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Guantanamo Military Prison - and right to a fair trial |
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Written by Collins Mbalo
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Friday, 30 March 2007 |
Darfur, Rwanda, the Israel-Palestine skirmishes and Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba capturing international attention with little response are evidence that the 21st Century is not a better place to live in afterall.
The 21st Century has seen an increase in situations where executive arms of various governments have embraced a systematic denigration of judicial systems and processes established over centuries-- systems which were meant to curtail the inefficiencies, abuses and shortfalls of imperfect humans.
The American Defense Secretary Robert Gates, addressing a congress committee, recently stated that America needs a new law to "address the concerns about some of these people (read terrorist) who really need to be incarcerated forever, but that doesn't get them involved in a judicial system where there is the potential of them being released."
By implication what Gates was admitting to is that the American judicial system (an adaptation and offshoot of British statutes and common law as applied through the centuries) was at best faulty and incompetent in safeguarding and ensuring the right of a suspect to be charged within the shortest possible time before a competent court of law and for an accused to stand a fair trial. And if indeed it does, that this was not for the common good of America.
As such America needed territorial jurisdictions whereby they would act or omit to act according to their liking to enforce or ignore these rights to their pleasure. What a sad respite for Human Rights!
The statement before a house committee was further an admission that should a terrorist be charged before a court of law in America he would have some rights and privileges (normal to any suspect) which according to the Bush administration should not be accorded to “these people”. The law should be an ass, goaded by force and as partial as can be against these people.
On this basis I sympathize with the efforts of respected lawyer Harun Ndubi and the family of Mr. Abdulmalik Mohammed a suspected terrorist recently extradited to the infamous Guantanamo Bay military prison.
What is particularly disturbing is that the US government which over the years has taken the international role of watch dog on human rights abuses by publishing the annual US State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices is now a leading contender in breaking established norms, practices, laws and conventions on human rights as evidenced in the Guantanamo Bay Military prison.
The likes of Mr. Abdulmalik and akin face the repressive penalty of being incarcerated in inhumane conditions “forever” if that is possible. The American government and its coalition of like minded will ensure that is the case and will not renege on their commitment to the cause even if it means breaking, bending or creating new law.
Perhaps Mr.Ndubi fails to appreciate that the US' Homeland Security Act 2002 by effect curtailed such privileges as right to legal counsel and representation to terror suspects after 9/11. The family’s cry for release and or the repatriation of the suspect is but a far cry and a drop in the ocean which will achieve no meaningful result.
The world is at war - war on terror, all rights and privileges have been abdicated until come what may. There are simply no rules, tyranny by the mighty prevails. The reality is that when faced with the threats ‘the great and mighty’ in power have no qualms trampling the rights (if any) of the lowly and or the vanquished and we need not look at America to see evidences of this.
Our own backyard exhibits such tendencies. We need not look any further than the extra judicial killings by the police of local ‘terror suspects’. The war continues and pray you do not become a suspect!
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Collins Mbalo |
| About the author: |
| Collins Mbalo blogs at the Nairobian's Perspective ! where he writes on everything from economics, social and political issues in Kenya.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 02 April 2007 )
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