Vol. 72/No. 26      June 30, 2008

About 200 pending legal challenges filed over the years will now be heard in federal court, possibly this fall. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the prisoners, told the Los Angeles Times he expected a “high number” of the detainees will eventually be released.

The 5-4 ruling is the most recent signal that a majority in U.S. ruling circles has decided that Washington must eventually close the Guantánamo prison, which has become an increasing political liability for it in face of exposures of inhuman conditions there.

Both major capitalist presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, have said they intend to close the camp. McCain was critical of the Supreme Court ruling, but added that the court had ruled “and now we need to move forward.” Obama supported the ruling as helping restore “our credibility” while criticizing the Bush administration for failing to “convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9-11 attacks.”

The ruling struck down parts of the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which Congress adopted in a bipartisan vote. That law allowed the U.S. military to use the Guantánamo camp to jail indefinitely, without charges, any noncitizen declared an “enemy combatant” by the president or defense secretary.

The Supreme Court left other parts of the act intact, including the government’s authority to try detainees in military tribunals at Guantánamo. In such tribunals, the judge and “jury” are military personnel appointed by the Pentagon and the prosecution can use secret evidence and hearsay. Statements obtained through some forms of torture are permissible, as long as it took place before Dec. 30, 2005.  
 
Military trials
The Pentagon has charged 19 men and is moving ahead with military trials against them. These include five prisoners arraigned June 5 on charges of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The U.S. government is seeking the death penalty for all five in a tribunal scheduled to start September 15.

One of the 19 charged is Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen captured in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15. Khadr faces life in prison for allegedly killing a U.S. soldier. His lawyers accuse military interrogators of having destroyed evidence. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled in May that Canadian agents broke the law when they interrogated Kadr in Guantánamo and handed the intelligence over to U.S. authorities.

The military trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden’s former driver, is scheduled for July 21. His lawyer said he will seek dismissal of the charges based on the Supreme Court decision. The former prosecutor at Guantánamo, Col. Morris Davis, who resigned over the use of evidence extracted through torture, has testified in Hamdan’s defense.

Pentagon officials announced in June they plan to charge Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohammad, accused of plotting to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the United States. They claim he conspired with José Padilla, who for lack of evidence was never charged for that. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced in January to 17 years for conspiracy to commit unspecified “terrorist” acts. Mohammad, who faces a life term, “confessed” under torture in a Moroccan prison, his attorneys say.

Only one prisoner, Australian David Hicks, has been convicted by a military commission. After spending five years in Guantánamo, Hicks was released to Australia in 2007, where he spent seven months in prison in exchange for pleading guilty to providing “material support to terrorism.”

The Pentagon has said it plans to try up to 80 more by military commission.

At its peak in 2003, the Guantánamo prison held 680 inmates; today about 270 remain. Since the prison opened in 2002, prisoners have been denied rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, including the right to due process. The vast majority have not been charged with any crime. For the last six years, according to former prisoners, inmates there have been subject to inhuman treatment that includes various forms of torture, beatings, sexual humiliation, starvation, long-term isolation, and sleep deprivation, some of which has been widely reported in the media. It is under such conditions that U.S. government interrogators pressed inmates for “confessions.”

The Supreme Court decision deals specifically with Guantánamo prison, where Washington—which has a naval base there against the will of the Cuban people—claimed that constitutional rights do not apply because it is not on U.S. territory. The ruling does not address U.S. prisons in other countries, where inmates are also held indefinitely without charges.

The U.S. military holds thousands of prisoners outside the United States, including more than 20,000 in Iraq. Washington is building a 40-acre prison camp at the Bagram airfield in Afghanistan to replace the makeshift jail there. Bagram prison has been used to jail suspected “terrorists” captured in Middle Eastern countries, often on their way to Guantánamo.
 
 
Related articles:
Boston Socialist Workers candidate opposes 'Safe Homes' initiative
Oppose 'anti-terror' measures  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home