REP. ALCEE L. HASTINGS HOLDS A BRIEFING ON THE GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION FACILITY.

Original Source: Political Transcript Wire

(CORRECTED COPY: ADDS SPEAKER)

UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE HOLDS A BRIEFING ON THE GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION FACILITY

JUNE 21, 2007

SPEAKERS:

REP. ALCEE L. HASTINGS, D-FLA., CHAIRMAN REP. LOUISE M. SLAUGHTER, D-N.Y. REP. MIKE MCINTYRE, D-N.C.

REP. HILDA L. SOLIS, D-CALIF. REP. G.K. BUTTERFIELD, D-N.C. REP. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, R-N.J.

REP. ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, R-ALA. REP. MIKE PENCE, R-IND. REP. JOSEPH R. PITTS, R-PENN.

SEN. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, D-MD., CO-CHAIRMAN SEN. CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, D-CONN. SEN. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, D-WIS.

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, D-N.Y. SEN. JOHN F. KERRY, D-MASS. SEN. SAM BROWNBACK, R-KAN.

SEN. GORDON H. SMITH, R-ORE. SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, R-GA. SEN. RICHARD BURR, R-N.C.

REP. STENY H. HOYER, D-MD., HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER

WITNESSES/PANELISTS:

JOHN B. BELLINGER III, LEGAL ADVISER, DEPARTMENT OF STATE

SENATOR ANNE-MARIE LIZIN, PRESIDENT OF THE BELGIAN SENATE

AND THE OSCE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE ON GUANTANAMO

TOM MALINOWSKI, ADVOCACY DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

GABOR RONA, INTERNATIONAL LEGAL DIRECTOR,

HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST

[*] HASTINGS: Well, that gets us right on time.

Mr. Bellinger, thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to call this hearing to order. Pretty obviously, it's an extremely busy day, and my colleagues on the commission will drift in and out as we progress.

But in the interest of everyone's time, I'd like for us to begin. I'd like to start by welcoming you, Mr. Bellinger.

I expect the majority leader, Steny Hoyer, will be here at some point. I'd hoped that he would be able to kick us off, but we'll listen to him when he gets here under the circumstances.

This is the Helsinki Commission's first hearing in some time examining an issue of domestic compliance, an area which will receive warranted attention during my chairmanship. As many people here know, in executing the Helsinki Commission's mandate, members of this commission are engaged in a continual dialogue with representatives of other countries, including parliamentarians, on issues of concern, with a particular focus on human rights.

This is, of course, a two-way street. Just as we raise issues of concern with representatives of other countries, our colleagues in other countries raise issues with us.

And no issue has been raised with us more vigorously in recent times, and vocally, than questions relating to the status and treatment of detainees, particularly those at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Those concerns have been raised for several years at meetings of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. They have been raised at meetings of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna. And they have been raised at the Human Dimension meetings of the OSCE.

I believe very strongly that our colleagues who have raised concerns with us deserve our considered response and engagement.

The fact is for all the 56 OSCE participating states and not just the United States, the issue of how to safeguard human rights while effectively countering terrorism may be one of the most critical issues our countries will face for the foreseeable future.

In organizing this hearing, it's painfully difficult to unpackage a whole set of issues related to our counterterrorism efforts: The offshore detention center at Guantanamo; the treatment of detainees in custody and the interrogation practices to which they may be subjected; the legal procedures for holding, trying and potentially convicting detainees of crimes; and the issue of extraordinary rendition, to name a few.

Frankly, in my opinion, the United States has not covered itself with glory when it comes to most of these issues. I'm, of course, mindful of the fact that many other committees of both the House and Senate are actively engaged in oversight on many aspects of this subject.

It's not our intention to duplicate those efforts. Rather, we hope to address the specific implications of Guantanamo for U.S. human rights leadership.

In no small understatement, this year's State Department country report on human rights notes, and I quote, "We recognize that we are writing this report at a time when our record and actions we have taken to respond to the terrorist attacks against us have been questioned." Indeed, they have been.

