he knew someone from the UK government
knew of his whereabouts.
MI5 gave him some tea and he asked for just like,
one lump of sugar.
One MI5 agent said, "Well, you probably want more
than that for where you're going."
And Binyam didn't understand it fully at the time,
but he understood something, he thought,
"Does that mean I'm gonna be moved somewhere?"
July 2002, he was rendered, taken off
and moved to an unknown location.
That's when things got from bad to worse.
He's moved to Morocco and for 18 months,
even MI5 can't find Binyam.
Because when they moved him,
the US refused to tell MI5 where they had moved him.
He talks about some of the worst physical torture
happening in Morocco.
Because they weren't getting anything from him,
they continued to increase the amount of pressure.
One day, they stripped him naked,
which was not an unusual thing to do.
They held his genitals in his hand
and with a razor and they said, "We might as well cut this off
because the only thing you'll ever do
is breed more terrorists."
They took what Binyam described as a razor type of device
like a scalpel and made little cuts in his genital areas,
which were extremely painful,
but not enough that they wouldn't heal.
And they would make five, six small cuts in him
and he would just scream.
I mean, he said, first he tried not to scream,
but it was just so painful.
After that, a doctor or someone would come in,
put some kind of liquid on it, let it heal,
and then two or three days later,
they would come back and do the same thing.
[Yvonne] Long-term sleep deprivation,
stress positions, long-term mind games.
All of this was to break him down
and get him to confess to things.
He said he lost hope when during one interrogation,
they start asking him questions
and were telling him about things about him
when he lived in London.
He said he realized then
when he saw his own government was involved in this,
that he lost hope because he could hold out like this
is just the Americans doing these things.
But when he feel-- Realized MI5 was now involved in this
and somehow, um, I think that was one of the things
that broke his spirit.
[chopper whirring]
Binyam, after spending about 18 months in Morocco,
was then moved to the Dark Prison.
[Clive] I remember just becoming numb.
He basically said, "Clive, you're gonna have to
fill in the emotion because I'm kinda dead in the head."
He was speaking very matter of matter-of-factly,
this is what happened, this is what happened,
this is what happened.
Uh, and I was just writing it down and it was horrifying.
[Yvonne] After the Dark Prison,
he was finally transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
[Clive] The stuff that Binyam shared with me is horrific,
but there were things that he didn't want me
to share with the world and they're worse.
And they're worse in ways that are just so humiliating
on different levels.
After that, I was pretty much suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder myself,
just listening to him.
So, I walked into that cell scared.
I walked out of that cell very upset and--
and-- and extremely mad.
Going in there with that type of attitude,
I just didn't realize that we were really holding people
at rendition and then torturing them.
That just never crossed my mind.
[Bush] I can tell you two things.
One, that we abide by the law of the United States
and we do not torture.
And two, we will try to, um, do everything we can
to protect us within the law.
We do not render to countries that torture.
That has been our policy
and that policy will remain the same.
[Yvonne] You go through so many emotions.
I think I learned more about myself
than I did about Binyam
because I realized that in a sense I had been had.
[pensive music playing]
[Steve] Do you think it's inevitable
that some people who are innocent
are going to end up in this system
spending years and years in Guantanamo Bay?
[John] There's no perfect system. I agree, Steve.
There's always the chance
that there will be people who are detained,
who are not enemy combatants.
The same is true of our criminal justice system.
We are-- You know, there's no doubt
that we have people in the criminal justice system
who are innocent.
That's why we have all these processes.
That's why we have all these appeals levels
is to try to correct any mistakes
that were made and prevent errors.
[Steve] Mr. Yoo, thanks very much.
[John] Thanks, Steve, for having me.
[announcer] The rights and responsibilities
inherent in freedom
and to celebrate the joys that life and liberty provide
and with these, to take renewed pride
in the continuing American revolution.
[Yvonne] There was always an issue
about whether Binyam is really as innocent
as the defense counsel say.
He was giving us a lot of information,
which we were trying to get evidence to back up.
And in Binyam's case, that became really important
because the government wasn't giving us any information.
There were many ways
in which we tried to corroborate what Binyam said.
You just go down to the secure facility
where all of the classified files are kept,
to the FBI office
and you look at the pile of so-called intelligence
on your client, what they say your client did.
What they say, the evidence for it is.
[Yvonne] The US was insistent that Binyam was this big shot
or knew something or was somebody.
[Bush] I can tell you that--
that we have a man detained who is a threat to the country.
This whole conspiracy connected Jose Padilla and Binyam
into this dirty bomb plot.
[Bush] Vigilance of our intelligence gathering
and law enforcement, he is now--
[Clive] John Ashcroft, who was then Attorney General,
held a press conference where he said
that they captured the dirty bombers.
The Al-Qaeda operative and was exploring a plan
to build and explode a radioactive dirty bomb.
Now, let me be clear. We know from multiple independent
and corroborating sources that Abdullah al-Muhajir
was closely associated with Al-Qaeda.
And that as an Al-Qaeda operative,
he was involved in planning future terrorist attacks
on innocent American citizens.
And that was a huge part of the case.
[reporter] They obtained information that led the CIA
and the FBI to capture this man, Jose Padilla.
[reporter 2] What this new term, enemy combatants, is.
This is the most extreme case.
Padilla and his accomplices, as with all of Al-Qaeda,
would go with any plan that would result
in maximum death and destruction.
[Yvonne] Binyam and Jose Padilla were supposed to be
coming to the US and have a radioactive bomb with them.
Discuss plans for exploding a radioactive dispersal device.
It's commonly called a dirty bomb.
[Yvonne] I talked to experts about this and they laughed
to think that this could even be carried out.
There were discussions about, um, this, uh, possible plan
and it was in the discussion stage and, uh,
it had not gone as far as we know
much past the discussion stage.
[Yvonne] Anyone who knows chemistry,
there'd be no way that these two individuals
could just carry a radioactive bomb into the US.
[reporter 3] Could we see this end up in court?
[Yvonne] But Americans, they just heard the dirty bomb
and after 9/11 was like, you know, the sky was falling.
The problem was, Binyam didn't know Jose Padilla.
Jose Padilla didn't-- didn't know-- didn't know Binyam.
