Judge Halts Groin Searches at Guantánamo, Calling Them Abhorrent to Muslims

CHARLIE SAVAGE; July 11, 2013, New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/us/judge-halts-groin-searches-at-guantanamo-calling-them-abhorrent-to-muslims.html?_r=0

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the military to stop touching the groins of detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, when they are moved from their cells to speak with lawyers. The procedure had led some prisoners to stop meeting with or calling their lawyers.

In a 35-page opinion, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, called the searches — which included guards wedging their hands between the genitals and thighs of the detainees as many as four times when moving them to a meeting and back to their cells — “religiously and culturally abhorrent” to Muslims. He portrayed the procedure as unnecessary and intended to “actively discourage” meetings with lawyers.

He also directed the military to allow detainees who are weak from hunger strikes to meet with their lawyers in the same buildings in which they are housed

Colonel Bogdan introduced the new procedures in May, after a raid in which guards forced protesting detainees into lockdown in their individual cells. After the raid, officials said they found improvised weapons. In putting the policy into place, the colonel cited the risk of such weapons as well as the case of a detainee who committed suicide in September by swallowing an overdose of medication, raising speculation that he had hoarded the pills in his underwear.

Common Sense Review

   The atmosphere of “we must treat those who want to kill us better than they would treat us” need to go.  The detention centers (prisons) were created to house those who have chosen to commit crimes against society.  Yet they protection overrides the soldiers who guard them from hurting other prisoner and guards.  This judge has decided that they cannot not do this… What?!?

As well as, detainees who have chosen to be on a hunger strike must be allowed to have their lawyer to come into their housing barracks.  Why can’t people choose to harm themselves without interference?  I find this act disrespecting their wishes.  Now don’t get me wrong, the guards shouldn’t give in to their demands due to the hunger strike but the detainees should get special treatment.

If you want the patients running the asylum, why don’t we put these terrorist on a island in the middle of nowhere and they figure out to protect themselves and their rights to a civil existence.