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Today's Must Read
Here's a painful Guantanamo Bay irony: What to do with detainees slated for repatriation who fear abuse back home?
That's a serious obstacle confronting the Bush administration as it considers shuttering the facility. The U.S. has legal restrictions barring it from sending people to countries where they're likely to be tortured. As much as human rights groups object to the indefinite detentions and harsh interrogations at Guantanamo, they also don't want to see further abuses occur in the name of closing the camp down, a problem the New York Times spotlights today.
Case in point: Ahmed Belchaba, an Algerian whom the Department of Defense no longer considers a danger to America. He's contesting his repatriation in a case set to be heard by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Lawyers for Mr. Belbacha have said he is at risk of torture or death by Islamist radicals because he once served in the Algerian army, and by the government, which is likely to view him as a terrorist because of his tenure at Guantánamo.In a filing on Wednesday, the Justice Department opposed any order barring a transfer of Mr. Belbacha, saying that “as the United States has explained, it is in no one’s interest to detain enemy combatants longer than is necessary.”
That case could open courthouse doors to dozens of similar claims by detainees who do not want to be sent home.
That throws an old Guantanamo problem into new light. Detainees there go through an administrative process, not a legal one, to determine whether the U.S. should continue to detain them. The operative consideration for Guantanamo jailers isn't detainee guilt or innocence. So when the U.S. sends detainees back to their home country, their often-authoritarian governments have no independent reason to believe that the former detainees don't pose a threat to them. And that makes them ripe for persecution.
In the recent case of a Tunisian detainee, Abdullah Bin Omar al Hajji, his lawyers sent a series of e-mail messages to government officials in May and June trying to stop a planned return to Tunisia, a court filing shows.The lawyers told the officials he had apparently been convicted in absentia in Tunisia for affiliation with a nonviolent political party at a time when human rights monitors had said such trials were not fairly conducted.
They warned that he would face torture and a 23-year prison term without having had the chance to defend himself. On June 15, one message shows, the lawyers demanded to see their client when they were to arrive at Guantánamo on June 17. But that day, he was shipped back to Tunisia. Not long after, according to an affidavit by his Tunisian lawyer, he was put in jail, where he was slapped and threatened with rape and told that his wife, too, would be raped.
The Defense Department wants to winnow the Guantanamo population down to 150 from its current 360 residents, and charge approximately 80 of the remaining detainees with war crimes. That's a task complicated by the paradox of keeping people at Guantanamo in the interest of protecting their human rights.
Comments (17)
Nick wrote on August 9, 2007 10:33 AM:Let's not forget that we bear the responsibility of placing this mark on them and creating the all-too-real possibility of torture if sent back home. I have a close relation who worked on these cases and visited Gitmo often on the government's side, and even they admitted that our careless picking up of often-innocent people on scant evidence or because their enemy sold us faulty info has destroyed their futures .... after all, if the US picked them up, goes the foreign country's reasoning, then they must be a threat, and we don't want them back. The solution is for the US to make right - whether allowing them to live in the US under some sort of "witness protection"-type scenario, or to find a neutral new country to help them re-establish their lives. The whole situation is a tragedy and shame on us.
OkieFromMuskogee wrote on August 9, 2007 10:35 AM:This is another example of the complete lack of any foresight or planning by this administration in execution of its signature "accomplishment," the Global War on Terror.
It's shocking, isn't it? Now we learn that no one else wants these guys either, after we called them "the worst of the worst" for all these years (but never actually charged them with anything). Who could have anticipated this?
Squeeky wrote on August 9, 2007 10:41 AM:Give 'em Bush's ranch and $10 million each. Bush can be the servant boy.
Molly, NYC wrote on August 9, 2007 10:48 AM:The U.S. has legal restrictions barring it from sending people to countries where they're likely to be tortured.
Legal restrictions, really? And "protecting their human rights" too?
Uh, we're talking about a torture camp here, run by people whose life's work is burying our Constitution in petty legalisms. I'm sure they'll find a way around it.
(E.g., how convenient would it be if these guys all suddenly died of something?)
illlich wrote on August 9, 2007 11:05 AM:Ignoring Molly,NYC's all too relevant comments, let's assume for a moment the the Bush administration DID wish to follow it's own rules and/or be humane for once, what could they possibly do? There are only a few options I can think of, most of which the Bushies would never do. 1) Admit wrong publicly (or privately to the leaders of the re-patriot's nation), say to the world "we picked these guys up by mistake, they have NO connection to terrorists." Of course to do so would invite legal proceedings, and besides, WHEN would W. and clan ever admit wrongdoing? Or 2) try and get them citizenship in a 3rd country like Denmark or Holland, (certainly not the US, where they would probably be shot by some "patriot" on implied orders from Limbaugh/Hannity/et.al).
Rich wrote on August 9, 2007 11:08 AM:So you are telling me that the bush administration can only send people to a foreign country where they will be tortured while they are in CIA custody but once they are released they cannot send them to a country where they might be tortured?
That is irony.
MikeS wrote on August 9, 2007 11:08 AM:Ah. Right. We torture them here so they don't have to be tortured there. Got it.
Nell wrote on August 9, 2007 11:12 AM:If they pose no threat to the United States and face a legitimate threat of torture or repression in their home countries, then we owe them asylum -- residence visas -- in the United States.
And reparations.
bushcounterfeiting wrote on August 9, 2007 11:14 AM:Go to http://www.cageprisoners.com to find out what you can do to help.
There is also a forum there where you can read about the agony of the friends and family of the victims of bushcheney's torture gulag.
So Padilla is an American citizen, and he was held for years without charge in secret prison. He was called a dirty bomber, but when they finally charged him with a crime, it wasn't related to being a dirty bomber. Now at trial, he may not even be guilty of this lesser charge. This is why people are innocent until proven guilty, and this is why it is unamerican to hold people without charge in secret prisons. Jeez!
nal wrote on August 9, 2007 12:35 PM:"The U.S. has legal restrictions barring it from sending people to countries where they're likely to be tortured."
Since when has the Bush administration been concerned with "legal restrictions"?
mbbsdphil wrote on August 9, 2007 12:58 PM:Since this is a mess of our own devising, the default position is to give detainees wrongfully imprisoned, or imprisoned beyond a reasonable time for crimes for which they have been convicted by a regularly constituted court, a right of permanent abode in the United States.
That's called the "You Break It, It's Yours" policy, which makes ordinary people think twice before doing something stupid. Young Shrub never learned that, which is why he's still a shrub and not a tree. He's always been able to break things and walk away. Time for that to stop.
someone wrote on August 9, 2007 1:19 PM:It's also a little disingenuous of the Administration to pretend they are trying really hard to get innocent folks safely repatriated. In many cases, governments have refused to accept detainees because the US demands they imprison the person forever, place the person under constant surveillance, deny them rights to sell their story to publishers, or prosecute them for crimes, even if the US found them innocent. Britain and other countries have balked at these demands and refused to comply. From what I hear from detainee lawyers, this is as big a problem in repatriation as fear of torture is.
TheraP wrote on August 9, 2007 2:08 PM:
xenophon wrote on August 9, 2007 3:18 PM:What you said, mbbsdphil. All of it!
After undermining and ignoring so many laws for so long, and all the hundreds of Bush's signing statements, suddenly they find one law they feel honor bound to obey?
Several years ago the Pentagon announced they had concluded that a majority of Gitmo detainees were not terrorists, never were terrorists, had no terrorist connections, and harbored no terrorist intent toward America or its citizens. Yet they still demanded $350,000,000 to build a special prison to incarcerate those innocent men in for the rest of their lives.
The Bush/Cheney administration is using this one law that forbids extradition of prisoners to countries they know will torture or kill them as an excuse never to release any of the detainees.
Has the Bush/Cheney administration ever hesitated to torture and kill prisoners? Has the Bush/Cheney administration ever hesitated to send other detainees to countries they know will torture and maybe kill them?
No and no. They don't want former detainees telling their stories once they are released.
Bush/Cheney and their cohorts are the kind of authoritarians to whom guilt or innocence are really interchangeable to them its the exercise of authority that is the only important thing. And since they have systematically removed Constitutional checks and balances, keep everything as secret as possible, given themselves the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Executive Order of July 17, (White House web page) then who is to stop them?
Leglaize wrote on August 9, 2007 4:08 PM:So, if the government is admitting that if these fellows are sent back to their home nations, they would likely be subject to torture, we have a legal remedy for such a scenario: it's called "asylum." Hell, they can grant asylum without even having to get a court order.
paul wrote on August 9, 2007 5:00 PM:If someone under US jurisdiction has a well-founded fear of political persecution in their home country, they're eligible for asylum. Period. Doesn't matter how they got under US jurisdiction, doesn't matter how they got the well-founded fear.
Of course, immigration judges have been laughing at this one for a long time, pretty much requiring that you actually be killed and then make your petition from the grave, because anything less wouldn't be "well-founded"...
regular lurker wrote on August 9, 2007 5:24 PM:Up until very recently, there were children at Guantanamo including one 11 year old who was held until he was a teen ager.
The US is accruing some frightening karma under Bush.