Binyam, when they caught him at the airport in Pakistan,
he was flying from Karachi to Zurich to the UK
because there's no direct flight from Karachi to London.
Jose Padilla travelling around at the same time
was going to Cairo.
They may have been going to Zurich together
because every flight from Karachi had to go to Zurich
'cause that was its hub.
So, they were on two different flights.
When Binyam was trying to make his way into Pakistan
to fly out, they did stay at different Madrasas.
They made it. Stayed at a Madrasa together. Who knows?
That would've been the only connection
between Jose Padilla and Binyam.
But there was never a clear connection.
Everyone who you could ever think of,
you could ever name in Al-Qaeda
was named in Binyam's charge sheet.
You had him connected with Jose Padilla,
Richard Reid, the shoe bomber.
I'm like, "How are they connecting Binyam
with you know, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Bin Laden."
And I'm thinking, Binyam, here you are, you converted to Islam
back in early 2001.
By 2002, you're shaking hands with Bin Laden
and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and you don't speak Arabic,
but I'm quite sure they probably thought
you were one of the club.
One of the things that happened during that time period
was that Abu Zubaydah had been captured.
We knew that Zubaydah had more information
that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking.
It became clear that he had received training
on how to resist interrogation.
And so, the CIA used an alternative set of procedures.
[Ali] And then, uh, and then we finally reported
to headquarters that, you know, this--
What's happening, as I called it in the, uh, uh,
D-O-J, Department of Justice Inspector General Report,
borderline torture.
[Yvonne] When they had picked up Binyam,
I think they kind of forced Abu Zubaydah,
when he was making these confessions
and was waterboarded to try to-- to say,
"Do you know this person, that person?"
There was a confinement box.
I mean, definitely it's-- it's for, uh, for Abu Zubaydah.
And, uh, I really cannot be part of this.
And at the time, I felt that waterboarding was something
that we needed to do.
And as time has passed, and has--
As September 11th has-- has, you know,
has moved farther and farther back into history,
um, I think I've changed my mind.
[Yvonne] And because they have been Binyam,
they kinda forced Abu Zubaydah.
They were probably saying, "Do you know this guy?"
"Hey, you know, I know anyone you want
if you stop pouring this water down my throat."
They were connecting dots that just did not connect
because they did the same thing with Binyam with Jose.
They showed him a picture of Jose.
He's like, "I don't know who this guy is."
But by the time they finished with Binyam,
he would've known who anyone in the world
wanted to be to stop the torture.
The US was trying to connect dots
and forcing people to confess to things
to justify their detention
and to show that they were terrorists and bad, bad men.
They had charged both Jose Padilla and Binyam,
pretty much co-conspirators.
I was very interested in what evidence
the government had on this whole dirty bomb thing.
[reporter] Jose Padilla, he was accused
in a radioactive dirty bomb.
[Yvonne] We knew it was hogwash.
But we were kind of interested
on how the government was gonna present this at trial.
Because Jose Padilla was in the federal court system
and not down at Guantanamo Bay in the commissions,
his trial actually kicked off first down in Florida.
So, I go to Florida to see the Jose Padilla case,
get to Miami.
I have a brief chance to talk with Jose Padilla's attorney
and he was the first one to tell me that the charges
that they originally had picked up Jose Padilla for
had magically disappeared.
[reporter] But those charges disappeared.
It's just impossible in this country
for someone to get a fair trial
when they're lumped in with Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
[Yvonne] That was a shock because that was the big thing
that hit the news.
Big thing that made Jose Padilla
and Binyam really bad guys and the worst of the worst,
where they were gonna come to the United States
and set off these dirty bombs.
It told me right then and there
that was something that was made outta thin air.
And that the government had no evidence on the dirty bomb.
That corroborated Binyam's stories.
The, uh, front page of USA Todayhas a story.
"Ashcroft's remarks annoy the White House."
It says, "Ashcroft's ominous tone surprise the White House.
They say that the former Chicago gang member,
once known as Jose Padilla, was up to no good.
But then, any plans involving radiation were not as mature
as Ashcroft suggested.
Administration sources say the White House
emphatically told Ashcroft it was dissatisfied
with his description of the alleged plot.
Publicly, the White House defended Ashcroft,
saying he was technically correct.
There's always a tendency at times like this,
that initial reports immediately lurch
to the worst case scenario." Next is a call--
[Yvonne] So, I was happy in some ways,
but in another way,
I knew the commissions were a totally different set of laws.
[Dana] Wow. This was weird and different
and the CIA is really involved in it
and we don't know if it's good or bad,
but it doesn't feel comfortable to a lot of people.
You know, how are you--
Where are you gonna put these people?
And that's where the whole transportation system,
the secret airplanes come into play.
'Cause you have to
logistically get them somewhere secretly. And then--
[Yvonne] Normally, when you have someone in your custody,
to move 'em from one jurisdiction to another,
the judicial proceedings that are supposed to take place.
When you render someone, you move them improperly
or illegally and often to locations or places
where you know that the treatment will not be humane.
So, I've been investigating, uh,
the CIA's policy of extraordinary rendition
for the last two, three years.
[Clive] There were many allies in the battle for Binyam.
Stephen Grey was one
and he was doing some work on airplanes.
[reporter] And the man that exposed
this whole dark program to the world,
journalist, Stephen Grey.
[Stephen] How do you investigate
the world's biggest intelligence agency?
How do you prove this is going on?
How could you track what had happened to these prisoners?
Bear in mind, most of 'em disappeared.
And those that did come out and tell some story,
no one believed anything they said.
So the question was, how do you prove it?
How do you show what's being going on?
You can see, uh, there is Guantanamo Bay.
One of the techniques was to find all the planes
that went to Guantanamo and then follow the--
the flight routes that they take.
There's always a key detail
that allows you to unlock a bigger puzzle.
These are what flight plans look like.
This is a flight plan N379P with tail number
of the Gulfstream jet.
I latched onto that detail
of the tail number of a plane. Registration.
Maybe in this story, it's not about following the money,
it's about following the planes.
I remember sitting in this very room
and worked out a method
of following from one plane to another
to see which planes were following a particular pattern.
I realized there was a very clear pattern.
I was staring and-- and thinking,
"I'm following the movement of these planes in real time."
