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Ellison's feelings on Guantanamo mixed

After visiting the facility, the congressman says that conditions are better than he expected but that the detainees' lack of legal rights remains a serious concern.

By KEVIN DUCHSCHERE, Star Tribune

Last update: January 25, 2008 - 11:23 PM

Conditions at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are better than he expected, but U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison said Friday that he is more concerned than ever about the lack of legal rights afforded terrorism suspects and others imprisoned there.

"We must balance our security interests with our commitment to human rights," said Ellison, , D-Minn., who has criticized the detention of a Sudanese journalist who has been held at Guantanamo for more than five years without charges.

The Minneapolis congressman spoke Friday morning at the University of Minnesota Law School, a day after Defense Department officials gave him and U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, a hastily arranged tour of the facility at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Ellison had expressed interest in going and was given a seat on a routine military transport flight to the base.

The camp, which has released hundreds of prisoners since its inception in 2002, now houses about 275 men captured during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on which Ellison sits, was also invited on the trip but declined after being told he couldn't talk to the detainees.

Ellison said that he went to Guantanamo "sure that I wanted it closed down," but that he tried to keep an open mind.

He came back less certain that it should be closed, he said, but eager to shine "a bright light" on it.

Some of what he saw impressed him. Detention officials "are professional, they're polite, they're doing a difficult job and they didn't make the policy that they're executing," he said.

Conditions were comparable to those at a well-run American prison, such as the state prison in Oak Park Heights, Ellison said. Detainees have access to medical care, are well-fed and get at least two hours of recreation each day.

He said he didn't see any thumbscrews or hear any howling. "But what I did see was a whole lot of people who have no process to change the condition that they're in," Ellison said.

'Absolute legal limbo'

The Guantanamo Bay facility is not quite the transparent prison that officials claim, he said. Many detainees have no guarantee of a trial, and attorneys representing some of the detainees have told him that they're not allowed to have private communications with their clients.

Ellison said he asked to speak with Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese cameraman for the Al Jazeera television network, but was refused. Ellison, the only Muslim member of Congress, drew national attention last year when he said Al-Haj should be either prosecuted or released.

Ellison said he received a confidential briefing from military authorities on Al-Haj's situation and was assured he wasn't being held because he was a journalist. But Ellison said he remained troubled that he wasn't allowed to speak to any prisoners.

"I don't doubt that many of them are bad," he said. He told the audience that he understood many spit at the guards and openly threaten to make war on the United States, he added.

But others are being held not because they're suspected of terrorist activity but simply because of information they may or may not have, he said.

Ellison said that he will push hard to open up the process that determines who should be detained.

"We have the majority of people in absolute legal limbo there," he said.

Kevin Duchschere • 612-673-4455

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