German Chancellor: Guantanamo Can't Exist Forever
Bump and Update: Here is the Der Spiegel interview with Chancellor Merkel in which she discusses her view of U.S. interrogation tactics applied to terror detainees.
SPIEGEL: The US government feels it is legitimate to hold prisoners under water until they believe they are drowning. Is this acceptable to you?
Merkel: There was a similar debate in Germany over the 2002
kidnapping of Jakob von Metzler, the banker's son. The issue then was whether it is legitimate to threaten or use torture to save the life of a child. The public debate showed that the overwhelming majority of citizens believed that even in such a case, the end does not justify the means. That is also my position.SPIEGEL: Do you agree with Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble's view that in the fight against terrorism, it is necessary to use information that may have been obtained through torture?
Merkel: Not in a criminal proceeding. Information obtained under dubious circumstances cannot play a role in legal proceedings in a constitutional state. But everything that's available must be taken into account in threat prevention. What do you do when other countries' intelligence agencies give you information and you aren't entirely certain about its source? Simply ignore it? That's impossible. We have a duty to guarantee the safety of our citizens.
SPIEGEL: In the interest of threat prevention, can German officials be sent to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay to interrogate detainees?
Merkel: An institution like Guantanamo in its present form cannot and must not exist in the long term. We must find different ways of dealing with prisoners. As far as I'm concerned there's no question about that.
SPIEGEL: Will you address Guantanamo with President Bush?
Merkel: We will certainly talk about the whole issue of combating terrorism. But it's also important to me, and I'll make this clear during my visit, that our relationship with the United States is not reduced to questions of fighting terrorism and the Iraq war. German-American relations were so good for so many years because they extended deeply into the normal lives of people.
********
Original Post: 1/8/06The new Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, will be making her first official U.S. visit later this week. She is scheduled to meet with President Bush on Friday, during which she will ask that Guantanamo be closed down.
"An institution like Guantanamo can and should not exist in the longer term," Merkel said in an interview with Spiegel. "Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners."
Der Spiegel will publish the entire interview with Chancellor Merkel tomorrow, in English. You will find it here. The German Blog, Atlantic Review, and its commenters, will be discussing the interview, and are hoping for participation by American bloggers.
What do you guys think about this? Are you pleased, disappointed or surprised by Merkel? Are US-German relations still going to improve?
The Atlantic review is edited by three German Fulbright Alumni: Jörg Wolf (Berlin), Sonja Bonin (Seattle) and Jörg Geier (Hamburg).
Here's an example of their prior Guantanamo coverage.
| < Live-Blogging This Week's Military Tribunals | Protesters Question Prosecution of Indian-American Clerks > |
