Obama signs NDAA 2014, indefinite detention remains
The president called defense bill a "welcome step" toward closing Gitmo, but civil liberties issues abound
Natasha Lennard Follow
Guantanamo Bay, NDAA, Defense Department, Surveillance, NDAA 2014, Indefinite Detention, Ted Cruz, Sexual assault, U.S. Military, News, Politics News
On Thursday President Obama signed into law the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a sweeping defense policy bill, which includes some improvements in terms of civil liberties and human rights on its previous two iterations. However, a number of provisions — as in the 2012 and 2013 NDAAs — should keep civil libertarians concerned.
As a notable improvement, NDAA 2014 includes a provision that Obama called a “welcome step” toward fulfilling his longtime promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The bill relaxes regulations that have held up the transfer of detainees out of the detention center.
The defense act also includes provisions aimed at intervening in the epidemic of sexual assault in the U.S. military. But, as the Washington Post noted, “it stops short of the broad reforms that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and other advocates have been calling for.”
While legislative movement on Gitmo’s closure is necessary, it is insufficient. As Amnesty International USA’s director Zeke Johnson commented, “[the president] should move forward with foreign transfers immediately and lobby Congress hard to end the ban on transfers to the U.S. mainland. Guantanamo must be closed by ensuring that each detainee is either fairly tried in U.S. federal court or released to a country that will respect his human rights.”
Meanwhile the troubling NDAA provision first signed into law in 2012, which permits the military to detain individuals indefinitely without trial, remains on the books for 2014. Efforts to quash or reform the provision (especially with regard to the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens) have failed and have been fiercely fought by the administration. Most notably, a lawsuit filed by plaintiffs including journalist Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg against the provision has been aggressively fought at every turn by the president’s attorneys. The plaintiffs argue that the NDAA provision constitutes a significant expansion of the laws regarding indefinite detention already established by Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).