Most importantly, we've got to figure out where we go from here. Pretty much everybody and his brother, including the secretary of defense and the secretary of state, have said that Guantanamo ought to be closed down, either because they believe it never should have been opened to begin with, or because they've concluded that the stigma associated with Guantanamo is so great that the entire operation serves to undermine our alliances and strengthen the propaganda machinery of our enemies rather than make us safer.

But the question is where do we go from here. I'm hoping our hearing today will, in part, help us answer some of those questions.

We have before us today, ladies and gentlemen, a panel of experts whom I believe can really engage in a constructive discussion on these issues. Their biographies have been circulated here, so I'm not going to re-read them.

Unfortunately, although we sent a letter to Secretary Gates on May 15 inviting the Department of Defense to send a witness to this hearing, the department has declined the opportunity to have its views heard.

Quite frankly, I'm disappointed by the message this sends. I know some tough questions may come up today, but it seems to me that there is nothing to be gained by avoiding tough questions.

I'd like, in any case, to warmly welcome to America our colleague and friend Senator Anne-Marie Lizin, the president of the Belgian senate.

When I served as president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I appointed Senator Lizin -- people are looking around.

Raise your hand, Anne-Marie, so they'll see where you are over there.

I appointed Senator Lizin to serve as special representative on the issue of Guantanamo. And I did so because of the extraordinary concern voiced in that body by she and numerous of our colleagues, she being one especially, regarding the status and treatment of detainees there.

Senator Lizin has shown remarkable dedication and initiative in addressing the issues within her mandate. And I'm delighted that she's with us today as we prepare for the assembly's annual session to be held early next month in Kiev, Ukraine.

Before calling on my colleagues who are here for any opening statement, let me just note the order in which we will receive testimony this morning.

Our first witness will be the Department of State's legal adviser, Mr. John Bellinger, followed by Senator Lizin, and we will then hear from an additional panel of representatives, Mr. Tom Malinowski from Human Rights Watch, and Mr. Gabor Rona from Human Rights First.

And we are prepared at this time to go forward, and, Mr. Bellinger, as I indicated, your handsome and awesome biography has already been passed out. I personally am grateful that you would come as the legal adviser to the State Department, having held such a position for numerous times.

I'm deeply grateful to you for being here, and I invite you to go forward with your testimony. Enter into the record your full statement and summarize if you see fit in any way that you would like. Thank you. Mr. Bellinger?

BELLINGER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and for those kind remarks. I do personally welcome the opportunity to be here to talk about what are, in fact, difficult issues.

I do have a prepared statement for the record, and I'll just make a few general comments up front and then look forward to entering into a conversation with you.

I will just say up front that the issue of Guantanamo, the situation in Guantanamo, is a source of frustration for this administration.

On the one hand, it serves a very important purpose, to hold and detain individuals who are extremely dangerous, people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, people who have been planners of 9/11, others who were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and who personally killed U.S. soldiers.

Everyone will agree that these individuals need to be detained somewhere, and the question is where. The administration has concluded that Guantanamo was the most secure and appropriate place to hold them.

On the other hand, we fully and acutely recognize that Guantanamo has become a lightning rod for criticism around the world, and this is something of deep concern to this administration and to Secretary Rice in particular.

I'm not going to go into detail about the legal basis for detention other than to say that we are not holding them as criminals. We are holding them because we consider them to be combatants.

Most of them were, in fact, captured on or near the battlefield during an international armed conflict in Afghanistan by our soldiers.

HASTINGS: Mr. Bellinger, let me ask you to suspend.

Ladies and gentlemen, those of you in the audience, this matter evokes rather extraordinary emotions from a wide swathe of people in the world, but in an effort to conduct a fair and objective hearing, I'm going to request of you, please, to refrain from any comments.

I want to make it very clear that I consider that personally to be rude and unnecessary. Everyone will have an opportunity to have their views expressed.

And for those of you that are here that are concerned about Guantanamo, the chair of this particular committee probably has done as much as you have about this particular facility and the need for it to be addressed, and that's why we're having this hearing. So I insist on quiet and respect for the witnesses.

Mr. Bellinger?

BELLINGER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So at this point, I'm not going to go into the legal basis for our detention other than, as I say, to emphasize that they are being held as combatants in an armed conflict.

