10 Years Since Historic Legal Victory Protecting Rights of Guantanamo Detainees

Michael Ratner: 10 years after the Center for Constitutional Rights won a major civil rights case that ended or limited torture of Guantanamo detainees, 149 people remain in detention though 88 detainees have been cleared for release

1 hour ago

Transcript: ANTON WORONCZUK, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Anton Woronczuk in Baltimore. And welcome to another edition of The Ratner Report.

Now joining us is Michael Ratner. He's the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City, and he's also a board member of The Real News Network.

Thanks for joining us, Michael.

WORONCZUK: So what do you have for us this week?

RATNER: Well, I want to talk about a case that the Center for Constitutional Rights and I was deeply involved in, and it has to do, of course, with Guantanamo--not of course, but that's what it does, and which, of course, still has 149 people at Guantanamo. Eighty-eight have been cleared for release, not released yet. And I'm talking about it today in particular because we're coming up on the tenth anniversary. On June 28, 2014, is the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court case that the Center for Constitutional Rights brought in an effort to give some rights to Guantanamo detainees. People may recall when Guantanamo was opened George Bush said they have no right to test their detention, no right to habeas corpus, they can be held incommunicado. The Center thought that was offensive, unconstitutional, immoral, inhuman, etc.

We went to court, and the case that we won on June 28 was called Rasul v. Bush. It was named after an English Muslim who was in Guantanamo along with some other plaintiffs that we had. And it was a significant case. It said that the people at Guantanamo had the right to test their detention in a court.

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