Imagine being locked away for the rest of your life without the opportunity to fully know the reason why. Imagine being locked away for the rest of your life without a full and fair trial.
According to Dafna Linzer of ProPublica, writing at Talking Points Memo Live Wire, the Administration is preparing an Executive Order to authorize the holding of some of the detainees in Guantanamo indefinitely without trial.
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo...
If signed by President Obama, the new order will provide added review for detainees designated for long-term detention. The order, which is being drafted jointly by White House staff in the National Security council and the White House counsel, will offer detainees in this category a minimal review every six months and then a more lengthy annual review. Detainees will have access to an attorney, to some evidence against them and the ability to challenge their continued detention.
So the prisoners will not have access to ALL of the evidence against them. It makes it pretty difficult to fight charges when do you don't know what the evidence against you. As an example: Murat Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk who was born and lived all his life in Germany, was kidnapped off a bus when he was returning from a trip to Pakistan and spent five years in Guantanamo. He wasn't allowed to know what he was accused of, which included being a friend of a suicide bomber. When he and his lawyer were finally told what he was accused of and who the supposed suicide bomber was, the lawyer went in search of information about the supposed bomber, only to discover that the supposed suicide bomber was alive. Murat Kurnaz' memoir of his time in captivity, Five Years of My Life, makes for harrowing reading, but it is a book every adult American should read.
"The order takes on additional restraints and lasts as long as the president wants. The White House gets just what it wants, no more or less. And, unlike with legislation, the order doesn't have staying power if the next administration doesn't want it."
said Bobby Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas who worked briefly on the administration's detention task force.
So apparently, the President can sign an Executive Order allowing for indefinite detention without trial, but cannot create or sign an Executive Order making it illegal to prosecute for war crimes those under 16 years of age at the time of the alleged crime. That means, if there was any doubt, that the prosecution of Omar Khadr, a tortured child who was 15 years old when he was first imprisoned, is on the shoulders of the President.
Please, if you don't want this to happen STAND UP and tell the White House:
NOT IN MY NAME !
Torture, including psychological torture, is ALWAYS wrong,
no matter who is doing it to whom,
For Dan,
Heather