NYT editorial: A Step Toward Fairness

[ProSense]

Editorial

A Step Toward Fairness

Published: December 27, 2010

This country continues to pay a high price in both security and reputation for the Bush administration’s many violations of international law at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. After more than a year of review, the Obama administration is preparing an executive order intended to resolve the situation of four dozen prisoners in the prison there who are caught in a legal limbo: they cannot be freed because they are considered a potentially serious terrorist threat, and they cannot be tried because the evidence against them is classified or was improperly obtained, often through torture.

The proposed order could give these prisoners a form of legal representation and a system to review their cases. It would not remove the tarnish to the American justice system of holding prisoners without trial. But it could represent a significant step forward in dealing with these cases and possibly reducing their number.

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The Obama administration deserves credit for trying to come up with a realistic legal process for these 48 prisoners, particularly after the Bush White House seemed content to hold them indefinitely with only a thin whitewash of due process. President Obama has rightly barred coercive interrogations and other forms of torture for new prisoners, and the administration needs to ensure that any future detainees are held only on admissible evidence.

Unfortunately, Congress seems determined to stymie every effort to close Guantánamo and begin dealing with its remaining prisoners in court. Last week, Congress passed a defense authorization bill that prohibits spending money to transfer a prisoner from Cuba to the United States, or to buy any prison facility in the United States that might hold the 48 in-limbo detainees.

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[Radical Activist]

1. It's all Obama's fault!

[Eric J in MN]

2. "they cannot be freed because they are considered a potentially serious terrorist threat"

Yes, they can be.

Release them and track them.

If they're still big in Al Qaeda, they will lead to others big in Al Qaeda.

If they were never terrorists in the first place, they should be free.

If they've given up terrorism, then set them free.