Guantanamo: A former prosecutor’s solution to an ‘unsolvable problem’

There’s no simple way to close Guantanamo Bay. According to one former prosecutor, political courage may be the key to justice in this case.

When Omar Ashmawy, then a United States Air Force officer, volunteered for the job of prosecuting Guantanamo Bay detainees in 2007, he had high hopes for America’s prospects of dispensing justice. 

“I believed in the idea that military tribunals historically have been a way for nation-states to resolve crimes against humanity, and I think terrorism very much qualifies as a crime against humanity,” he says. 

The Supreme Court had recently ruled that the Bush administration’s process for trying terrorist suspects violated their rights – as well as the Geneva Conventions – by, among other things, barring defendants from viewing the evidence against them. That was a promising development, he thought. 

There’s no simple way to close Guantanamo Bay. According to one former prosecutor, political courage may be the key to justice in this case.

At the same time, someone he “very much respected” was the Defense Department’s chief prosecutor at the time. “If that individual was willing to put his name behind the process, then that was something I was comfortable doing as well.”