A Conservative MEP said of Guantanamo that it was acceptable because the US considers the fight against terrorism to be a war on terror and that it was, therefore, being used to hold prisoners of war.
I find this argument weak. The people they captured, guilty or not, cannot be said to be soldiers in some enemy’s army. They could not be captured on the battlefield and then imprisoned instead of being killed. In a conventional war, civilians could not be taken by the army and held indefinitely and, without ambiguity, this is what has necessarily happened to provide inmates for Guantanamo.
I completely sympathise with the US that they believe they have captured people guilty of attempting to kill US and other Western civilians. I understand that they feel they must find a way to stop these people before they kill people (which is the main problem with suicide bombings), but the solution cannot be the incarceration of potentially innocent people.
People have said to me in the past, and I probably said it myself at first, that these people don’t have much excuse to be where they inevitably were (Afghan hills etc) but that’s not something we have the liberty to decide — these people haven’t even had a kangaroo court hearing, let alone a legitimate one. If only some of the stories about these people having been taken from family weddings etc are true, then it exacerbates the already unacceptable situation.
I haven’t heard anything more of the former Guatanamo prisoners who have been released to Britain, but I don’t believe any of them were involved in the 7th July bombings… Maybe the UK intelligence services are using them as bait, or keeping close tabs on them, but that’s preferable to having innocent people lose four years of their lives. Us atheists don’t expect to have any more than the alloted time — no afterlife to provide us with peace-of-mind — so to lose four of those years is beyond imagination.
Let’s release the prisoners and hope that none of them attack the West or innocent people anywhere. If they do, then at least our consciences can be clear — we did the right thing.
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