The men were transferred to Guantánamo Bay more than twenty years ago. Some were never charged. For others, a trial date has not yet been set. It should anger anyone who believes in justice, in the right to a fair and speedy trial. But few care about the fate of the men trapped at the American military base in Cuba.
Guantánamo Bay used to be a legal black hole, where the US detained hundreds of suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Without a trial, without any prospect of it and regularly on the basis of flimsy evidence, which they were usually not allowed to see themselves. The men were often extradited in exchange for money.
Of the thirty still in custody, sixteen have been found innocent, but no country wants to accept them. Three will never be released or tried and are in ‘infinite wartime captivity’, as the US calls it.
While President Obama was constantly reminded at home and abroad of his promise to close Guantánamo Bay, and President Trump did nothing to speed up the process, over the past four years under President Biden there seems to have been hardly any idea about what would happen. must be done with the prisoners. Guantánamo Bay also became a pit of forgetfulness.
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a story about the history of Guantánamo Bay
The fact that the world should continue to care about Guantánamo is evident from the latest episodes of the renowned crime podcast Serial. The makers visited the prison for the first time in 2015, but were dissatisfied with the prefabricated answers they received. Nine years later, a number of those involved, from former prisoners to interrogators, were willing to talk in more detail.
The picture they paint is even more disturbing than previously revealed. The overriding desire for revenge, leading to cruelty. The dawning realization among some guards and interrogators that not all prisoners were “the worst of the worst,” as President Bush had called them – and at the same time the realization that they could do nothing to change that. The cultural and religious differences were seen as terrorist characteristics, which even led to military interpreters with a Muslim background being seen as suspects. The shocking reflections of an interrogator, called Mr.
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the 2005 story of an interpreter
It has not yet brought any benefit to the victims and survivors of 9/11, 22 years after the opening of the camp: although there are five suspects who are said to have been directly involved in the attacks, and a courtroom was recently set up for trial, but of further there is no progress in their cases. That also robs them of their future.
What Guantánamo has brought is the moral decline of the country that could once point others to democratic principles. At a crucial moment, the Americans threw their own constitutional principles overboard, were guided by intolerance towards Muslims and by fear of strangers.
The conclusion, which should have been drawn by the US as early as 2002, is that Guantánamo Bay should never have existed.
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