Guantanamo Bay : U.S. detention policy in the war of terror

Abstract

The September 11 terrorist attacks had a distinct impact on international relations. The subsequent American call for a 'war on terrorism' was met with a huge amount of international support; the world clearly feeling sympathetic to America's cause of eradicating the dreadful terror phenomenon plaguing the international scenario. The U.S. government essentially 'stumbled into the war on terror' - a war with no precedent; waged against stateless organizations - and had no defined detention policy once it started to apprehend suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban affiliates during its war in Afghanistan. This dissertation examines the impromptu detention policy formulated and implemented by the Bush Administration, centering around Guantanamo Bay - the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba set up to house 'enemy combatants'. In formulating and implementing its Guantanamo detention policy, the Administration made a number of unilateral decisions. Chapter I discusses the legal implications of these decisions, particularly in terms of the Geneva Conventions and international law. The Executive's assertion that it had the power to disregard international principles and implement a unilateral detention policy in Guantanamo was litigated in court by the detainees who were supported by a number of civil liberty and human rights organizations. The litigation culminated in the Supreme Court's opinion of June 2004, which is analysed in detail in this chapter. The Bush Administration asserted that Guantanamo detainees were 'vicious killers , and on this premise justified their indefinite and incommunicado incarceration. Detention at Guantanamo was thus extracting terrorists from the battlefield (impeding them to wage war on American interests), and at the same time providing the U.S. military with valuable information on the workings of terrorist organizations. In legal terms, the Administration argued that terrorists do not respect humanitarian law, and should therefore not be protected under international law. Nevertheless, there have been serious allegations that the U.S. military has mistakenly imprisoned innocent civilians at Guantanamo, not 'vicious killers.' The whole of chapter II has investigates in detail the identity of those detained at Guantanamo Bay, and whether they constitute the threat on which the Administration justifies its controversial detention policy. Similarly, there have been numerous allegations of Guantanamo prisoners being abused and tortured at the hands of the U.S. military. In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal of May 2004, torture allegations received extensive media coverage, and continue to undermine the credibility of the Bush Administration. Chapter III specifically tackles the issue of torture in terms of existing international law and U.S. federal law, and then attempts to present reports in a balanced way so as to shed light on the veracity of these allegations. The final chapter looks at the repercussions of the American detention operation at Guantanamo. The positive and negative ramifications of U.S. policy are presented, such as whether Guantanamo has served to enhance U.S. national and international security; whether it has increased the moral and legal image of the U.S. as a leader in international relations, and the subsequent effect this has had on the 'war on terror'.