Detainees Face Severe Conditions if Moved to U.S.

Washington Post ^ | 10/3/2009 | Peter Finn

[Saije]

For up to four hours a day, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, can sit outside in the Caribbean sun and chat through a chain-link fence with the detainee in the neighboring exercise yard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Mohammed can also use that time to visit a media room to watch movies of his choice, read newspapers and books, or play handheld electronic games. He and other detainees have access to elliptical machines and stationary bikes.

At Guantanamo, such recreational activities interrupt an otherwise bleak existence, according to a Pentagon report of conditions at Camp 7, which houses 16 high-value detainees. But even those privileges may soon vanish.

The Justice Department has begun to hint in court filings that at least some of the defendants in the Sept. 11, 2001, case, as well as other prominent suspects, will be transferred to federal custody in the United States. While lawmakers and activist groups have been consumed with a debate over such a move, little attention has been paid to the conditions that Mohammed and other high-value detainees would face in the United States.

And those conditions, it turns out, would be vastly more draconian than they are at Guantanamo Bay...

If sent to a facility such as the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., they would be sealed off for 23 hours a day in cells with four-inch-wide windows and concrete furniture. If they behave, and are allowed an hour's exercise each day in a tiny yard, they will do so alone. They will have little or no human contact except with prison officials. And the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside group with access to Camp 7, will no longer have contact with them.

[Saije]

We're never going to get that place closed...

[Paladin2]

It’s a Jihadi Resort.

[Joiseydude]

If sent to a facility such as the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., they would be sealed off for 23 hours a day in cells with four-inch-wide windows and concrete furniture. If they behave, and are allowed an hour's exercise each day in a tiny yard, they will do so alone. They will have little or no human contact except with prison officials.

Watch how quickly that changes when they start filing lawsuit after lawsuit.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

[I]f Guantanamo ever does get closed, some of its detainees will wind up in the SuperMax prison in Colorado. Instead of cool airy cells under balmy Caribbean skies they'll be walled up in an underground bunker. No Ramadan pastry chefs, either, as there were on my visit to Gitmo. I wonder how grateful they'll be to the efforts of the "anti-torture" campaigners once the daily reality of SuperMax sets in. Oh, well. At least President Obama won't have to worry about the world hectoring him over it.

[nuvista]

Club Gitmo indeed!!! Rush Limbaugh is truly a genius! Even in his parody, there (more often than not) proves to be stark truth. He’s been calling it “Club Gitmo” for years, and has parodic ads promoting the resort for Jihadis. Amazing prescience!

[ExGeeEye]

Best argument in favor of reviving the ancient tradition of the vigilante lynch mob.

[Recon Dad]

Hell, move them all to Angola in Louisiana. A year there and they'll be begging to get to Colorado.

[MIchaelTArchangel]

Why don’t we move these thugs to ANWR at the beginning of December? I hear that’s a beautiful place where the animals all get along with each other peacefully in pristine surroundings.

[wbarmy]

This is a small attempt by the Post to show that it will be alright to move them to the U.S. because it will be harder on them. They don't say that they will then have access to lawyers and will “lawyer up”. Most of them do not have hard evidence of crimes, because they were captured before they could commit said crime. That means they will eventually be released. Since the countries they came from don't want them, they will have to remain in the U.S.

Now isn't that a pretty picture.

[Revolting cat!]

Severe conditions. Oh, yeah, just like the Manson Gang and the SLA: Ph.D education at your cost!

[Candor7]

Looks like RUSH was right when he called it, “ Club Gitmo.”

[Clive]

We are being continuously told that we are bound by the Geneva Conventiosn as to the treatment of detainees, to the point where even many conservative commentators accept this as a given. (I don't agree, but that seems to be the current conventional wisdom). If so, consider this:

There is an ancient principle taught to me in a British law school but also applicable in the US because it comes from the same root. "Thou shalt not suck and blow in the same breath". In other words, the current regime cannot have it both ways.

Under the Geneva Conventions, POWs are not to be held in civilian prisons, i,e. prisons that are also holding domestic civilian criminals. POWs are not to be segregated from each other and to the extent possible are to ke kept together with their captured unit mates. Hence the Allied POW camps and the German Stalags during WWII.

The exception would be those detainees who had been convicted of a crime and sentenced to a term of imprisonment, but IMO the International Committee of the Red Cross would would have an arguable complaint if a person convicted by court martial were to be incarcerated in other than a military stockade. I submit that the trial procedures at GTMO amount to a form of court martial. Supermax would not be appropriate unless the detainee were charged and convicted in a normal criminal court, with all the procedural rights and safeguards attendant thereon and sentenced according to the ordinary penal law with all the ordinary correctional rules, rights and safeguards attendant thereon.

[Mike Darancette]

Khalid Sheik Mohammed deserves an 8x10 cell at some Super-Max prison. One hour a day in the yard with the Aryan Brotherhood.

[the anti-liberal]

"It’s a Jihadi Resort."

[ANGGAPO]

And the ACLU will make big bucks in defending them.

[GeronL]

Sure they will. Right up until some judge grants them more freedom after a few months.

[reg45]

Rush calls it “Club Gitmo”.

[gigster]

Some Democrat idiot (but I’m being redundant) suggested to bring them here to Michigan.

I would agree, as long as they put them in tents, in the U.P., ‘ala Joe Arpaio.

Let them experience a U.P. winter, and a black-fly summer.
They will confess to everything, and beg to go back to Gitmo.

[radiohead]

<Let them experience a U.P. winter,

I thought Iowa winters were bad, but tents in the winter in the UP. Now that’s cruel and unusual punishment! : )