WASHINGTON — To date, the U.S. government hasn't given any former detainee financial compensation or apologized for wrongfully imprisoning him, shipping him around the world and holding him without legal recourse.
The 38 former Guantánamo detainees found to be no longer enemy combatants by tribunal hearings were flown out of Cuba with nothing but the clothes on their backs and assorted items such as copies of the Quran and military-issue shampoo bottles.
"It's particularly deplorable that none of the 38 NLECs [no longer enemy combatants] have been compensated, since the U.S. has officially recognized that they weren't 'enemy combatants,' even under the broad U.S. definition," said Joanne Mariner, of Human Rights Watch.
Ian Seiderman, a senior legal adviser for Amnesty International, agreed. "The fact that [compensation] hasn't happened at all, even in a small number of cases, shows that this administration is more concerned with avoiding scrutiny and accountability than it is the rule of law," said Seiderman, who previously served as a legal adviser to the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists and assistant to the special rapporteur on torture for the United Nations.
Seiderman cited two U.N. measures — including the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, for which the United States is a signatory — that he said call for compensation in cases such as those of many former Guantánamo detainees.
The former general counsel of the Defense Department, William Haynes, and the general counsel of the State Department, John Bellinger, declined interview requests, as did several other officials.
Human-rights advocates said they don't expect action from the U.S. government soon. The Bush administration has cut off most domestic legal channels, often claiming cases can't proceed, either because the evidence involved includes state secrets or because those who might be charged are immune from prosecution.
The administration also has refused to take part in foreign court proceedings in which international laws against cruel or unusual treatment of detainees could be enforced.
When Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, it included a section forbidding U.S. courts from hearing almost any detainee cases against the government or its representatives. The act blocks legal actions related to "any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination."
In January, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed a case filed by four former Guantánamo detainees who said their mistreatment amounted to physical torture and religious harassment.
The court agreed with the government that even if the former detainees, all British citizens, had been tortured, those who tortured them would be protected under the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988, which provides immunity in some cases to federal workers for actions done within the scope of their employment.
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