Amid the flurry of debate over health care reform this past week, we couldn’t help but notice that a panel assembled by President Obama to figure out how to close Guantanamo Bay asked for six more months to study the matter.
The panel is charged with figuring out what to do with the 229 suspected terrorists held there.
We praised Obama for his order to close Guantanamo in his first year.
But so far, nothing.
Senior administration officials said this week’s setback doesn’t mean the administration has become bogged down in its work to close Gitmo, which long ago became a symbol of a dark period our nation rightfully wants to put behind it.
The administration is finding that the practical implications of shutting down Gitmo supercede the political gain. Closing it down is not as easy as delivering the campaign rhetoric.
But still, there should be no excuses. The detainees should be properly adjudicated. If they can’t be charged, they must be freed.
The New York Times has reported that some of the most bedeviling questions about indefinite detention for high-risk detainees remain to be answered. The administration needs to resolve whether it can hold without good evidence those terrorism suspects who pose significant security threats. Even those detainees who are thought to pose little, if any, risk remain at Guantanamo.
Federal District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle expressed outrage at government prosecutors this week in the handling of the case of an Afghan held since he was a teenager on what Huvelle says is mostly hearsay evidence and on confessions gained through torture by Afghan captors.
Mohammed Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade that seriously wounded two U.S. servicemen and a translator in Kabul.
After Afghan forces captured him in 2002 and then turned him over to the U.S., he’s attempted suicide at Guantanamo and has been subjected to sleep deprivation, isolation and beatings by Guantanamo guards, according to military records.
Jawad on Friday learned that he’ll be tried in criminal court. But there are still 17 Gitmo detainees that courts have cleared yet they remain in custody, according to the nonprofit investigative-reporting organization ProPublica.
Complicating the situation, Congress has cut off federal funds to move Guantanamo prisoners to holding facilities in the United States.
Despite that, Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Charles Johnson told the House Armed Services Committee on Friday that the Obama administration continues to consider moving at least some of the Guantanamo detainees to a U.S. detention facility.
Though it is understandable that the option of relocating suspected terrorists to the United States has raised considerable negative reaction, we continue to call for an expeditious Guantanamo closing.
The U.S. military is capable of holding terrorists inside our own borders, and our courts are equally capable of resolving these longstanding questions.
Life after Guantanamo is fraught with political risks, but candidate Obama eagerly promised to close that dark chapter of American history, and he bravely took up that mantle shortly after his inauguration.
It’s not easy, but it’s necessary.
