Extrajudicial and witnessed serious violations

Biden administration must close notorious Guantanamo prison

• Prisoners in detention are subjected to inhumane treatment. Archival

• Biden wisely avoided public pledges to close the prison. A.B

image

At the beginning of his term, US President Joe Biden said he would seek to close the notorious Guantanamo detention center and directed the Department of Defense to consider how best to do so, but at the current pace of time to decide on detainees, it could take several more years to resolve.

Biden wisely avoided public pledges to close the prison made by former President Barack Obama and could not deliver on them. But to achieve the goal of ending the extrajudicial detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, its nefarious violations of basic human rights, and the renunciation of the right to a fair trial, more effort is required by Biden.

The release of the remaining prisoners requires a tangle of laws, policies, procedures, and bureaucratic secrecy. These are not simple tasks, but they are within the White House's authority to accomplish them, if the process is given much greater priority. The president can use his authority to order the Departments of Defense and Justice, intelligence agencies, and other relevant agencies to achieve this as quickly as possible.

The moral imperative to do so grows stronger over time. As long as there are people held at Guantanamo, America's condemnation of brutal detention centers in China, Syria, and elsewhere will be hollow. There is particular cruelty committed over time. On April 21, a senior official with the International Committee of the Red Cross issued a rare public call for the US military to better care for prisoners, as they "suffer from symptoms of rapid aging that have been exacerbated by the cumulative impact of their experiences. and years spent in detention."

As the 2024 presidential campaign season begins, Republicans are likely to describe any efforts to close Guantanamo as soft on terrorism. A victory for Donald Trump or a like-minded candidate could end any such efforts, as Trump did when he was in the White House.

Important

There are two specific and urgent tasks for the Biden administration: The first is to find countries willing to receive 16 men who do not pose a terrorist threat, and they were allowed to leave, but they did not, usually because their home countries are in chaos and no other country has been found to receive them.

The second is to clarify the "principles of policy", which would open the way for plea deals for those cases in which convictions are no longer possible. There are still 11 men with active cases before the special military commissions, including five accused of roles in the September 11 attacks. None can be convicted because they have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in detention.

embargo

Congress has imposed a ban on allowing any Guantanamo detainees to enter the United States, whether for trial, detention or even medical treatment. There is therefore almost nowhere else to imprison those who reach guilty plea deals, and as their cases drag on and prisoners' health deteriorates, teams of doctors and surgeons must regularly be transported to the island for treatment.

If Congress lifts the ban, those prisoners could serve their sentences after a plea bargain in a maximum-security prison in the United States. As long as the ban is in place, the only option is to keep the detainees at Guantanamo, at a cost of $13 million per man a year, which is many times the cost of holding them on U.S. soil. When these issues are resolved, Guantanamo as a legal black hole will cease to exist.

The ability to operate outside the normal constraints of law and human rights is why this legal black hole was created in the first place. The prison was established after the September 11 attacks as a secret detention camp for particularly dangerous prisoners, and the U.S. government initially considered it to operate outside U.S. jurisdiction. This gave the CIA and other agencies legal cover to conduct "enhanced interrogations" amounting to torture and subjecting prisoners to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Few clues

There is little evidence that these interrogations yielded much intelligence, but they ensured that much of the evidence against the captives would not be admissible in court, even if military prosecutors allowed their torture to be discussed publicly in court. Because of torture and a plethora of other legal problems – including allegations of secret government wiretapping of conversations between prisoners and their lawyers – there is little chance that detainees will receive a fair trial. The special military commissions set up to try prisoners have brought very few prisoners to trial.

"The time to expect justice through the legal process is over," General John Baker says in his testimony, continuing, "The best we can hope for at this point, more than 20 years after the crimes were committed, is to end this despicable chapter of American history. This goal can only be achieved through a negotiated solution to the issues."

President Biden has the authority to help get to that end and is committed to doing so.

As long as there are people detained at Guantanamo, America's condemnation of brutal detention centers in other countries will be hollow.

As the presidential campaign begins, Republicans are likely to describe any efforts to close Guantanamo as soft on terrorism.