 Guantanamo policy in hot debate
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-03 07:42 President-elect Barack Obama's choice to become the next attorney general, Eric Holder, once defended the Bush administration's arguments for holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, a position that runs counter to his more recent comments - and to a signature policy of the incoming administration. Holder, a confidant to Obama on legal issues, recently has been a leading voice in the chorus calling to close Guantanamo Bay, which he has described as an international embarrassment. Likewise, Obama has called it a "sad chapter in American history," pledged to close the prison at the US Navy base in Cuba, and criticized the Bush administration for arguing that terrorism suspects aren't covered by standards set by the Geneva Conventions. But in the months after the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks, Holder defended the Bush administration's policies at Guantanamo. Asked whether terrorism suspects could be held forever, Holder responded: "It seems to me you can think of these people as combatants and we are in the middle of a war," Holder said in a CNN interview in January 2002. Just weeks later, Holder told CNN he didn't believe Al-Qaida suspects qualified as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. "One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located," said Holder, the former deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration. "Under the Geneva Convention, you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people." Holder said it was important to treat detainees humanely. But he said they "are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war." He also downplayed criticism that prisoners were being mistreated. "Those in Europe and other places who are concerned about the treatment of al-Qaida members should come to Camp X-ray and see how the people are, in fact, being treated," he said. Agencies (China Daily 12/03/2008 page11) |
