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End Legal Limbo At Guantanamo
Editorial
June 16, 2006
Detroit Free Press
It is past time for the United States to begin shutting down its prison for suspected terrorists at GuantanamoBay. The installation has become more important as a recruiting symbol for Al Qaeda than as a component of U.S. security.
President George W. Bush said Wednesday he'd like to close the place but is awaiting direction from the Supreme Court on how to handle the 460 inmates still there.
"We're holding some people there that are darn dangerous and ... we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts," Bush said.
Why wait? Why not just do this the American way? Give each prisoner a hearing, present whatever evidence exists to show how they are a threat to humanity, and let the legal system decide which prisoners should remain locked up to await trial and which should simply be deported. It's time to get the detainees out of their legal limbo between being prisoners of war and criminal suspects. For nearly five years now, they have been treated as neither, which is partly why they are being quartered outside the U.S.
The government isn't saying whether the interrogations at "Gitmo" have produced anything useful in the war against terrorism. But it's pretty clear that the continued operation of the prison is undermining U.S. credibility on human rights and fueling anti-American passions in the Islamic world.
The fact that the Pentagon booted American journalists out of the compound after the suicides last weekend of three inmates only reinforces the notion that whatever the United States is doing there has to be hidden from public view. The latest deaths added to Guantanamo's sorry image from previous hunger strikes, mass suicide attempts and charges by the United Nations and the Red Cross that conditions are inhumane and interrogation techniques have amounted to torture.
The "Gitmo" prison has outlived whatever purpose it may have served. It has become an international liability, and the United States already has plenty of those.
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