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Detainees Should Have Lawyers so Innocents Can be Released

Law Professor Rosa Brooks did an admirable job on the O'Reilly factor explaining why we should provide the Guantanamo detainees with lawyers. Crooks and Liars has the video. Newshounds has the full transcript.

How do we know if the detainee is an enemy combatant who according to Bush, Rumsfeld and O'Reilly is not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, or a taxi driver or unlucky Joe who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up getting kidnapped and sold to U.S. forces by others who lied and said they were fighters?

How do the innocent make their case if they are not allowed a voice with which to do it? Answer, they can't. That is why the Muslim world is justified in its criticism of us for holding prisoners for three years without charges, without lawyers and without a neutral forum - an Article III judge - in which to be heard.

As Amnesty International has said, these are the rights we should afford to every detainee at Guantanamo:

"the right to humane treatment, to be informed of reasons for detention, to have prompt access to a lawyer, to be able to challenge the lawfulness of the detention, and to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise."

O'Reilly and Brooks sparred over the number of detainees who have been released and sent home without charges. The military says that as a result of the 558 hearings it recently was forced to provide 520 detainees, (hearings at which they were not allowed to have lawyers present) 38 were found "no longer" to be enemy combatants and released to their home countries.

That's not the operative number. In April, 2004 the military announced (pdf):

As of 5 April 2004, 134 detainees have been released from Guantanamo.

According to this October 4, 2004 Washington Post article, at that time, there were

202 Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been returned to their homelands. Of that group, 146 were freed outright, and 56 were transferred to the custody of their home governments. Many of those men have since been freed.

On April 20, 2005, the Washington Post reported 18 additional detainees were released.

The release brings the total number of detainees to leave Guantanamo Bay to 232; 167 have been sent home and released, while 65 others have been transferred to the custody of foreign governments including Pakistan, Britain, Morocco, France, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Currently, there are about 550 detainees (pdf) at Guantanamo. But these are not the same 550 that arrived three years ago. Continuously, some have been released and others have been brought in to take their place.

If you take the 550 detainees currently at Guantanamo and add to that the 232 who have been released, you get 782 total detainees. Of those, 167 have been sent home without criminal charges and released into the general population. That's more than 20% of the detainees.

The first prisoners to be released from Guantanamo were seven Pakistanis in October, 2002:

The U.S. military is planning to release seven Pakistanis being held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison within the next few days, having concluded that they are not terrorists and have no value for intelligence purposes, government officials said yesterday. The move would be the first release of a significant number of detainees since the U.S. Navy jail began housing them in January.

In December, 2003, Time Magazine reported in Inside the Wire thatthere were 660 detainees being held and 140 of them, 20%, were scheduled for release.

Here are Amnesty International's latest numbers.

USA’s “war on terror” detainees, April 2005
(approximate totals/estimates)(11)
USA: Naval Brig, Charleston, South Carolina2 “enemy combatants”
Cuba: Guantánamo Bay naval base520
(234 releases/transfers)
Afghanistan: Bagram air base300
Afghanistan: Kandahar air base250
Afghanistan: other US facilities (forward operating bases)Unknown: estimated at scores of detainees
Iraq: Camp Bucca6,300
Iraq: Abu Ghraib prison3,500
Iraq: Camp Cropper110
Iraq: Other US facilities1,300
Worldwide: CIA facilities, undisclosed locationsUnknown: estimated at 40 detainees
Worldwide: In custody of other governments at behest of USAUnknown: estimated at several thousand detainees
Worldwide: Secret transfers of detainees to third countriesUnk