| NEW YORK CITY
— The U.S. Department of Defense has denied a written
request from the National Council of Churches USA (NCC) for permission
to send a small interfaith delegation to visit detainees at the
U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay later this month.
NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar made the request in a Dec. 8,
2003, letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General
John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. On Jan.
16, he received a reply from Dr. Jeffrey M. Starr, Principal Director
for Special Operations Program Support in the U.S. Department
of Defense, who wrote, “Unfortunately it is not possible
for your group to meet with the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba.”
In response, Dr. Edgar said today that the NCC would “seek
a meeting with U.S. government officials to press the issue of
faith leaders’ access to the Guantanamo detainees.”
The Council also will continue to advocate for the due process
rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees, he said. The NCC is part of
a broad coalition of domestic and international religious, legal
and human rights organizations that filed a friend of the court
brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 14, asserting that foreign
nationals being held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay
have the right to challenge the legality of their detention.
Permission for interfaith visit
was requested Dec. 8
Edgar said in the Dec. 8 letter that he and other U.S. religious
leaders, including the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick of the Presbyterian
Church (USA) and the heads of several other denominations, would
be in Cuba Jan. 22-28 for the consecration of a new Greek Orthodox
Cathedral in Havana and for consultation with Cuban and other
Latin American religious leaders, and requested that “a
small group from this U.S. delegation” along with Muslim,
Jewish and other religious community leaders “be allowed
to visit the detainees at Guantanamo Bay while in Cuba.”
“This request stems from our religious conviction that all
people — regardless of religion, culture, or status —
be treated with dignity, which translates to humanitarian concern
for the detainees’ physical and mental well being, and pastoral
concern for their spiritual well being,” he wrote. “This
conviction reinforces our civic concern as Americans for their
rights under accepted international agreements and U.S. law.”
“The members of our delegation each represent large constituencies
that share these human rights concerns,” Edgar wrote. “It
would certainly reassure these religious leaders and their churches
to know that their concerns are respected by our country’s
political leaders. Therefore I urge you to grant this request
and allow members of the delegation to visit Guantanamo.”
In his reply, which Edgar received Jan. 16, Starr noted, “The
United States continues to be engaged in an armed conflict with
al Qaida and its supporters.” Access to detainees “is
only provided to the International Committee of the Red Cross,
and on a case-by-case basis to government officials for legitimate
government purposes,” he wrote.
He went on to assure Edgar that the United States “has
treated and will continue to treat enemy combatants humanely and,
to the extent appropriate, in a manner consistent with the principles
of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949. They are provided with
proper shelter and excellent medical care,” Starr wrote.
“Each is allowed to exercise his religious beliefs, and
have been provided a Koran to do so. Additionally, all are provided
food consistent with their religious requirements.”
Court brief on detention conditions
pending
The NCC is part of a broad coalition of domestic and international
religious, legal and human rights organizations participating
in a friend of the court brief — filed with the U.S. Supreme
Court on Jan. 14 by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights —
in Al Odah v. United States and Rasul v. Bush-consolidated cases
that will test the assertion that the approximately 660 foreign
nationals held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
have no means of challenging the legality of their detention in
court.
“What we are saying is that there is no land without law.
The law of the United States requires due process, and so does
international law,” said Antonios Kireopoulos, the NCC’s
Associate General Secretary for International Affairs and Peace,
New York. “The NCC, as a religious organization, is interested
from a moral standpoint in the right to due process, which is
being denied the detainees in Guantanamo.”
Despite widespread international protest, the United States has
been holding foreign nationals from more than 40 different countries
at Guantanamo since early 2002. The detainees have not been afforded
a hearing to determine their participation in any conflict, or
their connection to any crime.
At issue before the Supreme Court is an expansive decision by
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which held that
foreign nationals detained at Guantanamo may not petition U.S.
courts for review of their detention-because Guantanamo is not
formally U.S. “sovereign” territory. This ruling came
despite the fact that U.S. courts are the only courts to which
detainees can assert their innocence. The U.S. government exercises
“complete jurisdiction and control” over Guantanamo
under a perpetual lease signed by Cuba and the United States in
1903.
The brief argues that the Guantanamo detainees are entitled to
review of their detention under the U.S. habeas corpus statute,
which applies to anyone detained in violation of the laws or treaties
of the United States.
In their habeas petitions, the detainees argue that their detention
violates the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment
of Prisoners of War and the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution-both
eligible grounds for review under the statute.
The brief also warns that the D.C. Circuit’s decision places
the United States in conflict with other democracies, including
Israel and the United Kingdom, which have long rejected the notion
that governments can sidestep judicial review by holding individuals
outside their sovereign territory.
It also places the United States in violation of international
law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, which the United States formally adopted in 1992.
“The National Council of Churches has a long tradition
of advocating for civil liberties and human rights,” said
Kireopoulos. “In essence, in this case, we are urging our
country, as a citizen of the world, to uphold the rights mandated
by our international obligations — indeed, by our own Constitution.”
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