Special: The Future of Guantanamo – Q&A
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Who’s left?
The remaining 149 wartime detainees vary greatly,
from prisoners the United States government has little interest in
continuing to detain to a handful of the most notorious terrorist
suspects of the era. In general, they can be divided into two groups: 79
lower-level prisoners who have been recommended for transfer, and 70
higher-level prisoners who have not.
Why haven’t prisoners recommended for transfer been released?
Most of the prisoners in this group come from home
countries whose governments are either deemed abusive or incapable of
living up to security assurances (like promises to monitor them and
prevent foreign travel). For example, 58 are from Yemen, where the
central government has limited control and Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula is active. The Obama administration is trying to resettle many
of the prisoners elsewhere, but under a statute imposed by Congress,
they may be transferred only if Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel
determines that steps have been taken that will substantially mitigate
the risk of releasing a detainee. Mr. Hagel has also been slow to
approve proposed deals to repatriate several of the detainees, including
four Afghans and a Mauritanian.
What will happen to the higher-level prisoners?
The biggest hurdle to closing the Guantánamo prison
will be relocating the 70 higher-level detainees whom the government
does not want to release, including those charged before a war crimes
tribunal and those being held under the laws of war, which permit the
indefinite detention without trial of people deemed to be enemy fighters
to prevent their return to the battlefield. The Obama administration
has proposed moving these prisoners to a military-run prison inside the
United States, where most would continue to be held without trial. But
Congress has banned transferring detainees to domestic soil for any
purpose.
What are the arguments for and against closing the facility?
President Obama promised to close the Guantánamo
prison in one of his first acts after taking office in 2009, but
Congress has prevented him from carrying out his plan to do so. Mr.
Obama argues that the prison is a negative symbol of past detainee
abuses that is used for propaganda and recruiting among Islamists, and
that it wastes taxpayer money to operate it when federal prisons on
American soil — which already hold many convicted terrorists — would be
far cheaper to operate. The Obama administration has refused to bring
any new detainees to Guantánamo.Some Republicans think that Mr. Obama
should instead bring more prisoners to Guantánamo. They contend that
moving the detainees to domestic soil would be a bad idea because it
could give them greater legal rights or create a target for terrorist
attacks. Meanwhile, some civil libertarians oppose Mr. Obama’s plan to
hold the remaining inmates in law-of-war detention inside the United
States, arguing that it would institutionalize the practice of
indefinite detention without trial on domestic soil.
What are the challenges to keeping Guantánamo open?
The military is faced with decaying infrastructure
that was built to be temporary. The United States Southern Command,
which oversees Guantánamo, has determined about $200 million in
construction projects will be necessary to refresh or consolidate the
facilities there. Moreover, as the detainees grow older, they will
increasingly require more complicated medical treatment and equipment
than is readily available at the base, and Congress’s bar on bringing
them into the United States currently has no exception for medical
emergencies.
What does Guantánamo cost?
Taxpayers are spending about $443 million to operate
the Guantánamo prison this year, or nearly $3 million for each of the
149 prisoners. Because many costs are fixed, once the low-level
detainees are transferred, the per-inmate cost of housing the remaining
ones at the remote naval base would soar even higher. By comparison, the
federal Bureau of Prisons — which imprisons many convicted terrorists —
spent $30,280 a year per maximum-security inmate in 2013. The Bureau of
Prisons figure is not quite comparable because, for example, it does
not include the cost of the federal court system, whereas the Guantánamo
figure includes military commissions.
Will the legal basis for wartime detentions expire?
The detainees who are being held without trial are
subject to law of war detention. In an armed conflict, a party may
indefinitely detain members of the enemy force until the end of
hostilities in order to prevent their return to the battlefield. This
rule has humanitarian origins: It was designed to give armies an
alternative to killing their enemies to eliminate any future threat. But
it is a rule that was written for conflicts between nation-states, like
World War II, that come to a formal end after a few years, after which
prisoners of war are repatriated. From one perspective, it is not clear
when or how hostilities can reach an official end in the conflict
against an amorphous network like Al Qaeda, changing the nature of this
legal authority as the years keep passing by, raising the specter of
life imprisonment without trial.In habeas corpus lawsuits, the
government has relied on a 2001 law called the Authorization to Use
Military Force, or A.U.M.F., by which Congress authorized an armed
conflict against those who planned or aided the Sept. 11 attacks and
those who harbored them. The A.U.M.F. is the foundation of the war in
Afghanistan, where combat operations are officially ending this year.
The government is bracing for a new wave of habeas corpus challenges
after December, contending that detainees must be sent home, and it will
argue that the broader armed conflict against Al Qaeda and its
associated forces continues.
No comments:
Post a Comment