16 January 2009
Obama Will Close Guantanamo Facility, Rejects Use of Torture
U.S. will live up to its values, Obama’s choice for top legal post says
Washington — The next administration will shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and techniques used to question suspected terrorists will conform to U.S. treaty obligations and the Geneva Conventions, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for attorney general tells senators.
“Guantanamo will be closed,” Eric Holder said at his January 15 confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Steps are being taken … as we speak to look at the manner in which that can occur.”
Obama announced his selection of Holder to fill the nation’s highest legal post on December 1. (See “Obama Announces His Choice for U.S. Attorney General.”)
At the January 15 hearing, the Senate panel asked the attorney general-designate to comment on the practice of waterboarding, an interrogation procedure that causes a sensation of drowning, which the Bush administration has acknowledged was used in questioning suspected terrorists.
“Waterboarding is torture,” Holder said, and it violates the Geneva Conventions. The Obama administration intends to “make sure that we have interrogation techniques that are consistent with who we are as Americans so that we don't do things that will serve as a recruiting tool for people who are our enemies.” He added that “some of these enhanced techniques do not necessarily produce good intelligence.”
President-elect Obama said January 11 that torture will not occur under his administration. Speaking on ABC’s This Week, he recalled that, during the presidential campaign, he and Republican challenger John McCain agreed the United States can be kept safe “while still adhering to our core values and ideals.”
Regarding the Guantanamo detention facility, Obama said it would be difficult to shut down the camp within his first 100 days in office, but his administration will carry out its commitment to the rule of law “in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.”
The facility was established by the U.S. military to imprison nonuniformed combatants fighting independent of any nation’s official military forces who were captured while engaging in armed hostilities and terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries. These combatants have posed a thorny set of legal problems for the United States. (See “Guantanamo Detainees Win Right to Challenge Their Detention.”)
In his Senate testimony, Holder said that in order to close the facility responsibly, the United States must “make an independent judgment of who [the detainees] are, based on an examination of the records that exist down there, so that we can treat them in an appropriate way.”
He listed three categories of detainees at Guantanamo: “those who I think we can safely repatriate to other countries; those who we can try; and … those who perhaps are too dangerous, but nevertheless cannot be tried.”
For the others, who would stand trial, Holder said the Obama administration will examine the use of federal courts as specified under Article III of the U.S. Constitution and the use of military commissions. But military commissions that are currently in use do not have sufficient due-process safeguards, he said.
“The one thing I can assure you and the American people — and frankly, the world — is that whatever system we use, it'll be consistent with our values. It will be a system that has due process guaranteed. It will be seen as fair,” he said.
Holder said the Obama team has not yet determined what to do with those who are deemed dangerous but cannot be tried, but the new administration will “treat that person in a fair way, in a way that frankly they would not treat us.
“How we resolve that issue, that particular issue, I think, will say more about us as a nation than almost anything,” he said.
Holder also said the United States will not turn any prisoners over to countries “where we suspect or have reason to believe that person will be tortured.”
Obama’s choice for attorney general said the United States is engaged in an unconventional war with terrorist organizations and “should not have waited until September the 11th of 2001 to make that determination.”
There are physical battlefields in the conflict, such as Afghanistan, and “cyberbattlefields” where the United States needs to be engaged, he said. But there is also a battle for the public opinion of those living in the Islamic world.
“We have to … conduct ourselves in a way that we win that battle as well, so that people there who might otherwise be well-intentioned do not end up on the wrong side and against us,” he said.
Acknowledging it is “a difficult time” for the United States, he said that it is easy to adhere to one’s values when times are not stressful, but the real test comes in challenging times.
“When we are at war in a couple of places around the world, when we have budgetary concerns, this is the test for America,” he said.
“Are you really who you say you are? I believe we are,” he told the senators. “And I believe, with the appropriate leadership, we can handle and deal with the issues that you're talking about.”
Material related to the Holder hearing is available on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Web site. The hearing is scheduled to continue on January 16.
