By César Chelala, CGNews,
The recent US Supreme Court ruling that recognises the rights of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention in US civilian courts – possibly paving the way for a permanent closure of the facility – is a serious rebuke to the controversial detention policies of the administration of President George W. Bush. However, it is also an excellent opportunity for the current administration to demonstrate its commitment to American security while simultaneously beginning to heal one of the rifts that has harmed the global standing of the United States, particularly in the Muslim world.
America’s image has taken a beating since evidence of torture and abuse at Guantanamo, as well as the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was first revealed. These facilities have housed terrorism suspects rounded up since 9/11, and while US officials say many are guilty, human rights activists ask how they can be so certain given the lack of specific charges and legal protocol.
Most of the approximately 270 prisoners still at Guantanamo have been in US custody for more than six years without ever being charged with a crime, according to the June 2008 Human Rights Watch report, Locked up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo.
Suspects held at Guantanamo have been detained in conditions which amount to cruel and inhumane punishment, marking serious breaches of the prisoners’ basic human and health rights. Practices used against the prisoners have included forced feedings of hunger strikers, jabbing food tubes through their noses and keeping them in prolonged isolation.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says these practices amount to torture. In 2004, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton reported “increasing evidence that doctors, nurses and medics have been compliant in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.” The ICRC charged at the time that US interrogators engaged the participation of medical personnel in what the committee called “a flagrant violation of medical ethics.”
Detainees at Guantanamo spend an average of 22 hours a day by themselves, in cells lacking natural light or fresh air. They may occasionally be visited by an attorney or a representative of the ICRC, but are mainly cut off from family, friends and even each other.
These conditions of prolonged isolation not only violate international legal obligations, but can also create or aggravate mental health problems that may lead to suicide attempts. It is estimated that there have been four suicides and hundreds of suicide attempts by prisoners at Guantanamo.
In June of 2006, three detainees were found dead in what the Pentagon said was an “apparent suicide pact.” Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights – which represents hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners – said that the detainees “have this incredible level of despair that they will never get justice.” Prison commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris, however, stated that this was not an act of desperation but rather “an act of asymmetric warfare committed against us.”
Many of the prisoners released from Guantanamo have complained of beatings, sleep deprivation, prolonged constraint in uncomfortable positions, forced feeding and injections, sexual and religious humiliation, and other physical and psychological mistreatment. These accusations were confirmed by ICRC investigators. The Bush administration, however, has consistently rejected the ICRC findings.
In a series of reports, Amnesty International has called the situation in Guantanamo “a human rights scandal.” But the 12 June Supreme Court ruling gives us all cause for some optimism.
Kenneth Roth, executive director at Human Rights Watch, commented that “the Supreme Court decision has stripped Guantanamo of its reason for being: a law-free zone where prisoners can’t challenge their detention.” He added that the ruling is “not only a landmark victory for justice, it’s a big step toward establishing a smarter, more effective counter-terrorism policy.”
In his dissent of the decision, US Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that it will “almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honoured legal principle vital to our constitutional republic. But it is this Court’s blatant abandonment of such principle that produces the decision today.”
However, these positions are not necessarily mutually exclusive when it comes to protecting American lives, and also moving forward to try – and, when necessary, convict – the prisoners at Guantanamo. Court cases finding prisoners either guilty or innocent of the crimes that have allegedly landed them there will go a long way in proving that rule of law upheld in the US Constitution is a successful model, bringing to justice those who are threats to American security, and freeing those who are found innocent through legal proceedings.
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César Chelala is an international public health consultant and co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for a human rights article. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.