Cuba Detentions May Last Years

[kskiska]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 — Senior Defense Department officials said Thursday that they were planning to keep a large portion of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, there for many years, perhaps indefinitely.

The officials said they would soon set up a panel to review those long-term prisoners' cases annually to determine whether the men remained a threat to the United States or could be released.

The officials described the panel as a "quasi-parole board" that would comprise three members before whom prisoners could personally plead their case for release. At the same time, the officials said, in the coming months they will continue to release to the home governments many other prisoners deemed not to be a continuing danger.

The officials spoke as part of a Pentagon effort to counter sharp criticism by members of human rights groups and foreign governments about the situation at Guantánamo, where some 650 people, most of them captured in Afghanistan, are being held under maximum security, some as long as two years without being charged with any offense. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is scheduled to discuss the matter in a speech Friday in Miami.

more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13GITM.html?hp

[Minstrel Boy]

1. "many years, perhaps indefinitely"

What can be added? Words fail.


Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard.
Some of us are prisoners. The rest of us are guards.
- Bob Dylan, "George Jackson"

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. They will last until the rest of the world gets tired of the US kidnapping

their citizens while they wait to be carpet bombed and anything of value they have stuffed into American pockets.

[AZCat]

3. Seriously- WTF is wrong with these people?

Why do I feel like I'm in a separate country from these f**ks? How is this in ANY WAY representative of American values?

[PartyPooper]

4. It ain't American values...it's Bu$hco Amerikan values.

Better get used to it...unless, of course, we can successfully depose the boy king in November. For the sake of us all (and, for those "detainees"), I hope we do.

O8)

[bvar22]

5. Act 2....

Islamic fundamentalists start kidnapping Americans and holding them hostage until the release of the Guantanamo political prisoners. Not a pretty story; bound to happen. May even become popular.

[Djinn]

6. I wouldn't suggest it

there are no islamic fundies with the sort of fire power the USA has, all that would happen would be Georgie gets to bomb another country.

[DuctapeFatwa]

7. How many US citizens are in countries the regime is already bombing?

I'm sure the Gitmo victims are treated the same as the US wishes its captured personnel treated.