This is actually the full CIA's fleet.
Actually, I'm the only one
who knows this information right now.
All of a sudden, there was this really strong noise
of a-- a chopper flying really close nearby
and I thought to myself,
"They're about to raid my office."
[chopper whirring]
At that point, no one else had got those flight plans.
I was afraid if you publish all the details on the internet,
then people would study the flight plans and say,
"I remember being on that plane at this time."
Make up details and they could have invented the story.
So, what I did was I kept all that back.
People like, uh, Clive Stafford Smith
and Yvonne Bradley would want to have these flight plans,
but I wouldn't give them to anybody
until we'd got the prisoners to sit down
and write the exact details of what they remembered
of when and where they were picked up
and where they were taken to
and where they were taken to after that.
The whole story. And then, I used that to compare against
the flight plans and the planes.
And that was what was amazing is that it all matched up.
And that suddenly made all kinds of people credible,
who otherwise you would never have believed.
[Yvonne] Binyam was right on
when he was moved and all this stuff was confirmed.
The only person capable of telling me the truth
during this time was Binyam.
You know, finally I ended up working
with the New York Times
and we found pilots of these planes
who confirmed exactly what had happened.
[Steven] Jeppesen Dataplan are wholly owned subsidiary
of the Boeing Aerospace Company.
They allege that over a four year period,
Jeppesen actively participated in the rendition program
by supplying flight and logistical services
to 15 aircraft used by the CIA
in the extraordinary rendition program
to pick Mohammed up in Pakistan and then fly him to--
[Yvonne] At that point in my mind, I start thinking,
"This is so much bigger than just Binyam.
This is a constitutional issue.
It was a different type of fire in me to represent him
and not allow him to be railroad.
And I had fought that case from a different viewpoint
than I fought any other case.
[radio host] On the line, this is Evie.
Evie calling us from Boise in Idaho.
[Evie] Hi. I wanna know, have the names of the prisoners
down there ever been released?
[woman] Not formally, no.
The US government so far has declined
to release those names.
None of the names have ever been formally released.
[reporter] The secretive tribunals at Guantanamo Bay
is set to resume this month.
And while press cameras are not allowed in,
courtroom sketch artist, Janet Hamlin,
will be illustrating the scenes for the world to see.
The Associated Press sent Hamlin to Guantanamo in 2006.
[woman] I took the dogs for a walk and I gave him a bath.
[Janet] I've been illustrating for years.
That's all we had before cameras,
was court sketch artists.
The venue in Guantanamo will always be a sketch venue.
These three scenes.
This one, see I was thinking about an earlier drawing there
and just decided--
There's too many sensitive things happening
in that environment
and I can be edited and I am edited.
Anything I sketch has to be reviewed
by a court security officer and literally signed off.
That's the sticker
that has to be on every sketch that goes out.
This was Yvonne Bradley
and Binyam is wearing an orange tunic.
Oh. [chuckles] Yes. This is the--
the art sketching at the courts
because it was against the Geneva Convention
to take pictures of people.
It's not against the Geneva Convention to torture people
or hold 'em forever and do everything else,
but you couldn't take the picture of 'em,
but you could take the sketching.
The manner in which we conduct trials
under military commissions will speak volumes
about our character as a nation.
Just as the manner in which we were attacked speaks volumes
about the character of our adversaries.
Thank you.
[Yvonne] Binyam had only met me maybe twice
before we went to trial.
At this time, the ten detainees who were going to trial,
none of them trusted their military defense attorneys.
We went to his hearing, April 2006.
When we initially started the hearing,
Binyam wanted to represent himself.
The rule stated that he had to have
a military defense counsel.
I had to be at the table
in order to follow the rules of the commission.
Binyam tells the judge, he says,
"Look, let me explain to you
why I don't necessarily trust her.
Imagine if you were picked up by a Muslim
and they took you away and put you in a cell for years
and flew you around and tortured you for years
and interrogated you for years.
And then, one day someone in a--
in a turban and a beard came in and say,
'Trust me, I'm your lawyer.'
At what point would you trust him?"
And you could hear everyone
in the commission saying that's true.
Binyam understood the issues very clearly
and was trying to demonstrate to the court how ironic
and how silly this whole situation was.
[marker squeaking]
Binyam had a white piece of paper
and he had a magic marker.
And I'm talking to the judge
and so what I'm hearing is this squeak,
squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.
Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.
Binyam has a magic marker and he's writing something
and I'm trying to keep talking
'cause I don't know what Binyam's doing.
I can't like distract him like, "Binyam, stop it.
You're making all this noise with the magic marker."
And Binyam kinda taps me and he says, "Let me take over."
So, I sit down and Binyam goes on.
He says, "Your Honor, you know why she's confused
about what this is? Because no one's done this before.
If the US carries on these type of hearings
that are inappropriate, the next thing you know,
Canada will wanna do it
because America's the leader of things
and people follow after America, then if Canada does it,
then, uh, South American countries going to do it.
And then, you have a European country doing it."
He said, "You guys are leading a bad example."
He said, "I'm gonna tell you what this is.
The reason she doesn't understand it,
these aren't commissions, they're con missions."
And he holds up the sign that says con mission.
He said, "This is a mission to con the world."
And so, he's just holding it up and he turns it around.
The press is behind him, the media's behind him.
So, they're seeing this sign that says con mission.
This isn't a mission for fairness.
You wanna con people.
You wanna con people as if you're giving them fair trial.
You wanna con them as if these are real hearings.
I didn't expect him to hold up the sign.
[reporter] For the first time ever,
the military has released the names
of all the people in custody at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
The Pentagon handing over the names
as part of a freedom of information request lawsuit
filed by the Associated Press--
[reporter 2] Human Rights Watch says
it believes the United States operated a secret prison
in Afghanistan that engaged in torture and abuse
as early as 2002 and as late as last year.
It bases that claim on descriptions
that eight detainees at Guantanamo...
[Yvonne] When we went to court, 2006,
I had brought up an issue
that I thought there was a conflict of interest
in the way these commissions were gonna be set up.
The way this was all supposed to be designed,
he had these ten defendants.
At least four or five of them
when they were charged, were charged with a conspiracy
and named on each other's charge sheet.
