Editorial: The Prison That Won’t Go Away (NYT)

[struggle4progress]

Published: March 8, 2011

... The president announced that military commission trials for detainees would resume at Guantánamo after a two-year suspension. That became inevitable in December after members of Congress from both parties, in an act of notable political cowardice, banned moving those trials to the United States. The ban, inserted in a needed defense bill, also makes it virtually impossible to release prisoners to other countries willing to take them ...

Beyond the important symbolism of closing the camp, the more substantive issue was the system of indefinite detention that took place there. The president’s decision to formalize that system, made official in Monday’s executive order, was largely his own. It applies to 47 prisoners who cannot be tried because the evidence against them was classified or improperly obtained (usually through torture) but who cannot be freed because they are considered a serious terrorist threat.

The executive order requires regular review of those prisoners by an independent panel and access to legal counsel never granted by the Bush administration ...

The torture has stopped, and it is good to know that this regrettable policy will not be applied to any future prisoners beyond the group of 47. Perhaps in the future, Congress will wake up and restore the rule of law to Guantánamo Bay, including the transfer of some prisoners to other countries. But, for now, the wound to the nation’s reputation remains unhealed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/opinion/09wed2.html?_r=1&src=twrhp

[chill_wind]

1. K & R. n/t