A Long Way From America

Editorials / Columns
A Long Way From America
By Michol Rantschler
Feb 25, 2004, 19:24

This week marks the 101st anniversary of the United States’ agreement with Cuba to maintain a naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Two years ago, the station was reopened to hold prisoners of what Bush calls the global war on terror. Unless the Supreme Court makes some changes, the suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda supporters might not leave before the war ends, which could very well be longer than the next 101 years.

Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear cases of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, which would infringe on the military’s ability to keep them mired in legal limbo, it seems as though the Bush administration is working to show it can handle the situation without the help of the courts.

The military this week brought charges against detainees at Guantánamo for the first time since the prison reopened. And, officials said, a Yemeni man and a Sudanese man, thought to be associates of Osama bin Laden and accused of conspiring to commit war crimes, will be tried before U.S. military tribunals.

Meanwhile, A Danish citizen held at Guantánamo for two years was returned to Denmark. Five Britons are expected to be released soon as well. About 650 prisoners remain at the base, 94 having been released.

But earlier this month officials at the Defense Department said they will likely keep a large number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay for many years or indefinitely. Guantánamo prisoners may not be released, officials said, even if they are found not guilty by a military tribunal. Similarly, prisoners found guilty have no guarantee they will go free after serving their time.

The government has used the fact that Guantánamo Bay is not in the United States as a reason that the prisoners aren’t guaranteed any rights. But even here we have thousands of prisoners who have experienced the same treatment but for decades longer.

Remember Al Pacino in Scarface? He played a Cuban criminal, one of many Fidel Castro sent to the United States by emptying jails and mental institutions when he realized he couldn’t stop a mass exodus of refugees. There were about 125,000 Cubans who arrived in Florida in during a six month period in 1980 from the Port of Mariel.

In 1984 Cuba agreed to take back 2,746 of the criminals and mentally ill, but only 1,646 have been returned to date. Another 920 Mariel Cubans, who have been convicted of crimes in the United States, were not included in that agreement and remain in prison indefinitely.

Last months the Supreme Court said it will decide whether the federal government may keep the Cubans and other illegal immigrants imprisoned after finishing their sentences for crimes committed in the United States. These are the ones whose home countries will not let them return.

The Cuban government imprisoned 75 of its people last year for gathering signatures to petition the government for some minimal civil liberties; petitioning is not illegal in communist Cuba. Many who signed the petition lost their jobs, were expelled from universities and blacklisted. Some were beaten or threatened and had their homes ransacked. The U.S. State Department said the campaign was "the most despicable act of political repression in the Americas in a decade."

A few months later, Fidel Castro’s government criticized the United States. "In the territory illegally occupied by the Guantánamo naval base,” the December statement said, “hundreds of foreign prisoners are subjected to indescribable abuses."

Chances are good that the Supreme Court will at least partially agree. The Geneva Convention defines those entitled to prisoner of war status in three classes. The first is "Members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces." International law experts agree that the Taliban prisoners clearly qualify.