Eight years ago this week, the American detention centre on the shore of Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay welcomed its first shackled, hooded prisoners, in their now notorious orange jumpsuits – alleged enemy combatants in America’s ‘war on terror’. Since it opened on January 12th, 2002, some 775 detainees have been brought to the prison. Around 450 have been released without charge and over 200 men are still being held.

By Hermione Gee

The prison was chosen in part because the Bush-era Justice Department advised that its location on Cuba put it outside US jurisdiction and therefore prisoners were not subject to the usual legal protections. Coupled with persistent allegations of torture and other human rights abuses, this brought worldwide condemnation of the facility.

To date, there are prisoners who have been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than 7 years without facing any charge or trial, says Ben Wizner, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “The most controversial and disturbing notion was that the president of the United States could capture any human being anywhere on the planet, transfer [them] to an island prison and thereby hold [them] entirely outside the law, without charge or trial.”

And now another anniversary looms: January 22nd will mark one year since US president Barack Obama pledged to close the prison within 12-months. But, says journalist Marc Sandalow, “it turns out that [it’s] a lot more difficult than it looked.”

“President Obama was very clear in his first week in office that he was going to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. Well, we’re only a week away, and Guantanamo is nowhere close to being closed.”

Delay
The immediate reason for the delay is political – the US Congress won’t authorize funds needed to transfer detainees to the US mainland, where some will face criminal charges in federal courts, but others will still be held as military combatants in a maximum security prison. But critics charge that there are deeper problems with Obama’s plan. According to the ACLU, the current proposal amounts to “closing the prison but extending the principle,” says Ben Wizner.

“Closing [Guantanamo] and transferring prisoners to the US is a positive step but it’s only a minor step if the administration is going to claim the same legal authority to hold them under a Guantanamo justice system. In other words, to hold civilians captured far from any battlefield as military detainees without charge or trial, potentially for ever. And whether that happens in Thomson, Illinois or in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba the principle is identical. If we’re going to hold them, we have to charge them with a crime.”

And, indeed, that is part of the plan. But it, too, raises problems, says Walid Phares, of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies in Washington, D.C. “It is not appropriate, if the conflict is under international law. These guys are fighters in a confrontation [and] should be processed…under an international convention.”

Despite these obstacles, President Obama is standing by his pledge to close the prison, but how and when that will happen is still unclear.

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