G UA N TA N A M O
ABIDES
By Z a c h Cowe l l
The Guantánamo Bay military prison at a U.S. Navy
facility on a patch of land in Cuba was created in 2002
and, according to the American Civil Liberties Union,
has housed 779 detainees to date. Its first controversy
arose from speculation that it was located overseas
to avoid U.S. federal prison laws. The allegations of
torture, arrests without evidence, and other abuses have
not stopped since.
President Bush George W. Bush signed an action
memorandum on February 7, 2002, that excluded “war
on terror” suspects from the protections detailed by
the Geneva Conventions for prisoners of war, instead
designating the suspects as “enemy combatants”. For
more than a decade, organizations such as Human
Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union
and Amnesty International have been advocating the
humane treatment of detainees and the closing of
Guantánamo Bay.
President Bush had also declared that the detainees
in Guantánamo Bay would not be granted the right to
submit writs of habeas corpus, which require the justice
system to prove there is a reason to keep the prisoner
under arrest. In Rasul v. Bush the Supreme Court found
that detainees have a right to challenge their detention
through the process of habeas corpus.
Soon after the creation of the Guantánamo Bay
detention camp, the facility labeled Camp X-Ray
received its first detainees. Prisoner accounts claimed
that they were tortured. Camp X-Ray was closed on
April 29, 2002 and all prisoners were transferred to
Camp Delta.
On March 3, 2006 the interrogation log of
Mohammed al Qahtani was published by Time
magazine. It contained the different detailed techniques
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used daily on Qahtani such as forced nudity in front
of female personnel, beatings, forced body searches,
deprivation of sleep, deprivation of prayer, and
exposure to low temperatures for extensive periods of
time.
The leaked interrogation log titled, “Secret
ORCON Interrogation Log Detainee 063” led to the
ruling that the evidence given in Qahtani’s testimony
was inadmissible in his trial, as it resulted from
interrogation at the level of torture. On January 14,
2009, Susan Crawford, the senior official in charge of
the Office of Military Commissions, declared that the
charges against Qahtani should be dropped altogether,
and the prosecution be discontinued.
T
aylor says Guantanamo is
“a symbol around the world
for an America that flouts
the rule of law...The detention
of people without charge or
trial, and the abuses to which
they are subjected – such
as force-feeding – sets a
terrible example to the rest
of the world…
According to an American Civil Liberties Union
infographic titled Wasted Opportunities: The Cost of
Detention Operations at Guantánamo Bay, more than
500 suspects of terrorism have been prosecuted in federal
court since September 11, 2001. Eight Guantánamo
prisoners have been convicted by military commissions
since the attacks on the World Trade Center, and of
the 149 that remain in Guantánamo detention facilities,
78 have been cleared for release by the United States
government. Additionally 38 prisoners cannot be
prosecuted due to lack of evidence but are deemed “too
dangerous to release.”
The Guantánamo controversy is now about the
indefinite detention of those 38. They cannot be
prosecuted, for lack of evidence. Organizations like the
ACLU and Human Rights Watch believe that without
enough evidence to prosecute a prisoner, that prisoner
cannot be legally detained. The federal justice system
prohibits detention without incriminating evidence.
Numerous attempts to reach spokespersons who
could explain the official U.S. position on Guantanamo
and respond to criticisms were not successful. Regarding
more recent accusations of torture, Lieutenant Colonel
Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman, wrote to the
Al Jazeera news service that they “will not be discussing
this matter in the press because it is currently in active
litigation”, and that “those entrusted with safeguarding
the detainees at JTF Guantánamo Bay are some of the
most professional” guards in the world.
Katherine Taylor of the international human rights
organization Reprieve says, “We have to hope that
President Obama delivers on his promise and closes
Guantanamo. If [Obama} chose to exert the necessary
political will,” prisoners cleared for release could actually
be released soon.” She says cleared prisoners have been
determined by a number of US agencies - including the
FBI and CIA - not to pose a threat to the U.S., and that
people like Shaker Aamer, who has family in London,
still remains imprisoned in Guantanamo even after the
U.S. was asked by the British government to release him.
Taylor says Guantanamo is “a symbol around
the world for an America that flouts the rule of law...
The detention of people without charge or trial, and
the abuses to which they are subjected – such as forcefeeding – sets a terrible example to the rest of the world,
as well as damaging the U.S.’s reputation. Despite Pres.
Obama’s lauding of the principle of ‘transparency,’
right now his lawyers are fighting against attempts by
Reprieve to secure the release of videotapes showing
the force-feeding of prisoners”.
Laura Pitter, Senior National Security Researcher
for the Human Rights Watch says “Keeping people
locked up without charge or trial is a clear violation
of human rights law. [Guantánamo Bay] has had a
very negative impact on the United States’ reputation,
the ability to hold governments accountable for their
actions in other parts of the world, and it continues to
be a symbol that fuels violent extremism around the
world.”
“There has been a lot of evide