Jan. 6, 2005 – While fresh accounts of severe mistreatment and torture at the US-run prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba continue to stream out, government officials are reportedly considering proposals to imprison people captured in the so-called "war on terror" for life without charges.
In a move human rights groups called "illegal" and "immoral" the Bush administration is reportedly proposing various long-term imprisonment plans for the detainees currently held at the US military detention center in Cuba and for future captives in the "war on terror." The Washington Post reported earlier this week that there are proposals being considered by the White House designed to accommodate the lifetime detention of suspects without charges.
Unnamed administration and military officials who spoke to the Post explained that the government is looking for a way to imprison indefinitely people who no longer have intelligence value, but whom the government does not want to be forced to release for lack of evidence against them.
One aspect of the proposal, reports the Post, is to build a new 200-bed prison at the Guantánamo Bay base to house detainees who are no longer being interrogated. The prison would be modeled after a US jail and would designed to allow more room, comfort and socializing for those incarcerated.
Another part of the proposal involves using US taxpayer dollars to build prisons in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen to house detainees from those countries. Those prisons, according sources who spoke to the Post, would be run by the respective governments, but would be monitored by the US State Department and would be required to operate under certain human rights standards.
"The key here is that they are avoiding complying with the law as opposed to attempting to comply with it." -- Rachel Meeropol, CCR
"We think that the administration’s plans are absolutely illegal and immoral," said Rachel Meeropol, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. "The idea of holding all of these individuals after… [they] no longer serve any intelligence use begs the question of why they need to be held at all. And if they’re so dangerous, why can’t they simply be charged and given criminal process?"
In an interview with The NewStandard, Meeropol accused the administration of attempting to avoid the law by sending the detainees to other countries, since the Supreme Court ruled this summer that the prisoners at Guantánamo can challenge their detentions in US civilian courts. Lawyers working with Meeropol’s organization have been at the forefront of efforts to win rights to the Guantánamo detainees and were involved in bringing the landmark Rasul v. Bush case to the Supreme Court to establish that US civilian courts do have jurisdiction over the Guantánamo detentions.
"If they house people in other countries, then, of course, lawyers like us are going to have to go back into court to establish that those individuals also have the right to challenge their detention," said Meeropol. "The key here is that they are avoiding complying with the law as opposed to attempting to comply with it."
Meeropol said that while housing detainees elsewhere would force the courts to freshly examine the new arrangement in order to determine whether detainees could challenge their detentions, the Center for Constitutional Rights believes that "anyone being held under the power of the United States at a US-run facility should have the ability to challenge that detention in the US courts." To hold otherwise, she said, "would mean that these people can be tortured or abused with impunity."
Landslide of Guantanamo Torture Evidence Continues
While the debate over the administration’s long term plans heats up, additional details about the harsh and torturous conditions endured by the prisoners held at Guantánamo continue to emerge. Over the last several weeks, the testimonies of current and former detainees have been corroborated and complemented by a leaked Red Cross report, FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency documents obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests, in addition to press interviews with current and former military and intelligence officials who worked at the prison.
Though the administration continues to insist that the conditions at Guantánamo are humane, a former interrogator told the New York Times, on condition of anonymity, that one in six detainees was subjected to harsh tactics and all were threatened with them. That same source said that interrogators at Guantánamo felt they had great flexibility because they were told the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is a signatory, did not apply there.
Several officials interviewed by the Times described tactics such as shackling inmates for hours in uncomfortable positions, subjecting them to recordings of blaring music and incessant noise like cats meowing and babies crying. Others described how prisoners were given forced enemas as a degrading punishment on a regular basis and said that interrogators consistently used medical excuses to justify such treatment.
According to one account, given to the Times, prisoner Mohamed Al-Kahtani, who was believed to be of high intelligence value, was subjected to particularly cruel treatment. Captors tranquilized him, dressed him in stifling sensory deprivation attire and put him on an airplane for hours. He was told he was being flown to the Middle East, but instead was taken back to Guantánamo without his knowledge and was housed in an isolated cell where interrogators posed as Egyptian security operatives.
In a letter sent to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and obtained by the UK Observer, the lawyer of two British citizens currently held at Guantánamo described torture undergone by his clients. In his letter to Blair, attorney Clive Stafford Smith said US personnel had suspended one of his clients from a bar with handcuffs for hours until the cuffs cut deep into his wrists.
Also according to Stafford’s letter, his clients assert that British intelligence agents visited them in both Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, advising at least one of the men to make false confessions to his American captors in order to assure an earlier release. That client, Moazzam Begg, eventually did confess, but only after undergoing torture in February 2003, according to Stafford’s letter, which also notes that neither Begg nor Stafford has been permitted to see the statement Begg signed, allegedly under duress. Begg’s captors have explained the statement is classified, Stafford wrote.
