But if it is a regular criminal court, all the Jurors personal info -including their adress, where their kids go to school, their job, and so forth is 100% free and open to the Defense.
If it is a real terrorist, can we force a virtually unpaid juror to take the risk that they’ll blow up his kids schoolbus to silence him?
I think we need to give them speedy and fair Military Tribunals. If convicted of serious terrorist acts we should keep them at GITMO, if not they should be released or sent to another normal prison, or turned over to their home nations.
My WAG is that’d mean only about 10% of the current population stil there, and all will have been convicted of Capital crimes.
The big issue about Gitmo is too many have been held too long without even charges being brought. We need to put up or shut up.
It would be a penal colony, there’s no escaping that fact. The “colonists” would be stateless prisoners eeking out a subsistence existence. Either prove their guilt in an open courtroom or pay the price for the abuse of their human rights.
Gitmo closing will not solve the primary problem - what do you do with (and call) enemy “soldiers” captured during military actions in foreign nations?
POW
Are they POWs, who can be held until the “war” is over? That would mean that we can keep Gitmo (or its equivalent) going until Afghanistan is pacified and their new government asks for them back. We can ship to Iraq any Iraqi citizens as part of the final handover / troop withdrawel. We could ship the POWs back to all nations that we have friendly diplomatic relations with, giving the Saudis their citizens as well. We can also hold war crimes trials under standard military protocol.
International Criminals
If we decided that they are NOT POWs, but rather criminals, then we need a trial. We have a problem in that some evidence comes from our intelligence work. Now, if the only way to convict is to give up intelligence assets, we have a problem. During the trial of the first WTC bombing I believe it was revealed that the US was tracking some through their satellilte phones. Once this was revealed we lost this intelligence asset. Maybe we decide that we do not want to compromise the intelligence, so we can not get a conviction. We can just ship them back to their home nation, or to another nation that also wishes to try them for a crime. We also might just try them for lesser crimes and go for maximum sentencing (Al Capone style prosecution).
What might work is a standard release agreement where we hand people over with the stipulation that they not be tortured (and a few other requirements). However, I fully expect some of these people to be taken in, tried, and executed once they get “home.”
Let me be blunt - letting these people go free in the US will not (and should not) happen. Not only is it a bad idea, but it would also be political suicide for Obama. “He let a terrorist walk the streets of America!”
This entire operation has been analogous to the Iraq war. We knew what our first moves would be, but we never worked out the end-game scenario (occupation in Iraq, on-going trial / imprisonment for the Gitmo Detainees).
Most of them were just home. Just because they were in some ill-defined “war zone” (which if I’m not mistaken, encompasses the entire planet, in the ill-defined “war on terror”), doesn’t mean that they were waging war against us. And even for those who were actually waging war against us, there are legal structures in place for dealing with prisoners of war, and they still have rights.
Is there some difference between American gun owners and the Gitmo detainees you would like to point out to us? Or is it one of those things where if you told us, you’d have to kill us?
Except that
1- It is not true in many cases and
2- They have a right to have their in court and state their case.
The problem is that the US government will not give them a day in court because it knows full well that what would come out would be evidence that many of them are totally innocent and were sold for ransom by their enemies or they were just in the worng place at the wrong time etc.
Those who were lucky enough to have the nationality of Britain or some other advanced country which pressured for their release and have been released have been considered innocent by their home countries and set free. The evidence against them was considered insufficient or tainted by torture.
Guantanamo is a stain on the honor and reputation of America. It should have never had happened and it should be shut down ASAP.
Exactly. They’re stateless, so we give them a “state.” They’d be free to stay or go. Cuba is a short swim. Haiti’s that way. Wanna stay? The banana farm is that way. Minimum wage, but a guaranteed job.
The FBI regularly holds off on arresting low level members of the mob so that they do not have to give up an intelligence source. They make the decision that a bit more in drugs, prostitution, and killing is worth the risk.
The risk with terrorists is a hell of lot higher. The mob has not taken down any buildings in the US, nor have they used car bombs on US soldiers. The concern here has been shown once:
You kidnap people, hold them for years without just cause, torture them, deprive them of contact with the outside world and then, if that wasn’t enough, you open the cages and tell them that they have a choice between swimming to either Haiti or Cuba or remaining where they are and taking their chances in a stateless lawless no-man’s land. Are you serious?
Do you even understand the concept of human rights and human dignity?
People who are either POWs (which means we can hold them as long as the war is going on), or international criminals (which means we can try them or send them to their nation or origin or to the next nation that wants to try them).
Americans who don’t want to be killed by terrorists released on our soil.
You mentioned the difficulty of trying members of the mob. You were discussing issues around juror protection, I am also concerned with the protection of intelligence assets (which are often people, and not jsut technology).
I did not quote you out of context, I took an issue that you raised an discussed other issues in that area.
These cases are not as simple as you seem to be making them.
I would say the odds of this are close to zero because so much of the U.S. citizenry would freak the hell out. It’d be that much worse if witness relocation was involved, since that would be done on the government’s dime. I don’t know how many other options there are, but I suspect one would be found.
I’m sorry, but they are. Either the inmates are humans deserving of human rights or they are not. There is no hard decision. The only thing Obama needs to decide is how low does he bow his head when he begs the world’s forgiveness for the crimes against humanity that the US has committed and hands over the Bush administration to the ICC for trial.