Since January 2002, when the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was established, more of its 779 detainees have died in custody (nine) than have been convicted (seven) in civilian court or by military commissions. Six of the detainees reportedly committed suicide. The most recent death occurred last month. Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 36-year-old citizen of Yemen, was found unconscious in his cell and could not be revived. After nearly 4,000 days in Guantánamo, he was finally “released”—in a casket.
Mr. Latif’s is a tragic story. At age 18 he suffered a serious head injury in a car accident in Yemen. In later testimony, he explained that he traveled to Jordan, and then Pakistan, for treatment. In late 2001 he was arrested by Pakistani authorities, accused of fighting for the Taliban and transferred to U.S. custody.
Mr. Latif was one of the first detainees to arrive in Guantánamo. As early as 2004, and multiple times thereafter, the U.S. military determined that Mr. Latif was “not known to have participated in combatant/terrorist training” and cleared him for transfer to Yemen. In 2010 Mr. Latif finally received a hearing in federal court. Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. examined the government’s evidence, found it uncorroborated and “not sufficiently reliable,” and he ruled Mr. Latif’s detention “not lawful.” The appellate court, however, decided 2 to 1 in the government’s favor, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
It is another cruelty that Mr. Latif languished in Guantánamo simply because of where he was born. In January 2010 President Obama placed a moratorium on all detainee transfers to Yemen regardless of individual situations. The indefinite nature of his detention weighed heavily on Mr. Latif. In fragile physical condition and poor mental health, he attempted suicide at least once and often communicated his despair through poetry and letters. The detainee “who is able to die,” he wrote, “will be able to achieve happiness for himself….”
The Letter to the Hebrews implores the Christian community to “be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment” (13:3). This call to awareness, empathy and solidarity invites us to listen with open hearts and minds to the stories of prisoners like Adnan Latif and to recognize our complicity in their suffering. For some the complicity is active; it involves demonizing prisoners or legislating out of fear, not fairness. For most Americans the complicity is characterized by indifference.
As concerned parties await autopsy results for Mr. Latif, the Obama administration is busy defending a controversial provision in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. The provision grants broad executive authority to use indefinite military detention without charges or trials for terrorism suspects. Last month Judge Katherine B. Forrest issued a permanent injunction against the provision, ruling that it unlawfully expanded executive detention authority, failed to shield U.S. citizens from indefinite military detention and failed to specify adequately what counts as prohibited activity. In response, the Obama administration immediately requested, and won, a stay.
These legal disputes, however, can dangerously obscure a more fundamental question: Is it ever morally acceptable to detain a person, citizen or not, possibly for the rest of his life, without charges or a trial? Consider the Golden Rule. If a foreign government detained you, or a loved one, what would you expect as due process? Detailed charges? A presumption of innocence? Humane interrogation, skilled legal representation, access to evidence, ability to call witnesses, fair courtroom procedures, an independent judicial authority, a public trial within a reasonable amount of time and, if you are not charged or convicted, the freedom to return home to family? Some might argue that “terrorists” forfeit these rights. But this presumes guilt. No detaining authority, whether foreign or American, should have unchecked power over a person’s liberty.
The United States failed to treat Adnan Latif in accord with the Golden Rule. His only relief from Guantánamo was death itself. The Obama administration has no plan to prosecute or release 48 detainees in Guantánamo and hundreds more in Afghanistan. These men face the prospect that they will be “released” in the same tragic manner as Mr. Latif. In Guantánamo, 85 other detainees, already approved for release or transfer, remain in custody.
What has sustained this perversion of justice? As a nation, we have failed to acknowledge and repent of our sins. The problem is both political and spiritual. Leaving persons detained for an indefinite period of time is an inhumane practice that results in hopelessness, despair and sometimes, tragically, death. Human dignity requires that the United States reject this practice and firmly renew its commitment to basic fairness for all.
Moreover, to claim that this is a perversion of justice from which we as a nation are unrepentant (and sinful) is itself a perversion of truth. We are at war. I don't like it, who does? But these men are held accordingly, and not on a whim. It would be immoral, sinful, and stupid to release these men so that they can fight again to kill our men and women, and our envoys.
Life at Gitmo is lonely, I'm sure, but it beats any European prison, any Middle Eastern prison, all South American prison.
Your editorial doesn't mention once that we are at war, and that is a serious journalistic breach of the legal circumstances surrounding their capture and detention.
A better question for your paper might be to ask, what in the world was the Vatican thinking when it put a butler on trial for telling the truth?
