Jan. 11, 2007 marks the fifth anniversary of the United States transferring the first detainees to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Since Jan. 11, 2002, more than 700 people from 40 countries have been held at Guantánamo Bay. None of these detainees has been given prisoner of war status and the vast majority has never been charged with a crime or been tried in any court. Not only are the conditions surrounding Guantánamo detainees’ apprehension and harsh, indefinite detention inconsistent with U.S. and international law, they constitute an ongoing, inexcusable and unnecessary breach of American values as we struggle to fight the War on Terrorism.
In the past five years only 10 detainees at Guantánamo Bay have been charged with any crime. Meanwhile, prisoners have been confined to 6.5-by-8-foot cells, with some being held in maximum security blocks for up to 24 hours a day. Others have been repeatedly interrogated for hours at a time without access to a lawyer. The U.S. government has consistently denied prisoners the right to challenge their detention while the Military Commissions Act of 2006 further undermines Gitmo detainees’ access to courts. The International Committee of the Red Cross has condemned the conditions at Guantánamo as amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
A high incidence of acts of self-harm among Guantánamo speaks to the harshness of their five-year detention. In 2003 alone there were 350 such incidents. According to the U.S. government, there have been 34 “attempted suicides” at Gitmo and three prisoners have died of apparent suicides.
Perhaps what enables our society’s continuing, if tacit, acceptance of the unlawful and immoral detention of prisoners at Guantánamo is the set of myths that we have been told about who these detainees are. After all, for five years we have been told that these men were “captured on the battlefield,” were hell-bent on destroying America, and represent the “worst of the worst.” A closer look, however, reveals a different, more complex story. According to a recent Seton Hall University study, 55 percent of Guantánamo detainees have not been determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States and Al Qaeda fighters make up only 8 percent of the prisoner population. Further, only 11 percent of these detainees were captured by U.S. authorities and coalition forces, with the vast majority initially being arrested by either Pakistani or Northern Alliance/Afghan authorities before being handed over to U.S. custody. U.S.-distributed flyers in Afghanistan and Pakistan advertised monetary rewards for captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters and included phrases like: “Get wealth and power beyond your dreams…” The release of hundreds of Guantánamo detainees in the past few years, though certainly not attesting to the innocence of all prisoners held at Guantánamo, indicates that this was a mistake-ridden process.
Guantánamo Bay has become a globally-recognized symbol for America’s perpetration of human rights abuses and betrayal of its values as it fights a “War on Terror.” The America I believe in does not support indefinite detentions, unending legal limbo, and lack of due process. It is time for the U.S. government to close Guantánamo and either charge and give fair trials to the estimated 430 remaining Guantánamo detainees or release them. Five years of human rights abuses is five years too many.
Joe Feldman is the co-coordinator of UO Amnesty International