Former Prosecutor: U.S. Will Have To Apologize For Guantanamo
CHICAGO (CBS/WBBM) -- Former U.S. Attorney Tom Sullivan is warning that the United States will eventually have to apologize for its treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
As WBBM Newsradio 780's John Cody reports, Sullivan, who started the Operation Greylord investigation into corruption in the court system, now says the name Guantanamo Bay has brought the U.S. into disrepute around the world.
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He says those he represented at Guantanamo Bay were in the wrong place at the wrong time, many sold by Pakistanis to the U.S. for bounty money, and imprisoned still without cause after 9 years.
"What we are doing down there, and have done for the past seven or so years – actually nine – is a national disgrace," Sullivan said. "Eventually, we will as we did with Mary Surratt (who was charged with conspiracy in the Abraham Lincoln assassination), and with the Japanese-Americans, apologize for what we are doing today at Guantanamo Bay.
Sullivan spoke at a bar association Law Day celebration in the Daley Center. Law Day is Sunday, May 1.
President Barack Obama vowed to close Guantanamo Bay during his campaign in 2008, and signed an executive order to do so within one year just two days after he took office in January 2009.
But the plan was held up by what the New York Times characterized last year as "political opposition and… competing priorities," including opposition to an ultimately rejected plan to house Guantanamo detainees at a prison in Thomson, Ill., about three hours west of Chicago.
In March, Obama signed another order that allowed military trials to resume at the detention camp.
