Five Years of Abuse at Guantanamo Bay
by Aisha Gawad
It’s party time at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The infamous prison celebrates its fifth anniversary on January 11, marking five years of secrecy and abuse. How will the U.S. government commemorate this momentous occasion? It has already suspended habeas corpus and disregarded the process of judicial review, so that’s out. Perhaps it will simply continue to subject detainees to physical torture and degradation while making a mockery of their religions and holding them without charges and access to due process.
Guantanamo Bay now holds about 400 “enemy combatants,” as the government labels them, despite the fact that very few of them were caught anywhere near a battlefield or engaged in combat against U.S. forces. These detainees have never been charged with a crime, and are therefore unable to attempt to defend themselves. The only opportunity they are given to challenge their “enemy combatant” status is through Combatant Status Review Tribunals, but these hearings are far from fair or independent sources of judicial review, according to Human Rights Watch. During the hearings, the government often uses highly classified evidence against the detainee, making it impossible for him to defend himself – after all, he hasn’t seen the evidence he’s defending himself against. Coerced statements and admissions made under torture are considered permissible in these tribunals, and prisoners are almost never represented by lawyers. The overall lack of basic legal rights creates what Human Rights Watch calls a “nightmarish limbo,” and what Amnesty International refers to as a “legal black hole.”
Guantanamo Bay often conjures up images of Osama bin Laden-like terrorists, but the truth is that few of the detainees, if related to terrorist organizations at all, are high-ranking members. Many of them were never even involved in violence against the U.S. but were “sold to the U.S. by bounty hunters or turned over by rival clan members trying to settle a vendetta,” according to Human Rights Watch. If true, this means that many of the detainees are of little or no use to the U.S., and should either be charged and tried or released.
A 2004 FBI report, made public this January as part of legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of former inmates, details instances of detainee abuse witnessed by FBI agents. Agents report seeing detainees with their heads covered in duct tape and tied in the fetal position for hours on end. The report describes cases where interrogators squatted over the Quran or used other methods to religiously disrespect inmates. One inmate was “baptized” by an interrogator dressed as a priest. Although the Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress and signed by the president in October 2006, outlaws some of these harsh interrogation methods, the more significant legal issues remain unaddressed.
After the Supreme Court ruling last year that reinstated habeas corpus, where a prisoner has the right to challenge the legality of his or her detention, Congress bowed to pressure from the Bush administration and enacted legislation that cancelled that right. Congress even eliminated the right of detainees to challenge their treatment while being held. With a new Congress in power, it is time to restore habeas corpus, an integral part of the American justice system, and press the Bush administration to either charge or release inmates at Guantanamo Bay. The government says that it plans to charge up to 70 inmates in military commissions, but that leaves more than 300 men being held without charges. If these men are truly “enemy combatants,” threats to our country, then the government should stop hiding them in the shadows of an internationally condemned prison and bring them to court where they can receive true American justice.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/01/05/usdom14974.htm
http://hrw.org/campaigns/guantanamo/2007/myths.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1821278.htm
