Closing Guantanamo and Investigating the Past:Chances for Renewing Transatlantic Ties?

摘要

Closing Guantanamo confronts the United States and the West more generally with two different but interrelated tasks. The first is facing up to the past detention policy: how could it happen that the prohibition against torture, which both academics and policymakers regarded as a strong and consolidated norm in international relations, yielded under the weight of the shock and fear caused by the events of 11 September 2001?This pertains to the United States in particular, but it also applies to European states (and other US allies). Though the latter were not the driving force behind the erosion of the prohibition against torture, the extent to which they assisted in, or at least condoned, the process is neither fully known nor reflected in the public debate yet. The second challenge is the more immediate requirement to improve the humanitarian situation of those detained in Guantanamo and at other detention sites (such as Bagram air base) and to offer them some means of redress.