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Gainesville, VA
I served 25 years in the US Air Force, I was the Chief Prosecutor for the Terrorism Trials at Guantanamo Bay for more than two years, and now I need your help.
I personally charged Osama Bin Laden’s driver Salim Hamdan, Australian anathema David Hicks, and Canadian teen Omar Khadr. All three were convicted … and then they were released from Guantanamo. More than 160 men who have never been charged with any offense, much less convicted of a war crime, remain at Guantanamo with no end in sight. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system where not being charged with a war crime keeps you locked away indefinitely and a war crime conviction is your ticket home.
As of April 29, 2013 – 100 of the 166 men who remain in Guantanamo are engaged in a hunger strike in protest of their indefinite detention. Twenty-one of them are being force-fed and five are hospitalized. Some of the men have been in prison for more than eleven years without charge or trial. The United States has cleared a majority of the detainees for transfer out of Guantanamo, yet they remain in custody year after year because of their citizenship and ongoing political gamesmanship in the U.S.
That is why I am calling on Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel to use his authority to effect cleared transfers from Guantanamo and on President Obama to appoint an individual within the Administration to lead the effort to close Guantanamo. Obama announced on April 30 that he plans to do his part to close Guantanamo, but he has made this promise before. Now is the time to hold him to his promise and urge him to take the steps necessary to dismantle Guantanamo Bay Prison.
If any other country were treating prisoners the way we are treating those in Guantanamo we would roundly and rightly criticize that country. We can never retake the legal and moral high ground when we claim the right to do unto others that which we would vehemently condemn if done to one of us.
It is probably no surprise that human rights and activist groups like the Center For Constitutional Rights, Witness Against Torture and Amnesty International have been outspoken critics of Guantanamo. It may surprise you that a former military prosecutor and many other retired senior military officers and members of the intelligence community agree with them.
The Patriotic thing, the American thing, the Human thing to do here is to Close Guantanamo. Please join us in the fight by signing this petition.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
Submit a question!
Hunger Strikes, Obama and the future of the Guantánamo Bay prison Experts will join us Monday, May 6 from 2-3pm EDT (7-8pm GMT) to answer your questions. Submit and pose follow-up questions, and upvote your favorites until the Q&A closes. Last week President Obama vowed that he would close the controversial Guantánamo Bay prison.
Col. Morris Davis, who resigned from his position at Guantánamo in protest, says there's no upside to leaving the facility open. Christiane Amanpour, Jeffrey Toobin, Ari Fleischer and Amy Holmes weigh in on what should happen to the detainees imprisoned at Gitmo.
I am going to say something I have not said as often as I would have liked: I agree with President Obama.
Petition via Morris Davis: "President Obama: Close Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay" http://t.co/9ONSVH3sqy
Retired US colonel & chief prosecutor at Guantanamo leads petition calling on Obama to close Gitmo https://t.co/VAGJKM7Drl
Shut it down, the president has been saying he will for the almost 10 years of his presidency, this is an abomination.
Because it is morally wrong, it is illegal detention without due process, it has been nothing but political and has nothing to due with prisoners of war
Human rights issue
I voted for Obama in 2008 because he promised to close Gitmo. It is now April, 2014 and I am still waiting for him to fulfill his promise.
to put an end to the crimes , that the U.S. government hides . CLOSE GUANTANAMO !
As a former Guantanamo guard and seeing the horrors of Guantanamo first hand I can tell you it needs to be closed now.
Guantánamo is a dark stain on everything the United States claims to hold dear. I have had the privilege to work on the case of one detainee. I can tell you, it's one thing to hear groups speak about torture committed by your government, it's quite another to read a first hand account of it.
The Guantánamo Bay detention facility remains flagrantly outside U.S. legal and ethical norms, acts as a radicalizing factor among the vulnerable worldwide and has made America a pariah state among the human rights community both at home and in our European Union partner states. Importantly for you Mr. President, it is a symbol of the gross expansion of Executive power that took place under your predecessor that must be transparently ameliorated in full view of the international community.
11 years without a charge is unacceptable. While what was done to them can't be undone, the least we can do is not lengthen this abysmal disgrace.
The moral imperative of simple humane action demands that these men - especially those entirely cleared of wrong-doing and long-ago approved for release - be allowed to go home to their families. It makes me ache to know that my tax dollars are contributing to this travesty of justice.