Gitmo detainees deserve due process

Can we not all agree no government has the right to detain prisoners forever without trial?

Ok, now that that’s settled we have the curious and confusing case of more than 200 ‘terror suspects’ detained at U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Some of those prisoners, locked up since 2001, are indeed a serious and on-going risk to national security and many did likely take up arms against American interests in one way or another. That’s a likely fact that can be applied to most of these prisoners that precludes them from simply being ‘given a bus ticket and told to get out of town.’

Yet, something must be done with these prisoners.

A plan by President Obama to close the prison and export its prisoners to an undetermined American prison received lukewarm response in Congress. While most agreed shuttering Gitmo is a good idea, they stripped the plan of funding and made their ambivalence clear: we agree we have to deal with these prisoners, we just don’t want to have to deal with it.

It’s a clear and sad shirking of the basic tenet of democdue process. These prisoners, terrorists, murderers, jihadists, or what have you, no matter the cause, result or crimes are entitled to their day in court. Right here in the United States — the country that ‘arrested’ them, ‘jailed’ then and forgot the step in between called ‘trial.’

The legality of Gitmo, some would argue, already has the law on its side and has been held up in one case — one — since the base’s inception as a prison. But while that these are technically enemy combatants they are not entitled to due process. The reason? The list is sort of like a Bush administration primer on ‘because I said so policy’: the prisoners didn’t represent a standing army, didn’t wear uniforms, didn’t carry military rank or insignia, etc. The list is laudable for its very ingenuity at sustaining itself if not laughable for its slap in the of long standing military policy.

As it exists, Gitmo and its clear and glaring supposition of due process stands with that co-joined absurd notion waterboarding isn’t ‘technically’ torture. And, yes, it’s just as wrong.

Joel Stevens is associate editor of The Opinion-Tribune in Glenwood.