...Thomas Fiedler 12-17-14 Civics Thomas Fiedler 12-17-14 Civics Guantanamo Bay and the War on Terror Due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States of America, the U.S. military has captured hundreds of suspected terrorists on battlefields across the Middle East. These detainees have been interned at a detention camp on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba without trial. This has created a lot of controversy between the United States and those who believe the prisoners were apprehended unlawfully and deserve a fair trial. The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp was established in 2002 with the purpose to detain extraordinarily dangerous persons, to interrogate detainees in an optimal setting, and to prosecute prisoners for war crimes. The camp is made up of two main facilities: Camp Delta, which is a 612-unit detention center finished in April 2002 and includes detention camps 1 through 6, as well as Camp Echo, where pre-commissions are held; and Camp X-Ray, which was a temporary detention facility and was closed in April 2002. One of the principal advantages to placing the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is the legal status that non-U.S. soil provides. If the detainees are not in the U.S., then they don’t have the same rights under American laws. Some of these include the right to legal representation, rights of prisoners, and rights to the American legal system. One government official referred...
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...last couple of years is the Existence of Guantanamo bay. The debate is whether it should be closed or stay open. Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a military prison in cuba on the Guantanamo bay Naval base. The detention camp was created to house suspected terrorist and fighters of the Taliban . The Issue came about in about ‘07 - ‘08 toward the conclusion of the Bush Administration. President Obama was the first to openly speak about closing Guantanamo as it was one of his campaign promises .One of the main setbacks is where the detainees will be placed if it was to close. Most of the detainees haven’t been approved for transfer...
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...power cannot take away the ability for a citizen to challenge the factual basis of his detention, even if he is an enemy combatant, by the great writ of habeas corpus. That same day in 2004 when Hamdi v. Rumsfeld was decided, the court also decided In Rasul v. Bush, which clarified the jurisdiction of U.S. courts over Guantanamo Bay, as well as any foreign nationals who were detained by the U.S. Government. The landmark 6-3 decision reversed the District Court’s decision, which held that the judiciary lacked jurisdiction. According to the District Court, unless detainees were either U.S. citizens, or held in a geographical territory where U.S. has sovereignty, they were unable to file habeas corpus petitions of wrongful detainment. The Supreme Court referenced Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, using the fact that the courts would not challenge a habeas corpus petition by a U.S. citizen in Guantanamo, as evidence that the courts had jurisdiction at the base. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006). The plaintiff was Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a citizen of Yemen, who worked for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan was captured in 2001 by militia forces and by 2002 he was sent by the US to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. He was subsequently charged...
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...Guantanamo Bay A seemingly endless war is upon us, between the United States and the countless terrorists of ISIS, Al Qaeda and others. The Naval Station detention camp located in Cuba, referred to as Guantanamo Bay or Gitmo (GTMO), holds prisoners, or detainees, who have been involved in terrorist activities. Some believe that Gitmo should be closed because of recent torture stories involving U.S. officials on the prisoners of the camp. They surmise that by closing Gitmo, tensions with the terrorists will lessen, which is far from true. Closing Guantanamo Bay would have a negative effect on the overall position of the United States in this arduous battle with the terrorists. President George W. Bush decided to transfer high value detainees from Central Intelligence Agency sites in the summer of 2006. Usually, captured soldiers would have protection under the Geneva Convention, which establishes the standards of law for the humanitarian treatment of war, or the basic rights of wartime prisoners. The detainees, being suspected Taliban and al Qaeda operatives, were not viewed as a part of a legitimate government, so it is not clear whether they should be protected under international law (Dahlstrom). The purpose of Guantanamo Bay was to capture any person who was involved in the terrorism that caused many U.S. deaths; it is a way, and maybe the only way, that the United States has in order to protect its citizens. In an article called, “The Historical Perspective on Guantanamo...
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...Guantanamo Bay sits on what was once called Oriente Province. Located on the southeast corner of the island country of Cuba. Oriente Province has since been divided into five distinct provinces, Las Tunas, Holguin, Granma, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantanamo. Guantanamo Bay is situated in the belt of the Caribbean trade winds; it receives sea breezes from the southeast during the afternoons, and shortly after sunset, the wind changes to a northerly direction and becomes a land breeze. The constant breezes help to keep the bay cooler than most semi-arid deserts. However, the mountains that surround the bay to the west, north, and east shelter it from cloud systems, thus producing less precipitation and maintaining the lands aridity. The Guantanamo Bay area is a semi-arid desert very similar to the climate found in San Diego, California. With predominantly dry, sunny days ranging from 80 degrees to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly one-fourth of Guantanamo’s total average annual rainfall of 24 inches, which occurs in October. The region contains parched, brown land and woody plants and succulents capable of enduring the scarcity of water. The terrain and climate of Guantanamo Bay make it a haven for iguanas and banana rats. Guantanamo Bay was named by the Taino Indians, which is a subgroup of the Arawakan Indians, which inhabited the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, consisting of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola ( Haiti and the Dominican Republic ), and Puerto Rico. ...
