Why Obama’s Guantanamo Isn’t Going Anywhere
>> BY RYAN J. REILLY
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, CUBA
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N LATE JANUARY, shortly after President Barack Obama began his second term, Navy Cmdr. Walter Ruiz stood inside
an old airplane hangar on the southernmost tip of the island
and reflected on a central but unfulfilled promise of Obama’s
2008 campaign. ¶ “We’re still here,” Ruiz said, as reporters
milled around the aging hangar, which has been repurposed as
a work space for the journalists and human rights observers
who have been flying in and out of Guantanamo since the first
suspected terrorists were brought here 11 years ago. Instead of
planes, the hangar is now home to several trailer-size sheds
with slanted roofs. More offices line the hangar’s perimeter,
and a giant map of the base is painted on the floor. Screeching
bats fly in and out of the hangar at night.
“We’re still in military commissions. We’re still arguing about the
basic protections the system affords us. We’re still talking about
indefinite detention,” Ruiz continued. “We’re still talking about not
closing the facility.”
After years of legal wrangling,
the trials of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and four other men al-
legedly responsible for the 9/11
attacks have barely gotten off the
ground. Ruiz, an attorney for alleged 9/11 organizer and financier
Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, estimates he has traveled to Guantanamo 50 to 100 times for client
meetings and pre-trial hearings on
legal minutiae since he joined the
military’s defense counsel office in
September 2008.
“I’m here trying this case,
people were here trying this