Guantanamo Hearing Shifts Focus to World Opinion of U.S.

June 26, 2007— -- In a hearing Tuesday examining the legal basis for holding detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the focus turned to world opinion of the United States and the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies.

Amid recent debate over whether to close the detention facility altogether, the House Judiciary Committee is considering legislation to allow Guantanamo detainees to petition U.S. courts to challenge their confinement.

The facility was set up shortly after 9/11 to hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda detainees captured after the U.S. war in Afghanistan, but so far the Pentagon has only held military commissions for three al Qaeda members, out of the 375 detainees currently held at Guantanamo.

The legal arguments over the detention facility and detainee rights shifted to how the United States is perceived around the world.

"No executive in an English-speaking country has claimed such tyrannical power since before the Magna Carta 800 years ago," House Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Gerald Nadler, D-N.Y., said.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, a lawyer for Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, told the House committee that the image of Guantanamo was affecting America's standing in the Muslim world and had become a recruiting tool in jihadist propaganda.

"Guantanamo is Uncle Sam's recruiting poster of jihadist recruitment," he said.

Lt. Cmdr Swift said people in the Middle East look at Guantanamo as a reflection of values in the United States. Swift described a 2004 trip he took with a female lawyer to visit Hamdan's family in Yemen.

"The grandmother of that household brought together all the little girls of the household, and she pointed to my female colleague and said, 'Look at her. She went to school. She studied very, very hard. And now she's a lawyer,'" Swift said about his trip to Yemen with his colleague.

Swift continued with his anecdote, telling the committee, "And then she looked into their faces and said, 'If you go to school and study very, very hard, you can be anything.' Now, that woman is obviously Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare."