Prisioner+Release-Guantanamo

Prisoner Release Source: The Economist Date Published: Jan 29th, 2009 Source: The Wall Street Journal Date Published: Feb. 21st, 2009 Source: CNN Date Published: Dec 30th, 2007 Source: The New York Times Date Published: Feb. 10th, 2009 -A United States military lawyer representing one of [|the 242 detainees] still imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay told a British newspaper on Sunday that, including her client, “at least 50 people are on hunger strike, with 20 on the critical list” at the detention center. -The lawyer, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley of the Air Force, [|told The Observer], The Guardian’s Sunday newspaper, that her client, an Ethiopian-born Briton named [|Binyam Mohamed] , is in danger of dying. The Observer adds, according to witnesses, the starving detainees “are being strapped to chairs and force-fed, with those who resist being beaten.” -As [|John Schwartz reports] in The New York Times today, lawyers for Mr. Mohamed were outraged that the Obama administration sought on Monday to block a lawsuit they had filed on Mr. Mohamed’s behalf: In the case, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian native, and four other detainees filed suit against a subsidiary of Boeing for arranging flights for the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which terrorism suspects were secretly taken to other countries, where they say they were tortured. The court papers describe horrific treatment in secret prisons. Mr. Mohamed claimed that during his detention in Morocco, “he was routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.” -After Mr. Mohamed was captured, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft said that he had been complicit with Jose Padilla to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the United States. Last year, the Justice Department said it was dropping the dirty-bomb charges against Mr. Mohamed, and last October all charges against him were dropped. -The stated objection of the American government to the lawsuit brought by Mr. Mohamed and the other detainees in federal court is that making this secret evidence public could compromise American intelligence relationships with other governments. -Human-rights campaigners want the too-dangerous-to-release lot to have their day in court—federal district court, tried under criminal law. -Those deemed ordinary fighters, such as Taliban picked up on battlefields in Afghanistan, could be held legally as prisoners-of-war until hostilities have ended. But in many cases standard laws of war may be too hard or too risky to apply: to those whose proper identities are unknown, for example, or who are suspected of loyalty not to tribal commanders but to al-Qaeda’s network of terrorist affiliates.
 * Brief History: ** President Obama upheld oath to close Guantánamo Bay prison camp. The decision was intended to draw a clear line for all to see between George Bush’s efforts to consign foreign terrorist suspects to legal limbo and his own vow to restore America’s commitment to the rule of law. But Mr. Obama still has to decide what to do not just with Mr. Bush’s captives, but with any picked up on his own watch . Some inmates may be moved to the U.S. to face trial, while others may be released. Officials have 180 days to come up with “lawful” options for dealing with detainees, and just 30 days to ensure that all those held in American custody anywhere are treated humanely. They also have 180 days to decide whether the CIA needs, as some insist, to be able to use harsher interrogation techniques (still short, presumably, of unlawful torture) than are allowed in the Army Field Manual.
 * Opp: ** This month, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared divided along ideological lines after considering the constitutional rights of the more than 300 suspected terrorists and foreign fighters held at Guantanamo Bay. Several justices expressed concern that some of the prisoners could be held indefinitely by the government without charges or legal representation. The government has argued that one reason the detainees are not entitled to all constitutional rights is that they are not being held in the United States. Many of the detainees are challenging their years-long detention, contending they are entitled to petition for the right of habeas corpus, in which a government must justify a prisoner's custody. The high court has twice ruled against the government's authority to hold people it labels "enemy combatants." A law passed in 2006 would limit court jurisdiction to hear such challenges.
 * Gov: ** Reports of at least 61 of the more than 500 detainees freed from Guantánamo reverting to violence are making it harder to place them. Countries from Britain to Saudi Arabia have already taken back nationals or residents, including some potentially dangerous characters. Mr. Bush had been pressing others to take in the roughly 60 who, though cleared for release, could not be sent home; an expedited review of cases will have Mr. Obama pressing harder. The solution, argues Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution, think-tank, is for Congress and the administration to devise a properly constituted, accountable detention system, one designed to protect sensitive information that can nonetheless be challenged by defense lawyers.
 * Facts: **