Saturday, May 02, 2009
Guantanamo January 20, 2009 (photo: Brennan Linsley, AP)
In the midst of testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates let drop a piece of news that unsettled civil libertarians: between 50 and 100 of the prisoners currently being held at Guantánamo Bay may never be tried because the evidence against them was obtained through interrogation techniques deemed illegal according to U.S. law. The Obama administration considers these detainees too dangerous to release.
Gates did not go into whether the current administration would 1) continue to use the Bush administration argument that they can be held indefinitely because the battle against anti-American terrorists is an ongoing war, 2) try them before military tribunals, a system Barack Obama voted against while a senator, or 3) ask Congress to enact a law that would justify the prisoners’ continued incarceration.
-David Wallechinsky
Hints That Detainees May Be Held on U.S. Soil (by Elisabeth Bumiller and William Glaberson, New York Times)
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