Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Despite the efforts to expedite prosecutions, Davis said that most of the politicized convictions still couldn't be secured: "We had identified about 75 detainees as ones who potentially could be prosecuted, but 'could be' did not necessarily mean 'should be.' It meant that we had reviewed the information that the Criminal Investigation Task Force had assembled on individual detainees and determined that there was some credible evidence that could support a potential charge in roughly 75 cases."What would have happened had they been charged?"The majority would've been charged with providing 'material support' for terrorism. The US Court of Appeals in DC held in the Hamdan case that 'material support' was not a valid law of war offense that was subject to trial before a military commission. So, in the end, we would have charged most of the 75 with a war crime that wasn't really a legitimate war crime."This has left the detainees of Guantánamo falling into three categories: those who should stand trial; those who should be set free; and those in indefinite detention thanks to the lack of evidence needed to mount a trial. For Davis, the solution is to "get rid of that third category of indefinite detention" and make sure everyone is either "to be prosecuted" or "to be transferred."Despite the declining population, Davis doesn't think closing GTMO would solve the issue. "During the 2008 election, it was kind of the bumper sticker slogan, you know: 'Close Guantánamo.' Which, in my view, is not the solution. [The problem is] the underlying legal basis for creating Guantánamo to begin with. If you don't address that, then closing Guantánamo is just moving the detainees somewhere else. You know, at one point, early in President Obama's administration, there was a plan to move the detainees to a prison facility in Illinois. And all you've done then is just create a new Guantánamo."Whether the Guantánamo commissions were ever going to be fair and just is a contentious issue. The Supreme Court had ruled that the commissions contravened the Geneva Convention, meaning they had to be modified in 2006, before the political appointments that Davis identifies were made. Nevertheless, it's easy to forget that, for a while, they were run by people who at least believed in the idea of fairness and objectivity, and were working toward those aims—even if today Guantánamo Bay is often seen as an emblem for something completely different.Follow Simon on Twitter @simonchilds13."We had identified about 75 detainees as ones who potentially could be prosecuted, but 'could be' did not necessarily mean 'should be.'"