From the Washington Independent (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars):
On Monday a federal court judge ordered the Department of Defense to release a 47-year-old father of two with a heart condition who it has imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for the past seven years without justification. But like the other Yemeni men cleared for release but still held at the detention facility, it’s not clear when or even if Mohammed al-Adahi will get to go free.
Obama administration officials on Wednesday boasted that they’d secured agreements from six European countries to accept Guantanamo detainees, although the United States itself has still refused to free any Guantanamo prisoners on U.S. soil. But since President Obama’s inauguration in January, the administration has not released a single prisoner to Yemen, although that country is willing to have them back and many would be happy to go there. (Some prisoners from other countries, such as the Uighurs from China, cannot be returned to their home countries for fear of persecution.) The administration has not stated its reasons, but said only that the State Department is negotiating with the Yemeni government over the prisoners’ return. At least three Yemeni prisoners since April have won their petitions for habeas corpus in federal court — meaning a judge has ordered that the government must let them go. (The government has cleared for release an unknown number of others.) So far, though, the Obama administration has not complied with those court rulings.
The United States has long been reluctant to return Guantanamo detainees to Yemen, where al-Qaeda is believed to be active. As a result, of about 550 prisoners released from Guantanamo by Bush officials, only 14 were from Yemen. But that trickle has slowed to a complete halt under the Obama administration, despite court rulings that the government hasn’t shown the men have done anything wrong or present any security risk.
Nearly 100 of the remaining 223 detainees at Guantanamo Bay are from Yemen. A government official on Wednesday said that negotiations are ongoing. Now that two U.S. federal courts have ordered at least three Yemeni prisoners freed, however, it’s not clear under what power the United States can continue to hold them.
“We appreciate that the United States has security concerns about Yemen, but continuing to hold these men without charge is morally wrong, is in violation of court orders, and it’s handing al-Qaeda a recruiting tool,” said Letta Taylor, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who wrote a report on the Yemeni detainees’ situation in March. “It creates its own sets of risks.”
I live in Buffalo, NY, which at one time not too long ago, was also a place “where al-Qaeda was believed to be active.” So if I were wrongfully arrested, should I have been held indefinitely instead of releasing me back into the dangerous recruiting grounds of Buffalo?
This is a very strange mix of pre-emptive action, based on the idea that we should prevent hypothetical crimes which have not yet been committed but might or might not be in the future; and good old fashioned collective punishment. Since somewhere in Yemen al-Qaeda might be active, everyone who happens to have been born there apparently can not be released from detention regardless of whether or not they’ve actually committed any crime at all.
Tags: Guantanamo Bay, injustice, Yemen
August 28, 2009 at 16:04 |
You have to ask yourself what is the life of an American worth? That is what is at risk, the children living in America who would be perfect targets for Muslim terrorists.
What is the comfort or liberty of foreigners compared to the very lives of American children. Your answer to that question will determine your answer to whether this Yemeni should ever be released.
August 28, 2009 at 16:40 |
That is not the question to ask at all because you do not know whether these people will do what you believe they will. Your question is based on the false premise that it is known that “American children” will be put at risk.
These are innocent people who are being detained for a hypothetical crime which they might commit in the future. And the only reason they might be suspected of committing a hypothetical crime in the future would be exactly because of this indefinite detention to which they are being subjected.
What if I came to where you lived, captured you and threw you in a cage for no reason, and said that I thought that maybe someone who might be living near you might be plotting terrorist attacks, and so you could never be released regardless of whether you happened to have actually committed a crime?
August 28, 2009 at 16:52
Do you know that they’re innocent? If not, then the risk is real in the sense that it is a real probability that a simulation or actuarial chart could be devised for.
It still comes down to the same question, how much risk will you put American children in?
If you re-read my comment, you’ll hopefully notice that I didn’t say one choice or the other is the right one. I just distilled down the situation to the “first principle” as it were.
August 28, 2009 at 22:58
What we know about their guilt or innocence is that (at least in the US this is the case, where you live it may be different) the burden has been on the State to prove that they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That burden has not been met. A court ordered the release. The government then defied the court order and is therefore obstructing justice. End of story.
What evidence do you have that American children will be put at risk? If you have any, you should call the US Department of Justice and make it available to them. I am sure they will be happy to have it.
If you have no evidence that American children will be put at risk, you are simply fearmongering and the criteria you are using for preemptive incarceration could apply to anybody at all.
August 29, 2009 at 06:27 |
Defending? Not exactly. Explaining the real choice underlying the decision process is closer to factual. Defending the government’s position would have required me to do more than frame the question.
August 29, 2009 at 17:50 |
Who said anything about defending? I have no clue what you are even trying to say there.
You are not explaining “the real choice.” You are explaining a justification for ignoring due process of law, and you would need to need to meet a very heavy burden of proof in order to even do that in the first place. So do you have any evidence of future harm or not? If so, let’s see it. If not, the criteria you are advocating would mean anyone could be arrested for no reason with no habeas corpus or due process of law and so on.
June 15, 2012 at 23:54 |
[...] of my first posts on this blog when I started it about a year ago quoted the Washington Independent on the issue of [...]