Guantanamo

[Stavros]

I don't need to go over the history of the camps at Guantanamo for HA members, most of you are well informed. Right now at least 100 inmates are on hunger strike, mostly people who have never been charged with a crime, but whom, it seems, may never be released either because they are considered 'too dangerous' or because their country or origin or any other country refuses to accept them or because their country is in chaos or unstable (eg, Libya and Syria).

Nobody contests the right of the USA to prosecute, where possible, all and any person responsible for the attacks on 9/11, and the previous attacks such as the bombings in East Africa in 1998 and the attack on the USS Cole. I think that what has dismayed so many people, inside and outside the USA, has been the apparent inability of 'the Americans' to sort this mess out -'Americans' being the three branches of government. It would appear that President Obama is more than keen to shut Guantanamo and re-locate prisoners where necessary, but that Congress refuses to pass the laws or amendments to laws that are needed to make this possible.

Is Congress at fault? Is the law itself at fault? Is there such a tangle of contradictions in Guantanamo- the military tribunal, the prisoners not charged, the ones waiting on their release to sue the US, Britain, anyone who matters, the potential revelation of horrific stories (true or false) of abuse, torture and so on -that the US may be stuck with this problem for years?

So what are the solutions?

[fivekatz]

It takes political courage IMHO to either release or try these inmates. It is one of the great failings of the Obama administration not to reverse the very deliberate but terrible consequences of indefinite detention.

[robertlouis]

Guantanamo is a running sore on the world's conscience and a living contradiction of America's claims to be the protector.

The seeming inability to deal with the root problem suggests that it will remain open till the last prisoner dies in captivity.

Shameful.

[Prospero]

I met and spent some time with one british former inmate of Guantanamo. His stories would make your blood run cold - both about his initial arrest in Pakistan and subsequent treatment. A shame as RL says.... both to the UK and US

[Stavros]

I am familiar with the indignation, some of which is justified -but some of the accounts the British internees have given do not make sense -yes, on one level heading off to Peshawar or Afghanistan at any time between 1990 and 2001 might not be much different from starry-eyed reds heading off to Spain in 1937 to fight fascism, but at least one of the British prisoners gave an account of his life which stretched credulity to breaking point and in the process suggested he was at best, naive, at worst complicit to some extent, even if we will never be sure how far.

I was asking for solutions, which do not appear to be forthcoming. Geoffrey Robinson QC a few years ago argued that the core prisoners with real responsibility ought to be tried in The Hague for crimes against humanity. The USA withdrew from the UN's International Court of Justice in The Hague in 1984, when it was found guilty of violating international law in its illegal intervention in Nicaragua. It would mean the USA calling a halt to the Military Tribunal and handing the prisoners over to a system which ought on the record of torture to release the men without any further judicial process. That isn't going to happen. The Bush presidency, as with our current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, is waging war against human rights on all fronts, having realised that if human rights have any meaning, even Khalid 'Sheikh' Mohammed -and you can name any other 'bogeyman'- has them in equal measure. Bringing these men to account for their actions in a court of law has been made virtually impossible as a consequence of the manner in which they were originally arrested and interrogated. My guess is that the tribunals will finish their work, the core will get death or life, transferred to some prison in the US, and the rest released in stages. Or they will all die in Cuba. Whichever solution is discussed seems inadequate, but there aren't many at all under discussion.