Photo c/o US Navy/AFN Guantanamo Bay Public Affairs/Reuters
]]>Political leaders are hardly the only victims of the Trump administration's extrajudicial killing spree. Civilians suffer the destruction or appropriation of national resources. Academic invention attempts to justify the theft. War criminals like John Yoo advance fascist policy. But American lives are not more important than others. For the love of humanity, let's get these monsters out of our classrooms.
"We need to know where the boundaries of lawful conduct are in combating national security threats," responded (former) Berkeley Law dean Christopher Edley to persistant community calls for the dismissal of professor Yoo since the late 2000s. "We need to know when legal advice and advocacy become criminal." Questions never answered due to the dean's appraisal that "University faculty and administrators are not competent to answer these questions."
It's up to us.
]]>
Photo c/o US Navy/AFN Guantanamo Bay Public Affairs/Reuters
]]>Former Gtmo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi, @CAGE International Guantánamo Project Coordinator, Author--Don't Forget US Here.
"This is a huge moment, a win that builds a foundation for a new precedent in the U.S. This will cause a positive difference in the future. Those who believe they are above the law will now think twice before violating human rights," said plaintiff Salah Al-Ejaili.
UC Berkeley has yet to face accountbility for providing safe harbor and promotion of Law School professor John Yoo, whose 'Torture Memos' provided legal cover for the CIA rendition, detention, and interrogation (RDI) program, https,//www.cnn.com/videos/world/2011/12/19/nat-abu-ghraib-legacy.cnn
]]>The Trump administration feels unconstrained by existing laws and norms -- a key aspect of authoritarian and ultranationalist political ideology. Yet despite today's advance of American fascism Sands refuses to give in to despair, saying "I firmly believe that the arc of history will follow the arc of justice." He has come to believe that the law isn't the only avenue for establishing truth and accountability, or necessarily always the best one.
"Being a lawyer had taught Sands the limits of the law," observed Michael Steinberger. "Being an author had given him even greater appreciation for the power of the written word, and he now thought that books could sometimes be a more effective instrument in the pursuit of redress... In any situation in which a civilian population has been brutalized, the crimes must be acknowledged."
"You have to find a way to address what happened," said Sands.
]]>
"Yoo, of course, is one of the most notorious of the many national security ghouls who served in the George W. Bush administration, where he used his legal expertise to write in 2002 the so-called 'torture memos' that sought to justify the use of waterboarding and other violations of the Geneva Convention in the name of the Global War on Terror. This is not someone typically concerned about following the law."
The Berkeley Law professor jumps through hoops to designate drug cartel crime, when attached to the Maduro regime, acts of war.
"I do this because I know Guantanamo did not end, it spread," says writer, artist, activist, and former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi.
"I know this road. I have its map etched into my bones. I carry scars that won't heal without justice, without accountability."
As Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration, professor John Yoo authorized a series of enhanced interrogation techniques depicted in his infamous Torture Memos. The site for detaining foreign 'enemy combatants' outside the reach of US law (Guantanamo) has "metastasized into a symbol of indefinite detention, torture, and the erosion of constitutional protections," descibed historian Michael A. Smith--even for American citizens.
"The time has come to close Guantánamo--not just the physical facility, but the legal and moral architecture it represents."
Torture remains an American export. More than an 'American mistake', Guantanamo remains a laboratory. Its experiments are being exported, charges Adayfi. Absorbed. Normalised. And reportedly applied against thousands of Palestinian prisoners struggling for freedom from Israel's continued occupation of their land.
]]>Find a 60 Minutes feature critical of CECOT here
Photo: Inmates remain in their cell as Costa Rica's Minister of Security Gerald Campos tours the Centre for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) during a visit on April 4, 2025. Marvin Recinos/AFP via Getty Images
]]>