Thursday, October 8, 2009

Congressional leaders agree to try Gitmo detainees in US

For the first time since Guantanamo Bay's establishment as a detainment facility by George W. Bush in 2002, congressional leaders have agreeed to try the detained in the United States. This is a landmark decision that is a dramatic reversal of the unconstitutional system of military tribunals currently being implemented in Guantanamo Bay. This is not to say that this "compromise", as the NY Times calls it, is not highly problematic.

I have several questions I'd like to ask about the agreement in question:

1. Does this mean the prisoners will be granted habeus corpus rights? Can they go to trial in the US when we haven't even informed of their alleged crime?

2. The article states: "In addition, it was not clear whether the compromise would permit detainees to be brought to the United States for indefinite detention. An undetermined number of detainees are deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be put on trial because there is insufficient evidence against them". Is there the possibility that we will suspend habeus corpus on US soil? The entire Bush "legal argument", as articulated and ultimately rejected in Boumediene v. Bush, was that the constitution's 4th amendment protections don't apply on foreign soil. This appears to leave open the possibility that we will simply continue to detain prisoners whom we don't have sufficient evidence to convict. Does this compromise intend to only send suspected "dangerous" inmates to trial if we are sure of conviction? Last time I checked, that's not how the criminal justice system works.

3. Why would the agreement "forbid the Obama administration from releasing detainees in the United States"? If they are found innocent in the criminal justice system, aren't we obligated to release them? Where do we send them? To their home countries to face persecution and suspicion (or in the case of the Chinese Uighurs, death)? This seems to follow the same fear-inspired logic that caused congress to forbid Gitmo detainees from being held in US maximum security prisons. Nobody has ever escaped from a maximum security prison. Not the Unabomber, not Charles Manson,and certainly no terrorists. If our system of laws deems these detainees guilty, why can they not be held in our extremely effective high-security prisons? If they are innocent, what right have we not to release them immediately?

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