After U.S. forces attacked al-Qaeda and its Taliban protectors in October 2001, thousands of prisoners were swept up amid the fighting across Afghanistan. More than two years later, nearly 600 captives remain jailed in a military prison built at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments over whether the Bush administration must justify its claimed right to hold these captives indefinitely.
The cases were brought by 16 British, Australian and Kuwaiti prisoners seeking a court hearing on the legality of their detention. But U.S. officials argue they don't have to answer to courts on this matter. They have on their side legal precedents stemming from cases involving German prisoners in World War II.
However the justices rule, the cases put core U.S. values on trial. While the war on terrorism may be unique, asserting the right to hold prisoners forever without court oversight ought to trouble any American.
One goal of the anti-terror campaign is to spread liberty to Afghanistan and the Middle East. Yet arbitrarily and indefinitely denying liberty to those captured in the war teaches other countries a very different lesson.
In fact, even a group of former U.S. POWs has warned that precedents set at Guantanamo may be used by other nations to hold captured Americans indefinitely.
From the start, missteps in the Guantanamo operation have backfired on the United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has called the detainees among the "best-trained vicious killers on the face of the earth." Yet 134 have been found harmless enough to be set free, including three boys ages 13 to 15 and several old men, one claiming to be 105.
When the first detainees arrived, the U.S. released a photo of blindfolded, shackled prisoners on their knees ?- a public-relations disaster. Subsequent images of men in wire-mesh cells have fed critics' charges of ill treatment. More than 30 suicide attempts have been acknowledged.
Though the U.S. says the men were seized on Afghan battlefields, at least six were taken in Bosnia ?- in violation of Bosnian court orders. Two others were British residents arrested while on a business trip in Gambia.
U.S. officials say detainees aren't entitled to prisoner-of-war protections ?- such as limits on interrogation and release after hostilities end ?- because they weren't members of a formal army. The U.S. says it has no deadline for trying or freeing them because the war on terror is open-ended. While the U.S. had talked of holding special military tribunals for prisoners accused of war crimes, so far, only two have been charged.
Only in the face of growing pressure from U.S. lawyers' groups and foreign governments did the Pentagon agree in February to review each detainee's case once a year to determine if he "continues to pose a threat."
The absence of checks on potential abuses is contrary to American traditions. Many of those captured are undoubtedly hostile to the USA. That's why no one is seriously making the case for a blanket amnesty.
But more than 200 years ago, the Founding Fathers empowered courts that would protect individuals from the kind of abuses the British colonial rulers committed.
That cornerstone of U.S. democracy is no less relevant today.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-04-19-our-view_x.htm
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