Since President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order in January requiring the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center within a year, the debate about what to do with the detainees has been marked by much heat but little light. All that is about to change with the publication of the Report of a distinguished group of experts and associated articles appearing in the Winter 2009 issue of the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law.
The 57-page report and associated articles were the product of a meeting with two-dozen high-level government and international organization officials, key officers of Non Governmental Organizations, and leading academicians, which was convened at Case Western Reserve University School of Law by the International Committee of the Red Cross and CWRU’s Frederick K. Cox International Law Center a year ago.
According to the Report, shutting down Guantanamo is a start, but it will not be a comprehensive solution to the question of security detention (detention without charges of persons deemed a threat to national security) for the United States and other countries. It is likely that security detention will continue to be utilized, though to a lesser extent and in different venues, by the new administration. Meanwhile, following the lead of the Bush administration, countries around the world continue to experiment with various security detention regimes.
The Report and the associated articles indicate that international standards need to be clarified, adopted, and implemented to ensure that detainees are afforded prompt legal process and a meaningful opportunity to challenge the facts giving rise to their detention before a neutral arbiter. Moreover, extended security detention should be considered legitimate only where there is evidence that the detainee himself poses a serious security threat, an issue that must be subject to periodic review; and the longer the detention the higher must be the evidentiary burden of the State.
The Report and articles are available for worldwide viewing on the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law’s website http://www.case.edu/orgs/jil/
