Deja Vu

Gitmo, Now and Forever

Tags:

Barack Obama,

Guantanamo Bay,

Spanish-American War,

theodore roosevelt

2009: Word came from the Obama administration this week that many of the prisoners detained indefinitely at the American prison in Guantanamo Bay would be transported to a prison in rural Illinois where they will continue to be indefinitely detained. The Christian Science Monitor reported on the difficulties of transferring prisoners of dubious legal status from Cuba to the United States.

Under their current terms of confinement at Guantanamo, detainees have a constitutional right to challenge the legality of their detention in federal court. But that’s it.

In contrast, from the moment the detainees set foot on US soil, their lawyers will have the ability to tap into the full array of constitutional and other legal protections enjoyed by every American citizen and resident.

How broad might those protections be?

“It is an unanswered question. We’ve never done this before,” says Scott Silliman, a professor at Duke University Law School and director of the Center for Law, Ethics, and National Security. “They are probably going to end up with more rights than they have at Guantanamo Bay, but how much more, we don’t know,” he says.

1899: After the quick victory of the surging United States in the Spanish-American war, General Leonard Wood, Teddy Roosevelt's commanding officer in Cuba, was made governor of the province of Santiago. In his jurisdiction fell the city of Guantanamo, with its famous bay and infamous prison. Upon taking control of the area, he endeavored to root out the stain of Spanish rule, particularly the deplorable treatment of prisoners. Wood even issued a sort of peremptory bill of rights guaranteeing among other things, habeas corpus. Except, that is, when Wood himself deemed it "advisable" to withhold that right. Despite this retention, Wood did set his mind on reforming the court system to be more efficient and less corrupt. Guantanamo Prison would witness no more travesties of the judicial system while Americans were running the show. Explorer and journalist George Kennan (cousin to the famous diplomat) described the changes in a May 1899 article entitled, "The Regeneration of Cuba."

In the organization and procedure of these courts there were many objectionable features. An accused person had no right to demand trial by a jury of his peers; he might be arrested, examined, and imprisoned by the court of first instance without knowledge, on his part, of the nature of the charge made against him; he had no right to a writ of habeas corpus and he might be held "incommunicado," pending trial, for an indefinite length of time. Procedure in all the courts was very slow; persons accused of crime in Baracoa or Guantanamo could be tried only in the city of Santiago; witnesses had to be brought there from the most remote parts of the province; bribery and perjury were common; and persons accused of crime were always held in prison for months, and often for years, before their cases came to the Audiencia for final adjudication. Colonel Ray told me that when he took command at Guantanamo he found in prison three men who had been held without trial more than seven years.

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