Detainees

Re "High Court Rejects Bush's Claim That He Alone Sets Detainee Rules," June 30 Well, now that the president has lost two cases related to his administration's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, do you think he gets the message? I wish I could say yes, but apparently he figures he can get Congress to change laws so he can continue in the same mode. What he hasn't figured out yet is that his policy violates international standards of decency, and he should be embarrassed, as an American, to continue with the policy.

Under gray skies all but obscured by an opaque canopy and high concrete walls topped with razor wire, two bearded young men in tan tunics are having "rec time" inside separate chain-link pens. One jogs frenziedly back and forth in the 30-foot enclosure; the other is curled like a fetus at the base of a cement block. It's a dreary winter afternoon, but the scene could be any time of the day or night. The hour for rec time is one of the few unpredictable features in a day in the life of a detainee.

Your Aug. 6 editorial, "Secrecy vs. the Republic," addressed only part of the violation of rights committed by our Justice Department. We the people do need to know the names of those jailed after the 9/11 attacks. We also need to protest in favor of the constitutional rights that prohibit their detention without due process. This point was driven home to me during a discussion at the Manzanar exhibit at the Japanese-American National Museum last Sunday. One of the survivors of the camp and I bemoaned the fact that the violations of U.S. law based on racial profiling that led to that camp were being used today against Arabs living in our country, many of whom are U.S. citizens.

An internment camp survivor, former American prisoners of war, 175 members of the British Parliament and a group of Hungarian Jews were among those celebrating the Supreme Court's decision on enemy combatants Monday. They were among about 20 individuals and interest groups who had filed amicus curiae briefs in support of detainees held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Solitary confinement in immigration detention centers across the nation is often overused and arbitrarily applied. According to data obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center, as many as 300 immigrants, or about 1% of all detainees in the 50 largest facilities in the country, are confined to small cells on any given day, even though many pose no security risk. In many cases, they're held there for 23 hours each day without a break, often for weeks. The use of solitary confinement is troubling enough in regular state and federal prisons, where inmates held in such conditions for prolonged periods are at risk for severe mental illness and suicide, according to medical experts.

In addition to banana rats, tarantulas and scorpions, this outpost is home to 3-foot-long iguanas, a protected species. It is also home to 300 increasingly angry prisoners of the war in Afghanistan whose status is far less defined, and that, admit U.S. military officials who are in charge of this makeshift prison, is becoming a problem. In unprecedented legal limbo as the U.S.

Detainees facing war crimes charges should have the right to represent themselves, despite Pentagon decisions that have "messed up" the military's ability to conduct fair trials, an Army defense lawyer said Friday. The right of accused individuals to self-representation is one of many issues in dispute as the military prepares to hear cases against 10 people whom the U.S. has designated as enemy combatants and detained at Guantanamo camps.