I think there's really not much dispute about the fact that there was an international armed conflict going on in Afghanistan, and these individuals were picked up largely by our soldiers or by coalition forces. I'd be happy to take your questions about that.

What I'd like to focus my short remarks on this morning are the particular interests of this commission, which are how we address the international concerns that have been raised about Guantanamo and our efforts to address those concerns.

I want to draw your attention to a lesser-known recommendation of the 9/11 Commission from 2004 which noted that the legal framework for holding terror suspects captured outside the United States is unclear because they don't fit neatly into the Geneva Conventions.

The 9/11 Commission recommended, therefore, that we work with our friends around the world to try to develop an appropriate framework for the detention and treatment of such individuals.

That's exactly what we have been trying to do for the last 30 months. This was one of Secretary Rice's top priorities when she became secretary of state -- was to address these concerns.

We had perhaps not done as good a job as we should have in talking with our allies around the world, explaining ourselves, addressing our concerns, and we have tried to do that very hard over the last 30 months. And I'd just like to talk about a couple of those things.

First, last year, coincidentally, our reports under the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights were both due in one year.

We fielded large delegations to go to Geneva. I personally headed our delegation to the Convention Against Torture. Both of these reports ended up focusing in large part on Guantanamo.

We took those questions and the concerns that were raised, as the questions raised by the Helsinki Commission, very, very seriously.

Second, over the last two years, I have personally visited a dozen countries or more in Europe, OSCE countries, and some of them many times, to try to talk with governments, address their concerns not only about Guantanamo but about our laws, policies, the Military Commissions Act, the military commissions, and to address their questions. We have entered into for the last two years a formal dialogue with the E.U., and we have just finished the seventh round of discussions in Brussels with the legal advisers of all the E.U. countries to discuss the application of the Geneva Conventions and our criminal law framework.

We've done numerous press briefings in an effort to reach a larger audience in Europe to address their concerns and to really explain the legal framework for our holding people, what rights they have and what changes have been made in our laws and policies.

In addition, we have facilitated at the State Department and working with the Defense Department travel by numerous groups to Guantanamo. Chief amongst them is, in fact, the rapporteur of the OSCE, Madam Lizin.

I've gotten to know Madam Lizin quite well over the last two years, and it's a relationship that we really welcome because she and her team, all of whom are here today, have really dug into these issues in a serious way and have gone beyond some of the hysteria that we have seen, to delve into the difficult issues.

And they have not shrunk from criticizing us, but at the same time, they have recognized some of the difficulties.

I would also call your attention to the U.K. House of Commons' foreign affairs committee. You may have met some of them. They also went down to Guantanamo and issued a similar report to Madam Lizin's report on behalf of the OSCE.

We have worked with the Council of Europe and with members of the European Parliament.

As a result of these outreach efforts over the last couple of years, I think there is -- and this is important -- a growing international recognition, at least amongst legal experts and officials, of the legal complexities of how one deals with the threat of international terrorism, for people who we find outside our country.

It's easier when we find people inside our country and we can deal with them in the criminal law framework, like Mr. Moussaoui here in the United States or others in Europe.

But it's much more difficult when one deals with suspects from Al Qaida or the Taliban who are captured 3,000 miles away by one's soldiers.

I think there is now a growing recognition that you see reflected in Madam Lizin's report, in the U.K.'s House of Commons' report and in basically all the legal experts that I have talked to in Europe that the criminal laws don't fit this situation very well.

In fact, most of the individuals held in Guantanamo could not be prosecuted in our criminal courts. I hear repeatedly, "Why don't you act like a traditional country and simply prosecute them in your criminal courts?"

The answer is a large number of these individuals who traveled from countries like Yemen or Saudi Arabia to train in camps in Afghanistan may not have violated U.S. criminal laws by their actions because we did not have extraterritorial jurisdiction at the time.

We have subsequently amended our laws. This is even before you get to the practical difficulties of prosecuting someone captured by your soldiers 3,000 miles away.

But nor do the Geneva Conventions fit them very well because those are designed for individuals who are part of standing national armies.

So there is a growing recognition that we are dealing in areas that are hazy and are not well …