Opinion: Guantanamo Turns Five

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Five years ago today twenty prisoners arrived at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a formerly quiet naval base known largely for being the oldest U.S. military installation abroad (courtesy Theodore Roosevelt in 1903). Today it houses nearly 400 detainees from around the world. Below, excerpts from Times editorials since 2002 (and after the jump, information on protests):

• Even when memories of Sept. 11 were rawest, the idea of holding secret military proceedings, denying defendants a choice of lawyers and making the president the sole court of appeal struck many as un-American. (March 22, 2002)

• [Yaser Esam] Hamdi, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, was initially held along with other enemy combatants at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But in April, when U.S. military officials learned that he was born in Louisiana and had never renounced U.S. citizenship, Hamdi was transferred to a Navy brig in Norfolk, Va. After Wednesday’s decision, he will probably remain there for the foreseeable future, held incommunicado and without charges or a lawyer. (January 10, 2003)

• Now that the Guantanamo detainees have been given the right to a hearing, Americans will learn a bit more about what has happened there. As with the abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, it’s likely that the more they learn, the less they’ll like it. (June 29, 2004)
• The opening round of detainee military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay last week resembled something between a Mel Brooks farce and the kangaroo courts of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Maybe Captain Kangaroo courts. (September 2, 2004)
• Demonstrations in Afghanistan last week were sparked by a Newsweek report that Americans had desecrated the Koran during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. The State Department this month reported that 11 soldiers at the U.S. naval base in Cuba were punished for abusing detainees, but only one was court-martialed. He was acquitted. (May 15, 2005)
• It is becoming evident that the majority of the men held in Guantanamo were not, in fact, captured in battle. A study of individual detainee cases published recently by the National Journal argued persuasively that more t han half of the detainees currently in Guantanamo were abducted in the mountains of Pakistan by warlords who handed them over to U.S. forces for cash rewards, sometimes $1,000 a head. (February 14, 2006)
• Habeas protection for enemy combatants -- not just those at Guantanamo but other aliens who might be detained in the future -- is not just a legal nicety. Without such protection, real injustices could be suffered by flesh-and-blood individuals. (December 18, 2006)

The biggest protest will take place on the Cuban side of Guantanamo prison, where ‘peace mom’ Cindy Sheehan will make an appearance. Washington, DC, New York City, and San Francisco will have their own events. And read the words of a current detainee here.