Constitutional Law

ACLU's Anthony Romero on Obama's First Year

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero spoke with Glenn Greenwald for Salon Radio about the release of our report evaluating President Obama's first year in office. Speaking specifically about the president's failure to meet his own deadline to close Guantánamo, Anthony says:

Guantánamo is not just a physical location or a symbolic gesture. It's also about a set of rules and policies that have been attached at Guantánamo. The holding of individuals without charges or trial, the lack of access to counsel, the conditions of their confinement, the conditions of their transfer, have not been worked out in the Thompson proposal. And in the end, if we move individuals who are being held indefinitely without charges or trial from Guantánamo to Thompson, Illinois, and we still hold them indefinitely without charges or trial, we've not fixed the Guantánamo problem, we've just shifted it to Guantánamo North.

Listen to the entire interview here, or read the transcript here.

Full post as published by Blog of Rights on January 25, 2010 (boomark / email).