Guilty Until Proven Innocent

by Laura Snedeker

“I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that these firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing respectable firms.”
(Quoted from the Associated Press.)

So said Charles “Cully” Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, denouncing the detainees in Guantanamo Bay and their lawyers in one sweeping condemnation. Stimson resigned earlier this month but his remarks are indicative of a disturbing trend.

It’s popular among politicians and military officials to refer to the several hundred men in legal limbo as “terrorists,” despite the fact that only nine of these men have even been charged.

We don’t refer to the defendant in a murder case as “the murderer” until he has been arrested, charged, tried, and convicted. One of America’s greatest (and, I think, largely undisputed) ideals is that the burden of proof ought to rest with the prosecution. In the interests of national security, however, this standard has been substituted for a highly secret system in which the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the defendant, all justified by the argument that these are dangerous times and that terrorism is a special case.

The defendants’ very status as “enemy combatants” denies them the protections afforded to Prisoners of War (POWs) by the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit torture and emphasize humane treatment. In a turn of phrase more suited to authoritarian regimes, they are “detained” indefinitely; some have been forcibly detained at Guantanamo for more than five years after they were taken from their home countries.

Furthermore, the U.S. Government has decided to sequester them in Cuba of all places. The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is U.S. property, but there’s a sick irony in the U.S. military imprisoning and torturing people in a country that the United States not only has no high-level diplomatic relations with, but has frequently accused of human rights abuses.

Even more disturbing is Stimson’s criticism of the lawyers who represent the “enemy combatants.” These lawyers are not only representing controversial defendants, they work under the worst of conditions. They’re up against secrecy, up against torture-induced confessions, and up against an entire apparatus that would rather decry their efforts as “aiding the enemy” than see that justice consistent with democracy (and not with foreign policy) is carried out.

That the outcry over the remarks led to the resignation of one of our homegrown enemies of freedom is heartening, and it’s good to see that the media didn’t ignore such a ridiculous and offensive statement. With so few charged and the “War on Terror” going a little stale, more people are beginning to question the sanity of the administration and military policy.

More good news: The Pentagon found no evidence of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo despite the claims of the FBI and the soldiers involved.

In a related story, the Pentagon hired Baghdad Bob* as its new spokesperson.

*For those who don't follow the news from Iraq closely or for those who do not remember: Baghdad Bob refers to Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Iraqi Information Minister under Saddam Hussein.

(The photo of Charles Stimson is from the Defense Department and in the public domain.)

politics
justice
Iraq War
War on Terror
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