Introduction
Since 9/11, the specter of terror attacks has turned US terror policies upside down. Legislations that broadened the scope of government ability to detain terrorist as well as an extensive overhaul of government departments ensued. The US, long known for its adherence to due process, immediately gathered and arrested terrorist suspects detaining them in a military prison facility outside of the country taking liberties that it would not have ordinarily done or allowed to do under ordinary circumstances. The handling of terrorist suspects is one of the most debated issues in recent times. On one hand, the government wants to take the liberty of snatching suspects unfettered by constitutional concerns, and on the other, human rights advocates wanted the government to abide by constitutional guarantees.
Processing Terrorist Convicts
In the early days of the War of Terror – the military campaign led by the United States in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on US soil – captured suspected terrorists were brought to Guantanamo. Guantanamo is a US military prison inside a US military installation in Cuba. In 2005, more than 500 of such detainees were housed in Guantanamo (Flynn p. 96). This was part of the government’s plan to try terrorist suspects via the military tribunals (Wilkinson 2014, p.77). This was met with criticisms, particularly from human rights advocates because of the evident denial of human rights, such as access to outside visitors, absence of fixed trial dates, being held without charges and a general absence of a fixed law governing their detention. Reports also surfaced that the prisoners were not treated humanely in accordance with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, which provides for the minimal treatment of prisoners during non-international conflicts (Flynn p. 96). In 2006, the Supreme Court validated this charge in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld 548 U.S. 557 (2006), where it held that the detention of suspects in Guantanamo violated the Geneva Conventions, including Article 3. The plan of the Obama Administration to shut down the Guantanamo prison and move the trials to federal courts was strongly resisted (Wilkinson 2014, p. 78).
Incarcerating Terrorists
Convicted serious terrorists are incarcerated in prisons with the highest level of security. Even before Guantanamo, for example, persons convicted of terrorism, were imprisoned in maximum security federal prisons, such as the one found in Florence, Colorado. Short for supermaximum, the Colorado supermax prison have housed in 2009 33 terroists, including Raamzi Youssef, leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 conspirators, and Wadih el-Hage, the 1998 Kenya US Embassy bomber (Johnson & Pincus 2009). Facilities similar to ADX (for Administrative Maximum Facility) Florence include those established in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois, among others (Kaplan 2009).
Supermax prisons are segregated long term housing for serious convicts. A supermax prison is about 7x12 foot and scenes, such as lining up for meals in mess hall or showers are not common sight. Each cell holds only one prisoner with meals and showers are taken inside it. The prisoner stays inside for 22 to 24 hours a day, unless there medical reasons or visits. Visits are always no-contact. Hundreds of cameras keep track of each and every prisoner’s movements and moving one from area to another means locking segments of prisons through electronic gates that separate one segment from another. A prisoner never stays in one cell for long to really be familiarized with it as he is rotated weekly from one cell to another. Access to newspapers is censored and delayed by several weeks, so that the news a prisoner is reading is already several weeks old. Communication is also monitored and transcribed (Walsh 2007).
Constitutional Guarantees
The guarantees provided by the US Constitution extend to prisoners convicted of terrorism in the US as well, according to the US Supreme Court. In Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008), the Court held that basic constitutional rights, such as habeas corpus, extend even to those accused of terrorism. This holding contradicted the lower court decision, which held that a terrorist prisoner has no constitutional rights. A foreign person charged with terrorism in the US has also the right to access the US court system as was held in Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004). This decision predated the Hamdan case which outlawed the use military tribunals set up by the executive branch to try terrorism cases. In the same year, the Court also ruled that US citizens who are being detained and charged with terrorism have the right to due process guaranteed under the Constitution and may challenge their status in courts.
Before the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush, the Court held in the early case of Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950) that the US courts have no jurisdiction over persons captured outside of US jurisdiction and detained in US administered prison outside the country. Evidently, this has changed with the holding in the recent case of Rasul. As a matter of fact, the lower court based its decision to dismiss the case on the Eisentrager case, but as history has shown this was overturned by the US Supreme Court.
Conclusion
The 9/11 incident created so much impact on government policies in handling terrorism and terrorists. The government took the liberty of bringing in all and every suspect it could find unmindful of constitutional concerns. Public attention and the courts, however, have managed to whittle down a little of the authorities overkill highlighting the rights enshrined under the Constitution that should be made applicable to all – terrorist or no terrorist.
References
Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008)
Flynn, E. (2007). How Just is the War on Terror?: A Question of Morality. Paulist Press.
Hamdam v. Rumsfeld 548 U.S. 557 (2006).
Johnson, C. & Pincus, W. (2009). ‘Supermax Prisons in U.S. Already Hold International Terrorists.’ Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052102009.html
Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950)
Kaplan, F. (2009). ‘There Are Already 355 Terrorists in American Prisons.’ Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2009/05/there_are_already_ 355_terrorists_in_american_prisons.html.
Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004).
Walsh, C. (2007). ‘Security Inside the Supermax Prison.’ CSO. http://www.csoonline.com/article/2122162/access-control/security-inside-the-supermax- prison.html
Wilkinson, P. (2014). Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response. Taylor & Francis.
