35 Activists Put Guantánamo on Trial: Ed Kinane's Sentencing Statement
by Ed Kinane

May 30, 2008

The 35 defendants stand in front of Superior Court holding up a “Close Guantanamo” banner. Photo: Bill Ofenlach

DC District Court, Judge Wendell P. Gardner Presiding

(This past January about 80 of us were arrested both inside and outside the Supreme Court for demonstrating to close the Guantánamo concentration camp.

For a narrative of that arrest see, "Representing Massoum Abdeh Mouhammad," at www.witnesstorture.org/node/924. On May 29, after a spirited three-day trial in which defendants "went pro se," i.e. defended them selves, Judge Gardner found us guilty.)

Friends, members of the court, Your Honor, on January 11, 2008, and the next day at my arraignment, I invoked the name of Massoum Abdah Mouhammad, Guantánamo prisoner #330.

Mr. Mouhammad, an ethnic Kurd born in Syria in 1972, is said to be a Taliban member. For some years he has been illegally detained at Guantánamo prison. It's unlikely Mr. Mouhammad has ever heard of me. Surely, we are very different people; we may well see the world with very different eyes.

Nonetheless he's my brother; we are kin.

Let me explain. Many years ago the late Martin Neimoeller, a theologian and former World War I U-boat commander, spoke out against the Nazi menace. In a well-known quotation Pastor Neimoeller said…

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.*

Pastor Neimoeller knew whereof he spoke. As a dissenter, Neimoeller himself endured Hitler's concentration camps, Hitler's Guantánamos.

Neimoeller's words have long served as a beacon for me. Indeed, they helped inspire my participation in what was to be a liturgical event at the US Supreme Court on January 11, 2008, the beginning of the sixth year of the Guantánamo concentration camp.

You see, your honor, that rogue prison represents not only a tragedy for those trapped within it, but a threat to us all. Not a distant threat, but a close threat. If courts keep allowing the Cheney/Bush administration to get away with its contempt for law and its barbaric treatment of fellow human beings, I fear that US citizens may well be next. I fear I may be next.

Thomas Jefferson declared that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

Since the Viet Nam War era, as conscience has moved me, I've been a dissenter. I've been a dissenter committed to justice and to nonviolence - not only as a kind of politics, but as a way of life.

So Guantánamo chills me.

As long as Guantánamo remains open it will provide the ongoing precedent, the ongoing model, for rounding up people like me who dissent from the power structure's policies. Such captives could then be subject to Guantánamo-type incarceration: isolated detention, lack of habeus corpus, lack of other due process…and torture.

(At this point an exasperated Judge Gardner cut me off. With a burly US Marshall standing immediately behind me, I had no choice but to comply. Below is the rest of my prepared statement.)

And after people like me are rounded up maybe whatever administration is in power will begin rounding up people of color and other stigmatized minorities. Perhaps one day it will also round up those judges -who don't succumb to careerism,
-who resist political pressure,
-who respect the Constitution,
-who respect international law, supposedly the highest law of our land,
-who listen to and honor their conscience,
-who believe justice is their calling.

Your honor, although I did not intend to be arrested on January 11, and although I didn't expect to spend over 30 hours in detention, my standing before you today is a win-win situation. If you "throw the book" at us I'll be heartened and know our Supreme Court presence must have threatened this nation's power structure - a power structure with little respect, not only for our Constitution, but for human values.

If, on the other hand, you had been willing to sentence us to "time served" I would leave this court knowing that you have listened to us and knowing that your court respects the larger law it's pledged to uphold.

(Most of us were subsequently sentenced to pay $50 in court fees, to remain away from the Supreme Court for a year, to ten (or more) days in jail (suspended), and to a year's probation. In solidarity with the Guantánamo prisoners who never get that option, I told Judge Gardner I would not comply with probation. I was immediately taken away in cuffs for transport to the DC Dept. of Corrections jail to begin my sentence.)

*There are many versions of Niemoeller's quotation. See, e.g., the erudite discussion of Niemoeller (1892-1984) on www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/niem.htm.

I take this text from the 1997 Syracuse Cultural Workers poster reproduced on that website.

For more defendants' sentencing statements and other documents related to the trial and January 11 action, see www.witnesstorture.org.