Why Guantanamo is unjustGLOBE EDITORIAL
June 28, 2007
FOR MOST of the 400 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the only chance to challenge their confinement as enemy combatants comes at their Combatant Status Review Tribunals. No one in the Bush administration ever claimed these proceedings were full-blown trials in which the prisoners would have the benefit of an attorney. But it was not until last week that a military insider revealed just what a travesty of justice the tribunals actually are.
The disclosures of Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Stephen E. Abraham are more reason to close Guantanamo, move the prisoners to mainland US prisons, and try those suspected of war crimes in federal courts or courts martial. Under pressure from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the administration is at least moving closer to shuttering the detention center.
Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is trying to burnish his anti terror image by saying in last month's debate: "My view is we ought to double Guantanamo."The attorneys who have worked with Guantanamo prisoners but not been allowed to represent them in the tribunals have long said the hearings were kangaroo courts. The tribunals are important because they offered a chance for prisoners to claim they were detained by mistake in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where US officials paid as much as $5,000 in bounties for individuals taken into custody.
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Before Romney repeats his "double Guantanamo" suggestion, he might check with Gates, who became defense secretary long after the center was established. Gates has said any trials of suspects should take place elsewhere, because "No matter how transparent, how open the trials, if they took place in Guantanamo . . . they would lack credibility." The combatant status review tribunals lack transparency, openness, and fairness.more
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