Obama Considering U.S. Prison-Court Complex for Guantanamo Detainees
Posted on Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 05:43:00 PM EST
Tags: Guantanamo (all tags)
The AP reports President Obama is considering moving detainees at Guantanamo to a maximum security prison in Michigan that state officials are planning to close or to Ft. Levenworth in Ks.
The facility would include both a courtroom for military tribunal trials and federal criminal court trials and a prison. But, the details also include:
Providing long-term holding cells for a small but still undetermined number of detainees who will not face trial because intelligence and counterterror officials conclude they are too dangerous to risk being freed.
Building immigration detention cells for detainees ordered released by courts but still behind bars because countries are unwilling to take them.
So there are two classes of detainees the Administration plans to keep detained without charges or trial or after acquittal or a court-ordered release. [More...]
"Closing Guantánamo will be an empty gesture if we just reopen it on shore under a different name. While it's encouraging that the administration is attempting to meet the deadline for closing Guantánamo, any arrangement that allows indefinite detention without charge or trial will leave in place the problems that led President Obama to order the prison closed in the first place.Prisoners suspected of terrorism-related crimes should be charged and tried in federal courts that adhere to the rule of law and due process. These courts have shown themselves capable of handling complex terrorism prosecutions while affording defendants the procedural protections that the Constitution requires. Given that the federal courts are fully capable of handling these prosecutions, a new system of indefinite detention without charge or trial would be not only unconstitutional but unnecessary as well.
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