US Demands UK Surveillance of Released Gitmo Detainees

George Bush has often tried to convince his countrymen and those around the world concerned about the fate of Gitmo detainees that his government wants them repatriated to their countries of origin but that some countries unreasonably refuse to take them back for unstated, vague reasons. On Tuesday, Reuters revealed why the UK is so hesitant:

LONDON (Reuters) - Surveillance which the United States demands Britain carry out on prisoners from Guantanamo Bay as a condition of freeing them would divert vital resources from more urgent threats, a British official has testified.

"The use of such resources ... at the level that would be required by the U.S. administration could not be justified, and would damage the protection of the UK's national security," Home Office (interior ministry) official William Nye said in a written witness statement to the Court of Appeal obtained by Reuters.

"It would involve the diversion of a significant quantity of finite intelligence-gathering resources ... from those who pose a greater threat to national security," he said.
[...]
...having held them as enemy combatants, some for more than four years, and branded them as dangerous Taliban and al Qaeda operatives, it wants assurances that governments will continue to keep a close eye on them.

Nye, director of the Home Office's Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Directorate, said Washington wanted "active and aggressive measures" but that it was not "feasible or desirable" for Britain to give such commitments.

What legal right does the Bush administration have to impose these conditions on other countries? To demand how they should deal with these detainees not found guilty of any crime by requiring 24 hour surveillance of them at home? Bushco has taken great pains to inform the public that those released from Gitmo have been deemed to no longer pose any credible threat but we now discover that isn't what they actually believe at all.

Meanwhile, due to the passage of the detainee bill last week, the legal fate of those in Gitmo is more fragile than ever and the outright approval of torture techniques that can now be solely defined by Bush threatens a replay of darker times in American history - yet another example of the fact that torture does not work. It's also apparent that, despite Bushco's constant bluster about doing everything possible to fight the so-called war on terror, massive oversights such as being unable to monitor the mail of high-risk inmates in the US prison system still keeps the public unsafe.

The other US detention center that we rarely hear anything about is located in Bagram, Afghanistan. Perhaps the filing of a lawsuit challenging the detention of 25 of the estimated 500 prisoners kept there will foster more public interest in the fate of those incarcerated if they can be distracted from the fallout of the Foley sex scandal long enough to actually pay attention. Americans, in particular, ought to be doing just that since the bill has broadened the definition of unlawful combatants in such a way that it's not unreasonable to believe that Americans suspected in any way of supporting terrorism can now face the same legal purgatory and indefinite detention as those currently housed in Gitmo, Bagram and the many secret prisons the CIA maintains worldwide.

Lawyers for the Britons held in Gitmo reacting to its government's complaints about the US demands for costly surveillance had this to say:

"If the British want to put my clients under 24-hour surveillance, my clients will wear tags, they'll do anything they like. They can even watch them on the toilet, for all we care. That's already happening to them in Guantanamo, and they can't be any worse off," he told Reuters.

That is how desperate this situation has become for some. They are willing to give up their civil rights at home once they are released, having never been found guilty of any crime, just to be free of the oppressive US government. That reality, of course, mirrors the fact that most Americans have been more than willing to give up their rights since 9/11 via the passage of the so-called Patriot Act, tacit approval of the illegal wiretapping of their phones and an attitude that they have nothing to fear from their government since they, themselves, are not 'terrorists' after all. The Bush administration continues to shred America's cherished Constitution right before their very eyes while the public is easily distracted by more mundane concerns and that is a dangerous place to be in these times.