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“Interestingly, some detainees were offered release, and asked to stay in Gitmo. They prefer captivity in Gitmo to freedom in their own countries!” Rotunda told CNSNews.com by e-mail.
Far from being tortured, as some protestors outside the White House alleged last week, Rotunda said prisoners at Gitmo are allowed to take classes (with some even receiving “home-schooling”), can read Harry Potter books in Arabic and are given their choice of athletic shoes for playing sports. What’s more, the Defense Department has even flown in special fruits and nuts for detainees to observe Ramadan, Rotunda said, although the detainees’ request for a goat to be sacrificed was declined--in deference to PETA.
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“They are outside of their housing bays for up to 12 hours a day. During that time, they can take classes, visit the library--which has over 5,000 titles, including the Harry Potter series translated into Arabic, which are very popular--exercise, check out movies or games, play sports--detainees can chose from a selection of athletic shoes--or even visit the computer lab.”
Rotunda, who served as a prosecutor in the Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) office while stationed at Gitmo, is now a civilian who teaches military and international law at Chapman University Law School in Southern California and lectures at the University California at Berkeley. The author of “Honor Bound: Inside the Guantanamo Trials,” a book about her experiences at Gitmo, Rotunda said she recently learned about one detainee who asked, through his lawyer, “for an academic course offering that was more closely tailored to his educational interests and needs.”
“The Pentagon responded affirmatively and assigned lawyers to 'home-school' this detainee,” she said. “These lawyers regularly travel from Washington, D.C., to Guantanamo Bay to tutor the detainee--carefully following a curriculum that was agreed upon by the Pentagon and the detainee’s lawyer.”
Rotunda said that while most detainees live in open bays and “enjoy a lot of flexibility and freedom of movement,” a small handful of detainees (including those awaiting trial), live in a brick and mortar prison, which, she said, is modeled after a prison in Indiana.
“They have fewer freedoms and privileges, but the conditions meet U.S. standards,” according to Rotunda.
But all detainees are allowed to freely exercise their religion, the former Army prosecutor said. In fact, the U.S. goes out of its way to host events to mark important religious holidays.
Last week, activists wearing black hoods, protested outside the White House, claiming in a news release that the Obama administration was culpable for the “ongoing torture, mistreatment and indefinite detention of troops at Guantanamo Bay.”
“Black hoods that are now emblematic of the policies of torture and abuse that the Obama administration inherited from President Bush and has further entrenched,” the group Witness Against Torture said in the press release.
But professor Rotunda said detainees at Gitmo do not wear black hoods and denied that torture had occurred at Guantanamo Bay. “We know that some detainees were water-boarded by the CIA,” the former Army major said. “However, nobody was ever water-boarded at Guantanamo Bay, or at the hands of U.S. soldiers. Guantanamo Bay has undergone several investigations and all have reached the same conclusion--that detainees were not water-boarded or otherwise tortured in Gitmo.
She added: “After assuming office, President Obama launched yet another investigation, which resulted in a finding that the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in fact, fully complied with the Geneva Conventions.”
Rotunda points out that the detainees the U.S. is holding in Gitmo are not domestic criminals but enemy combatants.
“The U.S. holds detainees in Gitmo who are 'enemy combatants,' which essentially means that they took up arms against the U.S.,” she said.
“International Law requires a hearing, which affords very basic procedural protections," she said. "The U.S.--without any legal obligation to do so--has adopted procedural protections that exceed what International Law and the Geneva Conventions require.”
In fact, every detainee receives a hearing--called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal--before being detained. “Additionally, each detainee then receives an annual hearing--called an Annual Review Board--which is essentially a yearly parole board,” she said.
“The U.S. has released hundreds of detainees through the ARB Process,” she said. “About 25 percent of the released detainees return to the battlefield to fight against U.S. forces.
“Releasing enemy combatants back to the battlefield during a time of war is unprecedented and extremely dangerous," Rotunda said. "Some claim that the U.S. releases too few detainees--I think it releases too many.”