The American Gulag at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba continues to be focal point of US/Germany relations just two days before Chancellor Merkel arrives in Washington for meetings with President Bush. Today marks the fourth anniversary of the transfer of the first "terror detainee" to the prison. The following letter from Amnesty International was signed by 9000 German citizens and was sent to President Bush today:
Dear Mr President,
It is now four years since the first detainees were transferred to the detention facility at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Detainees in Guantánamo Bay are held in prolonged indefinite detention, which violates a fundamental legal principle: that anyone detained has the right to be promptly brought before an independent judicial officer to challenge the lawfulness of their detention. You have repeatedly asserted that the USA strives to “defend and extend a vision of human dignity” and “uphold the rule of law”. For the detainees at Guantánamo Bay these words ring hollow.
I call on you to close the detention facility and to ensure that all those held in Guantánamo are immediately released if they are not to be charged and brought to trial in line with standards of fairness. The military commissions violate several provisions of international treaties to which the USA is a state party and cannot provide fair trials in line with international standards They are fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned immediately.
Many detainees in Guantánamo come from countries which the US government itself has condemned for human rights violations. I therefore call on you to ensure that the USA will not transfer them to a country where they may face further human rights violations.
Yours sincerely,
The Linkszeitung has a good article marking the fourth year of this international travesty, a the taz writes about the fate of the Canadian Omar Khadr, who has been held at Guantanamo since he was just 15 years old.
Meanwhile, the United States thumbs its nose at Angela Merkel and the international community and defends the continued maintenance of the Gulag:
State department spokesman Sean McCormack said the camp kept society safe from very dangerous people who would fight the US if released. (…)"Guantanamo serves a purpose and it’s there for a reason," he said. "It keeps people who are very dangerous away from civilised society. Make no mistake about it; if these people were released, they would be right back in the fight."
And the Washington Post, in an op/ed piece today, notes that President Bush, despite signing on to the McCain anti-torture measure, fully intends to continue the practice of abusing foreign prisoners. This is perogative of the "Imperial Presidency" (dictatorship), which will get a permanent boost once Samuel Alito is confirmed as the next Supreme Court Justice:
From all that, it might be concluded that the Bush administration has committed itself to ending the use of practices falling just short of torture that it has used on foreign detainees since 2002. But it has not. Instead, it is explicitly reserving the right to abuse prisoners, while denying them any opportunity to seek redress in court. Having publicly accepted the ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, Mr. Bush is planning to ignore it whenever he chooses. As a practical matter, there may be no change in the operations of the CIA’s secret prisons, where detainees have been subjected to such practices as painful shackling, mock execution, induced hypothermia and "waterboarding," or simulated drowning.
The opposition in the United States has proven itself to be too meek and too weak to shut down the Guantanamo Gulag. Only a strong, united push by EU leaders – led by Chancellor Merkel – might shame to the United States into finally ending this sad chapter.
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