Editorial: Extend rights to detainees

Wednesday, March 8, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

In response to a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act by the Associated Press, the Defense Department last Friday released more than 5,000 documents pertaining to international terrorism suspects being held by the American military at Guantanamo Bay.

The documents are incomplete - they do not provide a full list of prisoner names, evidence against them or information on the disposition of their cases - but they do provide more insight than has ever been revealed about the detention center since it opened after 9/11.

One theme above all struck us after reading accounts of the documents in The New York Times. That is the nearly total deprivation of rights experienced by the hundreds of men who are imprisoned. If they had been arrested in the United States, the conditions of their imprisonment would be in flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution.

A story in the Times on Monday confirms that many of the suspects are likely enemies of the United States whose detention is well justified. Their own words spoken defiantly to American military review panels are self-revealing. But other transcripts of hearings show that many of the prisoners are arguing plaintively - and futilely - that their detention is the result of mistaken identity.

One prisoner, for example, is accused of being Abdur Jahid Rahman, former deputy foreign minister of the Taliban. The transcripts show him saying, "My name is Abdur Sayed Rahman. I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan."

That could be a lie. Or it could be the truth. But without the right to be released if formal charges are not promptly filed, or the right to a speedy and public jury trial, or most of the other rights guaranteed by our Constitution, who will ever know?

Several detainees are at Guantanamo because they were caught in possession of a certain brand of watch, which summaries of their cases say "have been used in bombings linked to al-Qaida." One prisoner explained that the watch has a built-in compass, which enabled him to bow toward Mecca for his daily prayers. Is there any evidence to contradict this reasonable-sounding explanation? In the secret world of Guantanamo, where prisoners are held indefinitely and indiscriminately, who will ever know?