Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib Revisited Published on openDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net) Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib Revisited Kleanthis Kyriakidis, 30th March 2012 Subjects: International politics [1] Democracy and government [2] Culture [3] Conflict [4] United States [5] Kleanthis Kyriakidis [6] Guantanamo, still front-page news around the world and Abu Ghraib both indicate that human rights and democracy are sorely tested in America. When the west is recommending western-type democracy to the Middle East and anxious about the electoral successes of political Islam, we need to take a closer look. About the author Kleanthis Kyriakidis (Hellenic Navy) is instructor at the Greek Joint War College. He holds three Masters’ degree from American universities, the latest an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School (2011, Lucius Littauer Award). Recently, the question of Guantanamo was raised in an editorial [7] of the New York Times, where the current US President Barack Obama was accused of “reversing field” regarding his decision not to veto “a military authorization bill that contains several disputed provisions about the treatment of terrorism prisoners”.[1] In the Washington Post Jonathan Turley [8] suggested that “the US is no longer the land of the free”, pointing out that there are questions regarding among others, indefinite detention, arbitrary justice, secret evidence, war crimes, secret court and extraordinary renditions, all of them somehow linked to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. In the aftermath of 9/11 and during the battles against the Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, 779 men (632 in 2002, 117 in 2003 and another 30 from 2004 to 2008)[2] were arrested and imprisoned without any legal right or representation in the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were kept for indefinite interrogation. The non-application of habeas corpus on these prisoners - even American citizens - kept in a legal limbo without being characterized either as criminals or as prisoners of war, immediately posed questions regarding American observation of human rights. The very reason for their transfer to Guantanamo was avoidance of any legal challenge regarding their imprisonment.[3] As Stuart Taylor Jr suggests [9] “by trying to sidestep the most basic legal protections for detainees at the outset, the Bush administration guaranteed years of legal wrangling”. During the interrogations, torture was used, as acknowledged by officials which include the former Vice-President Dick Cheney [10], while at the same time they tried to demote the use of certain “techniques” to simply “harsh treatment”. Techniques that the officials admitted that they used as standard operational procedure included sleep deprivation and, more rarely, “waterboarding”, a cruel simulation of drowning. Since then, President Obama, who promised the closure of the notorious detention facility before being elected, has issued two Executive Orders to “facilitate” this procedure.[4] Despite the transfer of the vast majority of the detainees to other countries for continued detention – some with alleged low human rights records – the President has proved to be very reluctant to close Guantanamo. According to the ‘Guantanamo Task Force’, 36 detainees should remain pending criminal investigations, while 48 others should remain in prison without a trial, as they are “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution”. The rest could eventually be transferred and tried in a foreign country. In March 2011, the President established a new process. Detainees under the Obama administration Page 1 of 7