Originally published on the CGS blog on May 31, 2013.
In light of President Obama’s recent speech on closing Guantanamo Bay (GTMO), among other things, I began to think about the situation surrounding his executive promise on May 23rd. He has made it before. Obama campaigned on closing Guantanamo Bay, he signed an executive order to do so in his first term and last week he re-stated his desire to close the facility. Should we (the American people) place confidence in our president? One thing is for sure, the detainees of Guantanamo do not. Recent reports state that over 100 GTMO prisoners are involved in an ongoing hunger strike, of those 35 have to be force fed. For those with strong stomachs, here is a link to see Hillary Swank in Iron Jawed Angels reenact the procedure. It’s not a pretty scene. The fact of the matter is, closing Guantanamo is a messy situation and a lot more complicated than the American people realize.
Guantanamo Bay is home to three types of prisoners. Group number one are prisoners considered safe to rejoin society and return to their home country. Yemen is the home for the majority of these individuals. However, this release is conditional on the responsibility of the host country to monitor those individuals. In 2009, President Obama signed an executive order allowing for the release of group one prisoners. The return of 86 inmates was all but imminent before an ex-Gitmo detainee attempted to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2009. Now, Obama has reassured us that group one detainees will be allowed to return to their home countries.
The second group of prisoners are those awaiting trail and possible conviction. President Obama has stated that it is his wishes to speed up those trials either in civilian court or by a Military Commission. However, in his most recent speech on May 23rd, President Obama discussed his frustration “I transferred 67 detainees to other countries before Congress imposed restrictions to effectively prevent us from either transferring detainees to other countries, or imprisoning them in the United States. These restrictions make no sense.”
The real problem comes with the third group of detainees at Guantanamo. These are the high-profile prisoners who are too dangerous to be released. They have participated in planned terrorist attacks. Though, this group of 47 inmates is not able to stand trial because as the President stated in his speech, the evidence has been “compromised or is inadmissible in a court of law.”
So the question remains, how does Barack Obama fulfill his promise to close Guantanamo? First, congress has to lift its restrictions on GTMO detainees, specifically on group one to allow them return home. The second is transfer those prosecuted in group two to prisons either in the United States or in a foreign country. However, group three remains a problem. The United States violates its own constitution by keeping these men without granting them due process. But these individuals cannot be released back into society for fear that they will return to terrorist organizations with more vigor and motivation than before.
GTMO will always be controversial. There is still a lot we don’t know about the inner workings of the prison. What we do know is enough. Photographs of Abu Ghraib illustrated, US military officials used tactics of sexual humiliation. Scholarly reports state detainees have been subject to “stress positions, beating, temperature manipulation, water boarding, threats of harm to person, family, or friends, sleep deprivation, sensory bombardment (noise and light), violent shaking, sexual humiliation, and prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation.” Our torture tactics will go down as one of the greatest human rights violations of our countries history.
I thought it just to use this little blog post to join the army of individuals and groups who want to close Guantanamo Bay no matter how hard it is for politicians.
