The U.S.’s octogenarian Nazis problem looks a lot like its Guantanamo prisoners problem

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/02/the-u-s-s-nazi-octogenarian-problem-looks-a-lot-like-its-guantanamo-problem/



A 2007 photo shows Guantanamo guards in a Camp 6.

The U.S.’s octogenarian Nazis problem looks a lot like its Guantanamo prisoners problem
By Max Fisher, Published: August 2 at 1:06 pm

There are four suspected Nazi war criminals currently living freely and openly in the United States, according to the Associated Press. Though the United States stripped them of citizenship and ordered them deported years ago, all four are still here. Their names and locations are well known, in some cases because they were drawing social security benefits. Their alleged crimes, however long ago, were brutal. But the United States can’t figure out what to do with them.

The cases of these four elderly suspects, and six others like them who died of old age while living in the United States, bear some striking similarities to that of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. There are also some big differences, of course, but how these two sets of cases converge and diverge can be revealing.

The United States, it turns out, is largely powerless to do anything about these suspected Nazi war criminals hanging out in American suburbs. There are two big reasons why, both of which could also be said to apply somewhat to Guantanamo prisoners.

The first reason is that the United States can’t put them on trial; their alleged crimes took place in central Europe, far outside of U.S. jurisdiction. Similarly, the United States believes it can’t try most or all of the detainees left in Guantanamo. The reasons are more complicated; Congress has passed legislation barring civilian trials or trials on U.S. soil for the detainees, leaving only military tribunals. But the tribunals are risky: they’ve actually proven much more likely to acquit the detainees of charges, in part because of Bush-era practices that many consider to be torture and thus make some evidence inadmissible. In many cases the United States doesn’t want to try the detainees because it believes they pose no threat and should be released.