Editorial: Basic rights for detainees

Friday, June 15, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

F ormer Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that if things were left to him, he would close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, where about 380 suspected terrorists are held, and send them to the United States.

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," Powell said he would move the prisoners at Guantanamo to the federal legal system , where they could challenge the charges against them. The argument against doing so, Powell said, is that the detainees would have access to lawyers and to challenge their imprisonment.

"So what?" said Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Let them. Isn't that what our system is all about?"

President Bush has said he wants to close the prison, but the reality is that it serves the administration very well because prisoners have no rights as long as they sit at the base in Cuba.

Federal courts, meanwhile, have repeatedly criticized the administration's systematic jailing of those deemed to be enemy combatants because doing so flies in the face of all the American legal tradition stands for - detainees have no rights to a speedy trial, no right to an attorney and no right to be heard.

Although it is clear that the military has detained some vicious terrorists, it is also clear that the military has often not been very discriminating about whom it has detained, and that is why it is important to have an open court system and allow detainees the right to be heard.

Powell said the U. S. should do away with the military commission system for trying detainees in favor of federal or military courts. The Guantanamo prison and the system of military tribunals trying the detainees has, Powell said, "shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system."

The way Bush has handled this, like the way he has handled the whole war, has been a disgrace. It is time to give the detainees their fair day in court.