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...Human Rights: Ceasing Torture and ill Treatment “In Guantanamo, Kurnaz was subjected to abusive practices and interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, religious and sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, and solitary confinement. Of his time in detention, Kurnaz stated that he was repeatedly made to feel less human” (Patel). This excerpt is a real life connection of torture and ill treatment. Torture is commonly overlooked due to the lack of interest and knowledge about it. For instance, “In international human rights law, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, is inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining information or a confession, or to punish, intimidate or coerce” (Rabbit). Basically,...
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...behind barbed wire at the U.S. Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In April 2004, when the case challenging the legality of their detention was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, Guantánamo still appeared to many as a strange aberration, as an “animal,” with “no other like it,” as Justice Ginsburg stated. Descriptions of Guantánamo as a lawless zone enhanced this image of its exceptional status: a legal black hole, a legal limbo, a prison beyond the law, a “permanent United States penal colony floating in another world.”3 Yet since the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the leak of the Washington “torture memos,” it has become increasingly clear that, more than an anomaly, Guantánamo repre- sents the start of the “road to Abu Ghraib,” one island in a global penal archi- pelago, where the United States indefinitely detains, secretly transports, and tortures uncounted prisoners from all over the world.4 As a rallying cry against human rights abuses in the U.S. “war on terror,” Guantánamo has come to embody what Amnesty International calls a “gulag for our times.”5 The global dimensions of Guantánamo cannot be understood separately from its seemingly bizarre location in Cuba. Prisoners captured in Afghani- stan and around the world were transported here, to a country quite close geographically, yet far politically, from the United States, a country with which the United States has no diplomatic relations. Guantánamo occupies a transi- tional political space...
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...Guantánamo Bay First-hand accounts of torture are described in the book “The Guantánamo Diary”, and the 115 page report on the “Tipton Three”, which was made into the documentary drama “The Road to Guantánamo Bay.” (Branigan) The evidence shows the harsh realities for the people who face judgment because of whom the United States is in war with at that time. Guantánamo Bay is a cruel environment for detainees, do these stories about the torture detainee’s face change the way people perceive the facility? It is something that is based on opinions and beliefs, but look at the facts, do people deserve to be treated like animals because they are of a certain religion or race? The stories about the facility are frightening and disgusting. Guantánamo...
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...Joint Task Force Guantanamo Troopers are afforded a special opportunity at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When stationed state-side, most awarding authorities require volunteer service time exceed three years in length or 500-hours of volunteer service to receive the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal. Here, Troopers are only required to do 50 hours over two-thirds of their time here. There is an abundant amount of opportunities for Troopers to earn volunteer hours through the Morale, Welfare & Recreation’s many programs and events, including the Plant Nursery, Red Cross and many other groups. “There’s always a place for people to donate their time,” said Katie Prestesater, the community recreation director with MWR....
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...Hawke, A. (2007, June 29). Primer: Guantanamo detainees’ rights. National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11600605 Habeas corpus was used as a reference to a judge’s order to expedite a detainee before the court to see whether or not the detainee deserves to be in prison. While these detainees were restrained to Guantanamo Bay prison, their rights had become abolished by the Supreme Court in 2006. It was not till October of 2006 when Congress stepped in and designed the new Military Commission Act, so that detainees may receive a fair trial. During that time the Federal court was using the Detainee Treatment Act, which was only being used if an detainee felt that they were being categorized as a criminal in a war crime even though they done no such thing and have proof to back up their claim. Our Congress had to jump in and derail any hope for the detainees’ at Guantanamo Bay to be able to use Habeas corpus. All of the problems the detainees’ are having are caused by the Bush Administration and the Republicans; because they feel that the detainees’ have no constitutional rights in the United States since they are not citizens. The Democrats feel that taking away Habeas corpus from the detainees. From Guantanamo Bay is very much unconstitutional. Question: What does the word “Combatant” means? Thesis Statement: The United States has certain laws protecting both civilians and prisoners. There is one certain law that was given...