So, you might have Binyam's name in Barhoumi's sheet
or Qahtani's sheet.
And then, Qahtani's name
that he committed these offenses with Binyam
and other individuals.
Each of these individuals are represented
by different JAG attorneys.
All these ten attorneys will work
out of the same legal office in D.C.
You have one Chief Defense Attorney.
Not only did the Chief Defense Attorney give advice
to each of the ten attorneys,
he always did a performance evaluation.
And in the military,
your performance evaluation is how you get promoted.
So, each of these attorneys have a stake in the CDC,
how they would evaluate them.
If I gave the CDC information
that was confidential privilege on Binyam's case,
he'd give me advice.
And then, say, Omar Khadr's attorney comes to CDC.
The CDC is now entitled for Omar Khadr's best interest
to reveal that information to him,
but he can't reveal it to him
because it conflicts with Binyam's interest.
The CDC, he has now put himself in a situation
where he's in a major conflict of interest.
It puts me in the situation
where I'm supposed to report to him.
He's supposed to do my evaluation,
but now I know I can't really report to him
because my concern is if I tell you something,
are you gonna tell these other four
or five individuals who are named
in Binyam's charge sheet?
There's no way I can go to the CDC.
The whole thing was a stack of cards
that really had to be addressed.
And everyone was ignoring the issue.
And I was the one willing to say,
"The emperor's not wearing any clothes."
When I brought this issue up,
the residing officer who was hearing the commissions,
what he was telling me,
"Counselor, Major, I don't wanna hear it.
I'm a colonel, you're major. We're gonna move on."
I was trying to be a litigator,
a advocate, bring up a legitimate legal issue
and I could not allow him
both ethically to roll over the issue
or constitutionally roll over the issue.
And I realized then their whole game plan
was just to steamroll through this,
put on these show trials and to get these convictions.
And they'll pat each other on the back and say,
"No, what good boys and girls we are."
And I just decided at that point,
I wasn't gonna be part of it.
I ended up pleading the fifth
because I refused to answer any more questions
on Mr. Binyam's behalf.
It became very contentious.
[Clive] The judge, who was a colonel,
he was trying to get her to say she agreed with him.
He was ordering her to say that.
And Yvonne was not doing it.
And indeed she was being pretty verbal about it.
And I just thought, "Oh, my goodness,
I think he's gonna lose it in a minute.
[Yvonne] Now, I didn't think I was disobeying an order.
In the heat of the battle,
there was a bailiff or someone who came
and gave him a piece of paper
and told him to take a recess.
And he said he would take a 15 minute recess.
There were members of the press coming up to me,
asking me, "Is there a barracks or something
that can put you in?"
I'm like, "What are you guys talking about?"
Oh, my gosh. I mean, there's a chance there could be,
like, a court-martial or some kind of incident
where she's gonna get punished?
I've never seen anything like this happen.
[Yvonne] That's the first time I realized
that I might get locked up
because I wasn't even thinking about getting locked up.
I wasn't even thinking along those lines.
I think everyone in that courtroom,
including Binyam, thought I was gonna get locked up.
And I definitely knew
what some of the consequences could be.
The hearings, from my understanding,
were being heard back in the Pentagon or elsewhere.
I later understood from one of the PA officers
who worked in the Pentagon that during this recess,
the judge had called back to the Pentagon.
And so, the judge was pretty much told,
"You need to calm things down.
You got the world press there and you have counsel,
which looks like you're about to lock up."
So during that recess, whoever he talked to,
whoever happened, he came back and it was like
a totally different judge took that stand.
"It's obvious, Major Bradley, you believe you have a conflict
and we will reschedule this for another day
and you can properly raise your motion."
I think when Binyam saw that I was willing to fight
and even willing to lose my career and/or get locked up,
that was one of the points where he realized,
"Wait a minute, she's not one of them."
She is one of them, but she's not one of them.
There's something wrong when your client,
the terrorist, is the truth teller.
And your peers and your superiors,
you always have to question what their motives are
and tell you whatever they're telling you.
We used to call it like Twilight Zone
or Alice In Wonderland
'cause everything was turned upside down in Guantanamo.
It was a world of its own.
Binyam was on a couple hunger strikes,
um, while he was there.
And every time I would come to see him on hunger strike,
I would always bring him food.
So, he would always break his hunger strike
when I was there.
During these meetings, Binyam would be gorging himself
on food that we would bring him.
He was telling me how he was a great cook
and how he make this great spaghetti.
Binyam, this seems like torture to me
for you to talk about food when--
when you're on a hunger strike.
He said, "You know, if I ever get outta here,
I'm gonna cook you a spaghetti dinner."
And I was like, "Okay, Binyam. That's really nice."
He said, "No, really. I'mma-- I'mma cook you spaghetti."
He said, "I make great spaghetti."
Going on about his skills at cooking spaghetti.
A devastating report
that three Guantanamo Bay detainees killed themselves.
Are these suicides in Guantanamo,
they are what they seem?
Very hard to know,
uh, definitively anything that goes on down there.
[reporter] Guantanamo Admiral Harry Harris describe
their deaths as a quote,
"Act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."
[Yvonne] A day or two before Binyam's hearing,
they had three detainees who died down at Guantanamo Bay.
Now, some people were saying they were suicides.
The inmates believed it was more nefarious.
The whole world shut down at Guantanamo.
As a result, Binyam's trial got shut down.
They would come in, they take all his legal paperwork,
everything that he had without telling him
they were stripping the paperwork
from all the detainees because of the suicides.
I was unable to talk with him.
Clive was unable to talk with him.
We couldn't even get letters down
because they were running the investigation.
So, he has no idea what's happening.
All he knows, he's supposed to be
in a hearing on that day.
They say nothing to him and nothing happens.
So, that leads him to his imagination as to what deal
I may have made? What's happening?
I didn't see him 'til another month or two
and he still had not been told anything.
Trust is a hard thing for many people to have
and it's almost impossible in this situation
in which Binyam was in.
So, the very first time I'm coming in,
I want to come in and tell him what happened.
I have to now explain why, for a month,
he's been sitting in his cell without news.
He can either hear it from me and maybe believe me
or I can provide him news reports
that may corroborate the information I'm telling him.
And I remember trying to bring news reports
into Guantanamo.
