In a recent letter, Henry Nichols argues for keeping Guantanamo Bay open, wants to keep using torture, and complains that detainees moved to the US will be given trials on the mainland. For a former prison guard and policeman, Mr. Nichols displays an alarming contempt for the American legal system and our Constitution.
Nichols certainly favors the word “animal” to describe the detainees, but he apparently doesn’t know who they really are. According to a study of 517 detainees by Mark Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law and legal counsel to two of them, only 8% of the detainees can be identified as al Qaeda fighters and only 5% had been arrested by US forces. 86% had been arrested “somewhere”, by “somebody”, for “something” – and that’s about all we have been told. Of course we want to keep really dangerous people locked up, but we really should know who they are first and what they are charged with. Many of the lawyers like Denbeaux who have defended detainees have expressed their disgust with what are basically kangaroo courts following on the heels of torture.
A recent scandal in Britain concerning US pressure on the UK to suppress reports of the torture of Binyam Mohamed, a British national, point out the illusion of military justice at Guantanamo. Even if we do not presume their innocence, we still can’t claim a detainee is guilty until he has been tried in a real court system. Richard Clark, President Bush’s former counter-terrorism expert, has pointed out that several detainee cases have already been tried in the United States in real courts. The sky has not yet fallen.
Mr. Nichols then makes the amusing argument that placing these suspects in a conventional prison among the main prison population would raise costs – as if costs alone should determine whether justice is sought. Aside from the inadvisability of doing this, apparently he hasn’t considered the costs of running a completely dedicated supermax prison in Cuba.
Finally, let’s not forget: if the United States makes a practice of holding foreign nationals (and even some Americans, in violation of the Constitution) in prisons without trial – it will not be long before Americans begin popping up as inmates without rights in foreign prisons. Do we really want to go down this road?
I have jury duty in a few weeks, and as I sit in the jury room in Taunton, bored and wishing I were somewhere else, I will remember the rights that our Constitution defends. And how people like Mr. Nichols are all-too willing to destroy them without a single thought.
This was published in the Standard Times on February 11, 2009
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/20090211/opinion/902110355
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