Readers React: If ‘El Chapo’ can be tried and jailed on U.S. soil, why can’t the Guantanamo detainees?

To the editor: So we do have a maximum-security prison housing inmates who killed or tried to kill people in terrorist attacks, some of them foreigners. They were all tried and sentenced in a court of law within the United States and are going to spend their whole lives in Florence, Colo. (“‘El Chapo’ likely to join some of nation’s most notorious criminals in Colorado’s ‘Supermax,’” Feb. 13)

I must ask: Why are we still paying to keep a number of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, most of them less dangerous than the guys in the federal “Supermax” prison, and maintaining a disgraceful legal and humane situation?

Shame on Congress for not budgeting for the permanent closure of Guantanamo. Shame on the government for having no excuses for continuing this abhorrent and arbitrary application of whatever laws are created ad hoc.

What a crying shame.

Licia C. Paskay, Los Angeles

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