Almost imperceptibly for the American public, the court again closed the gates of the notorious secret CIA prison in Guantanamo, where about 40 prisoners are still illegally held.
The New York Times writes about this.
According to the media, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are persistently ignoring the scandal in the current presidential race, although the Supreme Court has boycotted all proceedings for ten years. Moreover, the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington “just shut the Guantanamo Gate”.
“Did anybody notice? Guantanamo used to stir up public passion”, – writes NYT. – “Now that the number of prisoners has dropped to 40 compared to almost 800 who have gone through prison in its 18 years of existence, do people care?”
The publication recalled how in 2004 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the naval base, although located in another country, is functionally part of the United States and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of federal courts. This allowed many prisoners to file motions, and 38 of them were granted by federal district judges in Washington. The Barack Obama administration has released about half the other prisoners. However, at the same time, the court “gossiped around the prison camp a close network of government-friendly rules,” writes NYT.
“For example, accepting a thin chain of circumstantial evidence as sufficient proof that the definition of a cellmate as an enemy combatant was correct”, – the publication specifies.
Decisions of this kind, which are based on factual assessments of prisoners’ statements, have saved the Court of Appeal from the open question of how the constitution itself can be applied. Now, after 12 years, the secret prison of the CIA continues to exist, “born in fear and supported by political cynicism”. Contrary to attempts of the USA to prove the democracy, at least 40 people in new decade remain hostages of the American special services “without an obvious end of their imprisonment”.