What President-Elect Obama Must Do Once He Closes Gitmo
"What is abundantly clear is that no matter how hard the government tries to advance the military commissions, this process doesn't work...The only solution is to shut the military commissions down and start from scratch."
- Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union
Closing Guantanamo Bay will be a crucial first step toward restoring our moral leadership in the world, but President-elect Obama must also end the unconstitutional military commissions put in place by President Bush. These so-called "legal proceedings" are more akin to kangaroo courts for the unlawful ways in which they extract confessions from abused prisoners forced to stand trial.Â
As former Gitmo prosecutor Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld told the BBC recently, "No justice will be obtained at Guantanamo. And if that entails moving [the detainees] temporarily to the US for trial: so be it."Â Watch the tesimonies from those who have prosecuted and defended some of these prisoners, and see why we cannot continue to deprive them of their fundamental rights.
Send this video to all of your friends and coworkers in order to stress the importance of ending unconstitutional military commissions. If there are prisoners that still must stand trial, they should do so in U.S. civilian and military courts that abide by international human rights and humanitarian law. That is the only way to achieve real justice; the only way to break with the abusive past of the Bush administration; and the only way to show to the world that the Obama administration will faithfully follow the U.S. Constitution.
