Pentagon Rejoins the Fight Over Guantanamo

Conservative talkers will be flogging this story from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has returned to terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

The conclusion could strengthen the arguments of critics who have warned against the transfer or release of any more detainees as part of President Obama’s plan to shut down the prison by January. Past Pentagon reports on Guantánamo recidivism have been met with skepticism from civil liberties groups and criticized for their lack of detail.

That might be because the Pentagon considers former detainees giving interviews critical of the United States as "terrorism or militant activity." According to a report by Seton Hall Law School's Mark Denbeaux, the "Tipton Three" who participated in the documentary The Road to Guantánamo and one of five Uighurs released to Albania wrote a New York Times op-ed urging "American lawmakers to protect habeas corpus." The Pentagon counts all as anti-American activity under the rubric, "returned to the fight."

Today's report that one in seven (14%) detainees released from Guantanamo have returned to "terrorism or militant activity" is higher than past estimates. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates recidivism among the overall U.S. prison population at 67.5% (a fifteen-year study of prisoners rearrested within 3 years). The figure is about 60% for violent offenders, over four times higher than the Pentagon's estimate for detainees released from Guantanamo.

Based on raw numbers, prisoners arrested, tried and convicted under the U.S. system of justice are four times as likely to be career criminals than those summarily (and indefinitely) jailed at Guantanamo. One could argue that the U.S. justice system does a far better job of identifying and adjudicating hardcore bad guys than the U.S. military.

In addition to run-of-the-mill mass murderers and serial killers, U.S. jails presently hold over a dozen convicted foreign terrorists. David Corn and Steve Aquino listed a sampling for Mother Jones:

* Omar Ahmad-Rahman, a.k.a. the Blind Sheikh, who was convicted for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center attack, is in the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.

* Richard Reid, the failed shoe-bomber terrorist, is in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado.

* John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban," is in the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex.

* Ramzi Yousef, one of the planners of the 1993 WTC bombing and a nephew of 9/11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, is in Florence.

* Jose Padilla, accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack (before those particular charges were dropped), is in Florence.

* Zacarias Moussaoui, dubbed the "20th hijacker," is in Florence.

* Ahmed Ressam, who planned to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, is in Florence.

* Mohamed al-Owhali, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, Mohamed Odeh, and Wadih el Hage—each convicted for the bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998—are in Florence.

* Domestic terrorists Terry Nichols and Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski are also in the Florence facility.

Remind me again, why can't U.S. courts and prisons be trusted to handle Guantanamo detainees?

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