By Danielle Levredge, communications intern
Today marks 20 years since Guantánamo Bay – nicknamed the "island outside the law" – was opened.
20 years after its opening, over 40 people who have been accused of terrorism still remain in the prison without charges, trial, or legal representation. According to the national ACLU, "Guantánamo's military commissions, which violate basic fair trial requirements, are fundamentally broken." Dozens of those detained have already been cleared for release by the U.S. military and national security agencies, but still await a transfer with no end in sight. Federal courts are well-equipped to prosecute individuals suspected of terrorism and handle sensitive national security evidence while protecting defendants' rights. If there is reliable evidence, detainees should be prosecuted in the federal courts system. If there is not enough reliable evidence for criminal prosecution, there is certainly not enough to justify locking someone up – possibly forever.
Our Legal Director, Susan Burke, was featured in the recent ABC docuseries Longest Shadow, which further details the corroded workings and injustices of the military commissions of America's "War on Terror." As lead counsel for Iraqi victims, Susan achieved a historic win and legal first by negotiating multi-million dollar settlements with defense contractors involved in government-sanctioned torture at Abu Ghraib. Major David Dinenna, a former warden of Abu Ghraib prison, told a courtroom in July 2005 that interrogation methods used at Guantánamo Bay were imported to the prison in Iraq. The footprint for abusive interrogation methods popularized by staff at Guantánamo Bay continues to be used and updated at subsequent military prisons around the globe.
The ACLU fights in courts and advocates with Congress and the executive branch to secure the release of detainees who have never been charged with a crime to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay and to end Guantánamo’s flawed military commissions.
More than 70 million Americans have been born since 9/11; the legacy of our response to terrorism on American soil has spanned entire lifetimes for adults and children alike. The reaction to this new threat to the United States has opened a floodgate of civil rights abuses, extreme military budget inflation, and has bred a nation of people who are desensitized to the inhumanity of U.S. military-operated prisons around the world.
But no matter how desensitized we as a nation have become in the face of military torture, a core truth will always remain: government-sanctioned torture is, and will always be, a horrific violation of civil liberties and human rights. And we'll keep fighting to ensure that this torture comes to an end.
