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Time to Close Guantanamo
Is Bush afraid fair trials would find too many detainees are innocent?
Editorial: George Daly
Charlotte Observer
July 7, 2006
President Bush said that he wanted to close Guantanamo after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on his military tribunals. Was he telling the truth?
The Supreme Court has now told him how to clear the prisoners out of Guantanamo. Will he follow their lead, or will he have his lawyers prattle and dodge for another four years without giving any of the Guantanamo prisoners a trial?
The Supreme Court has ruled that President Bush violated due process of law in setting up the Guantanamo military tribunals because they could consider evidence obtained by torture and they could exclude the accused from his own trial. So, there is now no procedure in place for deciding if the prisoners at Guantanamo are guilty or innocent, except the basic pre-existing procedure of a court-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice -- in which coerced evidence is not allowed and the accused is entitled to attend his own trial.
Most of the prisoners at Guantanamo have been held for four years without being charged with any offense, and most of them will never be convicted of any crime. That's right, and the Defense Department knows it. Why else have they only charged 10 of the more than 750 prisoners who have been at Guantanamo?
We have heard a lot of blowhard rhetoric about how they are all terrorists, but the fact is that the majority of them should never have been there in the first place. Did you know that the CIA was offering rewards of $25,000 for terrorists during the war in Afghanistan? Lots of the Guantanamo prisoners are there because someone informed on them just to get the reward money, and not because there is any probative evidence against them.
Everyone in U.S. custody is entitled to due process. That's a requirement that defines our humanity as a nation. Due process dates from Magna Carta in 1215. It is a fundamental piece of who we are.
The United States was greatly admired after World War II for convening the Nuremberg tribunals to try the Nazi was criminals, rather than just shooting them on the spot as Stalin wished to have done. We gained stature in the world by being willing to give due process to everyone, even to the enemies who tried to kill us.
The longer we hold prisoners at Guantanamo without charges, without due process, the more we harm ourselves. We can't claim to be a law-abiding nation and deny legal process for four years of imprisonment in a gulag.
We should court-martial each prisoner within 60 days or release him. Is President Bush afraid of how many Guantanamo prisoners might turn out to be innocent after a due process trial?
**From Charlotte lawyer George Daly, who with Charlotte lawyer Jeff Davis volunteered to represent two GuantanamoBay detainees; one of the detainees is still there, the other was sent back to Saudi Arabia after being held four years with no charges filed against him.
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