The Swiss agreed to grant asylum to this individual in December on humanitarian grounds, after he had spent the past seven years at Guantanamo.
Seven years without ever being charged with an offense! Seven! Years! Without! Being! Charged! Seven years without ever once being allowed to clear one's name!
A travesty of justice? Well, er ... yes.
Long, long ago, in 1215, at Runnymede, King John of England was forced by his barons to sign a document known as the Magna Carta. The powers of the King, up to then practically limitless, were for the first time limited in an agreed-upon manner, even if the agreement on the King's side was coerced. Certain rights of his subjects were explicitly protected. Among rights that were implicitly protected was the right of appeal against unlawful imprisonment. That right of appeal against unlawful imprisonment ultimately developed into what is now known as the writ of habeas corpus. The Magna Carta forever changed the course of legal history in the English-speaking world and influenced common law systems. It had a profound influence on the United States Constitution, into which the writ of habeas corpus was incorporated. Article One, Section 9 of the Constitution states: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety requires it." [emphasis mine] A writ of habeas corpus is used as a legal avenue to challenge pretrial detention, even when those detained are not US citizens.
The writ of habeas corpus was suspended at extraordinary times and in certain areas throughout the relatively short history of the United States. For example, President Abraham Lincoln suspended it in 1862 during the American Civil War in Maryland and parts of midwestern states. President Ulysses S. Grant suspended it in the early 1870s against nine counties in South Carolina as part of federal civil rights action against the Ku Klux Klan. The writ was suspended from 1942 to 1944 in Hawaii by President Franklin Roosevelt, following the imposition of martial law there in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Although each of these suspensions was considered controversial even at the time, it was also arguable that in each case, there was a genuine issue of public safety that tipped the scales in favor of the suspension. In each case, once the public safety issue was resolved, however, the suspension was lifted as soon as possible thereafter so that the court system could function normally.
Former President George W. Bush did something unprecedented in a democracy, however. He did not actually suspend the writ. He totally ignored it. On 13 November 2001, he issued a Military Order stating that individuals could be held indefinitely without charges being filed against them, without a court hearing, and without entitlement to a legal consultant. This Order was not only in direct opposition to a person's right to a writ of habeas corpus, but also to a person's rights to counsel and to a fair and speedy trial as specifically provided for in the US Bill of Rights. Bush Administration lawyers used contrived definitions and circumstances to argue how and why the US Constitution and Bill of Rights should not apply to prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, especially as they were not US citizens. But the US Supreme Court, even this conservative one, and other US Courts did not buy those arguments. Thank heavens for us all, they reaffirmed prisoners' rights, time and again, in a series of decisions.
Finally, on 21 January 2009, shortly after being sworn into office, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order, not only reinstating the writ of habeas corpus but also ordering the "immediate" review of the status of each detainee together with a "prompt and thorough" review of the circumstances of all those who had been charged with offenses, and providing specifically for the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. That task has proven to be much more difficult than we had all hoped.
Yesterday's article about our recently arrived asylum seeker featured an interview with another former prisoner at Guantanamo. Mourad Benchellali, a French national of Algerian origin, was held at Guantanamo for two and one-half years, before being released to French authorities in 2004. He spent another two years behind bars in France until his eventual release in 2006. He stated that he has been able to reintegrate into French society primarily because he grew up in France and knew how the system worked. He is now employed as a tile installer ("carreleur"), is married and has a child. He still has residual trauma from his years behind bars. Mr. Benchellali believes that it will be more difficult for the gentleman from Uzbekistan to integrate into Swiss society because he will not have had the same cultural background and that therefore Swiss social services will have to help him more than French authorities helped Mr. Benchellali.
Some comments below the story reflect that some individuals cannot understand why the asylum seeker was not simply returned to Uzbekistan. Others, more knowledgeable about the situation in Uzbekistan and the likelihood of further persecution, if not outright torture or death there, note that asylum to a third country was the only option. In today's paper, it was noted that the gentleman is a pastry cook ("pâtissier") and that this profession was one of the considerations in accepting his relocation here.
Well done for Switzerland.
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