They were seized
because of some national security information saying
that I couldn't bring in propaganda.
So, it put me really between a rock and a hard place.
So, he says, "What happened to those people
who the US killed?"
I'm dancing around the issue
and I'm trying not to dance around the issue.
I'm like, "Who are you talking about?"
He says, "The three deaths."
So, information I was told I couldn't give to him,
he already knew.
So, it puts me in a bad place
as if I'm hiding information from him.
Whatever baby steps I had made
in our trusting relationship was shattered.
I remember at some point, he looked at me,
"You're just part of the same circus."
[reporter] There's another Supreme Court decision
regarding Guantanamo.
[man] Well, the case is called Hamdan versus Rumsfeld.
And it has to do with
whether the military commissions are constitutional.
And it's gonna be decided in a couple days.
No one knows how that's going to--
[Yvonne] Even after the Hamdan case
where the Supreme Court ruled
that the first set of commissions
were unconstitutional, within two, three months,
they tweaked it a little bit
and the charges on all the individuals stayed the same.
[Vandeveld] When I started the commissions,
I viewed the defense lawyers
as instruments of terrorism themselves.
Here they are, preventing these terrorists
from being brought to justice.
The case that really started my career
at the commissions was the case against Mohammed Jawad,
a Pakistani child soldier.
I think he was 14 or 15.
And because I was the most zealous prosecutor
at the commissions at the time,
I instituted charges against five others
and Binyam was one of them.
I looked at the evidence
and I thought it was pretty compelling
that he had committed these offenses.
[Yvonne] We realized that it was not gonna be
in the courts of Guantanamo Bay, that we were gonna get victory,
but it will be in the court of public opinion.
Bringing this story to the media and to the press,
people understanding the tragedy of Guantanamo
and Binyam and what was happening.
Concerning allegations this morning from a military attorney
who represented an inmate at Guantanamo Bay.
[Yvonne] That's the CNN interview.
She says, to get information, her client was tortured.
[Yvonne] This is the one I talked about
what we knew about torture
and waterboarding was the tip of the iceberg.
It's the tip of-- of the iceberg.
[host] Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Colonel
Yvonne Bradley says--
[Yvonne] The interviewer asked me something about
how I could represent Binyam.
Because I raised my hand
to protect the Constitution of the United States.
This has nothing to do about national security,
has to do with national embarrassment.
[host] Obviously, a story we'll probably hear
a lot more about.
[reporter] The US government alleges Mohamed trained
with weapons at Al-Qaeda's al Farooq training camp
where he met Osama Bin Laden.
[reporter 2] US claims Mohamed and his accomplice
discussed constructing a dirty bomb
as well as blowing up tankers in apartment buildings
and spraying people with cyanide in nightclubs in--
[reporter 3] His defense team say the only evidence
the Americans ever had was obtained by torture.
[Yvonne] Everything they have from him
came after he was severely tortured, beaten,
threatened with his life, threatened to be raped,
um, cut with a scalpel on his genitals, on his chest.
And then miraculously,
these statements come that he was in Al-Qaeda, that he--
This dirty bomb plot.
No government should hide such information
because it's embarrassing, but deal with what it occurred.
The United States has not, is not, torturing,
uh, any detainees in the global war on terror.
It is, uh, I'll leave it where it is.
In the present, it is accurate in saying--
Questioning your own government and to,
at the same time, trying to hold up values
of your government, it--
it-- it really is schizophrenia at times
of having to deal with all these things.
Presumably the people with most to lose with his freedom
are the very people who still detain him in Guantanamo.
Yes. Because he has information
that obviously they do not want-- want out.
Uh, all the torture and extraordinary ren-- rendition.
But this is a terrible situation.
I mean, will you ever be hired as a military lawyer again?
Well, I'm doing my job as a lawyer.
Because you're in the midst of the battle
of trying to do the right thing and--
and you don't have really have time to breathe,
you take it a day at a time and you focus on
trying to do what's right for your client.
Um, at the same time frightened for your sy--
For-- for what you think the system should be--
should be doing.
And making sure that not in my name
are you gonna do these-- do these type of things.
And so, you really don't have time to breathe,
you just do it.
[Pam] Yvonne, she's not one that likes to answer
a lot of questions.
I found out, sort of, gradually as things were happening.
I was like, "Oh, Yvonne, I'm coming down for something.
Will you be home?" "Oh, um, no, I won't be home
but maybe you can pick me up from the airport."
I'm like, "The airport. Where-- where you going?"
"Oh, um, you know, I'll be getting back from Cuba."
"You getting from where? Excuse me? Pardon me?"
There are certain conversations
you can't have with everyone. You still have--
People have very strong opinions.
Thinking, "Oh, you just let a criminal out."
You know what I'm saying? You let a terrorist out.
[Yvonne] I didn't tell my family
or friends very little, if anything.
It was my own psychosis in some ways.
And even when they would ask
I would just, um, you know, you can't get into it.
I was having my own doubts of what we were doing
and I just didn't wanna get people involved.
[Vandeveld] As I delved into the case,
I began to see that it wasn't as clear cut
as I had thought.
There were elements to it
beyond simply prosecuting somebody
that deserved more attention.
Stafford Smith is working
on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.
When I went to law school in New York at Columbia
many, many years ago, it never occurred to me
that one day, I would be sitting across a table
from one of my clients,
talking to him about how my government took him to Morocco.
And they had him tortured for 18 months,
including, and excuse me, for saying this in public,
they took a razor blade to his penis.
Binyam Mohamed is certainly a strong example
of why we need to be closing Guantanamo Bay.
I believe this is the first time
that many, uh, many Americans will have heard this
from people who know what they're talking about
and are not trying--
[reporter] Lieutenant Colonel Bradley says,
Binyam Mohamed is dying.
Britain, she insists, must get him out now.
When I walked into his cell,
I was shocked to see his condition.
I mean, to put in a nutshell, he was skin and bones.
I mean, he-- he was so thin. His arms looked like twigs.
What is Binyam's situation now with the hunger strike?
He's down to nothing but skin and-- skin and bones
and has lost a lot of weight and looks-- It looks hard.
According to US officials,
84 prisoners are on hunger strike currently.
[reporter] The pressure is building.
