An independent appraisal by trusted legal figures should be made of each remaining prisoner at the Guantanamo camp, said The Guardian in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
To avoid uttering anything but the blandest words on Israel’s actions in Gaza, Barack Obama pleaded that there should be one president at a time. He has had no such qualms about saying he would issue an executive order closing Guantanamo Bay detention camp on his first full day in office.
A reminder of why it is so important to close the camp was given yesterday by Susan Crawford, the retired judge who dismissed war crimes charges against a Saudi national, Mohammed Al-Qahtani, who allegedly planned to take part in the 9/11 attacks. Crawford, who served as Pentagon inspector general under Dick Cheney’s tenure as defense secretary, yesterday became the first senior official to state that a detainee had been tortured. The Al-Qahtani case is also now a problem for Obama, since military prosecutors plan to refile charges based on noncoercive interrogation, but this process might not secure a conviction. What to do with detainees who are still considered too dangerous (about a hundred of the remaining 248 prisoners) to set free but who might not be prosecutable for a specific offense?
The dilemma has led some to advocate a new law authorizing indefinite detention. This would mean moving the camp, not closing it. It would perpetuate the myth that there were those who were “too dangerous” to risk setting free, if acquitted of the charges. An independent appraisal by trusted legal figures should be made of each remaining prisoner at the camp. No one should rely on the tainted testimony of an administration which redefined torture or which declared all these detainees the “worst of the worst” only to release 500 of them. Those who are not released should be charged using testimony permissible in court.
