Today an important deadline was missed. One of the most shameful chapters of American history was to have been brought to a close with the shuttering of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. President Obama's executive order to close the prison within a year (PDF), made on his second full day in office, was a bold act that signaled a strong commitment to breaking away from the unlawful policies of the Bush administration.
Sadly, the prison is still open. President Obama has recently reaffirmed his commitment to closing the facility, and that is encouraging. Yet, at the same time, it is worrisome that when Guantánamo finally does close, it appears that some of its most shameful policies will continue on U.S. soil, potentially reducing the closure to a symbolic gesture.
The administration has admittedly run into significant obstacles to closing the prison. Congress, awash in fear-mongering and claims of "Not in my backyard," helped turn Guantánamo into a political football by blocking transfers of detainees cleared for release to the U.S. and launching a failed attempt to block the Justice Department from prosecuting detainees in federal court. But the administration is also to blame, as it has essentially discouraged other countries from accepting detainees by refusing to accept any into the U.S., fought the release of cleared detainees even up to the Supreme Court, and declared recently that it won't release detainees to Yemen. The notion that Americans are made safer by continuing to detain prisoners who have been deemed appropriate for release simply because they come from certain countries will only serve to inflame those who believe that the U.S. has lost respect for the rule of law.
It is vital that the failure to meet the closure deadline does not give in to a sense of inertia or inevitability that the prison will be open for a long time to come. But it is also just as important that when Guantánamo is finally closed, it is closed right. That means that along with closing the facility, we must also put an end to its illegal policies like indefinite detention. Unfortunately, the latest indications from Washington don't bode well.
Last month, the Obama administration announced its intention to purchase the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois for the purpose of holding some of the detainees currently remaining at Guantánamo. However, all indications are that some of the detainees who would be sent to the Thomson prison would be held under a policy, unchanged from the Bush administration, of indefinite detention without charge or trial. The Obama administration may have inherited the problems of Guantánamo from the Bush years, but by continuing the prison's lawless policies on U.S. soil, it would take undisputed ownership of them.
In deciding how to handle detainees, the administration should conduct a thorough review of each case. Detainees against whom there is no credible evidence should be repatriated back to their home countries or resettled elsewhere where they won't be tortured. Detainees against whom there is evidence of terrorist activity should be tried in federal courts. The American criminal justice system is more than capable of trying terrorism suspects while protecting both sensitive security evidence and fundamental rights. The federal courts have successfully prosecuted more than over 200 terrorism cases, including those of "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussoui for conspiring in the 9/11 attacks.
No one disputes that the government has the right, under the laws of war, to detain prisoners captured on the battlefield until the end of hostilities. But the Bush and Obama administrations have defined their powers to do so far too broadly. They have used such authority to pick up and detain prisoners from around the globe who they deem engaged in the "war on terror," essentially defining the "war zone" as the entire globe. Moreover, the "war on terror" will never come to a public, decisive end, so the duration of the war is essentially forever, opening up the possibility that America would detain individuals for the rest of their lives without giving them their due process rights. But even for those detainees at Guantánamo for whom the laws of war would ordinarily apply, the unique situation demands that they be charged or released after so many years of imprisonment without the protections of domestic and international law.
Guantánamo must close, and when it finally does, celebration will be in order. But the illegal policies embodied by the prison must disappear along with it. This moment in time presents a crucial opportunity to turn the page on the tragic policies of the past and firmly reclaim our moral authority. Continuing the failed policies of Guantánamo, on U.S. soil or elsewhere, would be an error of historic proportions.
Follow Anthony D. Romero on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ACLU
Guantanamo Bay detention camp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Guantánamo Bay | World news | guardian.co.uk
Closure Of Guantanamo Detention Facilities | The White House
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I am ashamed that americans continue to look the other way on this issue. So many americans also looked the other way when we marched japanese american men, women and children into internment camps during WWII. We have become a defeated nation and a defeated people. As long as I can get my latte, and that new flat screen tv I don't care that we are continuing to torture human beings. What will it take to wake up a nation whos people are asleep at the wheel? How many of our rights will be taken away before we look back and see the correlatio
In the year since, it has become clear that our commander in chief has no intention to actually right the wrongs that occurred at Guantanamo
Today the marketing plan to close Guantanamo (certainly there's no other plan) has become sort of a headstone for hope. Maybe a poster boy for the fundamenta
But now I am not so sure.
It is apparently being considered as a site to house Haitian refugees.
Nonsense. You don't bring allegation
Today, somehwere in your country, the torturers walk free. Just like they did once under Pinochet. And soon, they'll be back. This time, within the physical borders of your country, to torture the dissenting citizens of the US.
http://www
IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 22, 2010
Military Commission Charges Withdrawn In Sept. 11 Case
The Defense Department announced today that the convening authority for Military Commission
This action comes in light of the announceme
Given the determinat
The convening authority took a similar action May 29, 2009, when charges against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani were withdrawn and dismissed without prejudice after a decision was made to pursue prosecutio
http://www
The Italian courts found more than twenty CIA or former CIA employees guilty of kidnapping related charges for abducting a man from the streets of Milan. Those individual
The overall picture is one of a continuanc
This is the kind of statement that only serves to show how out of touch you seem to be with reality. Are you seriously suggesting that the US military and CIA just brought a bunch of random people to Gitmo for the fun of it? Do you not think that the vast majority of these people were involved in harming, killing, or attempting to harm or kill our soldiers? Do you not believe that they are the enemy?
To suggest that most of them are innocent might be the most ridiculous statement you could make about the whole subject.
However as you used the term ILLEGAL practices ( I would invite you to read my comment s and replies to other comments here.)
Yes ILLEGAL practices gave GITMO ABU GHRAIB and AMERICA a bad name.
and these should not be continued on US SOIL ever.
for the REASONS in my other comments
Fortunatel
THANK you
and why not reply to me if you have any ???!!!
ABOUT GITMO
the reason GITMO got a bad name was because we held a lot of foot soldiers of Al-Qaeda rounded up and did not get a trial soon so as to let them go and there was BAD treatment of prisoners there.
So even Bush had spoken of closing Gitmo.and so SEC GATES agrees to this.
BUT AMERICANS should not want a building that cost so much to build WHY WASTE it.
AN i am glad we are using it as a shelter for some HAITIANS there now.
DO NOT RUSH to judgement people....
so GITMO became BAD because of some bad actions .........B
For HEaven's sake people ........GI
First, Nonsense.
President Obama preened in the media glare, with his naive, self-indul
He failed to deliver because he failed to consider. He never bothered to ask the informed players in the intelligen
This is a failure of experience
Second, Correct
Nothing will change for the detainees, except the weather.
Thanks.
You hold an enemy soldier under rules governed by Geneva and subject to review under the terms of that treaty until such time as the war is over, at which point you release them or charge them with war crimes if they are guilty of unlawful combat.
None of these conditions has ever been considered acceptable for Gitmo detainees.
We will not be closing Gitmo. Furthermor
Government
We agree.
sorry, but i'm more interested in jobs and healthcare ~ as one of those millions of unemployed ~ long-term (20 months as of this week) and uninsured.
But, because I'm not religious, I believe we're in the fix we're in because of greedy, self-cente