Guantanamo is a Continuing War Crime!
Channel: Amnesty International Group 37
Date: 2022-02-22

Guantanamo prison is a festering wound upon International Law, specifically of the Law of Armed Conflict as established by the  Geneva Conventions of 1949. In addition, it is a standing violation of various other treaties to include the Convention Against Torture. The U.S. Global War on Terror is better described as the U.S. Terrorist War on Law.  

This includes on our own domestic law. That is, Constitutional and Statutory Law. The latter was with the evisceration of the War Crimes Act, to deny liability of U.S. officials for the war crimes they committed. This was enabled with the violation of Constitutional Law which required abiding with Treaty Law, as well as with the subsequent violations of the Bill of Rights by the U.S. government, by all successive post-9/11 administrations. 

The number of prisoners now held at Guantanamo is down to 39, with 20 of them now “approved for release,” according to Andy Worthingon who tracks the status of prisoners there. But whether, or how soon, they will actually be released, is another matter, as Guantanamo history shows. And they’ve all suffered the criminality of U.S. torture already with “indefinite detention” of this long of a period, long ago passing their detention into a form of torture. 

The adoption of Military Commissions for the ostensible reason to try prisoners for alleged “war crimes,” turned the law totally up- side down, as they were designed to deny “Fair Trial Rights” to prisoners as required under the Geneva Conventions. Each succeeding “law” establishing Military Commissions; Military Commissions Order No. 1, and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and then of 2009, deepened the level of war crimes criminality of the U.S. government, and the individuals directly responsible for what are in fact are U.S. “war crimes,” as established at Nuremberg and the Tokyo War Crime Trials. 

But recognition of culpability, and accountability for committing war crimes as once defined by the War Crimes Act, was long ago deleted from U.S. “law.” This is what Guantanamo remains symbolic of, even while every day war crimes continue to be committed there in the fact that it remains open, and holds “forever prisoners.”  

About Todd Pierce

Military historian and former JAG (pro bono Military Commission Defense Counsel) at Guantánamo, has represented 3 defendants before the Military Commissions at Guantánamo. He has presented on Guantánamo many times before different organizations, including at our own May 2016 meeting and gave an excellent presentation on the dysfunction at Guantánamo. This presentation will mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the detention center at Guantánamo where there are still 39 prisoners (13 of whom have been cleared for release but remain) at a cost of about $14,000,000 per prisoner per year.