Criminology Counterrorism Not Long After

Criminology

Counterrorism

Not long after September l1, 2001, the Bush administration began to develop plans for a prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, in Cuba. Though formed physically like maximum-security prisons in the United States, this facility with a maximum capacity of 1,100 inmates would not hold convicted criminals. Actually, most of the inmates at this prison would never be charged with a crime, let alone convicted. The prison would house the people detained in apparent connection with the war on terrorism, most of who would never be brought before a court of any kind and would never be given an opportunity to secure their release by proving their innocence. Referred to as enemy combatants by the president, they would be held without legal process, destined to live out their days in isolation until the administration saw fit to let them go (Marguiles, 2004).

The detentions at Guantanamo marked the first time in U.S. history that the military has relied on a systematic plan of indefinite detention without legal process. Defenders of Guantanamo Bay point out that the United States has detained people in every prior conflict, and in actuality they are correct. During the Second World War, the U.S. Military held over 400,000 German and Italian prisoners in the United States, but these prisoners were given the protections of a legal system known as the 1929 Geneva Conventions, which the United States observed to the letter. Different from the present conflict, the nature of the hostilities during the Second World War substantially minimized the risk that the military would capture an innocent civilian. The military could fairly presume that the soldier across the field in the slate gray uniform was in fact a member of an aggressive force who could be lawfully held for the duration of the conflict, without the need for further process. But administration officials acknowledge that no such confidence that surrounds the present conflict (Marguiles, 2004). These actions were so far outside of the norm of how the United States normally does things during war and conflict it makes one wonder what they were thinking. The closing of Guantanamo Bay is something that should have been done long before it actually was.

Guantanamo was a high-security confinement camp run by the U.S. At its naval base in south-eastern Cuba. America put the camp up in 2002 to hold foreign terror suspects captured during the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Detainees were initially kept in an improvised facility called Camp X-Ray which was replaced by a more permanent structure, Camp Delta. As enemy combatants the detainees are not given the same rights as prisoners-of-war or U.S. citizens accused of crimes. The camp once held 750 inmates, mostly foreigners detained in Afghanistan on suspicion of being Islamist fighters. Most came from primarily Muslim states, but French, Russian, British and other countries' citizens have also been held there. The Red Cross was the only outside organization permitted to visit the prisoners and draw up a record of them. There had been allegations of mistreatment and even torture of detainees in the camp. The United Nations investigators had called for the closing of the prison which Amnesty International campaigners had compared to a Soviet labor camp. America always claimed that prisoners were treated humanely and only a tiny number of cases of misconduct by guards had been recorded (Should the prison at Guantanamo Bay be closed, 2006).

The record is clear in that rather than keep this country safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It was a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the eagerness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any determination, the costs of keeping it open far exceeded the complications involved in closing it. President Obama has said that the facility resulted in the creation of more terrorists than it detained, and he said that over the last seven years, the system of military commissions at Guantanamo succeeded in convicting a grand total of three suspected terrorists (Obama defends plan to close Gitmo, 2009).

Over the last 7 years, before its closing, around 800 individuals whom the Department of Defense has ever determined to be, or treated as, enemy combatants have been detained at Guantanamo. The Federal Government had relocated more than 500 of these detainees from Guantanamo, either by returning them to their home country or by releasing or transferring them to a third country. The Department of Defense had determined that a lot of the individuals that were being held at Guantanamo were eligible for such transfer or release (Closure of Guantanamo Detention Facilities, 2009).

Some of the individuals that were detained at Guantanamo have been there for more than 6 years, and most have been detained for at least 4 years. In view of the important concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally, rapid and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guantanamo and closure of the facilities in which they are detained would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice. Simply closing the facilities without promptly determining the appropriate disposition of the individuals detained would not adequately serve those interests. To the degree practicable, the prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals detained at Guantanamo should precede the closure of the detention facilities at Guantanamo (Closure of Guantanamo Detention Facilities, 2009).

It was thought that the individuals that were being detained at Guantanamo had the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Most of those individuals had filed petitions for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal court challenging the lawfulness of their detention. Many feel that it was in the best interest of the United States that the executive branch undertake a prompt and thorough review of the factual and legal bases for the continued detention of all individuals that were being held at Guantanamo to see if their continued detention was of national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and in the interests of justice. The unusual circumstances associated with detentions at Guantanamo required a comprehensive interagency review (Closure of Guantanamo Detention Facilities, 2009).

The President said when singing the order to shut Guantanamo Bay down that the U.S. would continue to fight terror, but maintain American values while doing so. The United States intends to act against the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism but is going to do so vigilantly. They are going to do so effectively and in such a manner that is consistent with the values and ideals that we hold as a nation. Mr. Obama believes Americans will be safer with the prison closed. The legal process for these prisoners has been widely criticized because the U.S. military acts as jailer, judge and jury (Obama orders Guantanamo closure, 2009).

It has been revealed that within the heavily guarded perimeters of the Defense Department's much-discussed Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the CIA has maintained a detention facility for valuable al Qaeda captive that has never been mentioned in public, according to military officials and several current and former intelligence officers. The buildings used by the CIA were masked by high fences covered with thick green mesh plastic and ringed with floodlights. They sat inside the larger Camp Echo complex, which was erected to house the Defense Department's high-value detainees and those awaiting military trials on terrorism charges (Pries and Higham, 2004). This was another instance that can be said endangered our security overall.

The Guantanamo military prison camps have endured the anger of many leftwing human rights organizations, which have alleged that the prisoners are being mistreated or tortured. Other leftist organizations have objected to America's use of an offshore prison and to the unclear legal status of its detainees who are classified as illegal combatants not entitled to Geneva Convention protections, rather than as prisoners-of-war or common criminals. The critics have also claimed that the detainees were entitled to the protection of the constitutionally guaranteed civil rights given to prisoners who are incarcerated within the United States (Guantanamo Bay, 2009).