Going forward, aggressive diplomacy will be the single vital tool in closing Guantánamo. Detainees from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan constitute the majority of those remaining in U.S. custody. To get them home, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will have to put pressure on these countries to ensure that the prisoners won’t be subjected to torture after they are returned. The Obama-Clinton team will also have to get assurances that if the individuals are released, local law enforcement will keep abreast of their activities if such surveillance is necessary. And violations of these agreements will be taken seriously.
“The United States Needs a Special National Security Court for Hard Cases”
Not yet. More than 700 terrorism-related defendants have gone through U.S. courts since September 2001. Nearly all of these cases have resulted in convictions of some sort, though often on lesser charges because the evidence of terrorism is often tenuous. For example, defendants initially arraigned on terrorism charges are frequently convicted of immigration violations or document fraud. As a result of the lack of terrorism convictions, the courts have appeared inadequate to the task of trying such suspects. But going forward, solid cases -- with clear evidence and clear terrorism links -- would likely fare just as well in the courts today as they did in the 1990s, when federal courts successfully tried and convicted hardened terrorists such as the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing and the U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa.
A new and untried national security court would be time-consuming to create and might not even solve the problems of prosecuting terrorists. Waiting for all the glitches to be ironed out would drain energy from the pressing legal issues that need to be addressed at this point in time, including how to assess evidence against alleged terrorists and on what grounds to bring terrorism-related indictments, including material support charges.
“Thanks to Gitmo, It Will Take Years to Rebuild Goodwill Toward the United States”
No. On the contrary, the resolution of Guantánamo is a unique opportunity to heal, with a stroke of the pen, the American image in the world. Obama’s executive orders on his first day in office are a symbolic announcement of a new and different United States. More can and should be done along these lines, including formal apologies to the detainee population, as well as the possibility of reparations for those who are deemed, in future days, to have been held erroneously. Maher Arar sued the Canadian government for his rendition to Syria and was awarded $11.5 million. Whether or not there are reparations, there needs to be acknowledgment that the United States made mistakes in apprehending most of the Guantánamo detainees. We can only hope that under this new administration, the country is confident enough to admit to its mistakes and right the many legal, not to mention moral, wrongs of the past seven years.
