…cell without a number

Guantanamo Bay’s prison has been described by Amnesty International as the “Gulag of our times,” but it’s becoming more evident that the US maintained a far worse system of incarceration – so-called “Black Sites,” a euphemism for CIA-operated facilities that operated outside the reach of US law.


Rather than the masters of a single gulag, we appear to hold title to another gulag archipelago. The New Yorker is reporting that black sites have been engaging in conduct similar to that of Abu Ghraib, only much more organized and sophisticated.


Since the operations are highly classified, Jane Mayer’s article approaches the topic from the edges, but it’s abundantly clear that the CIA is attempting to extract intelligence from prisoners using methods that can only be described as torture.


As Abu Ghraib established, this conduct would provoke outrage if conducted in the open.
If this occurred on US soil, this conduct would be illegal.


So it occurs in secret, in other countries.

I am reminded of Jon Ronson’s story on This American Life, where he illustrates an amazingly similar situation from the 1600s.


Following the bloody civil war that led to the ascension of Oliver Cromwell and the execution of Charles I, the monarchy was restored to power. The followers of Charles II were determined that their enemies would never again be in a position to threaten the realm. One of the king’s advisors, Lord Clarendon proposed to suspend the right of habeas corpus and send the enemies of the realm to his own Guantanamo: far away prisons, never again to see the light of day.

Ronson: The exact location of Lord Clarendon’s Guantanamo is lost to history. … But suspending habeas corpus didn’t work out well for Lord Clarendon. He was impeached. At his impeachment trial, he was accused of sending people away to “remote islands, garrisons and other places, thereby to prevent them from the benefit of the law, and to produce precedents for the imprisoning of any other of his majesty’s subjects in like manner.” And remember, democracy as we know it is still centuries away. Innocent until proven guilty, one man one vote – only the most extreme radicals held these views.

These were dark times. There were heads on spikes all over London and still, the people were shocked by Clarendon’s disregard for habeas corpus.


…The one outcome of all of this was the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which specifically forbade what Clarendon had done, and made it illegal to send a prisoner into “Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, Tangier or into parts, garrisons, islands or places beyond the seas which are, or at any time hereafter shall be within or without the dominions of His Majesty.” And forbade it has remained for 330 years – in England, anyway.

England figured this out three centuries ago, is there any reason we have to learn it the hard way?

We’re the good guys, we should act like it.