Buried Treasure: "The Forever Prisoner"

Skullduggery

Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Victoria Bassetti

Politics, White House, News Commentary, Government, Senate, Podcasts, President, House Of Representatives, News, Victoria Bassetti, Supreme Court, Michael Isikoff, Foreign Policy, Scandels, Yahoo News, Voting, Elections, Skullduggery, Daniel Klaidman

4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2019

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ramzi Kassem, a professor of law at the City University of New York, joins co-hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman to discuss his work defending Guantánamo Bay detainees. Kassem is currently working to shine a light on detainees who have been imprisoned without ever being convicted of a crime, such as his client Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alawi, who was classified as a “forever prisoner” in 2010 despite never being convicted because he was considered too dangerous to be released. Intelligence analysts allege that he was once a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	More than 18 years ago, Moeth Haasma Ahmed Al-Alui left his native Yemen to wage
0:05.9	G-Hard in Afghanistan. According to US officials, he underwent weapons training
0:10.5	at an al-Qaeda guest house and fought for the Taliban until fleeing to the
0:14.5	mountains of Torah Borah as US forces closed in. In December 2001, he was
0:19.4	captured by Pakistani forces and turned over to the US military, which
0:23.2	shipped him to Guam-Tanamo Bay Cuba, where his been ever since, a detainee deemed
0:28.0	too dangerous to release, yet never charged with the crime. How long can the
0:32.8	US government continue to hold men like Al-Alui? Without saying it has the
0:37.1	country sanctioned indefinite detention without trial? Those were questions
0:41.3	posed by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer last week, in a brief but pointed
0:45.9	statement accompanying the Court's refusal to hear Al-Alui's arguments for why
0:50.3	he should be released. It is past time Breyer wrote to confront the difficult
0:54.7	question left open by a 2004 Supreme Court decision that gave the US government
0:59.8	illegal authority to hold men like Al-Alui for the duration of the war on terror.
1:04.4	A conflict that has Breyer also noted has no end in sight. As multiple legal
1:09.7	battles from the Trump era wind their way through the courts, the troubling
1:13.1	case of Moeth Al-Alui is a reminder that thorny constitutional issues from the
1:18.0	Bush and Obama presidencies are still very much with us. It's a subject we'll
1:22.7	discuss with Al-Alui's lawyer on this episode of Buried Treasure.
1:33.2	Because people have got to know whether or not they're presidents of
1:36.2	crop, well I'm not a crop. I told the American people I did not trade arms for
1:40.6	hostage. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true but the facts
	...

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