What in God's name has the Vatican butler's case got to do with this ? AT least he got a trial in a reasonable length of time. The fact that what turned out to be, (exposed AT TRIAL), internal Vatican squabbles perfectly DISPROVES Gaitley's entire premise. STOP THE KILLING OF INNOCENT BABIES. STOP THE DRONE STRIKES NOW.
The problem with being an outlaw is you lose the protection of the law. The distinctions aren't mine, they are the legal forms of the Geneva Conventions (plural).
We are not in some struggle with beliefs, per se, we are at war with Afganistan's rebel Taliban, Al Queada, and other bad actors in sympathy. Notably, we are not at war with all Arab or Islamic states, in fact, we receive a great deal of material support from them and always have. Our beliefs are and always have been different from Islam, so would any of this have happened absent 9/11? I don't believe so. War is different, and the consequences are not always predictible. I certainly don't like everything that has happened these 10 years or more. But I want to win, prevail, or succeed to the degree that my fellow countrymen are safe and the terrorists are weakened or destroyed and dismayed from further attacks. That is surely a fair goal.
Detained POWs are not put on trial for the very reason that they are not criminals in the usual sense, and norms of criminal trials do not apply. To be caught armed on a battlefield by an opposing force is proof enough of your purpose. Nothing else need be proved.
Now, is it really useful to detain such people? That is a different matter, but I give the benefit of the doubt during the conflict. When peace breaks out, flowers bloom in the souls of the deluded terrorists, then we should let the other killers go.
The remarks from Mr. Firestone regarding what I know about prisons are unworthy of response except that the prisoners there do not die from starvation or disease or summary execution, indeed, they are fed, clothed, cared for far above the standard found around the world. That two or three prisoners were waterboarded ten years ago is a shame, but not dispositive. Plus, Mr. Obama promised to close the place and hasn't-for a reason.
I think America is worth defending, and if it is at the sufference of these men at Gitmo, well, they are alive and kept. That's better than so many Americans who had their heads actually cut off. Or the little girl shot in the head days ago in Pakistan for wanting an education.
The US needs no vote in the UN to defend itself at anytime. Regarding Iraq, what so many liberals fail to remember is that the first Iraq War (or Gulf War) was voted upon in the US, and the UN. Those resolutions were still in effect when the US invaded in 2003. Indeed, President Clinton used those resolutions to enforce the terms of the conditional surrender e.g. the "no fly zone" among others. One of those provisions was a prohibition against stockpiling or developing certain weapons. The US invaded on the fear that this was violated. Leading up to the invasion the UN voted several resolutions condemning Irag's behavior. Since Bill Clinton, the public policy of the US was to remove S Hussein from power. Clinton did nothing; Bush acted. Perhaps imprudently, but the invasion was not a sneak attack. The whole world knew we were coming, only Hussein didn't believe it.
Tough. I have no tears for him or his fate or his regime. He should have been removed in 1991, and that is the real tragedy for the Iraqi people and us.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kusterer, you deserve an answer. I support no wars, but I see then with clear eyes and no sentiment. Other bad actors in sympathy refers to the club of killers including but not limited to: the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestiinian Authority, Hesbollah, Hamas, etc. You know these lovable misunderstood theologians of Islam, just fun guys and gals all. I don't see the war ending soon. We may remove troops but we have huge forward bases in the Middle East in Bahrain, Qatar, and S. Arabia, and other places nearby. Nearly 500 years lapsed between the Muslim victory at Manzikert (in current Turkey) and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. So don't sell them short.
The Arabs who boycotted the United Nation decisions to convert the British Mandate in Palestine to Israel blundered, and have pained the whole world since but of course, they backed Hitler too. Iran fell to the terrorists who hold it in 1978. The war or as you write, "war" will be with us as long as all these people have knives in their hearts and false ideologies in their heads.
Get used to it. War will become more automated in the coming years, putting fewer soldiers at risk. These aerial assasinations are cheaper, effective, and politically savvy. Sending abroad 300,000 soldiers to fight is logistically hard and politically difficult. Welcome to War in the age of Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and ten dozen firms you've never heard of. The technology that enables this blog, flies a drone; the voice you hear on your iPhone is just a billion bits of oblivion coming to kill you softly. Frankly I blame Gutenberg. I prefer books and smoke signals and horses, but you know, we humans move and communicate but do not improve. Not really.
Nations don't sin, they don't have souls, they don't repent. Individuals sin and may or not repent. America knows better.
They were bad men in a bad place doing bad things to others.
The politcal pressure brought to bear on the US due to propaganda and hand-wringing has been enormous. This too has interfered with the course of justice.