After Gitmo, Bagram Must Go
The US Senate has given the go ahead to President Barack Obama’s decision to close the infamous military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Senate passed by a 79 to 19 vote to allow the government to transfer detainees from the prison to the US soil for trial or transfer them to their home countries.
The measure has already been approved by the House of Representatives and now goes to Obama for his signature.
The closure of the Gitmo prison was the first executive decision Obama made after taking office. Considering the worldwide opinion and growing international pressure to shut the prison, the move was understandably hailed around the world as a huge step forward on human rights front. It indeed had been a courageous decision by the new president after all that had been going on at Gitmo for years under the previous administration.
More than 600 people picked up randomly from around the world, especially from Afghanistan and Pakistan, after the US invasion of Afghanistan had been lodged at the prison camp in Cuba for years in despicable conditions — without a trial and without giving them access to their families. In fact, even today little information is available about those held at the Bay and their crimes. As some of America’s own most respected newspapers and media networks have reported, most of those faceless suspects at Gitmo had been men who just happened to be at a wrong place at a wrong time.
Some of those detainees have subsequently been released or transferred to their home countries. However, there is still a large number of detainees out there who have been given up for dead by their families. They don’t have anyone to defend or fight for them. This is why the Obama administration’s move to transfer those unfortunate men to the US soil before shutting what has come to be known as America’s gulag is so welcome. If those men are indeed guilty of what they have been accused of, they should be tried in a US court of law. Else, they should be set free to go home to their countries. In fact, they should be compensated for having been imprisoned and traumatised all these years without a charge and without any evidence.
While shutting down the Guantanamo Bay, Obama must not forget about the other gulag that the US has been operating in Afghanistan. According to human rights groups, the Bagram airbase prison is even worse than Gitmo because of its hellish conditions and torture of detainees. While the US is in the process of closing down Gitmo giving its inmates a chance to defend themselves in its courts, it is refusing to extend the same privilege to those held at Bagram. However, rights groups insist that most Bagram detainees are equally innocent.
One case in point is that of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, who mysteriously disappeared in Islamabad to resurface in the US custody last year – after five years. The US-trained neuroscientist is said to have been kept at Bagram and tortured for years even as her family looked for her everywhere.
President Obama can restore the world’s faith in America and its moral leadership by shutting both Gitmo and Bagram — or by opening them to justice and the rule of law.
SOURCE: Khaleejtimes.com