His US military appointed lawyer,
Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, has flown to Britain
to lobby local officials about the dire state of his health.
[Yvonne] Towards the end,
I was spending more time over in London,
doing press releases and trying to talk with politicians
to convince them the dire straits of Binyam's situation.
I'm going to say very few words
'cause the person we wanna hear from today is Colonel Bradley.
Mr. Mohamed was rendered
and he was tortured by my government,
but there were other governments involved.
Mr. Mohamed has told me year-- months before this happened,
I've represent him for three years,
that the FBI, CIA, and MI5 agents
were involved in his conditions in Pakistan
and his later-- His being removed to Morocco
where he suffered horrendous torture.
He will leave Guantanamo Bay either insane
because that's slowly was happening to him or in a coffin
because his condition is declining. Thank you.
In London, they had a greater interest
of what was happening in Binyam's case.
It was a totally different atmosphere.
[reporter] An American military lawyer
on a mercy mission to London.
She's flown in to plead for the life
of a British resident, for the past four years,
a resident of Guantanamo Bay.
To even describe what's happening in Guantanamo Bay
and describe what's happening in commissions,
I-- I-- I think it's a mystery for everyone.
On one of those trips, I took my sister.
Oh, there she is. I'm like, "Where is she?"
[Pam] Yvonne, right here.
[Yvonne] She's a teacher in New York.
-Are you ready? -Yep.
Okay. Let's go.
Yvonne said, "I have to go to London for a few days."
She said, "Why don't you come over here?
You can stay here for a while.
You get your mind off of everything."
So, I go over there
and still, she doesn't say anything.
I don't know why she's over there.
We're going somewhere and I hear someone say,
"Isn't that that lady that was on TV?"
So, I'm looking around to see what the lady--
Who-- who are they talking about?
I realize they talking about Yvonne,
but Yvonne still doesn't say anything.
Just walked down memory lane.
[woman] You've handled a lot of big cases.
This is quite an unusual one, isn't it?
It-- it is. And I've done some high profile cases,
but this is probably-- Is the most unusual usual case. Yes.
[Pam] So, I get on the computer in the hotel.
So, I start looking up her name, right?
And all these clips are coming up on Yvonne.
[Yvonne] She's saying "Torture. And who's MI5?"
What are you talking about? CIA, FBI?
What did you do?"
Not knowing she's on the news every night.
Not knowing I've picked up the newspaper
and there's my sister.
No. As I said, we're moving forward in the process
and we're really grateful for, you know,
what we're working on here.
And I start letting people know.
Everyone was like, "What? Yvonne did what? She what?"
Because no one knew.
She never said anything, you know.
And no one understood the magnitude
of the nature of the work that she did.
[Yvonne] I had no doubt that Binyam was innocent
of these charges, but because it was so controversial.
Clive and I were walking down the street
and some guy came up to us,
he was walking the opposite direction and he stopped.
He said, "Aren't you representing that bloke
who's in Guantanamo Bay? You're that--
Those two who's helping that guy, aren't you?"
He said, "Good. Keep doing what you're doing."
Because in London, because in the UK,
it was more of a big deal than the US.
"You're that lady on the telly, aren't you?"
Because we were not getting from the US
what evidence the UK had,
there were several lawsuits in trying to bring things out
into the light.
And it was always that thin line of what was classified,
what was not classified on Binyam.
So, if he was going through trial
that we would have all the evidence.
And that created a conflict between the US and the UK
because the US was adamant
of not releasing that information.
A fundamental principle for both of our countries
is that we don't disclose publicly
each other's intelligence.
Are you at all concerned
that the judges think that justice would be better served
if the material was published?
Well, I'm not gonna comment on the last question.
[Yvonne] The British government knew this guy disappeared.
They knew that the Americans had him
and they were complicit
because they allow their questions
to be filtered through the Americans
to Binyam to get-- to get answers.
But what you're essentially saying
is some people need to be tortured.
No, I did not say that. I did not say.
You're telling me that the enhanced interrogation--
[George] I didn't say that.
We do not tort-- Listen to me.
You call it in the book enhanced interrogation.
Well, that's what we call it.
That's a euphemism.
I'm not having a semantic debate with you.
[Yvonne] Once the UK government had a realization
that there may have been some complicity by MI5
and Binyam's, um, rendering and, uh, torture,
the UK government, unlike the US go-- government
didn't hide behind national security.
They wanted to bring this to the light.
They were appalled that their government officials
would've been anywhere involved.
[Snow] Foreign Secretary, Binyam Mohamed was tortured.
He was certainly subject to inhuman treatment.
-There's a blurred-- -[Snow] No. Was he tortured?
-Well, torture-- -[Snow] Yes, tortured.
No, torture can be constituted by repeated inhuman treatment.
That's something that the courts--
[Yvonne] At some point, there was--
"That's what the US is doing. No one else is doing it."
And when the UK realized that their hands may not have
been as clean as they liked, there was a reaction
by the UK courts and the UK public.
That these things if true are not only morally wrong,
but harm our efforts to combat terrorists.
Knowledge of the American use of torture did not remain
within the Secret Service, but was almost certainly passed
onto the highest levels of government.
If in fact, we know that torture is being carried out
by our closest ally, we have a responsibility to act.
And I'm afraid when in the case of Mr. Mohamed,
we didn't do so.
[Yvonne] So, it was the UK government who allowed us
to file suit in the court about,
if we're involved in this, if there's evidence that
should be released, should be-- should be released.
The reason you sub-- You, uh, suppressed the seven paragraphs
which the court has now released to the general public
was because they revealed he'd been tortured.
Not because, in any way,
they compromised our relationship with America.
That's a completely untrue. That is an absolute slur.
This government, and myself in particular, were instrumental
in getting the documents to Binyam Mohamed's legal council.
[Yvonne] I think that was pivotal because
there were a group of people willing to say,
"We are going to allow this evidence to be released
if you're going to try this individual. "
So pretty much, US, either you release the information
or we release the information.
[Vandeveld] As I got deeper into the commissions,
I had these misgivings about what I was doing.
Ethical considerations, but also moral considerations
like is this consistent with my Catholic faith?
Is this something that I can do and still be a good Catholic?
