Review for Guantanamo detainees

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The White House is drafting an executive order for President Obama on Guantanamo. The order would formalize the indefinite detention without trial of some Guantanamo detainees, while setting up a system of periodic reviews of their cases. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Lt. Col David Frakt of the US Air Force Reserve JAG Corps. Frakt says the order might allow some detainees to effectively challenge their incarceration. Download MP3

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Hi I am Marco Werman. This is The World. President Obama vowed to shut down the US military prison at Guantanamo. That was almost two years ago. And Mr. Obama has yet to find a way to fulfill that pledge. Today he suffered another setback. The Senate approved a bill that would ban the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the US for trial and incarceration. Now what has officials say they’re preparing an executive order that would formalize the detainees’ indefinite detention without trial while setting up a system for periodic reviews of their cases? Lieutenant Colonel David Frakt is the US air force reserve JAG corps. He’s defending Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad. Frakt says the executive order might bring about an improvement for the detainees.

DAVID FRAKT: What’s important about this new review process is that at least as it has been reported the detainees will be entitled to a council to a system in the process. And that did not exist in the earlier combatant status review tribunal administrative review board process. And I think that’s a major improvement.

WERMAN: Some people have said this draft order is equivalent of a parole board for prisoners. Is that accurate for [xx]?

FRAKT: Well it does have some of those features. What we have focused on before was was this person an unlawful combatant at the time that they were captured? And that may have been in 2001-2002-2003. And it does very little look at is there a continued basis to hold them now. And so this hearing process may say well we were lawfully holding them in our opinion but is there a good reason to hold them? Perhaps they have renounced terrorism, or they have cooperated, or conditions have changed in their home country and we’re comfortable that could release them without concern of them rejoining the fight. So in that sense it does have some parole board like features.

WERMAN: So are we going to hear them what some of those good reasons are for holding these detainees?

FRAKT: I would hope that we would. This is a large question that remains regarding these 48 individuals that allegedly are too dangerous to release but cannot be tried for any crimes. And I have always wondered and asked how can that be? Is it we cannot try them because they never committed any crimes, or we can’t try them because the evidence of their crimes was obtained through torture and coercion. We really don’t know. So this will be an opportunity to put to the test the government’s claim that these people really are too dangerous to release, yet somehow cannot be tried.

WERMAN: I’m just wondering, I mean many civil liberty groups have been vocal in the criticisms of this draft executive order. Do you feel like we are heading to this kind of new space where there are two worlds where people can get charged and some people won’t get charged?

FRAKT: Well, my primary criticism of this is that it may lend of a near of legality and legitimacy to indefinite detentions that may not be well founded under international law. There clearly is a right to detain people and not to charge them that are captured in an armed conflict that are enemy combatants. But what about people who have some affiliation with some terrorist group, that are picked up outside of an active theater of war? For a lot of civil libertarians there’s concern that we’re importing a military detention model into what really should be a criminal justice process.

WERMAN: You know, president Obama pledged to change things at Guantanamo. Do you think what we’re seeing now is just a kind of a fine tuning of the same policy basically as the Bush administration?

FRAKT: Yes. I mean it is an improvement. Conditions at Guantanamo have improved for the detainees and there has been an effort to make Guantanamo comply with domestic and international law rather than simply declaring it to be a law free zone. Yet, the underline policy of holding suspected enemy terrorists forever remains the same.

WERMAN: Lieutenant colonel David Frakt defended Guantanamo detainee Mohammad Jawad. He is a professor at the Barry University School of Law in Orlando. Thanks very much.

FRAKT: You’re welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.