On Gitmo's 5th Birthday, New Pressure to Shut it Down

[marmar]

From CommonDreams:

Published on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 by OneWorld US
On Guantanamo Prison Camp's Fifth Birthday, New Pressure to Shut It Down
by Aaron Glantz

An international delegation arrived in Cuba this week to call for the closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The protest is part of the January 11 International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo, during which many groups in the United States and abroad are expected to rally thousands of human rights activists.

January 11 is the 5-year anniversary of the first prisoners being sent to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

"From the beginning this was a prison that was set up without any kind of due process," Medea Benjamin of the women-for-peace group Code Pink told OneWorld from Havana. "People in prison have no access to see their family members. It took a long time for them to even have lawyers and those lawyers don't even have access to their clients."

"Most of them have no charges against them, and none of them have had a fair trial," Benjamin added.

The 12-person delegation organized by Code Pink also includes U.S. "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in the war in Iraq; Adele Welty whose firefighter son was killed on 9/11; retired U.S. colonel and diplomat Ann Wright who resigned over the invasion of Iraq; and legal director of the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights Bill Goodman who has taken the cases of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Thursday, the group will walk to the gates of the Guantanamo prison from the Cuban side. They had petitioned for access to the prison itself but were denied.

Protests are also planned outside the U.S. military's Southern Command in Miami, outside the Capitol in Washington, DC, and at international capitol buildings worldwide.

The London-based rights group Amnesty International will also be rallying activists around the world Thursday, while New York-based Human Rights Watch is asking its supporters to contact their congressional representatives and local newspapers.

Jen Daskal, the Washington lobbyist for Human Rights Watch, told OneWorld that activists are pushing the newly formed Democratic-led Congress to restore the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. President Bush stripped so-called "unlawful enemy combatants" of that right last year when he signed the Military Commissions Act.

"Habeas is one of the oldest and most important checks on arbitrary executive power," she said. "It dates back to the days of the early English kings. At that time it assured that the king couldn't just throw somebody in the dungeon without having an independent review of their detention." ......(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0109-03.htm

[hashibabba]

1. I think Bush and his cabal should be put there after their trials.

Well, OK, not really, but I'm anxious to see them go down in a big way.