[man] Guantanamo Bay and its judicial system
is a stain on the reputation of America.
This is not some hand-wringing liberal lawyer
or a peace activist speaking.
It's a military officer who, until a few months ago,
was charged with prosecuting the suspected terrorists
held there, including the British resident,
Binyam Mohamed.
[Vandeveld] I became skeptical
of the military commissions process as a result.
And ultimately led to a crisis of conscience,
you know, and I left the commissions in a--
in-- in what was considered to be a public way.
My conscience is not clear.
I participated in the commissions for too long.
[reporter] Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld,
he'd accused the military of deliberately withholding
evidence that could have helped clear them.
One of the five men is the Ethiopian born Binyam Mohamed.
That there isn't enough evidence to prove
your case beyond reasonable doubt.
You're almost guilty until proven innocent.
I looked back and I was in the middle of it.
And I'm surprised at how calm I was because outwardly--
Because inwardly, I had all these conflicting emotions
and, you know, I thought I'd be toss--
tossed out on my ear, you know.
And that I would lose a lot of friends
that I had developed over these 25 years
because I was going against the institution of the army.
Except for maybe a dozen and a half hardcore terrorists,
war criminals who should be prosecuted, which you have
there are people who would not be considered
to be war criminals under any other regime
or legal circumstances.
[reporter] Vandeveld's resignation
led to charges being dropped against Mohamed.
And he believes they will not be refiled,
partly to protect the details of rendition.
[Yvonne] I may have been the voice
for Binyam Mohamed's case, but I wasn't the only attorney
saying that these are unfair trials.
I felt the need to speak out publicly about this
and to expose, you know,
the injustices that were occurring in our name.
[Yvonne] I've been gardening for quite a while.
I started doing it when I was doing death penalty cases.
In the industry where you're putting people to death,
to be able to just grow something from seed
into something alive and watch the progress that things grow.
Going down to Guantanamo
and dealing with the pressure and stress,
being in a garden was just the opposite for me.
90 days turned into nine months.
Nine months turned into a year
and a year turned into many other years.
It always seemed like it wou-- Was never going to end.
Until you saw something happen, you never put
any true hope in, no matter what someone told you.
And even when they said they were gonna put him on the plane,
you never believed anything.
I remember that day that Binyam was returned to the UK and--
After being released from Guantanamo Bay.
[man] You're clearly quite emotional.
I was able to keep a promise.
There's not many promises I can keep, but I told him,
"Next time I see you Binyam, you'll be a free man."
So, I mean, I'm overwhelmed.
I'm thrilled that I was able of these three years
of representing him.
And we're waiting for him to come.
Even with the press there, I still didn't believe it
until I saw the plane land.
[reporter] About a ten hour flight from Guantanamo Bay.
That's the same type of plane that they rendered him in
to Morocco and elsewhere.
It's also the plane that brought him home to freedom.
[man] After nearly seven years in US captivity.
[Yvonne] Binyam, stepping off the plane
and taking his first steps on British soil after his freedom.
[reporter] His case has raised questions about torture
and secrecy for the British and US governments.
Both face related lawsuits.
[man] It all happened before he went to Guantanamo...
That moment.
Charges were dropped two times.
He was never convicted and the American government
never apologized for taking away close to seven,
eight years of this man's life and putting him
through this before they released him pretty much
with just the clothes on his back and goodbye.
Of course, given what he had gone through--
Clive and I at the press conference--
[reporter] After Mohamad's arrival,
an attorney read a statement from him.
"And tortured in medieval ways, all orchestrated
by the United States government.
I'm not asking for vengeance only that the truth
should be made known so that nobody
in the future should have to endure what I have endured."
[Yvonne] Clive read a statement from Binyam
about being grateful and thankful for his release,
but at the same time asking for his privacy.
There was never a notion that Binyam was gonna speak.
He wasn't about to subject himself
under another type of captivity.
That's the photo of Binyam being mobbed
by the press coming home.
In the UK the tabloid press is really big.
So when Binyam came home, there was a lot of press coverage.
They had a big interest of following him around.
So, even coming back to the UK, it wasn't a normal life.
And the hat that he has on, which I can't find that hat.
That was my hat.
He asked me to wear my hat so he can kind of shield himself
from the, uh, from the-- from the-- from the press.
In fact, what that hat says is, "Human rights quarterly" on it.
[pensive music playing]
Binyam Mohamed obviously has refugee status
in the United Kingdom.
He can be kept under surveillance there
to the extent that he will no longer pose
any kind of danger to the United States.
[reporter] Darrel Vandeveld's crisis of conscience
raised deeper questions about how America
is going to deal with the men it's detained
in its so-called War on Terror.
[Vandeveld] I actually thought that Binyam had
committed the offenses that he was alleged to have committed.
And so, I was surprised his release
was agreed to by the US.
[Stephen] I remember trying to get this story onto 60 Minutes.
What I was told was, "Can you prove these guys are innocent?"
And I was like, "Well, that's not the point.
You know, I don't know if they're innocent or not really.
That's not what I'm about.
I'm saying that they-- they're being tortured
and that's probably wrong by itself. "
[Yvonne] In the UK, there was another suit on their treatment
and what had happened and what the British government
knew or should have known what was-- what was happening
in particular with the US being their ally.
So I had some involvement in that
and just providing affidavits of what I knew.
The government has always denied any allegations of, uh, torture.
The government was left with little option but to concede
in order to protect such information
from further public scrutiny.
They won a large sum money that was divided up
among the detainees.
Among those said to be in line for payments
are Binyam Mohamed, who was released
from Guantanamo Bay and returned to Britain in 2009.
[man] Binyam Mohamed will almost certainly
receive one of the highest payments.
At least one of the former detainees
will very likely get more than a million pounds.
[Yvonne] I think what the UK was saying,
"Hey, let's just put an end to all this
because this stuff could go on forever."
Sometimes, you do those settlement suits
to make things go away, pay off a large sum of money
and put an end to this continued dispute.
But no one should read into this admissions of liability.
No one should read into this that once I packed up
their claims, we just agreed to come
to a very sensible mediative settlement.
In the US, anytime we bring any suits up, we were blocked.
National security, state secrets.
The most popular question on your own website,
"Will you appoint a special prosecutor
to independently investigate the gravest crimes
of the Bush administration, including torture?"
