Any person accused or suspected of a crime and after being formally charged is entitled to a fair and speedy trial to prove his/her guilt or innocence. Although the guarantees for fairness and speed are questionable at times, all international and acceptable common laws agree that people can’t be held against their will without being charged or convicted of a crime.
Those rights must be guaranteed for all including those who we think do not deserve them. It was guaranteed for Nazi war criminals, Charles Manson and most recently Saddam Hussein. It is a part of the system of checks and balances necessary for society to function correctly and to ensure the preservation and protection of our legal and human rights.
Only five of the estimated 520 or 540 prisoners suspected of ties to the 9/11 attacks or other terrorist activities held for over three years in the US Naval Base prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been charged with crimes; the rest are held without charge.
A US Senate Judiciary Committee was recently formed to investigate the legality of the detention for the 500 inmates in Guantanamo. Senior Republican Sen. Arlen Specter urged Congress on Wednesday to clarify prisoners’ rights at Guantanamo Bay, decrying a “crazy quilt” of legal decisions about the military’s handling of suspected terrorists. Specter expressed his frustration at the failure of the House of Representatives and the Senate to act on several bills, including his own, to clearly define rights and procedures for enemy-combatant detainees. He said, “It may be that it’s too hot to handle for Congress, may be that it’s too complex to handle for Congress, or it may be that Congress wants to sit back as we customarily do”.
Senior officials at the Pentagon and Justice Department failed to provide panel members with any information or give direct answers to the simplest of questions such as the number of prisoners held at Guantanamo or how long the government of the United States intends to hold those prisoners without charge.
It is not very clear if the committee will succeed in its attempt to pressure the Bush administration to find an immediate solution for the situation in Guantanamo. As Sen. Specter said, “Congress has its work cut out for it” as it studies the system that lies outside the scope of the US judicial branch.
What is clear and obvious however is the overwhelming evidence of torture, extreme physical and psychological abuse and unlawful methods used by interrogators reported by human rights groups, Amnesty International, former detainees, X-military personnel and FBI secret reports that were leaked to the press on the conditions in Guantanamo. Sen. Dick Durbin made a comment on the Senate floor comparing the actions of American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Soviet gulags and a “mad regime” like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s in Cambodia. Amnesty International, also, branded the facility the “gulag of our times”.
Erik Saar, a US Army sergeant who served as an Arabic translator stationed at the camp from December 2002 to June 2003 and author of the book “Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo” says that he witnessed sexual abuse, mock interrogations, the use of dogs and a female interrogator smearing what looked like menstrual blood on a Muslim prisoner.
Sarr reports some minute-by-minute accounts of integration techniques that are beyond imagination and defy human decency. He also mentions suicide attempts by two prisoners, a Bahraini and a Saudi, who crossed to the other side of sanity as a result of the constant abuse.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, despite all the hard evidence of repeated mistreatments of the prisoners, humiliation and disrespect for their faith including incidents in which guards at Guantanamo defiled the Holy Qur’an, still denies facts and calls them “minor isolated incidents” and remains “satisfied” with the situation in the prison. He remarked on the fine cuisine on which prisoners are dining — “lemon fish with two types of vegetables” followed by “two types of fruit” which he described as “made to the religious convictions of the detainees” and “better than the rations given to our troops”.
I am not in the least defending terrorists or those guilty of murdering or harming innocent people.
I am simply trying to point out that unless those prisoners in Guantanamo are charged, tried or released, justice is not served and those prisoners will continue to be the subject of abuse.
How can we accept this outrageous injustice to a fellow-human being who might be an innocent victim of circumstances? Does any one have the right to take away another man’s freedom because he does not understand his culture, faith or beliefs?
To those who rally around the world preaching democracy, freedom and justice but seem to ignore the first rule of justice — innocent until proven guilty — not to mention the basics, I say: Charge them, put them on trial and if guilty punish them to the fullest extent of the law...or let them go.
— Ibrahim Abdullah Al-Hajri is a business development and management consultant based in Dammam.
