So predictable: President Obama announces that he will close the Guantanamo prison camp, albeit without first deciding how to do it. And the terrorist rights establishment reacts by demanding judicial review for terrorists captured in Afghanistan.
The Daily Telegraph, unhappily falling into step with David Cameron’s frivolous anti-anti-terrorist policy, editorializes “reports”:
As President Barack Obama declared with a fanfare his intention to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp last week, he made no mention of another growing US-run prison – with more than twice as many inmates and an even murkier legal status.
More than 600 detainees are held at the US Bagram Theatre Internment Facility - known by campaigners as “the other Guantanamo”. Not only are there no plans to close it, but it is in the process of being expanded to hold 1,100 illegal enemy combatants; prisoners who cannot see lawyers, have no trials and never see any evidence there may be againstthem. . . .
While Mr Obama struggles to work out what to do with Guantanamo’s 245 remaining prisoners, critics claim Bagram and other detention centres around Afghanistan are still legal black holes.
“If they close Guantanamo and they expand the one in Bagram, it’s the same – there will be no difference,” said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation.
“If Barack Obama wants to close Guantanamo he should also set out to close not just Bagram, but detention centres in Khost, Kandahar andJalalabad.” . . .
The International Justice Network, representing the families of four prisoners, has been arguing that they should have the same legal rights to challenge their detention that were eventually given to Guantanamo inmates.
All the same arguments are deployed that have been used against Guantanamo: The captives supposedly consist largely of innocent victims of mistaken identity; they are being mistreated; “the shadowy network of military prisons” has “outraged Afghans and fuelled the insurgency”, and so on. It is evident that what these “human rights campaigners” want is a set of rules that will make it impossibly burdensome for American and Afghan troops to take and hold prisoners. How long before they insist that returning enemy fire is “execution without trial”?
If the President thought that yielding to our enemies on Guantanamo was going to do anything but encourage them to press for more concessions, well, it’s time for him to start learning his job.
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