In 1902, at the end of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Congress’ Platt
Amendment compelled Cuba’s constitutional convention to lease
a 45 square-mile area at Guantánamo Bay to the United States,
specifically “for use as coaling or naval stations, and for no
other purpose.” Eighty-nine years later, however, the George
Herbert Walker Bush administration began to build a “tent shelter” at
Guantánamo surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guarded by
troops.
That action violated the Platt Amendment, but nobody in the White House
or on Capitol Hill remembered that or cared to remember it. Although
run like a prison, Guantánamo’s tent city was to shelter
the hundreds of Haitians and Cubans who fled oppressive and miserable
conditions in their home countries.
As sovereign Cuban territory, Guantánamo is not subject to U.S.
law. That leaves the federal government free to take measures that
might be illegal on U.S. soil, such as the forcible repatriation of
unwanted persons. Already in 1895 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
in Atlanta had ruled that constitutional rights “bind the government
only when refugees are at or within the borders of the United States.”
It is on this legal basis that the younger President Bush found Guantánamo
a most suitable place for the incarceration of Taliban and al Qaeda
captives. Hurriedly, the wire cages of Camp X-Ray were built to hold
the first prisoners from Afghanistan’s Kandahar province when
they arrived at Guantánamo on January 11, 2002. Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld decided, to label the prisoners “unlawful combatants” so that the
Geneva Conventions would not apply to them. When the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Red Cross protested the
U.S.’s circumvention of the applicable international law, the
Bush administration conveniently ignored them.
For the past four years, the media everywhere have been disseminating the pictures
of the “unlawful combatants” shown in leg shackles and handcuffs
and allegedly subjected to various kinds of torture, on hunger strikes one day
and force-fed the next. Some of the captives released to their home countries
reported they were told that not only would they be held indefinitely but also
have no rights.
Apparently gripped by despair, dozens among the more than 600 prisoners from
43 countries allegedly tried to kill themselves. Recently, two Saudis and one
Yemeni actually hanged themselves. “An act of asymmetrical warfare against
us,” said camp commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris. “A good PR move,” explained
the deputy secretary of state for public diplomacy.
The recent “Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of
Defense Data” revealed that 55 percent of the detainees are not known to
have committed any hostile act against the U.S. Only 8 percent were characterized
as al Qaeda fighters. Only 10 so far have been charged before military tribunals.
Not a single detainee had the lawfulness of his detention reviewed by a court.
The majority has never been charged with any crime.
The Defense Department has categorized 8 percent of the detainees as “fighters
for,” 30 percent as “members of”, and 60 percent as “associated
with” alleged terrorist organizations. Only 5 percent had been captured
by U.S. troops while 86 percent were arrested by either Pakistan or Afghanistan’s
Northern Alliance and turned over to U.S. custody.
Secretary Rumsfeld routinely describes these foreign nationals at Guantánamo
as “the worst of the worst” of “unlawful combatants,” even
though he cites no evidence to support this claim. When five British citizens
were sent home from Guantánamo, the British prosecutors released all of
them without charges the following day.
The Bush administration has been facing a growing barrage of domestic and foreign
denunciations of the Guantánamo prison conditions and repeated demands
for its closure. America’s friends in particular wonder why those captives
cannot be held, questioned, and be tried, if justified, according to the proven
procedures of American law.
U.S. Senator Biden is right: Guantanamo "has become the greatest propaganda
tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world, and it is unnecessary
to be in that position."