Uh, I don't believe that anybody is above the law.
Uh, on the other hand, uh, I also have a belief
that we need to look forward as opposed to look--
looking backwards.
Getting things right, uh, in the future as opposed to,
uh, looking at what we got wrong in the past.
[reporter] The CIA's policy of extraordinary rendition
goes on trial today in California.
Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary,
which provided aeronautical services for rendition flights
is accused by Binyam Mohamed and four others
of involvement in kidnap and torture.
The company says there's no basis--
US corporations should not be able to reap profits
off of a program that is illegal
and violates the basic values of Americans.
[Ben] This Boeing subsidiary, and we know from an employee
of this company, that it was openly discussed
within the company that these were the CIA's torture flights
and that they were making a handsome profit
from these flights.
The problem is, President Obama will not be president forever.
Uh, and-- and there is a dangerous possibility that a--
That his successor will return to these kinds of policies.
It's not enough for this administration to say,
"We are not running secret prisons.
We're not torturing people."
Without a definitive ruling by a court
that what happened was illegal and unacceptable,
uh, there is a real danger
that we'll see a repeat of these abuses.
[woman] Are you appealing the case to the Supreme Court?
[Ben] Absolutely.
We are going to ask the Supreme Court to review this.
And I hope that the Supreme Court will see
this in an international context.
Many other countries like the United Kingdom
are investigating their secondary...
The President does believe
that those that believed in good faith,
that these techniques have been declared legal
by the Department of Justice, uh, should not be prosecuted.
Bipartisan review board has found it indisputable
in their words that the United States
has engaged in the practice of torture since 9/11.
The report also criticizes the Obama administration
for what it calls excessive secrecy.
They say the highest officials in our country
bear responsibility and share responsibility for it.
The report says torture has damaged the state...
[pensive music playing]
[Yvonne] That was a hard thing for me to have to deal with.
When you unwind, you realize
the rollercoaster of emotions and the rollercoaster
of situations that you've been through.
[reporter] Four memos have been released
which detail extreme interrogation techniques;
keeping detainees naked for long periods of time,
keeping them in painful positions,
beating and kicking them,
locking them into a box with insects,
threatening their families and simulated drowning.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, uh,
we did some things that were wrong.
We did a whole lot of things that were right,
but we tortured some folks.
We did some things that were contrary to our values.
I understand why it happened.
[Yvonne] Guantanamo is written in the history
of many countries and many people.
In every war that I've ever seen, there's been mistakes.
In-- even the war in terrorism.
And whether or not one individual
was mistakenly tortured, mistakenly, uh, mistreated.
I'm afraid that's the price we pay in-- in a real world.
I mean, they do have terrorists at-- at Guantanamo Bay.
Unfortunately, they had a whole lot of
people who weren't terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
We are not ghouls.
We're not-- We don't-- We're not--
We don't wanna torture somebody because he has a bad name.
We wanna-- we wanna get information from somebody
that we think might wanna kill our children
and kill your children.
[man] Request that those in the audience
causing this disruption cease their actions immediately.
[woman] Being told to us--
[overlapping indistinct conversation]
[man] Committee will suspend--
[Obama] It's important for us
not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect
about the tough job that those folks had.
And a lot of those folks were working hard
under enormous pressure and are real patriots.
But having said all that,
we did some things that were wrong.
We crossed the line.
[Yvonne] We lost ourselves, we lost our values.
And those are the type of things that are so hard
once you give up to get back,
'cause you almost lose, in some way, your innocence.
I would like to pass you on to somebody
who needs little introduction.
And that is because his case has been
in the media almost every week in one form or another.
He's Binyam Mohamed.
[Yvonne] I pray for Binyam a lot.
I can't even imagine to today, you know,
how he lives in his head and his self.
He's strained from all his prior relationships.
In a time when he needed people the most,
no one could help him.
And I think it's hard for him to understand
that everyone's hands were tied.
And his brother, his sisters, they continued
to try to look for him, work-- Find where he was.
And everyone's hand was tied.
And that's what people don't realize.
The human toll this has on families, on people--
On sisters and brothers, on cousins, on everyone.
On mothers and fathers.
We don't think about the long-term effect that we have,
not just on the individual that we wrong,
but everyone else who gets dragged into this.
[Yvonne] As horrendous as it was
to have the scalpel used on his private areas,
he said, "I heal from that."
He said, "It's the psychological things
of being in a dark room and have that music playing
that you never get outta your-- get outta your head."
He says, like, every time the lights go out...
it brings him back.
I don't think he'll ever be the same.
[tense music]
[Cori] I don't think any of us
who are not in the military can realize
the kinds of pressures that would've been put on people
who volunteered to defend Guantanamo prisoners.
These people had drilled to them every day.
Every single man in Guantanamo Bay would,
if he got the chance, kill every last one of you,
every member of your family.
These people wanna literally destroy America.
[Pam] When you're going up against
such a major government, people will never know
the wear and tear it takes on you to be that person.
[man] Ladies and gentlemen,
please join us in congratulating
Lieutenant Colonel Bradley and her family.
[applause]
[Pam] I was so proud of her.
What she did in putting herself out there.
You can't appreciate it because it's just of how subtle she is.
But that had impact on her.
It really, I think to this day weighs on her.
It was a hard struggle, a hard fight
and I think it-- it's had impact.
[Yvonne] A couple months later I went to London
and Binyam called me up.
He said, "I know you're in town.
I need you to come over.
I have a surprise for you," type of thing.
So, he and Omar Deghayes and about one or two women
from reprieve, we went over to where Binyam was staying.
And he had cooked me a spaghetti dinner.
And, uh, and he kept apologizing
the entire time because he didn't have proper spaghetti.
He had like the short noodles, like, more like the ziti.
He kept apologizing 'cause he had the wrong pasta.
"Binyam," I said, "I can't believe,"
'Cause we had this conversation maybe three
or four years before he got released.
"Um, that you've remembered and you actually
cooked me the spaghetti dinner."
'Cause I don't know if I could be big enough
if we reverse the roles, to be honest with you.
[laughs]
I-- I-- I think it wouldn't be hard to be bitter.
[gentle, stirring music]