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A Legal Limbo

By Mischa Gaus

Abdul Hamid Abdul Salam Al-Ghizzawi is frantic. “He is in very poor health, which deteriorates day after day (details to be discussed with u in person). He has a family that is in desperate need of him.” The fragment, taken from a page handwritten by another detainee, is the only record of Al-Ghizzawi to emerge from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp… return to article

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    Page 1 of 1 pages

    The point is, in so many cases we have no idea whether Guantanamo detainees are “the worst of the worst” or mere “woodworkers and farmers.” Why? Because they’re beyond due process. They’re beyond either military or civilian justice because the administration apparently cannot live with being bound by Constitutional limits upon power, making the case that America is essentially undefended unless the president has unlimited freedom of action. This apparently includes the freedom to hold suspects without a trial or even a charge.

    Gather evidence. Charge. Try. Convict and punish, or acquit and release. Is there some other course of action that makes any sense?

    Of course we could just kill them all, but that might look inhumane.

    Speaking of “making a case”, the conundrum that is Guantanamo was pointed up by today’s rejection in the Supreme Court of an appeal filed by two Uighur Muslims who have been in Guantanamo for roughly 4 years, as well as having been deemed “unthreatening” by a military tribunal almost a year ago. No threat, yet not to be released, because the detainees face possible torture or death if they are transferred back to Xinjiang province in China.

    I guess they can work on their tans in the balmy Cuban sunshine while they languish. They can’t be allowed to enter the US, so it is said, because that would provide a disadvantageous precedent for other detainees’ lawyers to exploit. Conundrum indeed.

    It just gets more intricate and convoluted with each passing day, the White House less and less able to manage the unplanned-for consequences of their decisions, the country less and less able to hold up its collective head with the confidence that it is on the right path.

    Philippines Posted by Kuya on Apr 18, 2006 at 8:20 AM

    Mohammed Jawad is still struggling to pick up the pieces of his lost childhood and teenage years after languishing for seven whole years in America’s notorious Guantanamo detention center on terror charges.

    “I hadn’t done anything — 1Y0-A13 exam they took me for nothing,” the young Afghan, who was released to Afghanistan earlier this week, told The Times on Thursday, August 27.

    Jawad was arrested in 2002 when he was 12 on suspicions of throwing a grenade at US invading troops in Afghanistan.

    “They knew I was underage but they did not care about my age 70-284 exam.”

    The teenager was first sent to a Kabul airbase before being flown to notorious Guantanamo, where his ordeal began.

    “There was a lot of oppression when I was in Guantanamo,” said a weary-looking Jawad.

    “I was 642-691 examoppressed the whole time until I was released.”

    He described having his hands bound and stretched behind his back, and being forced to eat by bending over and putting his mouth into a plate of food.

    Germany Posted by feka on Oct 24, 2009 at 10:25 AM
    Page 1 of 1 pages

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