US considering detaining terror suspects for life without trial
My first reaction was what the fuck? You've got to be fucking joking. But no, apparently not. Now I can't see this actually passing, but you never know from one of the biggest human rights violators in the world.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
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| Mon 3 Jan 2005 |
US 'preparing to detain terror suspects for life without trial'
Plan for permanent US prison reported
JACQUI GODDARD IN MIAMI
THE Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds the government does not have enough evidence to charge in court, it was reported yesterday.
Citing intelligence, defence and diplomatic officials, the Washington Post said the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had asked the White House to decide a more permanent approach for those it did not plan to set free or turn over to courts at home or abroad.
Despite pressure from the international community and human rights advocates to end the holding of suspects without trial at Guantànamo Bay, Cuba, the newspaper said the United States Defence Department planned to apply for $25 million from Congress to build a 200-bed prison to house them permanently.
In addition, some of the Afghan, Saudi and Yemenis currently accommodated at Guantànamo and elsewhere could reportedly be filtered back to their home countries and held in prisons built by the US but operated by their national governments.
"Since the global war on terror is a long-term effort, it makes sense for us to be looking at solutions for long-term problems," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
"We are at a point in time where we have to say, ‘How do you deal with them in the long term?’"
While addressing calls to improve conditions for detainees, the proposals are bound to bring further outcry from human rights groups.
Leading senators from both political parties condemned the reported plan yesterday.
"It’s a bad idea, so we ought to get over it and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this," said Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the senate foreign relations committee.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the armed services committee, said the system should be made more democratic. "There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process ... if you’re going to detain people, whether it’s for life or whether it’s for years," he said.
The plan could prompt new questions over Britain’s record on terrorist-suspect detentions, which was condemned in a Law Lords’ ruling last month. The Lords ruled that the detention without trial of nine Muslim suspects in Belmarsh Prison, London - nicknamed "Britain’s Guantànamo" - violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
"It calls into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention," wrote Lord Hoffman, one of nine Law Lords involved in the ruling. "The real threat to the life of the nation ... comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."
The Home Office has refused to release the detainees, however, saying it is now up to Parliament to decide whether to legislate and that it considers the men - who include a Syrian cleric Britain believed to be a spiritual mentor to Mohammed Atta, a hijacker involved in the September 2001 attacks on the US - a "significant threat" to national security.
The London ruling paralleled a decision five months earlier by the US Supreme Court, which handed Guantànamo inmates the right to challenge their detention before a judge or "neutral decision-maker".
"A state of war is not a blank cheque for the president," the US court ruled in a scathing indictment of the administration’s policy.
About 500 inmates are currently housed at Camp Delta at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay. Under the proposals, a new facility called Camp 6 would be built to provide 200 of them with more comfortable and less stringent conditions, including the ability to socialise with each other rather than being held in isolation.
A solution also needs to be found for rehousing prisoners being held in secret by the CIA, to address concern from some corners of Congress and President George Bush’s administration itself over the lack of external scrutiny and risk of prisoner abuse, according to the Washington Post.
The CIA is believed to be holding about 30 of al-Qaeda’s top captured leaders, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaida. Its detention facilities are operated under strict secrecy and are believed to include Diego Garcia island, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, and Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Congresswoman Jane Harman, vice-chairman of the House intelligence committee, is among those who have called for a public debate on whether to open up the CIA detention system to outside monitoring, while also voicing concern that making it too public could blow counter-terrorism operations.
"This is complicated. We don’t want to set up a bureaucracy that ends up making it impossible to protect sources and informants who operate within the groups we want to penetrate," she said.
The plan to improve the conditions in which terrorism suspects are held may be part of a wider effort by the Bush administration to deflect accusations over its human rights record following reports of detainee abuse at facilities such as Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Last week, the US Justice Department widened its definition of torture from causing "excruciating and agonising pain" to include any physical suffering "even if it does not involve severe physical pain".
"Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms," the department stressed in a 17-page memo, which was released as the Senate judiciary committee prepares to consider Mr Bush’s nomination of his chief White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to replace John Ashcroft as attorney general.
Democrats have said they will question Mr Gonzales closely on previous memos he has written that appeared to justify torture.
Citing intelligence, defence and diplomatic officials, the Washington Post said the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had asked the White House to decide a more permanent approach for those it did not plan to set free or turn over to courts at home or abroad.
Despite pressure from the international community and human rights advocates to end the holding of suspects without trial at Guantànamo Bay, Cuba, the newspaper said the United States Defence Department planned to apply for $25 million from Congress to build a 200-bed prison to house them permanently.
In addition, some of the Afghan, Saudi and Yemenis currently accommodated at Guantànamo and elsewhere could reportedly be filtered back to their home countries and held in prisons built by the US but operated by their national governments.
"Since the global war on terror is a long-term effort, it makes sense for us to be looking at solutions for long-term problems," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
"We are at a point in time where we have to say, ‘How do you deal with them in the long term?’"
While addressing calls to improve conditions for detainees, the proposals are bound to bring further outcry from human rights groups.
Leading senators from both political parties condemned the reported plan yesterday.
"It’s a bad idea, so we ought to get over it and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this," said Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the senate foreign relations committee.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the armed services committee, said the system should be made more democratic. "There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process ... if you’re going to detain people, whether it’s for life or whether it’s for years," he said.
The plan could prompt new questions over Britain’s record on terrorist-suspect detentions, which was condemned in a Law Lords’ ruling last month. The Lords ruled that the detention without trial of nine Muslim suspects in Belmarsh Prison, London - nicknamed "Britain’s Guantànamo" - violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
"It calls into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention," wrote Lord Hoffman, one of nine Law Lords involved in the ruling. "The real threat to the life of the nation ... comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."
The Home Office has refused to release the detainees, however, saying it is now up to Parliament to decide whether to legislate and that it considers the men - who include a Syrian cleric Britain believed to be a spiritual mentor to Mohammed Atta, a hijacker involved in the September 2001 attacks on the US - a "significant threat" to national security.
The London ruling paralleled a decision five months earlier by the US Supreme Court, which handed Guantànamo inmates the right to challenge their detention before a judge or "neutral decision-maker".
"A state of war is not a blank cheque for the president," the US court ruled in a scathing indictment of the administration’s policy.
About 500 inmates are currently housed at Camp Delta at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay. Under the proposals, a new facility called Camp 6 would be built to provide 200 of them with more comfortable and less stringent conditions, including the ability to socialise with each other rather than being held in isolation.
A solution also needs to be found for rehousing prisoners being held in secret by the CIA, to address concern from some corners of Congress and President George Bush’s administration itself over the lack of external scrutiny and risk of prisoner abuse, according to the Washington Post.
The CIA is believed to be holding about 30 of al-Qaeda’s top captured leaders, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaida. Its detention facilities are operated under strict secrecy and are believed to include Diego Garcia island, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, and Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Congresswoman Jane Harman, vice-chairman of the House intelligence committee, is among those who have called for a public debate on whether to open up the CIA detention system to outside monitoring, while also voicing concern that making it too public could blow counter-terrorism operations.
"This is complicated. We don’t want to set up a bureaucracy that ends up making it impossible to protect sources and informants who operate within the groups we want to penetrate," she said.
The plan to improve the conditions in which terrorism suspects are held may be part of a wider effort by the Bush administration to deflect accusations over its human rights record following reports of detainee abuse at facilities such as Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Last week, the US Justice Department widened its definition of torture from causing "excruciating and agonising pain" to include any physical suffering "even if it does not involve severe physical pain".
"Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms," the department stressed in a 17-page memo, which was released as the Senate judiciary committee prepares to consider Mr Bush’s nomination of his chief White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to replace John Ashcroft as attorney general.
Democrats have said they will question Mr Gonzales closely on previous memos he has written that appeared to justify torture.
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