by Felicite Fallon
U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch
was faced with what he termed “the toughest decision of his military
career” when he was asked to prosecute Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a
detainee at Guantanamo Bay linked to 9/11. He spoke about this decision
as well as other aspects of his military career Thursday, July 31 at
the College of Law Rotunda at Florida State University as the final
speaker in the summer session of the Human Rights and National Security
in the 21st Century lecture series, sponsored by the Center for the
Advancement of Human Rights.
Slahi was identified after the 9/11 attacks as the individual who helped
assemble the “Hamburg cell” of al-Qaeda which included the
hijacker who piloted United Flight 175 into the south tower of the World
Trade Center.
But the decision of whether to prosecute Slahi was not merely an abstract
dilemma of justice and morality. For Couch, the issue had a personal
dimension. An old Marine friend of Couch’s, Michael Horrocks, was co-pilot
on United Flight 175.
The case against Slahi should have been open and shut, but Couch said
something was amiss.
“When I first got military commissions, one of my buddies picked
(Slahi) out and said ‘This is probably the most significant guy at Guantanamo,
but they’re doing special projects on him,'” Couch said. “I
asked what special projects were and he said, ‘Well, we really don’t
know, but it doesn’t sound good.'”
Mindful of the gravity of the Slahi’s
case, Couch researched the history of the case thoroughly. He found
that Slahi had been fairly tight-lipped about his al-Qaeda involvement
until the fall of 2003, when overnight Slahi “started singing like
a canary.” Slahi divulged a great deal of intelligence about al-Qaeda,
particularly its organization in Europe. When Couch inquired what had
instigated this sudden pliability in Slahi, he was told he wasn’t privy
to that information.
With the aid of a criminal investigator with connections in intelligence,
Couch began receiving government documents about interrogation tactics
used to make Slahi confess. Couch came to suspect that the special projects
being performed on Slahi involved enhanced interrogation techniques.
Couch’s first exposure to enhanced interrogation techniques came with
his first trip to Guantanamo in October 2003. Couch heard heavy metal
music cranked up and, assuming mischief on the part of personnel, went
to investigate but found the situation was not what he had anticipated.
“There was a strobe light going,” he said. “It was the
only light in the room and I saw a detainee sitting in the corner of
the room wearing orange. He was shackled to the floor and this heavy
metal was going, and he was rocking back and forth and praying. Two
individuals came out and backed me up and pulled the door behind me.
I said, ‘What’s going on here?’ They wouldn’t answer my question. The
guy that was escorting me around, an air force JAG, goes, ‘That’s approved.'”
Couch discovered that Slahi had been lied to and subjected to mental
and emotional trauma.
“The detainee, Slahi, had been shown a letter on state department
letterhead that indicated his mother and brother had been picked up
by force and his mother would be brought to Guantanamo. The letter was
sort of stressing out loud concerns about what they were going to do,
because she was going to be the only female detainee at Guantanamo,
they were concerned about her safety.”
In the spring of 2004, Couch felt it
was time for him to get off the fence and make a decision regarding
the Slahi case. After a personal revelation at his church one Sunday,
Couch decided that he would not prosecute against Slahi
“By that point, I had seen nough, I had read enough, I had heard
enough, and enough was enough,” Couch said.
While Couch asserted his primary reason for refusing to prosecute the
Slahi case was that the confessions obtained from Slahi by torture were
inadmissable under U.S. law, he referred also to the ethical dimension
of the dilemma, which he said went against his moral compass.
“The torture of any human being is wrong,” Couch said. “It’s
a violation of our domestic law; it is a violation of our values as
Americans, and a violation of international norms and laws. The debatable
thing now is whether the cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of a
particular detainee falls under the same category. (…) Some of this
stuff gets to the point where it really tears at the fabric of what
we are as Americans and our American values.”
Couch now serves as a judge on the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal
Appeals after ending his three-year stint as a prosecutor in the Office
of Military Commissions in 2006.
Slahi is still being detained at Guantanamo and his case has not yet
been brought to trial.
The question with which Couch was confronted is one that is in step
with the ongoing debate about human rights versus national security
in the post-9/11 United States, according to Mark Schlakman, senior
program director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights.
“It’s a tension between the human rights interests and the national
security imperatives and how they can be reconciled within the context
of the ‘U.S.-led war on terror,'” Schlakman said. “It is an
extraordinary example of efforts made to respect the Constitution and
the principles upon which it was founded, and yet apply them in a real-world
environment that is confronting the nation today.”
This story was written by Felicite
Fallon, news editor of FSView & Florida Flambeau, the online
edition of the student newspaper at Florida State University .