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...Guantanamo Bay is a United States naval base/detention camp located off of the coast of Cuba. The camp was established by the Bush administration in 2002, and has been in the mainstream media ever since. What draws the media to this specific base is the ongoings there. People have been held there indefinitely without trial and been relentlessly tortured. This is seen as an extremely controversial breach of human rights by Amnesty International, which is one of (if not the) biggest human rights groups focused on the equality of all human beings. George W. Bush’s administration opened Guantanamo Bay as a detention center during the “War on Terror”. Bush coined this term after 9/11 as a promise to stop terrorism in the U.S. Since it’s opening,...
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...The Case of Omar Khadr: Summary + Timeline Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1986. Omar has been in the custody of the United States Department of Defense since he was 15 and has been detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba since he was 16 years old. The United States alleges that Omar’s father took him to meet Al-Qaeda leaders when Omar was ten years old, that he received military training, and fought in Afghanistan. In July 2002, Omar was captured by the U.S. military after its forces bombed and assaulted the compound in which he was living. The U.S. raid and subsequent firefight resulted in the death of a U.S. soldier and Omar being severely wounded. Thereafter, he was detained at Bagram Air Base and was subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and torture. At the age of 16, Omar was sent to the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. While detained, Omar was subjected to excessively harsh interrogation methods in violation of international law, including: shackling in painful stress positions for hours on end; beatings by guards; express threats of rendition to third countries for the purposes of torture; solitary confinement for lengthy periods; and confinement in extremely cold cells. While other minors at Guantánamo were segregated from the adult population and ultimately repatriated, Omar has never received any age-appropriate treatment. In nearly five years of imprisonment, Omar has only once been permitted contact with his family...
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...“The government may not deprive citizens of “life, liberty, or property without due process of the law” (N.A, 2010). When interpreted this means the government has laws to follow before a person can be determined innocent or guilty if either aren’t proven the detainee must be let free. This paper is going to attempt to analyze the historical evolution of Habeas Corpus; give examples from history of the suspension of Habeas Corpus, as well as analyzing it relevance. Habeas Corpus derived from English common law and first appeared in the Magna Carta of 1215 and is the oldest human right in history. Habeas Corpus translated means “you should have the body” habeas corpus is a legal action, or writ, by which those imprisoned unlawfully can seek relief from their imprisonment” (N.A, Habeas Corpus-The Rutherford Institute, 2015). Habeas Corpus was extremely important to the Framers of the Constitution from their personal experiences. When one was capture they were considered either an enemy combatant, imprisoned indefinitely and denied the opportunity to have a fair trial. It became increasing to the founders to protect the American people from such atrocities. March 4, 1801 President Jefferson in his first inaugural addressed the necessity of habeas corpus. President Jefferson belief was found the “freedom of person under the protection of the Habeas Corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected” (N.A, Habeas Corpus-The Rutherford Institute, 2015). There have been only two...
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...I believe that The United States should keep Guantanamo prison open. Because if the United States closed Guantanamo bay prison then they would have to move high value terrorists. Also, a few terrorist that were involved with 9/11. Guantanamo bay prison has played a big part in the war against terrorists and without Guantanamo prison it would have left dangerous terrorist on the battlefield that could target and kill lots of people. Until the Government can come up with a good alternative to Guantanamo bay prison it should be kept open. Guantanamo bay prison in cuba isn't easy to escape from. Guantanamo prison has interrogated lots of terrorist and found out information. Guantanamo bay prison has military guard towers guarding the prison....
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...Law). Lakhdar Boumediene also served as an director humanitarian, providing assistance to children who lost family members during Balkan attacks and conflicts, and this is when he became a citizen of Bosnia in 1998. “In early October 2001, less than a month after the al Qaedas attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States”(My Guantanamo Nightmare). Intelligence Analysts officers of the United States Embassy had concerns about a plot on another al Qaeda attack on the embassy in Sarajevo. As the Intelligence Analysts Officers request Bosnia arrested Boumediene and five other Algerian born, but Bosnian citizen acquaintances. In January of 2002 Supreme courts of Bosnia explained the there was no evidence to incarcerated the six men and ordered that the charges are dropped and the six men released. Once Boumediene and the five men were released from Bosnia custody the American Forces seized the six men and transported them to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp which was on a United States Navy base in Cuba. Boumediene was held there and interrogated with out being charged. During the Summer of 2004 while in placement at the camp in Guantanamo Bay, Lakhdar Boumediene “ filed suit against the United States government...
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